Move Over the U.S. – China Owns the Fastest Supercomputer For Now
It is called the Tianhe-2 and is the product of China’s National University of Defense Technology. It performs processing speeds of 33.86 petaflops per second. That’s almost twice as fast as the Titan, the U.S. Department of Energy computer that previously held the record. The computer uses a combination of Chinese-built and Intel technology to achieve these processing speeds which are useful in analyzing complex models such as those studied by meteorologists and geneticists.
Just how fast is 33.86 petaflops? Almost 34 thousand trillion floating point calculations per second. When I compare that to my desktop computer which does 2.8 billion calculations per second, I would need 12.14 million to equal the processing power of one Tianhe-2.
Tesla Continues to Try and Entice Consumers to Buy Electric Vehicles
Recently Tesla began rolling out a plan for a coast-to-coast recharging station network here in North America. But even with these stations the current technology can take up to 30 minutes to top up the onboard battery on Tesla Model S sedans. But Tesla wants to give its customers a faster turnaround and it believes it can do this with a swap out plan that can exchange a depleted battery in a little over 90 seconds. That’s even faster than a stop at the gas pumps. Tesla demonstrated this capability on June 20 and you can watch to see just how it is done. Tesla plans to have 50 spare batteries in inventory at any of its charger stations.
An Israeli company, Better Place, recently tried a similar strategy but it failed to catch on and the company closed its doors last month.
Medical Centres in California are “Hiring” Avatars for Patient Interactions
Sense.ly may be the wave of the future, an avatar nurse who can interview and assess a patient in multiple languages over the Internet, by telephone or through a television monitor. Her name is Molly and she has the ability to react to information received in an emotionally appropriate way. She can ask questions and answer those posed by patients. The technology that Sense.ly deploys can collect data from medical devices the patient is using in his or her home. With Microsoft’s Kinect she can even observe a patient’s limb dexterity and mobility. Molly can change facial expressions and intonation.
The pilot project which will involve between 50 and 60 patients is in San Mateo California and appears to be well received by the first to interact with the avatar. One patient states “I’ve gotten used to the avatar. I look forward to seeing it when it comes online.” One physician in the pilot program states that some patients are more willing to share personal information with an avatar, something they might not be willing to do with their own doctor who they know personally.
“Star Trek” Move Over – There’s Another Tricorder in the Running
Last week I wrote about the Scanadu Scout, a tricorder equivalent raising funding on IndieGoGo. Well it seems there is another medical device that is a candidate to provide the same capability. Joining it is the Biozoom Biofeedback Scanner, a product of a joint venture between Vodafone and Carl Zeiss.
Biozoom is a handheld trans-dermal scanner that measures antioxidant levels, Cytochrome c-Oxidase, stress levels, VO2 max and skin moisture. It does this using an LED to radiate light into the skin of the user’s palm and reading it in 16 milliseconds. The data then gets transmitted to a smartphone, tablet, laptop or personal computer. Biozoom is adding additional capability to the scanner in the near future including reading cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood alcohol levels, and doing toxic screening for drugs.
Want to Become an Android Group Confers in New York City
At the Global Future 2045 conference last weekend in New York City, a group who call themselves trans-humanists gathered to talk about the technology needed to download a human mind into a machine. In attendance – 230 journalists, an Eastern Orthodox archbishop, a Tibetan lama, Google engineers and a number of scientists from universities and research institutes right across North America.
The organizer was Dmitry Itskov (seen below with his android equivalent), a Russian entrepreneur and millionaire on a mission to create a trans-human-machine species that is freed up from our biological mortality. Mr. Itskov wants to live forever and he plunked down $3 million to host the conference for a meeting of the like-minded.
For him the Singularity that Ray Kurzweil has espoused is likely by mid-century and he is the author of the manifesto for Initiative 2045. The end result if successful will mean all aspects of our mind, personality and memories will become software. To accomplish such a feat will require much more processing power than even that displayed in the Tianhe-2, China’s super fast super computer which you can read about above.
A Postscript
If you are a first time visitor to Techso Mogro then welcome. You can search all the backlog of blog postings a number of ways. There are the menu tabs at the top of the page. There is a search function to the right of the tabs that you can use to type in key words or phrases. Below on the right you can drill down on the category pick list. Or you can just view postings by month.
For past readers who keep on returning in the thousands I thank you. You inspire me through your questions and comments to research the advances we are making in technology and science and write about them almost every day. So keep on coming back and I promise you lots more to read.
– Len Rosen
]]>If you are unfamiliar with the goals of this group, the main objective is to develop neural interfaces and robotics to a point when humans can extend their lives through a non-biological carrier. In other words, we can become immortal by transferring ourselves into machines. The rationale as stated in the manifesto is as follows:
“Modern civilization, with its space stations, nuclear submarines, iPhones and Segways cannot save mankind from the limitations in the physical abilities of our bodies, nor from diseases and death.”
As a result those who ascribe to the initiative seek a limitless solution for humanity…..immortality through the integration of humans and machines. The manifesto further reads:
“We believe that before 2045 an artificial body will be created that will not only surpass the existing body in terms of functionality, but will achieve perfection of form and be no less attractive than the human body. People will make independent decisions about the extension of their lives and the possibilities for personal development in a new body after the resources of the biological body have been exhausted.
“The new human being will receive a huge range of abilities and will be capable of withstanding extreme external conditions easily: high temperatures, pressure, radiation, lack of oxygen, etc. Using a neural-interface humans will be able to operate several bodies of various forms and sizes remotely.”
Here are current timeline projections.
By 2020 the emergence of avatars controlled by a direct brain-computer interface.
By 2025 the development of life-support technology capable of keeping an out-of-body human brain working and functioning linked to an avatar robotic system.
By 2035 the complete modeling of human consciousness with the ability to transfer this to an artificial carrier.
By 2045 the evolution of humanity to a new species, immortal, and capable of leaving the planet for large-scale expansion to other worlds.
To learn more you can attend the upcoming Global Future 2045 International Congress taking place in New York City, June 15-16, 2013 at the Lincoln Center. The speaker list includes geneticists, robotics and AI developers, engineers and bio-engineers, physicians, neuroscientists, futurists, and religious and spiritual leaders. If you book the conference before March 31 a general admission ticket will cost you $500. Students can register for $350.
I’ve included a visual roadmap from the 2045 Initiative below.
So what do you think? Is this for real or are the 20,000 plus members all suffering from a delusion? Or do you want to join the group and help achieve the immortality by the means they seek?
]]>“Honorable businessmen and businesswomen, members of the Forbes richest list: human life is unique and priceless. It is only when we have to part with life do we realize just how much we have not done, that we have not had enough time to do what we really wanted or to address something we’ve done wrong. Everything that we have cherished and loved all of a sudden becomes unreachable.
Today you have a unique chance to change this situation. And at the same time bring invaluable benefits to your countries and the world as well as make a mark in history by supporting the creation of the new industry of immortality. You have the power to support and create a new industry of immortality to make revolutionary change that will forever reverberate through the pages of history.”
The current membership total is 11,946. The goal is to create immortal rich people who can then pass along their collective wisdom to those of us who have not yet achieved billionaire-dom. This will be achieved through the convergence of human brains and technology. There are four stages to the evolution of this convergence:
2015-20
Creation of an anthropomorphic robot controlled through a brain-computer interface to act on behalf of its controlling operator in situations where human presence would be endangered.
2020-25
Development of autonomous life-support for human brains linked to robots for those whose bodies have worn out.
2030-35
Creation of technology for transferring human consciousness to one or more robots.
2045
Often referred to as the singularity by futurists such as Ray Kurzweil, this technology will free human minds from human bodies and we will evolve into a new converged species – half human, half machine.
Folks. Hold on to your nano-hats because if you refer to my last blog posting on connectomics and human immortality you can decipher in part how researchers are tackling the job of discovering all aspects of how our minds store and process information, neuron by neuron, synapse to synapse. Once we have imaged and fully mapped the human brain Initiative 2045 intends to reverse engineer it creating an instruction manual for assembling an artificial brain.
