I was listening to The Economist “Babbage” podcast yesterday, and was really struck my something Timoni West said. She mentioned Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law - “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. She then said; “The reverse is also true - any sufficiently rigorous technology doesn’t feel like technology any more”.
Centaur Living
The World-champion chess player Gary Kasparov concluded that "Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkable, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process." He created "Freestyle Chess", pairing a computer and a human to make a stronger chess player. This hybrid combination is sometimes called a "Centaur".
Slow A.I.
In Charlie Stross' Keynote at the CCC, he talks about corporations being like Slow A.I. organisms. They pursue their instrumental goals, they exist apart from people yet are legal entities in their own right, and they can have lifespans way longer than human lifespans.
Mnemonic Major System
When I was young, I did this thing called Silva Mind Control. It taught me meditation, and various other mental techniques that have come in handy throughout my life. One of the techniques that we learnt was for memorising lists of things - they called it "Memory Pegs" in Silva. It turns out that this technique is generally known as "The Major Mnemonic System" derived from a technique developed in the 1600s. I became more interested in mnemonics after the book "Moonwalking with Einstein" shot to fame, especially combined with all the studying I have been doing over the years which made me desperate for faster ways of remembering things. It made me dust off this technique and start to use it again.
What Google Glass might soon be like
There is an interesting clip over on YouTube, that shows what having Google Glass (or something similar) might someday be like.
The Technological Unemployment Problem
Jon Perry has written an interesting post listing some strategies for dealing with the Technological Unemployment Problem.
The Technological Unemployment Problem is the issue of technology replacing humans to the point that there is massive unemployment.
True Skin - Sci-Fi Short Film
Eclipse Phase RPG
I just read this awesome thread over at RPG.net about character creation in the new RPG Eclipse Phase. Man, this RPG sounds awesome! As ExNihilo mentions in the thread:
The fact that a question like "Can my character upload his living consciousness into a distributed network-swarm of microscopic robots?" results in actual debate is enough to convince me that I'll like this game regardless of what the answer itself turns out to be.