Lifeboat Foundation

By Nathaniel Calhoun –Singularity Hub

Since 2005, I’ve been grappling with the issue of what to teach young people. I’ve written curricula for junior high students in the US, for a UNICEF program reaching students in a dozen countries, and now, for East African young people as they become financially literate and business savvy.

Through the years, I’ve watched program directors demand young people focus on foolish content because it lined up with something trending in the public discourse—units on climate change; modules about using social media to share stories; lessons on agricultural policy; and so forth.

Continue reading “Future of Work: Why Teaching Everyone to Code Is Delusional” »

By Steven Kotler — Singularity Hub

San Francisco to Los Angeles in 35 minutes flat—that was the dream of the Hyperloop.

Back in 2013, Elon Musk introduced the world to this dream a 60 page white paper. The paper caused a stir. The idea—a levitating, solar-power supersonic train—was both pure geek porn and a transportation revolution in the making. It definitely captured people’s imagination.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Will Revolutionize Transportation, But That’s Only The Beginning Of The Change It’ll Bring” »

By Jason Dorrier — Singularity Hub

In two recent videos, Jason Silva visits the idea of ontological design—that as we design our tools, so our tools design us in return. We devise and engineer computers and the internet, and now computers and the internet are remaking us.

Silva describes the process as endlessly circular, like the serpent eating its tail.

Why does this matter? Because, according to Silva, as we become aware of these feedback loops, we can design with more intention. Make spaces—homes, museums, skyscrapers, cities—in anticipation of how they’ll influence our brains.

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From Innovation to Oblivion…

The ups and downs of Bitcoin as an internet currency may be compared to the eventual demise of Google Glass due to its lack of purpose among consumers. While it does not significantly hold true for bitcoins, which apparently have a more supportive and enthusiastic followers, the path that these two have taken and will take may be substantially similar than we like to admit.

For one, Bitcoin’s staggering price decline in the recent days left some people wondering what road it will eventually take in the near future. Is it only taking a detour or is it bound for a dead end?

In the case of Google Glass, it received much attention during its inception a few years ago. It was even named by Time magazine one of the best innovations of 2012. However, despite the ingenuity behind a supposed-to-be groundbreaking invention, Google Glass lacked a tangible sense, its purpose incoherent.

Continue reading “Bitcoins and Google Glass: Are They Heading For the Same Direction?” »

By Jason Dorrier — Singularity Hub

It’s officially 2015, the year Marty McFly and Doc Brown visited in their souped up DeLorean time machine in Back to the Future Part II. There’s been a flurry of press comparing the iconic flick’s predictions to reality—and it got me thinking.

Let’s say Robert Zemeckis is making the movie today. He and cowriter Bob Gale are researching current trends in technology and projecting thirty years into the future. What vision do you think would emerge?

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by Donna Tam — c/net

Elon Musk, the man who’s determined to move our civilization to Mars, will also tackle creating an Internet in space.

The CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX said Friday night that he will use a fleet of satellites to make the Internet speedier and to bring it to those without access, according to media reports of a private event in Seattle. Details of the plan were shared before the event with Bloomberg.

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By Erico Guizzo — IEEE Spectrum

The robot seems determined to put a bigger smile on the man’s face. “Are you smiling from the bottom of your heart?” it asks. The man chuckles. “That’s what I’m talking about,” the robot quips in a high-pitched voice. Then, just for good measure, it bows its plastic head and apologizes for being “too bossy to our CEO.”

The CEO is Masayoshi Son, founder and chairman of telecom giant SoftBank and Japan’s richest person. As such, he has overseen the development of hundreds of new products as part of a vast conglomerate of mobile-phone carriers, Internet ventures, and media companies. But last June, at a press conference outside Tokyo, Son climbed onstage to unveil a pet project: a humanoid robot named Pepper. Designed to be a companion in the home, it is the world’s first full-scale humanoid to be offered to consumers. In February, SoftBank plans to start selling it in Japan for 198,000 yen (less than US $2,000), plus a monthly subscription fee. Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn, known for building iPhones and iPads for Apple, will produce the robots.

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Quoted: “IBM has unveiled its proof of concept for ADEPT, a system developed in partnership with Samsung that uses elements of bitcoin’s underlying design to build a distributed network of devices – a decentralized Internet of Things. The ADEPT concept, or Autonomous Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Telemetry, taps blockchains to provide the backbone of the system, utilizing a mix of proof-of-work and proof-of-stake to secure transactions.”

Read the article here > http://www.coindesk.com/ibm-reveals-proof-concept-blockchain…et-things/

By Jason Dorrier –SingularityHUB

“No, no it’s not science fiction; it’s already happening,” said Ido Bachelet to a somewhat incredulous audience member at a London event late last year. Bachelet, previously of Harvard’s Wyss Institute and faculty member at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, is a leading figure in the field of DNA nanotechnology.

In a brief talk, Bachelet said DNA nanobots will soon be tried in a critically ill leukemia patient. The patient, who has been given roughly six months to live, will receive an injection of DNA nanobots designed to interact with and destroy leukemia cells—while causing virtually zero collateral damage in healthy tissue.

Continue reading “Can DNA Nanobots Successfully Treat Cancer Patients? First Human Trial Soon” »