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For purposes of EDTC6340, I will be introducing the features of the Web 2.0 tool Slideshare. This presentation explores the social features of Slide Share that make this program unique.
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Computation of Things - Justyna Zander, Pieter Mosterman - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Justyna Zander
Harvard University
Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS
Computation of Things:
Challenges and Solutions for the Needs of Humanity
Presented with Pieter J. Mosterman
The current exponential growth of technologies is providing novel, frequently unimaginable ways of leveraging its applications for human needs. Ubiquitous communication capabilities allow a redefinition of an individual person as one who is becoming an integrated part of the virtual world and vice versa. The challenge of sustainable development of those trends from the perspective of a single human and humanity as such remains unsolved.
In the presented vision various aspects of the sustainability (e.g., the relation between a person’s quality of life, climate change, and social awareness) are highlighted to explore and share how an individual impacts and is impacted by the surrounding. Ultimately a technological solution called Computation of Things (CoTh) is outlined. It allows for a quick and reliable assessment of people’s possible decision paths and how this affects sustainable development on a local and global scale. Forecasting life-path alternatives for a human based on its geographic position (including pollution level, energy usage), activity patterns (including nutrition habits, lifestyle, travelling load, family status, circle of friends, social network, or virtual life), and state patterns (including individual’s DNA, current health conditions, musculature) is targeted.
CoTh enables an understanding of the individual self and its surrounding based on the micro-scale information that combines with macro-scale data to enable prediction of different life scenarios. It is defined as an abundant supply of predictive computation capabilities of high performance and large-scale applicability with high accuracy and quality so as to allow for providing humanity’s physical, physiological, mental, and spiritual needs in a profound and as of yet unfathomed manner.
Its core is strongly connoted with physical systems engineering. Thus, a parallelly-conducted research on the notion of computation deploys computational models as the primary representations of physics, instead of attempting to approximate first principles ever closer. A theory of treating models as dynamic systems themselves follows. This evokes the promise for a fundamental breakthrough in terms of computational semantics the significance of which becomes paramount as far as the faithfulness of the predictions is considered.
Dr. Justyna Zander is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Harvard University (Harvard Humanitarian Initiative) in Cambridge, MA, USA (since 2009) and Project Manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems in Berlin, Germany (since 2004). She holds Doctorate of Engineering Science (2008) and Master of Science (2005), both in the fields of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from Technical University Berlin, Germany, Bachelor of Science (2004) in Computer Science, and Bachelor of Science (2003) in Environmental Protection and Management from Gdansk University of Technology, Poland.
She graduated from the Singularity University, Mountain View, CA, USA in 2009 where she then was a Teaching Fellow in 2010. Before she was a visiting scholar at the University of California in San Diego, CA, USA in 2007, and a visiting researcher at The MathWorks in Natick, MA, USA in 2008. Her research interests include heterogeneous system development, design, simulation, computation, humanities, and future studies.
For her scientific efforts Dr. Zander received grants and scholarships from such institutions as Polish Prime Ministry (1999-2000), Polish Ministry of Education and Sport (2001–2004), German Academic Exchange Service (2002), European Union (2003-2004), Hertie Foundation (2004-2005), IFIP TC6 (2005), German National Academic Foundation Grant (2005-2008), IEEE (2006), Siemens (2007), Metodos y Tecnologia (2008), Singularit
Do-it-yourself Transhuman Tech - Bryan Bishop - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Bryan Bishop
Do-it-yourself Transhuman Tech
This talk will cover the prospects of do-it-yourself transhumanism, do-it-yourself garage biotech and engineering. These topics and more will be explored within the context of open source technology and licensing. In addition, progress on open source DIY lab-on-a-chip devices will be exhibited.
Bryan Bishop is an advocate and developer of do-it-yourself transhumanism and open source hardware. His primary focus is directing a "triple trick" transhumanist team focusing on accelerating trends like the technological singularity, do-it-yourself biology, and open source technologies. In 2008, Bishop became a research assistant at the Automated Design Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. From time to time, if you're lucky, you might find him stealing a few hours of sleep on the lab couch. Lately he spends his waking hours at the recently new hackerspace in Austin, Texas.
You can find him on the web at http://heybryan.org
The fate of the meat world - David Pearce - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Some transhumanists speculate about a future of post-biological superintelligence, and even "uploading" ourselves to a less perishable medium. This involves some fairly radical metaphysical assumptions. Viable or otherwise, universal "destructive" uploading is sociologically implausible to say the least. So what will be the fate of old-fashioned organic robots in the primordial biosphere? This talk explores a more bioconservative scenario - a future of superintelligent, supersentient and superhappy organic life in a cruelty-free global ecosystem. What are the pitfalls and opportunities of using biotechnology to abolish suffering throughout the living world?
David is an independent researcher based in Brighton UK. In 1995, he wrote "The Hedonistic Imperative", a plea for the use of biotechnology to abolish suffering in all sentient life. In 1998, David and Nick Bostrom founded the World Transhumanist Association - now Humanity Plus - to promote the use of technology to overcome our biological limitations.
A selection of David's latest work can be found on abolitionist.com
How WE create I - Heather Schlegel - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Heather Schlegel
VP of Product Management, Debtmarket
How WE create I:
Post-Human Identity, Privacy and Self-Value
Science and technology let you to create the person you want to be. How does the technology we create today enable future selves? What is the impact on identity creation, individual privacy and self-value?
Heather Schlegel is a futurist, technologist, and cacophonist. For more than 12 years she has helped build innovative Internet products in Silicon Valley and has more than 50 product launches to her name. Schlegel is currently the head of product development at DebtMarket, a financial start-up in Los Angeles. Her research projects include disruptive technology in financial markets: lending, alternate/virtual currencies and transactions; long-term product adoption for innovative technologies and positive wildcards. Schlegel is primarily known by her online moniker, heathervescent, where she explores the intersection of technology, culture and identity.
Superconducting Quantum Circuits That Learn - Geordie Rose - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Geordie Rose
D-Wave Systems Inc.
Special purpose superconducting quantum processors for disruptively accelerating machine learning
Any system that could be considered intelligent must be able to learn. Unfortunately teaching machines how to learn in a generalizable way – so-called minimally supervised or unsupervised learning – is an extremely hard problem. While much progress has been made in understanding how we might do this – for example using deep belief networks – all current proposals are extremely computationally intensive. Exercising them in real-world situations is often not possible because of the required computational cost – even for large corporations with access to enormous server farms. Here I present a path to overcoming this problem by running state of the art machine learning algorithms on a revolutionary new processor design, which uses quantum effects to enable a class of algorithms that cannot be run on any conventional processor.
Dr. Geordie Rose is the founder and CTO of D-Wave. He is known as a leading advocate for quantum computing and superconducting processors, and has been invited to speak on these topics in a wide range of venues, including TED, Future in Review and SC.
His innovative and ambitious approach to building quantum computing technology and support infrastructure has received coverage in MIT Technology Review magazine, The Economist, New Scientist, Scientific American and Science magazines, and one of his business strategies was profiled in a Harvard Business School case study.
Dr. Rose holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of British Columbia, specializing in quantum effects in materials. While at McMaster University, he graduated first in his class with a B.Eng. in Engineering Physics, specializing in semiconductor engineering.
The Power of Hierarchical Thinking - Ray Kurzweil - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Ray Kurzweil
The Power of Hierarchical Thinking
What does it mean to understand the brain? Where are we on the roadmap to this goal? What are the effective routes to progress - detailed modeling, theoretical effort, improvement of imaging and computational technologies? What predictions can we make? What are the consequences of materialization of such predictions - social, ethical? Kurzweil will address these questions and examine some of the most common criticisms of the exponential growth of information technology including criticisms from hardware ("Moore's Law will not go on forever"), software ("software is stuck in the mud"), the brain ("the brain is too complicated to understand or replicate"), ontology ("software is not capable of thinking or of consciousness"), and promise versus peril ("biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence are too dangerous").
There is now a grand project comprising at least a hundred thousand scientists and engineers working in diverse ways to understand the best example we have of an intelligent process: the human brain. It is arguably the most important project in the history of the human-machine civilization. The goal of the project is to understand precisely how the human brain works, and then to use these revealed algorithms as a basis for creating even more intelligent machines.
As we learn the algorithms underlying human intelligence, we will similarly be able to engineer it to vastly extend the powers of our intelligence. Indeed this process is already well under way. There are literally hundreds of tasks and activities that used to be the sole province of human intelligence that can now be conducted by computers usually with greater precision and vastly greater scale.
Was it inevitable that a species would evolve that is capable of creating its own evolutionary process in the form of intelligent technology? Kurzweil will argue that it was.
According to my models we are only two decades from fully modeling and simulating the human brain. By the time we finish this reverse-engineering project, we will have computers that are millions of times more powerful than the human brain. These computers will be further amplified by being networked into a vast world wide cloud of computing. The algorithms of intelligence will begin to self-iterate towards ever smarter algorithms.
This is how we will address the grand challenges of humanity such as maintaining a healthy environment, providing for the resources for a growing population including energy, food, and water, overcoming disease, vastly extending human longevity, and overcoming poverty. It is only by extending our intelligence with our intelligent technology that we can handle the scale of complexity to address these challenges.
Ray Kurzweil has been described as "the restless genius" by the Wall Street Journal, and "the ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes. Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the "rightful heir to Thomas Edison", and PBS included Ray as one of 16 "revolutionaries who made America", along with other inventors of the past two centuries.
As one of the leading inventors of our time, Ray was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Ray's web site Kurzweil AI.net has over one million readers.
Among Ray's many honors, he is the recipient of the $500,000 MIT-Lemelson Prize, the world's largest for innovation. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. And in 2002, he was inducted into the National Inventor's
The Rise of Citizen-Scientists in the Eversmarter World - Alex Lightman - H+ ...
Alex Lightman
Executive Director, Humanity+
The Rise of Citizen-Scientists in the Eversmarter World
Knowledge may be expanding exponentially, but the current rate of civilizational learning and institutional upgrading is still far too slow in the century of peak oil, peak uranium, and "peak everything". Humanity needs to gather vastly more data as part of ever larger and more widespread scientific experiments, and make science and technology flourish in streets, fields, and homes as well as in university and corporate laboratories. In this talk, H+ Executive Director Alex Lightman will give an introduction and overview of the big picture of H+ the organization, the magazine, and the conference, and how the participants can make the most of their experience and relationships at the conference. The case for ending embargoes and other beaver dams in the rivers of potentially global knowledge will be made. Lightman will offer a vision of a properly functioning Eversmarter world, ending with a call to action to become a citizen-scientist, and a recruiter of other citizen-scientists.
Alex Lightman is the Executive Director of Humanity+ and the chair of the H+ Summit @ Harvard and of the inaugural H+ Summit held December 2009 in Irvine, California. He is a director of Fortune Nest Corporation (Bahrain, Beijing and Beverly Hills, CA) and of Inova Technology. He is an award-winning educator, an inventor with several US patents issued or pending and the author of over 800,000 words, including 12 articles in h+ magazine, and Brave New Unwired World: The Digital Big Bang and The Infinite Internet, the first book on 4G wireless. He has advised NATO, the US Dept. of Defense, and a number of governments on Internet Protocol version 6, the 128-bit successor to the current Internet, IPv4. Lightman's advocacy led to the only Congressional hearings held on US Internet Leadership, conducted by The Government Reform Committee and at which Lightman testified, leading to implementation of Lightman's recommendations to mandate IPv6 for the US government and require IPv6 as part of government information technology contracts. Lightman studied Civil and Environmental Engineering, and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983 (Course I-A), and attended graduate school at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He lives in Santa Monica, California, where he runs marathons, and attempts his first Ironman triathlon, in the UK, on August 1, 2010.
(Reverse) Engineering Intelligence - Noah Goodman - H+ Summit @ Harvard
What computational principles explain the success of human intelligence? I will describe recent work that combines together the unbounded flexibility of mathematical logic with the robustness of statistical inference. This combination brings us several steps closer to understanding human intelligence -- and to the tools for true intelligence engineering.
Noah D. Goodman is a research scientist in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He studies the computational basis of human thought, merging behavioral experiments with formal methods from statistics and logic. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin. After a brief stint as a Chicago real estate developer, he joined the Computational Cognitive Science group at MIT. Goodman has published more than thirty publications in psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and mathematics. Several of these papers have won awards.
50 years of Invention and Entrepreneurship - Nolan Bushnell - H+ Summit @ Har...
The products and services of my life from simple gadgets as a teen to the more sophisticated projects of an adult continue to stoke the creative fires of invention and discovery. My processes of research and execution on a project have been a significant part of successful business formation. In any business many unforeseen occurrences can disrupt any carefully crafted business plan. The objective is to minimize those instances to as few as possible so that it is unlikely to be battling more than one at a time. I will talk about my process of invention and business formation and how it applies to my various companies.
Nolan Bushnell’s career spans over 30 years in which he has made innovations and contributions to several industries. He is best known as the creator of the first digital videogame and the founder of Atari, founder Chuck E. Cheese entertainment restaurant chain, Axlon for interactive toys, Catalyst the first high tech incubator, Etak the first automobile navigation system, ByVideo the first on line shopping system and several others. Through the years Bushnell has given over 2000 speeches on subjects ranging from his companies, the history of video games, the process of innovation, entrepreneurship, intrepreneurship (bringing to market a new project in an old company) and his 10 steps to bring projects to market with no money. His speeches, while being somewhat irreverent to established cliché’s, are humorous high energy and always thought provoking.
He is widely credited with the following innovations and trends:
- The creation of the first commercial digital videogame.
- The acceptance of casual dress in the technical workplace.
- The creation of the Chuck E. Cheese chain of restaurants.
- The creation of the first digital automobile navigation system.
- The creation of the first on line marketing system.
- 3 Simple ways to inject creativity into an organization.
Several of his quotes have entered the mainstream:
- On Ideas: “Anyone who has had a shower has had a good idea--- what separates the winners from the losers is what does the person do after they leave the shower.”
- On Arrogance: “About the time someone thinks the sun shines out their rear-- all that they can be assured of is an illuminated landing area.”
- On Innovation: “Everyone wants innovation until they see it.”
- On Hard Work: “If it were easy to make a million dollars more people would be doing it.”
- The Future: “The world rewards accurate prediction of the future, the best way to be right in your predictions are to make them happen”
- Business Plans: “Anyone can create a success based on everything going correctly—the issue is to be successful even if nothing goes according to plan.
He has received numerous awards including the following:
- New Week 50 Americans that changed the nation.
- Consumer Electronics “Hall of Fame”
- Video “Hall of Fame”
- Restaurant Business “Innovator of the Year”
- Amusement Operators of America “Life time Achievement”
- Distinguished Fellow, University of Utah
- Computer Museum “Hall of Fame”
- Distinguished Leader of Silicon Valley
- The Agenda “Crystal Ball Award”
- Babson College “Distinguished Entrepreneur”
- British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Life Time Achievement Award
The Evolving Data Sphere - David Orban - H+ Summit @ Harvard
David Orban
Chairman, Humanity+
Advisor, Singularity University
Founder & Chief Evangelist, WideTag, Inc.
Intelligence Augmentation, Decision Power, And The Emerging Data Sphere
Human civilization depends on our ability to manage its increasing complexity. Behaviors, processes, and decisions that in the past were tolerated by the complex adaptive system we call Earth, are now more and more showing unforeseen consequences in unexpected places.
Many of our theories about the workings of the world are hampered in their predictive power by the lack of data, and suffer garbage-in, garbage-out effects. New interconnected sensor networks, fast, and ubiquitous communications, and the parallel power of our massive software systems are the never too soon answer to this need, and promise to revolutionize the way we understand, and act upon the planet.
The data sphere we are building, developing through every traceable action of millions of people, and billions, soon trillions of devices, designs a fine-grained picture of necessary understanding, and empowers us to believe that we can indeed aim to evolve our civilization, and to move it to the next levels of complexity, and achievement of human potential.
David Orban is an entrepreneur and visionary. He is Chairman of Humanity+, Advisor of the Singularity University, a Founder of WideTag, Inc., a high technology start-up company providing the infrastructure for an open Internet of Things. David shapes the strategic vision of its technologies by developing the policies and communication steps necessary to enable constructive progress. He is further a Scientific Advisory Board Member for the Lifeboat Foundation. David cuts across the limits of deep specialization to contribute to the new renaissance. He explains, “My vision is at the crossroads of technology and society as defined by their co-evolution.” David Orban’s personal motto is, “What is the question I should be asking?” This concept is his vehicle to accelerating cycles of invention and innovation in order to build the new world ahead.
Humanity 2020: The Next 10 Years of Human Development - Ramez Naam - H+ Summi...
Ramez Naam
Humanity 2020: The Next 10 Years of Human Development
The decade between 2010 and 2020 will be a small but significant step in the development of human enhancement technology, with tremendous numbers of new discoveries in genetics fueled by the continuing exponential drop in gene sequencing cost, commercial availability of a new generation of cognitive enhancers and the first plausible aging inhibitors, likely advances in genetic reprogramming of embryos and of mature humans, and continued progress in prosthetics, imaging, sports enhancement, and numerous other areas. Science and technology will have made significant strides in empowering individuals to be smarter, stronger, faster, and longer lived than ever before.
Computer scientist Ramez Naam, author of More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Human Enhancement, and winner of the 2005 H.G. Wells Award for Contributions to Transhumanism will give a guided tour of the 10 year horizons across the board of human enhancement.
Transhumanism & Education - Kevin Jain - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Kevin Jain
Transhumanism & Education
In reviewing the curricula of various Universities, one will find few, if any, classes that meaningfully consider the increasing assimilation of technology with the human. If an education predicated on assumptions of human nature is made without a meaningful consideration of transhumanism, can it remain relevant in a future where technology may render false these very assumptions? How can the question of human enhancement be introduced as a topic of more widespread academic deliberation? This talk will also discuss current efforts in this arena.
Kevin Jain is an undergraduate at Harvard University, and is Founder and President of the Harvard College Future Society, a student organization interested in evaluating the impact of future technologies on the human and humanity. He is the Student H+ Summit Coordinator, and helped organize the H+ 2010 Summit at Harvard. He plans to graduate with a special concentration in Transhumanism.
Can we extract a mind from a plastic-embedded brain? - Kenneth Hayworth - H+ ...
Ken Hayworth
Can we extract a mind from a plastic-embedded brain?
We now have a good working theory of consciousness – the phenomenal self model (Metzinger 2009), and we have a good understanding of the human cognitive architecture (Anderson 2007) within which this self model is implemented. The key components of this cognitive architecture are declarative memory chunks and productions – thought to be implemented as stable attractors in the neural networks of the cortex and basal ganglia. According to neural network theory, such stable attractors are robustly defined by the synaptic connectivity between neurons. In small pieces of tissue such synaptic connectivity is easily preserved using chemical fixation and embedding in plastic, and it should be relatively easy to adapt these protocols into a surgical procedure performed in hospitals to preserve whole human brains. Such plastic embedded brain tissue can be imaged at the nanometer level using new automated techniques (SBFSEM, FIBSEM, Tape-to-SEM), and we can directly extrapolate these techniques to future ones that will enable all the synaptic connections within a human brain to be mapped allowing a fully accurate simulation of the original preserved mind. In short, we have a complete sketch of how mind uploading will work and we have a mandate to implement emergency brain preservation in hospitals for all who desire access to this future technology.
Kenneth Hayworth, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, is the inventor of several technologies for high-throughput volume imaging of neural circuits at the nanometer scale. He received a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Southern California for research into how the human visual system encodes spatial relations among objects. Hayworth is a vocal advocate for brain preservation and mind uploading, and runs a website (www.brainpreservation.org) calling for the implementation of an Emergency Glutaraldehyde Perfusion procedure in hospitals, and for the development of a Whole Brain Plastic Embedding procedure which can demonstrate perfect ultrastructure preservation across an entire human brain.
Far Beyond Smartphones - David Wood - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Far Beyond Smartphones:
Lessons From Disruptive Technology, Open collaboration, and Breakthrough Mobile products
David Wood has spent more than 20 years envisioning, architecting, implementing, supporting, and avidly using smart mobile devices (devices that can also be called "personal electronic brains"): ten years with PDA manufacturer Psion PLC, and then ten more with smartphone operating system specialist Symbian Ltd. He was centrally involved in preparations and planning for the open source Symbian Foundation. Over that time, many lessons have emerged, highly relevant to the H+ mission to explore how humanity will be radically changed by technology in the near future:
What factors cause both spurts and slowdowns in technology development? What enables new technology visions to "cross the chasm" towards mainstream adoption? Given the history of improvements in smart mobile devices over the last 20 years, what can we realistically expect in the next 20 years? How credible is the vision of mobile devices helping billions of people to collect data that can be used for science and advance human knowledge? To what extent can technological progress be foreseen, and to what extent is the process chaotic, risky, and even dangerous?
David Wood spent ten years with PDA manufacturer Psion PLC, and then ten more with smartphone operating system specialist Symbian Ltd, where he was co-founder and executive vice president.
His background includes: many years building and integrating UI system software and application frameworks in 16-bit and 32-bit versions of “EPOC” software (later named “Symbian OS”); growing and directing the technical consulting teams that worked with leading phone manufacturers to create the world’s first successful smartphones; and defining and running development programs to stimulate and nurture the fast-growing Symbian partner ecosystem.
From the first half of 2008, he was involved in preparations and planning for the independent open source Symbian Foundation. He served on the Leadership Team of the Symbian Foundation as “Catalyst and Futurist” until October 2009. I continue these same roles from within Delta Wisdom.
He has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge University and an honorary doctorate in science from the University of Westminster.
In September 2009 he was included in T3's list of "100 most influential people in technology": http://tech100.t3.com/list/80-61/.
Military 2.0 - Patrick Lin - H+ Summit @ Harvard
For better or worse, the military is a major driver of technological, world-changing innovations, such as the Internet. At the same time, wars and armed conflicts are a key roadblock in the evolution of humanity. Therefore, to understand how emerging technologies will change our lives, we must look at their military origins as a harbinger of things to come for society at large. This presentation will focus on ethical and policy questions arising from two key areas making headlines today and in the future: human enhancement technologies and robotics.
For instance, are there moral or practical issues with eliminating human emotions such as fear or anger, which have led to abuses and accidents in wartime? Must these enhancements (and others, such as super-strength) be temporary or reversible, considering that soldiers usually return to civilian life? Robots can discourage such abuses if equipped with cameras, becoming objective and unblinking observers on the battlefield, but would this erode cohesion and trust among soldiers – and in the civilian realm, would surveillance robots infringe on our privacy? Generally, would these new technologies make it easier to engage in war, since they would lower political costs by reducing the number of casualties on our side – if so, is it immoral, or otherwise counterproductive to humanity's progress, to develop these capabilities?
Patrick Lin is the director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group , based at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Most recently, he has led research efforts that culminated in two major reports: Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, and Design (funded by the U.S. Dept. of Defense/Navy, 2008) and Ethics of Human Enhancement: 25 Questions & Answers (funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, 2009). He has published several books and papers in the field of technology ethics, including a new monograph What Is Nanotechnology and Why Does It Matter?: From Science to Ethics (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) and a forthcoming anthology Robot Ethics: The Social and Ethical Implication of Robotics (MIT Press, in preparation). Dr. Lin earned his B.A. from University of California at Berkeley, M.A. and Ph.D. from University of California at Santa Barbara, and completed a three-year post-doctoral appointment at Dartmouth College. He is currently an assistant professor in Cal Poly’s philosophy department and an ethics fellow at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Sparking Our Neural Humanity - M. A. Greenstein - H+ Summit - Humanity+
M. A. Greenstein, an internationally recognized commentator, researcher and coach on best and future practices for "opening the doors of perception". Based in L. A. with networked alliances throughout the AsiaPacific region, she founded The George Greenstein Institute and the future-focused e-zine BODIES IN SPACE to advance global change in designing creative and holistic learning systems as well as to encourage progressive leadership in related issues of neurotech innovation and designing sustainable lifestyles. Dedicated to BIG THINKING energized by visionary "sci-art" and anchored by S.I.T. (Somatic Intelligence Training), Dr. G is a whole-brain systems generator who privileges "interoception" as a search engine for catapulting & mapping best design images and ideas.
An Adjunct Associate Professor at Art Center College of Design, Dr. G. is also member of TED, Mindshare.la, The Neuroleadership Institute and in alliance with the Society for Neuroscience and the Neurotechnology Industry Organization.
Democratizing The Genome - Melanie Swan - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Exponential declines in the cost of human genome sequencing is starting to put applications in the hands of researchers and consumers that were only dreamt of previously. Individuals are starting to have access to their own genomic data which can be actionable in a variety of ways including drug response, health condition analysis, athletic capability, and ancestry. DIYgenomics is a new platform bringing citizen scientists together to run peer cohort research studies and conduct novel research linking genetic data and physical biomarkers. Some norms are developing in response to the variety of community-based research issues that arise such as adaptive studies, informed consent, security, anonymity, and study design.
Melanie Swan is a genomics researcher, hedge fund manager, and leader in the Health 2.0 movement. Recent publications include “Multigenic Condition Risk Assessment in Direct-to-Consumer Genomic Services,” “Engineering Life into Technology,” and “Emerging Patient-Driven Health Care Models.” She serves as an advisor to research foundations, government agencies, corporations, and startups. Melanie has an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Georgetown University. She is an advisor and faculty member at Singularity University.
Altered Carbon - Andrew Hessel - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Andrew Hessel is an outspoken advocate and champion of DNA technologies, catalyzing new project developments, investment, and relationships in synthetic biology and bioengineering. His overarching message is that biology is poised to become the IT industry of the 21st century, fueled by a new generation of young researchers and entrepreneurs armed with technologies like DNA sequencing and synthesis that are becoming exponentially more powerful yet increasingly inexpensive. The possible applications are virtually limitless and include the typical global challenges (sustainable fuel production, environmental remediation, and better diagnosis treatment of human disease) but also extend into new, uncharted scientific territories. His popular lectures at the Singularity University and his visioning work reinforce that the foundations for this new industry are already in place, that it will grow explosively once the first few killer applications find commercial success, and that it will change the world, and humanity itself, in profound yet perhaps evolutionary necessary ways.
Do We Click? - Laurent Silbert - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Do we click?
Speaker-listener neural coupling underlies successful communication
Verbal communication enables us to directly convey information across brains, independent of the actual external state of affairs (e.g. telling a story of past events). Such phenomenon may be reflected in the ability of the speaker to directly induce similar brain patterns in another individual, via speech, in the absence of any other stimulation. The recording of the neural responses from both the speaker brain and the listener brain opens a new window into the neural basis of interpersonal communication, and may be used to assess verbal and non-verbal forms of interaction in both human and other model systems. Further understanding of the neural processes that facilitate neural coupling across interlocutors may shed light on the mechanisms by which our brains interact and bind to form societies.
The capacity to communicate internal thoughts from one person to another is at the foundation of human society. Communication naturally requires an interaction between at least two people. Existing neurolinguistic studies are concerned, however, either with speech production or with the comprehension of isolated words or sentences. Little is known, therefore, about the underlying neuronal mechanism that facilitates the transfer of information between two brains during communication.
Understanding the interaction between a speaker’s brain and a listener’s brain in the context of real-world communication requires the development of new experimental paradigms. Using function Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), we measured neural signals from two brains (a speaker and a listener) during a complex everyday communication. We then built a simple, interpretable model that leverages the dynamics of fMRI and uses the speaker’s brain responses as a model for predicting the brain responses within the listener. Our model reveals that during successful communication, the speaker and listener’s brains exhibit joint, temporally coupled, response patterns. Such speaker-listener neural coupling vanishes when participants fail to communicate (such as with different languages). The temporal nature of this speaker-listener coupling suggests that an ability to evoke similar brain patterns in another individual via speech may gate our communication abilities. Moreover, while in most areas the listeners’ brain responses mirror the speaker’s responses with a delay, some areas in the listeners’ brain exhibit predictive anticipatory responses. Finally, we found that the extent of the anticipatory neuronal coupling between interlocutors is predictive of communicative success.
Currently a PhD candidate in Neuroscience from Princeton University, Silbert also has a Bachelors from University of Pennsylvania (Biology and Photography), Masters in Neuroscience from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, and Masters in Psychology from NYU.
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Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS
Computation of Things:
Challenges and Solutions for the Needs of Humanity
Presented with Pieter J. Mosterman
The current exponential growth of technologies is providing novel, frequently unimaginable ways of leveraging its applications for human needs. Ubiquitous communication capabilities allow a redefinition of an individual person as one who is becoming an integrated part of the virtual world and vice versa. The challenge of sustainable development of those trends from the perspective of a single human and humanity as such remains unsolved.
In the presented vision various aspects of the sustainability (e.g., the relation between a person’s quality of life, climate change, and social awareness) are highlighted to explore and share how an individual impacts and is impacted by the surrounding. Ultimately a technological solution called Computation of Things (CoTh) is outlined. It allows for a quick and reliable assessment of people’s possible decision paths and how this affects sustainable development on a local and global scale. Forecasting life-path alternatives for a human based on its geographic position (including pollution level, energy usage), activity patterns (including nutrition habits, lifestyle, travelling load, family status, circle of friends, social network, or virtual life), and state patterns (including individual’s DNA, current health conditions, musculature) is targeted.
CoTh enables an understanding of the individual self and its surrounding based on the micro-scale information that combines with macro-scale data to enable prediction of different life scenarios. It is defined as an abundant supply of predictive computation capabilities of high performance and large-scale applicability with high accuracy and quality so as to allow for providing humanity’s physical, physiological, mental, and spiritual needs in a profound and as of yet unfathomed manner.
Its core is strongly connoted with physical systems engineering. Thus, a parallelly-conducted research on the notion of computation deploys computational models as the primary representations of physics, instead of attempting to approximate first principles ever closer. A theory of treating models as dynamic systems themselves follows. This evokes the promise for a fundamental breakthrough in terms of computational semantics the significance of which becomes paramount as far as the faithfulness of the predictions is considered.
Dr. Justyna Zander is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Harvard University (Harvard Humanitarian Initiative) in Cambridge, MA, USA (since 2009) and Project Manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems in Berlin, Germany (since 2004). She holds Doctorate of Engineering Science (2008) and Master of Science (2005), both in the fields of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from Technical University Berlin, Germany, Bachelor of Science (2004) in Computer Science, and Bachelor of Science (2003) in Environmental Protection and Management from Gdansk University of Technology, Poland.
She graduated from the Singularity University, Mountain View, CA, USA in 2009 where she then was a Teaching Fellow in 2010. Before she was a visiting scholar at the University of California in San Diego, CA, USA in 2007, and a visiting researcher at The MathWorks in Natick, MA, USA in 2008. Her research interests include heterogeneous system development, design, simulation, computation, humanities, and future studies.
For her scientific efforts Dr. Zander received grants and scholarships from such institutions as Polish Prime Ministry (1999-2000), Polish Ministry of Education and Sport (2001–2004), German Academic Exchange Service (2002), European Union (2003-2004), Hertie Foundation (2004-2005), IFIP TC6 (2005), German National Academic Foundation Grant (2005-2008), IEEE (2006), Siemens (2007), Metodos y Tecnologia (2008), Singularit
Do-it-yourself Transhuman Tech - Bryan Bishop - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Bryan Bishop
Do-it-yourself Transhuman Tech
This talk will cover the prospects of do-it-yourself transhumanism, do-it-yourself garage biotech and engineering. These topics and more will be explored within the context of open source technology and licensing. In addition, progress on open source DIY lab-on-a-chip devices will be exhibited.
Bryan Bishop is an advocate and developer of do-it-yourself transhumanism and open source hardware. His primary focus is directing a "triple trick" transhumanist team focusing on accelerating trends like the technological singularity, do-it-yourself biology, and open source technologies. In 2008, Bishop became a research assistant at the Automated Design Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. From time to time, if you're lucky, you might find him stealing a few hours of sleep on the lab couch. Lately he spends his waking hours at the recently new hackerspace in Austin, Texas.
You can find him on the web at http://heybryan.org
The fate of the meat world - David Pearce - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Some transhumanists speculate about a future of post-biological superintelligence, and even "uploading" ourselves to a less perishable medium. This involves some fairly radical metaphysical assumptions. Viable or otherwise, universal "destructive" uploading is sociologically implausible to say the least. So what will be the fate of old-fashioned organic robots in the primordial biosphere? This talk explores a more bioconservative scenario - a future of superintelligent, supersentient and superhappy organic life in a cruelty-free global ecosystem. What are the pitfalls and opportunities of using biotechnology to abolish suffering throughout the living world?
David is an independent researcher based in Brighton UK. In 1995, he wrote "The Hedonistic Imperative", a plea for the use of biotechnology to abolish suffering in all sentient life. In 1998, David and Nick Bostrom founded the World Transhumanist Association - now Humanity Plus - to promote the use of technology to overcome our biological limitations.
A selection of David's latest work can be found on abolitionist.com
How WE create I - Heather Schlegel - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Heather Schlegel
VP of Product Management, Debtmarket
How WE create I:
Post-Human Identity, Privacy and Self-Value
Science and technology let you to create the person you want to be. How does the technology we create today enable future selves? What is the impact on identity creation, individual privacy and self-value?
Heather Schlegel is a futurist, technologist, and cacophonist. For more than 12 years she has helped build innovative Internet products in Silicon Valley and has more than 50 product launches to her name. Schlegel is currently the head of product development at DebtMarket, a financial start-up in Los Angeles. Her research projects include disruptive technology in financial markets: lending, alternate/virtual currencies and transactions; long-term product adoption for innovative technologies and positive wildcards. Schlegel is primarily known by her online moniker, heathervescent, where she explores the intersection of technology, culture and identity.
Viewers also liked (6)
Computation of Things - Justyna Zander, Pieter Mosterman - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Computation of Things - Justyna Zander, Pieter Mosterman - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Do-it-yourself Transhuman Tech - Bryan Bishop - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Do-it-yourself Transhuman Tech - Bryan Bishop - H+ Summit @ Harvard
The fate of the meat world - David Pearce - H+ Summit @ Harvard
The fate of the meat world - David Pearce - H+ Summit @ Harvard
How WE create I - Heather Schlegel - H+ Summit @ Harvard
How WE create I - Heather Schlegel - H+ Summit @ Harvard
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Superconducting Quantum Circuits That Learn - Geordie Rose - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Geordie Rose
D-Wave Systems Inc.
Special purpose superconducting quantum processors for disruptively accelerating machine learning
Any system that could be considered intelligent must be able to learn. Unfortunately teaching machines how to learn in a generalizable way – so-called minimally supervised or unsupervised learning – is an extremely hard problem. While much progress has been made in understanding how we might do this – for example using deep belief networks – all current proposals are extremely computationally intensive. Exercising them in real-world situations is often not possible because of the required computational cost – even for large corporations with access to enormous server farms. Here I present a path to overcoming this problem by running state of the art machine learning algorithms on a revolutionary new processor design, which uses quantum effects to enable a class of algorithms that cannot be run on any conventional processor.
Dr. Geordie Rose is the founder and CTO of D-Wave. He is known as a leading advocate for quantum computing and superconducting processors, and has been invited to speak on these topics in a wide range of venues, including TED, Future in Review and SC.
His innovative and ambitious approach to building quantum computing technology and support infrastructure has received coverage in MIT Technology Review magazine, The Economist, New Scientist, Scientific American and Science magazines, and one of his business strategies was profiled in a Harvard Business School case study.
Dr. Rose holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of British Columbia, specializing in quantum effects in materials. While at McMaster University, he graduated first in his class with a B.Eng. in Engineering Physics, specializing in semiconductor engineering.
The Power of Hierarchical Thinking - Ray Kurzweil - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Ray Kurzweil
The Power of Hierarchical Thinking
What does it mean to understand the brain? Where are we on the roadmap to this goal? What are the effective routes to progress - detailed modeling, theoretical effort, improvement of imaging and computational technologies? What predictions can we make? What are the consequences of materialization of such predictions - social, ethical? Kurzweil will address these questions and examine some of the most common criticisms of the exponential growth of information technology including criticisms from hardware ("Moore's Law will not go on forever"), software ("software is stuck in the mud"), the brain ("the brain is too complicated to understand or replicate"), ontology ("software is not capable of thinking or of consciousness"), and promise versus peril ("biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence are too dangerous").
There is now a grand project comprising at least a hundred thousand scientists and engineers working in diverse ways to understand the best example we have of an intelligent process: the human brain. It is arguably the most important project in the history of the human-machine civilization. The goal of the project is to understand precisely how the human brain works, and then to use these revealed algorithms as a basis for creating even more intelligent machines.
As we learn the algorithms underlying human intelligence, we will similarly be able to engineer it to vastly extend the powers of our intelligence. Indeed this process is already well under way. There are literally hundreds of tasks and activities that used to be the sole province of human intelligence that can now be conducted by computers usually with greater precision and vastly greater scale.
Was it inevitable that a species would evolve that is capable of creating its own evolutionary process in the form of intelligent technology? Kurzweil will argue that it was.
According to my models we are only two decades from fully modeling and simulating the human brain. By the time we finish this reverse-engineering project, we will have computers that are millions of times more powerful than the human brain. These computers will be further amplified by being networked into a vast world wide cloud of computing. The algorithms of intelligence will begin to self-iterate towards ever smarter algorithms.
This is how we will address the grand challenges of humanity such as maintaining a healthy environment, providing for the resources for a growing population including energy, food, and water, overcoming disease, vastly extending human longevity, and overcoming poverty. It is only by extending our intelligence with our intelligent technology that we can handle the scale of complexity to address these challenges.
Ray Kurzweil has been described as "the restless genius" by the Wall Street Journal, and "the ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes. Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the "rightful heir to Thomas Edison", and PBS included Ray as one of 16 "revolutionaries who made America", along with other inventors of the past two centuries.
As one of the leading inventors of our time, Ray was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Ray's web site Kurzweil AI.net has over one million readers.
Among Ray's many honors, he is the recipient of the $500,000 MIT-Lemelson Prize, the world's largest for innovation. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. And in 2002, he was inducted into the National Inventor's
The Rise of Citizen-Scientists in the Eversmarter World - Alex Lightman - H+ ...
Alex Lightman
Executive Director, Humanity+
The Rise of Citizen-Scientists in the Eversmarter World
Knowledge may be expanding exponentially, but the current rate of civilizational learning and institutional upgrading is still far too slow in the century of peak oil, peak uranium, and "peak everything". Humanity needs to gather vastly more data as part of ever larger and more widespread scientific experiments, and make science and technology flourish in streets, fields, and homes as well as in university and corporate laboratories. In this talk, H+ Executive Director Alex Lightman will give an introduction and overview of the big picture of H+ the organization, the magazine, and the conference, and how the participants can make the most of their experience and relationships at the conference. The case for ending embargoes and other beaver dams in the rivers of potentially global knowledge will be made. Lightman will offer a vision of a properly functioning Eversmarter world, ending with a call to action to become a citizen-scientist, and a recruiter of other citizen-scientists.
Alex Lightman is the Executive Director of Humanity+ and the chair of the H+ Summit @ Harvard and of the inaugural H+ Summit held December 2009 in Irvine, California. He is a director of Fortune Nest Corporation (Bahrain, Beijing and Beverly Hills, CA) and of Inova Technology. He is an award-winning educator, an inventor with several US patents issued or pending and the author of over 800,000 words, including 12 articles in h+ magazine, and Brave New Unwired World: The Digital Big Bang and The Infinite Internet, the first book on 4G wireless. He has advised NATO, the US Dept. of Defense, and a number of governments on Internet Protocol version 6, the 128-bit successor to the current Internet, IPv4. Lightman's advocacy led to the only Congressional hearings held on US Internet Leadership, conducted by The Government Reform Committee and at which Lightman testified, leading to implementation of Lightman's recommendations to mandate IPv6 for the US government and require IPv6 as part of government information technology contracts. Lightman studied Civil and Environmental Engineering, and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983 (Course I-A), and attended graduate school at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He lives in Santa Monica, California, where he runs marathons, and attempts his first Ironman triathlon, in the UK, on August 1, 2010.
(Reverse) Engineering Intelligence - Noah Goodman - H+ Summit @ Harvard
What computational principles explain the success of human intelligence? I will describe recent work that combines together the unbounded flexibility of mathematical logic with the robustness of statistical inference. This combination brings us several steps closer to understanding human intelligence -- and to the tools for true intelligence engineering.
Noah D. Goodman is a research scientist in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He studies the computational basis of human thought, merging behavioral experiments with formal methods from statistics and logic. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin. After a brief stint as a Chicago real estate developer, he joined the Computational Cognitive Science group at MIT. Goodman has published more than thirty publications in psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and mathematics. Several of these papers have won awards.
50 years of Invention and Entrepreneurship - Nolan Bushnell - H+ Summit @ Har...
The products and services of my life from simple gadgets as a teen to the more sophisticated projects of an adult continue to stoke the creative fires of invention and discovery. My processes of research and execution on a project have been a significant part of successful business formation. In any business many unforeseen occurrences can disrupt any carefully crafted business plan. The objective is to minimize those instances to as few as possible so that it is unlikely to be battling more than one at a time. I will talk about my process of invention and business formation and how it applies to my various companies.
Nolan Bushnell’s career spans over 30 years in which he has made innovations and contributions to several industries. He is best known as the creator of the first digital videogame and the founder of Atari, founder Chuck E. Cheese entertainment restaurant chain, Axlon for interactive toys, Catalyst the first high tech incubator, Etak the first automobile navigation system, ByVideo the first on line shopping system and several others. Through the years Bushnell has given over 2000 speeches on subjects ranging from his companies, the history of video games, the process of innovation, entrepreneurship, intrepreneurship (bringing to market a new project in an old company) and his 10 steps to bring projects to market with no money. His speeches, while being somewhat irreverent to established cliché’s, are humorous high energy and always thought provoking.
He is widely credited with the following innovations and trends:
- The creation of the first commercial digital videogame.
- The acceptance of casual dress in the technical workplace.
- The creation of the Chuck E. Cheese chain of restaurants.
- The creation of the first digital automobile navigation system.
- The creation of the first on line marketing system.
- 3 Simple ways to inject creativity into an organization.
Several of his quotes have entered the mainstream:
- On Ideas: “Anyone who has had a shower has had a good idea--- what separates the winners from the losers is what does the person do after they leave the shower.”
- On Arrogance: “About the time someone thinks the sun shines out their rear-- all that they can be assured of is an illuminated landing area.”
- On Innovation: “Everyone wants innovation until they see it.”
- On Hard Work: “If it were easy to make a million dollars more people would be doing it.”
- The Future: “The world rewards accurate prediction of the future, the best way to be right in your predictions are to make them happen”
- Business Plans: “Anyone can create a success based on everything going correctly—the issue is to be successful even if nothing goes according to plan.
He has received numerous awards including the following:
- New Week 50 Americans that changed the nation.
- Consumer Electronics “Hall of Fame”
- Video “Hall of Fame”
- Restaurant Business “Innovator of the Year”
- Amusement Operators of America “Life time Achievement”
- Distinguished Fellow, University of Utah
- Computer Museum “Hall of Fame”
- Distinguished Leader of Silicon Valley
- The Agenda “Crystal Ball Award”
- Babson College “Distinguished Entrepreneur”
- British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Life Time Achievement Award
The Evolving Data Sphere - David Orban - H+ Summit @ Harvard
David Orban
Chairman, Humanity+
Advisor, Singularity University
Founder & Chief Evangelist, WideTag, Inc.
Intelligence Augmentation, Decision Power, And The Emerging Data Sphere
Human civilization depends on our ability to manage its increasing complexity. Behaviors, processes, and decisions that in the past were tolerated by the complex adaptive system we call Earth, are now more and more showing unforeseen consequences in unexpected places.
Many of our theories about the workings of the world are hampered in their predictive power by the lack of data, and suffer garbage-in, garbage-out effects. New interconnected sensor networks, fast, and ubiquitous communications, and the parallel power of our massive software systems are the never too soon answer to this need, and promise to revolutionize the way we understand, and act upon the planet.
The data sphere we are building, developing through every traceable action of millions of people, and billions, soon trillions of devices, designs a fine-grained picture of necessary understanding, and empowers us to believe that we can indeed aim to evolve our civilization, and to move it to the next levels of complexity, and achievement of human potential.
David Orban is an entrepreneur and visionary. He is Chairman of Humanity+, Advisor of the Singularity University, a Founder of WideTag, Inc., a high technology start-up company providing the infrastructure for an open Internet of Things. David shapes the strategic vision of its technologies by developing the policies and communication steps necessary to enable constructive progress. He is further a Scientific Advisory Board Member for the Lifeboat Foundation. David cuts across the limits of deep specialization to contribute to the new renaissance. He explains, “My vision is at the crossroads of technology and society as defined by their co-evolution.” David Orban’s personal motto is, “What is the question I should be asking?” This concept is his vehicle to accelerating cycles of invention and innovation in order to build the new world ahead.
Humanity 2020: The Next 10 Years of Human Development - Ramez Naam - H+ Summi...
Ramez Naam
Humanity 2020: The Next 10 Years of Human Development
The decade between 2010 and 2020 will be a small but significant step in the development of human enhancement technology, with tremendous numbers of new discoveries in genetics fueled by the continuing exponential drop in gene sequencing cost, commercial availability of a new generation of cognitive enhancers and the first plausible aging inhibitors, likely advances in genetic reprogramming of embryos and of mature humans, and continued progress in prosthetics, imaging, sports enhancement, and numerous other areas. Science and technology will have made significant strides in empowering individuals to be smarter, stronger, faster, and longer lived than ever before.
Computer scientist Ramez Naam, author of More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Human Enhancement, and winner of the 2005 H.G. Wells Award for Contributions to Transhumanism will give a guided tour of the 10 year horizons across the board of human enhancement.
Transhumanism & Education - Kevin Jain - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Kevin Jain
Transhumanism & Education
In reviewing the curricula of various Universities, one will find few, if any, classes that meaningfully consider the increasing assimilation of technology with the human. If an education predicated on assumptions of human nature is made without a meaningful consideration of transhumanism, can it remain relevant in a future where technology may render false these very assumptions? How can the question of human enhancement be introduced as a topic of more widespread academic deliberation? This talk will also discuss current efforts in this arena.
Kevin Jain is an undergraduate at Harvard University, and is Founder and President of the Harvard College Future Society, a student organization interested in evaluating the impact of future technologies on the human and humanity. He is the Student H+ Summit Coordinator, and helped organize the H+ 2010 Summit at Harvard. He plans to graduate with a special concentration in Transhumanism.
Can we extract a mind from a plastic-embedded brain? - Kenneth Hayworth - H+ ...
Ken Hayworth
Can we extract a mind from a plastic-embedded brain?
We now have a good working theory of consciousness – the phenomenal self model (Metzinger 2009), and we have a good understanding of the human cognitive architecture (Anderson 2007) within which this self model is implemented. The key components of this cognitive architecture are declarative memory chunks and productions – thought to be implemented as stable attractors in the neural networks of the cortex and basal ganglia. According to neural network theory, such stable attractors are robustly defined by the synaptic connectivity between neurons. In small pieces of tissue such synaptic connectivity is easily preserved using chemical fixation and embedding in plastic, and it should be relatively easy to adapt these protocols into a surgical procedure performed in hospitals to preserve whole human brains. Such plastic embedded brain tissue can be imaged at the nanometer level using new automated techniques (SBFSEM, FIBSEM, Tape-to-SEM), and we can directly extrapolate these techniques to future ones that will enable all the synaptic connections within a human brain to be mapped allowing a fully accurate simulation of the original preserved mind. In short, we have a complete sketch of how mind uploading will work and we have a mandate to implement emergency brain preservation in hospitals for all who desire access to this future technology.
Kenneth Hayworth, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, is the inventor of several technologies for high-throughput volume imaging of neural circuits at the nanometer scale. He received a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Southern California for research into how the human visual system encodes spatial relations among objects. Hayworth is a vocal advocate for brain preservation and mind uploading, and runs a website (www.brainpreservation.org) calling for the implementation of an Emergency Glutaraldehyde Perfusion procedure in hospitals, and for the development of a Whole Brain Plastic Embedding procedure which can demonstrate perfect ultrastructure preservation across an entire human brain.
Far Beyond Smartphones - David Wood - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Far Beyond Smartphones:
Lessons From Disruptive Technology, Open collaboration, and Breakthrough Mobile products
David Wood has spent more than 20 years envisioning, architecting, implementing, supporting, and avidly using smart mobile devices (devices that can also be called "personal electronic brains"): ten years with PDA manufacturer Psion PLC, and then ten more with smartphone operating system specialist Symbian Ltd. He was centrally involved in preparations and planning for the open source Symbian Foundation. Over that time, many lessons have emerged, highly relevant to the H+ mission to explore how humanity will be radically changed by technology in the near future:
What factors cause both spurts and slowdowns in technology development? What enables new technology visions to "cross the chasm" towards mainstream adoption? Given the history of improvements in smart mobile devices over the last 20 years, what can we realistically expect in the next 20 years? How credible is the vision of mobile devices helping billions of people to collect data that can be used for science and advance human knowledge? To what extent can technological progress be foreseen, and to what extent is the process chaotic, risky, and even dangerous?
David Wood spent ten years with PDA manufacturer Psion PLC, and then ten more with smartphone operating system specialist Symbian Ltd, where he was co-founder and executive vice president.
His background includes: many years building and integrating UI system software and application frameworks in 16-bit and 32-bit versions of “EPOC” software (later named “Symbian OS”); growing and directing the technical consulting teams that worked with leading phone manufacturers to create the world’s first successful smartphones; and defining and running development programs to stimulate and nurture the fast-growing Symbian partner ecosystem.
From the first half of 2008, he was involved in preparations and planning for the independent open source Symbian Foundation. He served on the Leadership Team of the Symbian Foundation as “Catalyst and Futurist” until October 2009. I continue these same roles from within Delta Wisdom.
He has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge University and an honorary doctorate in science from the University of Westminster.
In September 2009 he was included in T3's list of "100 most influential people in technology": http://tech100.t3.com/list/80-61/.
Military 2.0 - Patrick Lin - H+ Summit @ Harvard
For better or worse, the military is a major driver of technological, world-changing innovations, such as the Internet. At the same time, wars and armed conflicts are a key roadblock in the evolution of humanity. Therefore, to understand how emerging technologies will change our lives, we must look at their military origins as a harbinger of things to come for society at large. This presentation will focus on ethical and policy questions arising from two key areas making headlines today and in the future: human enhancement technologies and robotics.
For instance, are there moral or practical issues with eliminating human emotions such as fear or anger, which have led to abuses and accidents in wartime? Must these enhancements (and others, such as super-strength) be temporary or reversible, considering that soldiers usually return to civilian life? Robots can discourage such abuses if equipped with cameras, becoming objective and unblinking observers on the battlefield, but would this erode cohesion and trust among soldiers – and in the civilian realm, would surveillance robots infringe on our privacy? Generally, would these new technologies make it easier to engage in war, since they would lower political costs by reducing the number of casualties on our side – if so, is it immoral, or otherwise counterproductive to humanity's progress, to develop these capabilities?
Patrick Lin is the director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group , based at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Most recently, he has led research efforts that culminated in two major reports: Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, and Design (funded by the U.S. Dept. of Defense/Navy, 2008) and Ethics of Human Enhancement: 25 Questions & Answers (funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, 2009). He has published several books and papers in the field of technology ethics, including a new monograph What Is Nanotechnology and Why Does It Matter?: From Science to Ethics (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) and a forthcoming anthology Robot Ethics: The Social and Ethical Implication of Robotics (MIT Press, in preparation). Dr. Lin earned his B.A. from University of California at Berkeley, M.A. and Ph.D. from University of California at Santa Barbara, and completed a three-year post-doctoral appointment at Dartmouth College. He is currently an assistant professor in Cal Poly’s philosophy department and an ethics fellow at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Sparking Our Neural Humanity - M. A. Greenstein - H+ Summit - Humanity+
M. A. Greenstein, an internationally recognized commentator, researcher and coach on best and future practices for "opening the doors of perception". Based in L. A. with networked alliances throughout the AsiaPacific region, she founded The George Greenstein Institute and the future-focused e-zine BODIES IN SPACE to advance global change in designing creative and holistic learning systems as well as to encourage progressive leadership in related issues of neurotech innovation and designing sustainable lifestyles. Dedicated to BIG THINKING energized by visionary "sci-art" and anchored by S.I.T. (Somatic Intelligence Training), Dr. G is a whole-brain systems generator who privileges "interoception" as a search engine for catapulting & mapping best design images and ideas.
An Adjunct Associate Professor at Art Center College of Design, Dr. G. is also member of TED, Mindshare.la, The Neuroleadership Institute and in alliance with the Society for Neuroscience and the Neurotechnology Industry Organization.
Democratizing The Genome - Melanie Swan - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Exponential declines in the cost of human genome sequencing is starting to put applications in the hands of researchers and consumers that were only dreamt of previously. Individuals are starting to have access to their own genomic data which can be actionable in a variety of ways including drug response, health condition analysis, athletic capability, and ancestry. DIYgenomics is a new platform bringing citizen scientists together to run peer cohort research studies and conduct novel research linking genetic data and physical biomarkers. Some norms are developing in response to the variety of community-based research issues that arise such as adaptive studies, informed consent, security, anonymity, and study design.
Melanie Swan is a genomics researcher, hedge fund manager, and leader in the Health 2.0 movement. Recent publications include “Multigenic Condition Risk Assessment in Direct-to-Consumer Genomic Services,” “Engineering Life into Technology,” and “Emerging Patient-Driven Health Care Models.” She serves as an advisor to research foundations, government agencies, corporations, and startups. Melanie has an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Georgetown University. She is an advisor and faculty member at Singularity University.
Altered Carbon - Andrew Hessel - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Andrew Hessel is an outspoken advocate and champion of DNA technologies, catalyzing new project developments, investment, and relationships in synthetic biology and bioengineering. His overarching message is that biology is poised to become the IT industry of the 21st century, fueled by a new generation of young researchers and entrepreneurs armed with technologies like DNA sequencing and synthesis that are becoming exponentially more powerful yet increasingly inexpensive. The possible applications are virtually limitless and include the typical global challenges (sustainable fuel production, environmental remediation, and better diagnosis treatment of human disease) but also extend into new, uncharted scientific territories. His popular lectures at the Singularity University and his visioning work reinforce that the foundations for this new industry are already in place, that it will grow explosively once the first few killer applications find commercial success, and that it will change the world, and humanity itself, in profound yet perhaps evolutionary necessary ways.
Do We Click? - Laurent Silbert - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Do we click?
Speaker-listener neural coupling underlies successful communication
Verbal communication enables us to directly convey information across brains, independent of the actual external state of affairs (e.g. telling a story of past events). Such phenomenon may be reflected in the ability of the speaker to directly induce similar brain patterns in another individual, via speech, in the absence of any other stimulation. The recording of the neural responses from both the speaker brain and the listener brain opens a new window into the neural basis of interpersonal communication, and may be used to assess verbal and non-verbal forms of interaction in both human and other model systems. Further understanding of the neural processes that facilitate neural coupling across interlocutors may shed light on the mechanisms by which our brains interact and bind to form societies.
The capacity to communicate internal thoughts from one person to another is at the foundation of human society. Communication naturally requires an interaction between at least two people. Existing neurolinguistic studies are concerned, however, either with speech production or with the comprehension of isolated words or sentences. Little is known, therefore, about the underlying neuronal mechanism that facilitates the transfer of information between two brains during communication.
Understanding the interaction between a speaker’s brain and a listener’s brain in the context of real-world communication requires the development of new experimental paradigms. Using function Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), we measured neural signals from two brains (a speaker and a listener) during a complex everyday communication. We then built a simple, interpretable model that leverages the dynamics of fMRI and uses the speaker’s brain responses as a model for predicting the brain responses within the listener. Our model reveals that during successful communication, the speaker and listener’s brains exhibit joint, temporally coupled, response patterns. Such speaker-listener neural coupling vanishes when participants fail to communicate (such as with different languages). The temporal nature of this speaker-listener coupling suggests that an ability to evoke similar brain patterns in another individual via speech may gate our communication abilities. Moreover, while in most areas the listeners’ brain responses mirror the speaker’s responses with a delay, some areas in the listeners’ brain exhibit predictive anticipatory responses. Finally, we found that the extent of the anticipatory neuronal coupling between interlocutors is predictive of communicative success.
Currently a PhD candidate in Neuroscience from Princeton University, Silbert also has a Bachelors from University of Pennsylvania (Biology and Photography), Masters in Neuroscience from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, and Masters in Psychology from NYU.
HACCP as a Lifespan Extension Management System - Morris Johnson - H+Summit @...
HACCP , a comprehensive self-directed management system which is used to ensure food and pharmaceutical safety can be readily adapted to personalized healthspan and lifespan plan creation and implementation. Preventative, regenerative, enhancement, crisis-management and palliative medicine incorporated into the 12 step HACCP management system life-cycle can manage hazards which contribute to finite lifespan and reduced healthspan by managing 8 critical control domains. Hazard analysis of 6 management domains, including 8 moral hazard sub-domains can empower individuals to create their own personal longevity dividend. It is asserted that the profitability of statistically compliant mortality creates an economic incentive which undermines efforts to shift the global economic paradigm to one which encourages extreme healthspan and lifespan. Adaptation of universally accepted HACCP methodologies can drive transhumanism's fundamental principles and the concept of universally accessible extreme lifespan into mainstream acceptance.
Born at Radville , Saskatchewan 21 Sept , 1955."Citizen scientist" and Chief Technology Officer of Lifespan Pharma Inc. Since 1973 made a career of farming, trucking, oilfield industry work and entrepreneurial business. 1977-79 Director on the board of Bison-Hybrid International Association. 1978 to present time active in public policy development with the Saskatchewan NDP; Provincial Election Candidate for NDP in the Estevan Constituency in the 2007 election. 1982 organized, founded and served as president of the Canadian Bison Association. 2006 acquired a certificate in HACCP system creation and system management from the Food Centre on the University of Saskatchewan Campus. 2006 completed "Longevity Dividend" course directed by James Hughes, IEET. 2005 founded Lifespan Pharma Incorporated, a company which is commercializing a patent and trademarks as well as trade secrets for producing and marketing a new food supplement ingredient CANTERPENE.
Why Uploading Will Not Work - Patrick Hopkins - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Transhumanists tend to have a commitment to materialism and naturalism but nonetheless pursue goals traditionally associated with religious ideologies, such as the quest for immortality. Often, they hope to achieve immortality through the application of a technology whereby the brain is scanned and the person "uploaded" to a computer. This process is typically described as "transferring" one's mind to a computer. I argue that, while the technology may be feasible, uploading will not succeed because it in fact does not "transfer" a mind at all and will not preserve personal identity. Transhumanist hopes for such transfer ironically rely on treating the mind dualistically-and inconsistently with materialism-as the functional equivalent of a soul, as is evidenced by a carefully examination of the language used to describe and defend uploading. In this sense, transhumanist thought unwittingly contains remnants of dualistic and religious categories.
Patrick D. Hopkins is a philosopher and ethicist who specializes in ethical theory and in applied ethical issues in science, medicine, and technology. He has a B.A. from the University of Mississippi in Experimental Psychology, worked in neuroscience research for several years at a major medical school and a primate research center, received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Washington University in St. Louis, and is currently Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Millsaps College in Jackson, MS. He has published numerous articles on biomedical ethics, science and technology studies, gender studies, and religious studies and has edited a book on the relationship between gender and technology.
Is Deep-Layered Machine Learning the Catalyst for an Artificial General Intel...
Is Deep-Layered Machine Learning the Catalyst for an Artificial General Intelligence Revolution?
Deep-layered machine learning technologies have recently emerged as promising, biologically-inspired cognitive architectures for driving next-generation artificial intelligence applications. Deep learning architecture comprise of hierarchical structures capable of representing diverse, high-dimensional sensory data in a manner that facilitates capturing salient spatiotemporal dependencies in the observations. Advances in the field of machine learning, particularly those made over the past two decades, offer profound insight into the paradigms governing decision making under uncertainty in the mammal brain. From an implementation perspective, integrated circuits fabrication technology continues to improve to a point where billions of neuron-like computing elements can now be realized on a single chip. I argue that these conceptual and implementation building blocks serve as catalysts for the realization of artificial general intelligent systems in the near future.
Itamar Arel is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Director of the Machine Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Tennessee. He is a co-founder of the Artificial General Intelligence Roadmap initiative, which aims to play a vital role in defining AGI benchmarking and coherence in research focus. During 2000-2003 he was with TeraCross, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company developing Terabit/sec switch fabric integrated circuits, where he held several key positions including chief scientist. His research focus is on high-performance machine learning architectures and algorithms, with emphasis on deep learning architectures, reinforcement learning and decision making under uncertainty. Dr. Arel is a recipient of the US Department of Energy Early Career Principal Investigator (CAREER) award in 2004, and is a senior member of IEEE. He holds a B.S., M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an M.B.A. degree, all from Ben-Gurion University in Israel.
I Am Ocean - Arturo Pelayo - H+ Summit @ Harvard
We are Ocean. Who will you be?
At the heart of Humanity lie concepts such as curiosity, imagination, resourcefulness and a natural gravitation towards community building and governance.
Life, including human life, originated from the ocean. It is perhaps wise that this is where we have to return to find the path to our future.
At Ocean University we are planning a global expedition in a transformed passenger cruise ship that will serve as a tabula rasa for the exploration of what our common humanity is. In this dedicated neutral space, our quest doesn't begin by looking to the next trend or technological advance: Ocean sets the stage for human exploration in an expedition that will circumnavigate the globe exploring basic needs of the peoples of this planet.
Gaining a basic, first-hand understanding of humanity will open the possibility for program participants to begin conversations, collaborating and co-designing solutions for climate change, biodiversity, human mobility and intercultural communications.
Ocean is a design collaborative at sea. Let's explore together the human diaspora.
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HACCP as a Lifespan Extension Management System - Morris Johnson - H+Summit @...
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Why Uploading Will Not Work - Patrick Hopkins - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Why Uploading Will Not Work - Patrick Hopkins - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Is Deep-Layered Machine Learning the Catalyst for an Artificial General Intel...
Is Deep-Layered Machine Learning the Catalyst for an Artificial General Intel...
Humanity+ presentation contest
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