Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday

[brekin]

Strange, the Singularity is Near folks now have a university which is in bed with NASA.
Hard to tell how much Singularity U and NASA are just friends, dating or secretly married. NASA leases
space to them, advises them, collaborates on projects and a joint program but NASA
staff have no financial or personal interests in Singularity U?

Singularity University

Singularity University is a non-profit learning institution in Silicon Valley whose stated aim is to "assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges."[2]

Singularity University is not an accredited four-year university, but is instead intended to supplement traditional educational institutions.[3] It offers an annual ten-week summer course intended for graduate and post-graduate students and ten day programs for senior corporate executives and senior government leaders. The first Graduate program began in June 2009, with full tuition costing US$25,000 (although a majority of the participants were provided full or partial scholarships). The inaugural 2009 class was limited to forty fellows chosen from over 1,200 applicants. Eighty graduate and postgraduate students were accepted for the graduate course beginning summer 2010 from a pool of 1,600 applicants.[4][5]

Academics
[edit] Subjects

The University offers 10 different academic tracks, each chaired by one or more experts in the field:[6]

1. Futures Studies and Forecasting (Ray Kurzweil, Paul Saffo)
2. Policy, Law and Ethics (Marc Goodman)
3. Entrepreneurship (Eric Ries, founded by David S. Rose)
4. Networks and Computing Systems (John Gage, Brad Templeton)
5. Biotechnology and Bioinformatics (Raymond McCauley, Andrew Hessel)
6. Nanotechnology (Ralph Merkle, Robert Freitas, Jr.)
7. Medicine and Neuroscience (Daniel Kraft, Michael McCullough[disambiguation needed])
8. AI, Robotics, and Cognitive Computing (Neil Jacobstein, Raj Reddy)
9. Energy and Ecological Systems (Gregg Maryniak)
10. Space and Physical Sciences (Dan Barry)

Other faculty members and advisors include: Tom Byers, Vint Cerf, José Corderio, Marc Goodman, Aubrey de Grey, Christopher deCharms, Tim Ferriss, Terry Grossman, Daniel Kammen, Bruce Klein, Larry Brilliant, Bob Metcalfe, Matt Mullenweg, Peter Norvig, David Orban, Daniel Reda, Tina Seelig, George Skidmore, Larry Smarr, George Smoot, Sebastian Thrun, Vivek Wadhwa, Pete Worden, and Will Wright.
[edit] Programs

The University offers three kinds of academic programs:[7]

* Graduate Studies Program — a ten-week summer program for 80 students running once per year (Tuition US$25,000)
* Executive Program (10 days) — a 40-student program running about 3 times per year (Tuition US$15,000)
* Specialty executive programs — like FutureMed 2011, with a concentration on a particular area of interest.

[edit] Organization

Singularity University is overseen by a Board of Trustees.[8]

* Ray Kurzweil, Co-Founder, Chancellor & Trustee
* Peter H. Diamandis, Co-Founder & Chairman
* Rob Nail, Associate Founder & CEO
* Michael Simpson[disambiguation needed], Founding Trustee
* Robert D. Richards, Founding Trustee
* Salim Ismail, Executive Director & Trustee
* Sonia Arrison Senkut, Trustee
* Barney Pell, Trustee
* Reese Jones, Trustee
* Jeff Kowalski, Trustee
* Naveen Jain, Trustee

Rob Nail, one of the organization's Associate Founders, was named CEO of Singularity University in October, 2011.[9] Vivek Wadhwa is the organization's Vice President for Academics and Innovation.[10]

Corporate founding partners and sponsors include NASA, Google, Nokia, Autodesk, IDEO, LinkedIn, ePlanet Capital, and the X-Prize Foundation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_University

It is located at Moffett Federal Airfield which is owned and operated by NASA.

Moffett Federal Airfield (IATA: NUQ, ICAO: KNUQ, FAA LID: NUQ), also known as Moffett Field, is a joint civil-military airport located between northern Mountain View and northern Sunnyvale, California, USA. The airport is near the south end of San Francisco Bay, northwest of San Jose. Formerly a United States Navy facility, the former naval air station is now owned and operated by the NASA Ames Research

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moffett_Federal_Airfield

From Singularity University's own site:

Singularity University is located at NASA. Students who are interested in learning more can take a site visit to the other side of the “black gate” to learn about some of NASA’s most recent projects. The site visit gives insight into the way NASA runs its operations from initial research to analysis of data collected during missions.

http://singularityu.org/gsp/

http://singularityu.org/about/overview/

Our History

Singularity University was jointly founded by Dr. Peter H. Diamandis and Dr. Ray Kurzweil. The concept of a new university that could leverage the power of exponential technologies to solve humanity’s grand challenges was proposed by Diamandis to Kurzweil and to International Space University colleagues Dr. Robert D. Richards and Michael Simpson in April 2007. An exploratory meeting was held at NASA Research Park, Moffett Field in November 2007, followed in September 2008 by a Founding meeting also hosted at NASA.

Our Mission

A number of exponentially growing technologies will massively increase human capability and fundamentally reshape our future. This warrants the creation of an academic institution whose students and faculty will study these technologies, with an emphasis on the interactions between different technologies. Our mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a new generation of leaders who strive to understand and utilize exponentially advancing technologies to address humanity’s grand challenges.

The University

With the support of a broad range of specialists in academia, business and government, Singularity University creates a global network of like-minded entrepreneurs, technologists and young leaders to participate in crafting a road map to guide the evolution of these disruptive technologies. SU helps create solutions and applications of these technologies for the benefit of humanity through its Graduate Studies and Executive Programs. SU is based at the NASA Research Park campus in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Q. Is NASA involved with Singularity University?
http://singularityu.org/faq/#VM1

Singularity University has a lease agreement with NASA Research Park, Moffett Field, Calif., to house its facilities in the NASA Research Park. S. Pete Worden, NASA Ames Center Director, hosted SU’s Founders Conference on Sept. 20, 2008 and continues to participate as a guest lecturer.

On NASA’s behalf, he and other Ames personnel have provided input to SU’s founders and faculty that encourages scientific and technical discussions. “The NASA Ames campus has a proud history of supporting ground-breaking innovation, and Singularity University fits into that tradition,” said Worden. “We’re proud to help launch and be a growing partner with this unique educational program and are looking forward to the new ideas, technologies and social applications that result.”

Neither NASA Ames Director Worden nor any other NASA employee is engaged in the University’s operation, however, nor do any NASA Ames employees have personal or financial interests in Singularity University.

The NASA Research Park, located in the heart of Silicon Valley has emerged as NASA’s leading center in information technology research with a focus on supercomputing, networking and intelligent systems. Ames also is a leader in nanotechnology, fundamental space biology, biotechnology, aerospace and thermal protection systems, and human factors research. Ames conducts the critical R&D and develops the enabling technologies that make NASA missions possible. NASA Research Park (NRP), the R&D Center for NASA Ames which directly collaborates with academia, private industry and non-profits is home to Singularity University.

Singularity University has a Space Act and Lease agreement with NASA Research Center. This allows SU to house its facilities in the NASA Research Park and facilitates partnership with NASA through joint public events, speaker presentations, team projects collaboration and NASA Ames STEM program.

S. Pete Worden, NASA Ames Center Director, hosted SU’s Founders Conference on Sept. 20, 2008 and continues to participate as a guest lecturer.

On NASA’s behalf, he and other Ames personnel have provided input to SU’s founders, faculty and students that encourages scientific and technical discussions. “The NASA campus has a proud history of supporting ground-breaking innovation, and Singularity University fits into that tradition,” said Worden. “We’re proud to help launch and be a growing partner with this unique educational program and are looking forward to the new ideas, technologies and social applications that result.”

Neither NASA Ames Center Director Worden nor any other NASA employee is engaged in the University’s operation, however, nor do any NASA Ames employees have personal or financial interests in Singularity University.

[Schmazo]

http://www.anagramgenius.com/archive/sergey-brin.html

[Hammer of Los]

...

Pythagorean agenda?

I am here to teach the Most Ancient Pythagorean Doctrine of Transmigration of Souls.

And even he got it from the Egyptians.

And they got it from the Atlanteans.

They probably got it from outer space.

Or perhaps inner space.

Is that an agenda?

Yes, yes, I know.

The neo pythagoreans are everywhere.

...

[General Patton]

Strange, the Singularity is Near folks now have a university which is in bed with NASA.
Hard to tell how much Singularity U and NASA are just friends, dating or secretly married. NASA leases
space to them, advises them, collaborates on projects and a joint program but NASA
staff have no financial or personal interests in Singularity U?

It's not strange at all. It's advertised. It would only seem strange if it wasn't for the fact that the fields these people work in are extremely small and tight knit, it would be strange if they didn't talk to each other.

NASA is turning over low earth orbit to the private sector while working on developing Asteroid/Mars projects.

You can find ties to guest speakers and faculty to nanotechnology, Alcor cryo-life extension, SENS foundation, Scott Summit's prosthetics/3d printing work (which works in zero gravity), synthetic biology (NASA's new preferred bootstrap), robotics, AI...

They have projects on food, energy, Low-Earth-Orbit, ect, ect...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTzG_HIUu9c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5tUE_G3Hgw

You guys are still wading through the kiddy pool of 6 degrees of kevin bacon research. Apply yourselves.

Here's some more on student projects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRPwoXiDJSs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOjGTyCX_2g

http://www.artificialbrains.com/google-x-lab#foutnder-quotes-on-AI
"One of my favourite things is artificial intelligence, but it has gotten a very bad rap, but my prediction is that when AI happens it's going to be a lot of computation and not so much clever algorithms but just a lot of computation. My theory is that if you look at your programming, your DNA, it's about 600 megabytes compressed, so it's smaller than any modern operating system, smaller than Linux or Windows or anything like that, your whole operating system, that includes booting up your brain. So your program algorithms probably aren't that complicated, it's probably more about the overall computation. We have some people at Google who are trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale to make search better. Very few [other] people are working on this, and I don't think it's as far off as people think." - Larry Page, February 2007

[brekin]

brekin wrote:
Strange, the Singularity is Near folks now have a university which is in bed with NASA.
Hard to tell how much Singularity U and NASA are just friends, dating or secretly married. NASA leases
space to them, advises them, collaborates on projects and a joint program but NASA
staff have no financial or personal interests in Singularity U?

General Patton wrote:

It's not strange at all. It's advertised. It would only seem strange if it wasn't for the fact that the fields these people work in are extremely small and tight knit, it would be strange if they didn't talk to each other.

I think it is strange because NASA is helping to legitimize the Singularity folks by advertising such an open partnership. Singularity is more of a religious
outfit than anything, with their promises of enlightenment and immortality, so they hardly bolster serious science with their wish fulfillment timelines.
I'm waiting for their joint press release, "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of merging a man with a computer.."

General Patton wrote:

You guys are still wading through the kiddy pool of 6 degrees of kevin bacon research. Apply yourselves.

Here's some more on student projects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRPwoXiDJSs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOjGTyCX_2g

Thanks General Patton for the in-depth reporting and pep talk. I'll have to apply myself to these links you
found on this strange, esoteric site called Youtube.

[General Patton]

brekin wrote:

Thanks General Patton for the in-depth reporting and pep talk. I'll have to apply myself to these links you
found on this strange, esoteric site called Youtube.

See that you do. And have those TPS reports on my desk by Friday.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/singularity-u ... ve-upgrade
Singularity University is planning to exponentially advance itself, transforming from a provider of short supplemental classes into a sort of innovation pipeline, with a rich website and conference series on one end, an expanding array of classes in the middle, and at the other end incubation labs for startups and corporate skunkworks teams, as well as a strong global alumni network, Wired Business reports.

The ongoing expansion is meant not only to make the university a bigger player in the world of business, but also to influence elected leaders and other policymakers, to spread ideas and values from the university to dozens of foreign countries, and to change the way humans are educated at a time of rapid technological progress.

Singularity University’s CEO Rob Nail is taking SU beyond its existing graduate-student and executive classes and into the sort of memetic networking you might see at a TED Conference, the sort of online learning you might experience on a website like Udacity, and the sort of business mentoring you might get at a startup hatchery like Y Combinator.

The university would like to become a for-profit benefit corp and is moving toward a hybrid approach that expands the physical component of schooling, adding collaborative startup offices and live events, even as the university works to build a content-rich internet platform and a powerful online community of alumni.

Key to Nail’s plan is Singularity Labs — nearly two dozen offices recently added to Singularity University’s campus at NASA Ames, together with some classroom-style spaces and laboratories — to expand the incubator program and bring in startups focused on security, energy, and even outer space.

SU also plans to build an interactive site that that can take some elements of the Singularity U curriculum to a wider audience, possibly in partnership with Udacity or some other online education venture.

“We really need to have as one of our track chairs an AI [artificial intelligence] faculty member,” Nail says. “Not a faculty member that’s teaching AI — a faculty member that is an AI. And we’re dead serious. … If anyone should be testing that, it should be us.”

[tazmic]

Singularity University is planning to exponentially advance itself [...]
The ongoing expansion is meant not only to make the university a bigger player in the world of business, but also to influence elected leaders and other policymakers, to spread ideas and values from the university to dozens of foreign countries, and to change the way humans are educated at a time of rapid technological progress.

So what are the values of the Singularity University, given that they don't value humans, except as potential progenitors of the posthuman?

[General Patton]

Singularity University is planning to exponentially advance itself [...]
The ongoing expansion is meant not only to make the university a bigger player in the world of business, but also to influence elected leaders and other policymakers, to spread ideas and values from the university to dozens of foreign countries, and to change the way humans are educated at a time of rapid technological progress.

So what are the values of the Singularity University, given that they don't value humans, except as potential progenitors of the posthuman?

Well the group is spread over a lot of people. Kurzweil is well known because he gives up to 60 speeches a year.

Kurzweil thinks computers will slowly be able to catch up to humans in the realms of emotional intelligence, which will allow us to make a slow transition over to machine-based life. Kurzweil primarily advocates the use of nanomachines. We have computer algorithms that can generate a symphony, but a lot of the most complex emotional stuff is going to take awhile:
http://blogs.cofc.edu/sota/2011/02/24/cita-lecture/

It's mainly about improving the human condition and increasing intelligence. Most of them don't think that there will be an extreme gap between the rich and the poor. They usually cite cellphones or laptops as an example, when designs are exported to India or Africa they are made with lower-specs but more resilient and suited to local needs.
http://youthhubafrica.org/2011/10/17/zu ... n-nigeria/

Distribution has always been a pain in the ass, particularly in Africa. Low-cost drones will help, there isn't much developed infrastructure in Africa so wifi and bicycles are usually used in place of more complex solutions. Low-cost drones might be useful in this regard for wifi/package delivery (important for food delivery), along with better solar stoves, lamps and sanitation solutions. People have a better chance than ever before to educate themselves and get a start in the world though. Virtually every technology related to IT is undergoing a dramatic cost decrease over time, so that makes it easier to spread. There's work on creating an AI medical doctor, sort of like an interactive webmd, that can be used on cellphones for the hundreds of millions of people without access to doctors or medical care (legal liabilities will probably limit it from being used in the US for quite awhile). To really take off they have to build in sensors and monitors, which will take more engineering and innovation.

The tricky issue for augmentation is what is the root of consciousness? Plants, for instance, have been shown to respond to music, but people have a hard time imagining the stretch in complexity from that to computers being capable of complex thought:
http://www.amjbot.org/content/93/10/1466.full

The field of synthetic biology and gene therapy is also disputed but isn't targeted as much in the popular media despite being much closer to the market.

There is a good number of people who don't have much of a choice and will get the implants or gene therapy regardless:
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-01-06/heal ... =PM:HEALTH
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1344 ... hetic-eyes

Seeing the way that most people are more obsessed with their pets rather than fellow humans, I think ordinary people will credit machines as being intelligent before they even really are intelligent.

On the Singularity roll there is Peter Thiel, the Google crew, Hugo de Garis, Ralph Merkle, Vernor Vinge, Max More, I. J. Good and Eric Drexler. There are probably other's I forgot about as well. Thiel and de Garis offer the pessimistic view.

de Garis' unofficial polls show that younger generations are much more likely to be open to the idea of merging with machines, around 80% in favor, versus a 50/50 split seen in older demographics:
http://profhugodegaris.wordpress.com/artilect-polls/

Most of them don't touch on the psi issue, Ben Goertzel is one of the few that does. He also had the idea of using Seasteads to create the worlds first sea-based psychedelic resort/lab: http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspo ... rtlab.html

[tazmic]

Singularity University is planning to exponentially advance itself [...]
The ongoing expansion is meant not only to make the university a bigger player in the world of business, but also to influence elected leaders and other policymakers, to spread ideas and values from the university to dozens of foreign countries, and to change the way humans are educated at a time of rapid technological progress.

So what are the values of the Singularity University, given that they don't value humans, except as potential progenitors of the posthuman?

[...]It's mainly about improving the human condition and increasing intelligence. Most of them don't think that there will be an extreme gap between the rich and the poor.

…I do think there is going to be this issue of how much diversity is tolerable within an affordable medical system or welfare system, which is kind of the context in which the "racial hygiene" movement first got established, in the context of creating welfare states. I'm very much of the mind, if any of you are familiar with the history of philosophy, if you look at people like Leibniz, Hegel, all of these people are devotees of a certain branch of theology called theodicy, which is basically how god justifies evil in the world. If you've got this great god, why is everything so horrible? All that misery is a means towards a greeter end that will be realized in the fullness of time. As creatures created in the image and likeness of god, we participate in that process. It's just for us to, as it were, suffer as victims, but it's actually for us to be engaged with the process, and to experiment with the world, and experiment with ourselves, and to go forward, and transform things, and yes there will be a lot of damage on the way, yes a lot of people will die, but it will be in the name of a greater good. I actually do believe something like that I have to say. I do think that anyone who wants to get onboard with transhumanism or the enhancement project and really wants to think about this in a comprehensively social way, is going to have to live with that. In other words, you're gonna have to take that onboard, you can't get into this kind of blinkered libertarian world where everybody just makes their own little choices individually. Being involved in scientific experiments should be part of national service. You should be obliged to do it. The problem is that if this whole enhancement agenda, and all this scientization, technologization, if this is just something that people can choose to either be "in" or "out," given the current socioeconomic disparities in the world today, we're just going to see a wider and wider gap between the haves and the have-nots. So my point is that you've got to get everybody on board…

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=435073#p435073

[General Patton]

…I do think there is going to be this issue of how much diversity is tolerable within an affordable medical system or welfare system, which is kind of the context in which the "racial hygiene" movement first got established, in the context of creating welfare states. I'm very much of the mind, if any of you are familiar with the history of philosophy, if you look at people like Leibniz, Hegel, all of these people are devotees of a certain branch of theology called theodicy, which is basically how god justifies evil in the world. If you've got this great god, why is everything so horrible? All that misery is a means towards a greeter end that will be realized in the fullness of time. As creatures created in the image and likeness of god, we participate in that process. It's just for us to, as it were, suffer as victims, but it's actually for us to be engaged with the process, and to experiment with the world, and experiment with ourselves, and to go forward, and transform things, and yes there will be a lot of damage on the way, yes a lot of people will die, but it will be in the name of a greater good. I actually do believe something like that I have to say. I do think that anyone who wants to get onboard with transhumanism or the enhancement project and really wants to think about this in a comprehensively social way, is going to have to live with that. In other words, you're gonna have to take that onboard, you can't get into this kind of blinkered libertarian world where everybody just makes their own little choices individually. Being involved in scientific experiments should be part of national service. You should be obliged to do it. The problem is that if this whole enhancement agenda, and all this scientization, technologization, if this is just something that people can choose to either be "in" or "out," given the current socioeconomic disparities in the world today, we're just going to see a wider and wider gap between the haves and the have-nots. So my point is that you've got to get everybody on board…

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=435073#p435073

Eh, using a cattle prod to make people innovate hasn't been incredibly useful in the past, except for making people figure out how to dodge the prod. His background is in philosophy and sociology more than science/engineering, so he isn't looking at it from a very practical point of view. It's a matter of innovation, price, design and distribution.

Getting affordable 3d food printers, delivery mechanisms along with medical/sanitation will do a lot more good than crazy ass "National" projects for the have-nots. Most advances can be made by fairly small teams, particularly when compared to teams and support structures from 20 years ago. Most of these technologies favor decentralization, with the obvious exception of cloud computing.

[Col. Quisp]

What is a food printer? Does it validate my belief that food is all fake?

Why are there so few women at this Singularity place?

[General Patton]

What is a food printer? Does it validate my belief that food is all fake?

Why are there so few women at this Singularity place?

It's a technology that uses 3d printing for the purposes of making food. It typically uses a liquid solution to build up foods layer by layer.

Peter Thiel recently sponsored a project to make meat printers, same principle as printed organs/skin only simpler:
http://io9.com/5936317/billionaire-pete ... inted-meat

re women: Will probably be replaced by sexbots

The simple answer is women are generally underrepresented in Science/technology/engineering/mathematics, but overrepresented in STEM management positions, which correlate to employment in government or large companies, not smaller and more agile companies:

http://www.esa.doc.gov/sites/default/fi ... on8311.pdf

[General Patton]

Wilhelm Reich, long ago, combined synthetic and organic material to create what he called orgone accumulators. He preferred to use iron-based raw materials, saying that things like aluminum are poisonous. However he obviously didn't carry out the experiments with modern equipment or check if that effect held true at the nano-level.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/merging-nanoe ... an-tissues
Merging nanoelectronics into 3D engineered human tissues
Researchers grow cyborg tissues with embedded nanoelectronics
August 28, 2012

3D reconstruction confocal microscopy image of a 3D macroporous nanoelectronic scaffold; a nanoelectronic device exists (too small to see in image) in each circular region (credit: Harvard University)

Harvard scientists have created a type of “cyborg” tissue for the first time by embedding a three-dimensional network of functional, biocompatible, nanoscale wires into engineered human tissues.

The research team led by Charles M. Lieber, the Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry at Harvard, and Daniel Kohane, a Harvard Medical School professor in the Department of Anesthesia at Children’s Hospital Boston, developed a system for creating nanoscale “scaffolds” that can be seeded with cells that grow into tissue.



“The current methods we have for monitoring or interacting with living systems are limited,” said Lieber. “We can use electrodes to measure activity in cells or tissue, but that damages them. With this technology, for the first time, we can work at the same scale as the unit of biological system without interrupting it. Ultimately, this is about merging tissue with electronics in a way that it becomes difficult to determine where the tissue ends and the electronics begin.”

Contributing to the work were Robert Langer, from the Koch Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Zhigang Suo, the Allen E. and Marilyn M. Puckett Professor of Mechanics and Materials at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.


3D reconstructed confocal microscopy image of synthetic 3D neural tissue with neurons (red) and nanoelectronic circuitry (green/blue) (credit: Tian, et al./Harvard University)

The research addresses a concern that has long been associated with work on bioengineered tissue: how to create systems capable of sensing chemical or electrical changes in the tissue after it has been grown and implanted.

The system might also represent a solution to researchers’ struggles in developing methods to directly stimulate engineered tissues and measure cellular reactions.

“In the body, the autonomic nervous system keeps track of pH, chemistry, oxygen, and other factors, and triggers responses as needed,” Kohane said. “We need to be able to mimic the kind of intrinsic feedback loops the body has evolved in order to maintain fine control at the cellular and tissue level.”

Building 3D networks of nanoscale sensors

Using the autonomic nervous system as inspiration, Bozhi Tian, a former doctoral student under Lieber and a former postdoctoral fellow in the Kohane and Langer labs, joined with Harvard graduate student Jia Liu in Lieber’s Harvard lab to build meshlike networks of nanoscale silicon wires.


Scanning electron microscopy image of one circular region of the nanoelectronic scaffold, with nanowire transistor at the center. (credit: Harvard University)

The process of building the networks, Lieber said, is similar to that used to etch microchips.

Beginning with a two-dimensional substrate, researchers laid out a mesh of organic polymer around nanoscale wires, which serve as the critical sensing elements. Nanoscale electrodes, which connect the nanowire elements, were then built within the mesh to enable nanowire transistors to measure the activity in cells without damaging them.

Once completed, the substrate was dissolved, leaving researchers with a netlike sponge, or a mesh, that can be folded or rolled into a host of three-dimensional shapes.

Once complete, the networks were porous enough to allow the team to seed them with cells and encourage those cells to grow in 3-D cultures.

“Previous efforts to create bioengineered sensing networks have focused on two-dimensional layouts, where culture cells grow on top of electronic components, or on conformal layouts, where probes are placed on tissue surfaces,” said Tian.

“It is desirable to have an accurate picture of cellular behavior within the 3-D structure of a tissue, and it is also important to have nanoscale probes to avoid disruption of either cellular or tissue architecture.”



Schematic of the conceptual basis for the 3D networks of nanoscale sensors (credit: Tian, et al./Harvard University)

Using heart and nerve cells, the team successfully engineered tissues containing embedded nanoscale networks without affecting the cells’ viability or activity. Using the embedded devices, the researchers were then able to detect electrical signals generated by cells deep within the tissue, and to measure changes in those signals in response to cardio- or neuro-stimulating drugs.

They were also able to construct bioengineered blood vessels, and used the embedded technology to measure pH changes — as would be seen in response to inflammation, ischemia, and other biochemical or cellular environments — both inside and outside the vessels.

Though a number of potential applications exist for the technology, the most near-term use, Lieber said, may come from the pharmaceutical industry, where researchers could use it to more precisely study how newly developed drugs act in three-dimensional tissues, rather than thin layers of cultured cells. The system might also one day be used to monitor changes inside the body and react accordingly, whether through electrical stimulation or the release of a drug.

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the McKnight Foundation, and Children’s Hospital Boston.

REFERENCES:
Bozhi Tian, Jia Liu, Tal Dvir, Lihua Jin, Jonathan H. Tsui, Quan Qing, Zhigang Suo, Robert Langer, Daniel S. Kohane, Charles M. Lieber, Macroporous nanowire nanoelectronic scaffolds for synthetic tissues, Nature Materials, 2012, DOI: 10.1038/nmat3404

[Belligerent Savant]

.

In a future presidential election, would you vote for a candidate who had neural implants that helped optimize his or her alertness and functionality during a crisis, or in a candidates’ debate? Would you vote for a commander in chief who wasn’t equipped with such a device?

Takes the Manchurian Candidate concept to another level, doesn't it? No longer a need to dedicate time towards compartmentalizing traumatic memories when a chip can simply alter "functionality" however necessary.

[of course, there's the argument/theory that such technology -- or at least some form of it, sub cutaneous or not -- already exists and has been implemented.. ]


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/sunda ... ss&emc=rss

IF a brain implant were safe and available and allowed you to operate your iPad or car using only thought, would you want one? What about an embedded device that gently bathed your brain in electrons and boosted memory and attention? Would you order one for your children?

In a future presidential election, would you vote for a candidate who had neural implants that helped optimize his or her alertness and functionality during a crisis, or in a candidates’ debate? Would you vote for a commander in chief who wasn’t equipped with such a device?

If these seem like tinfoil-on-the-head questions, consider the case of Cathy Hutchinson. Paralyzed by a stroke, she recently drank a canister of coffee by using a prosthetic arm controlled by thought. She was helped by a device called Braingate, a tiny bed of electrons surgically implanted on her motor cortex and connected by a wire to a computer.

Working with a team of neuroscientists at Brown University, Ms. Hutchinson, then 58, was asked to imagine that she was moving her own arm. As her neurons fired, Braingate interpreted the mental commands and moved the artificial arm and humanlike hand to deliver the first coffee Ms. Hutchinson had raised to her own lips in 15 years.

Braingate has barely worked on just a handful of people, and it is years away from actually being useful. Yet it’s an example of nascent technologies that in the next two to three decades may transform life not only for the impaired, but also for the healthy.

Other medical technologies that might break through the enhancement barrier range from genetic modifications and stem-cell therapies that might make people cognitively more efficient to nano-bots that could one day repair and optimize molecular structures in cells.

Many researchers, including the Brown neuroscientist John Donoghue, leader of the Braingate team, adamantly oppose the use of their technologies for augmenting the nonimpaired. Yet some healthy Americans are already availing themselves of medical technologies. For years millions of college students and professionals have been popping powerful stimulants like Adderall and Provigil to take exams and to pull all-nighters. These drugs can be highly addictive and may not work for everyone. While more research is needed, so far no evidence has emerged that legions of users have been harmed. The same may be true for a modest use of steroids for athletes.

Which leads us to the crucial question: How far would you go to modify yourself using the latest medical technology?

Over the last couple of years during talks and lectures, I have asked thousands of people a hypothetical question that goes like this: “If I could offer you a pill that allowed your child to increase his or her memory by 25 percent, would you give it to them?”

The show of hands in this informal poll has been overwhelming, with 80 percent or more voting no.

Then I asked a follow-up question. “What if this pill was safe and increased your kid’s grades from a B average to an A average?” People tittered nervously, looked around to see how others were voting as nearly half said yes. (Many didn’t vote at all.)

“And what if all of the other kids are taking the pill?” I asked. The tittering stopped and nearly everyone voted yes.

No pill now exists that can boost memory by 25 percent. Yet neuroscientists tell me that pharmaceutical companies are testing compounds in early stage human trials that may enable patients with dementia and other memory-stealing diseases to have better recall. No one knows if these will work to improve healthy people, but it’s possible that one will work in the future.

More intriguing is the notion that a supermemory or attention pill might be used someday by those with critical jobs like pilots, surgeons, police officers — or the chief executive of the United States. In fact, we may demand that they use them, said the bioethicist Thomas H. Murray. “It might actually be immoral for a surgeon not to take a drug that was safe and steadied his hand,” said Mr. Murray, the former president of the Hastings Center, a bioethics research group. “That would be like using a scalpel that wasn’t sterile.”

HERE is a partial checklist of cutting-edge medical-technology therapies now under way or in an experimental phase that might lead to future enhancements.

More than 200,000 deaf people have had their hearing partially restored by a brain implant that receives sound waves and uses a minicomputer to process and deliver them directly into the brain via the cochlear (audio) nerve. New and experimental technologies could lead to devices that allow people with or possibly without hearing loss to hear better, possibly much better.

The Israel-based company Nano Retina and others are developing early-stage devices and implants that restore partial sight to the blind. Nano Retina uses a tiny sensor backed by electrodes embedded in the back of the eye, on top of the retina. They replace connections damaged by macular degeneration and other diseases. So far images are fuzzy and gray-scale and a long way from restoring functional eyesight. Scientists, however, are currently working on ways to mimic and improve eyesight in people and in robots that could lead to far more sophisticated technologies.

Engineers at companies like Ekso Bionics of Richmond, Calif., are building first-generation exoskeletons that aim to allow patients with paralyzed legs to walk, though the devices are still in the baby-step phase. This summer the sprinter Oscar Pistorius of South Africa proved he could compete at the Olympics using artificial half-leg blades called Cheetahs that some worried might give him an advantage over runners with legs made of flesh and blood. Neuroscientists are developing more advanced prosthetics that may one day be operated from the brain via fiber optic lines embedded under the skin.

For years, scientists have been manipulating genes in animals to make improvements in neural performance, strength and agility, among other augmentations. Directly altering human DNA using “gene therapy” in humans remains dangerous and fraught with ethical challenges. But it may be possible to develop drugs that alter enzymes and other proteins associated with genes for, say, speed and endurance or dopamine levels in the brain connected to improved neural performance.

Synthetic biologists contend that re-engineering cells and DNA may one day allow us to eliminate diseases; a few believe we will be able to build tailor-made people. Others are convinced that stem cells might one day be used to grow fresh brain, heart or liver cells to augment or improve cells in these and other organs.

Not all enhancements are high-tech or invasive. Neuroscientists are seeing boosts from neuro-feedback and video games designed to teach and develop cognition and from meditation and improvements in diet, exercise and sleep. “We may see a convergence of several of these technologies,” said the neurologist Adam Gazzaley of the University of California at San Francisco. He is developing brain-boosting games with developers and engineers who once worked for Lucas Arts, founded by the “Star Wars” director George Lucas.

Which leads to another question: How far would you go to augment yourself? Would you replace perfectly good legs with artificial ones if they made you faster and stronger? What if a United States Agency for Human Augmentation had approved this and other radical enhancements? Would that persuade you?

Ethical challenges for the coming Age of Enhancement include, besides basic safety questions, the issue of who would get the enhancements, how much they would cost, and who would gain an advantage over others by using them. In a society that is already seeing a widening gap between the very rich and the rest of us, the question of a democracy of equals could face a critical test if the well-off also could afford a physical, genetic or bionic advantage. It also may challenge what it means to be human.

Still, the enhancements are coming, and they will be hard to resist. The real issue is what we do with them once they become irresistible.

[Luther Blissett]

Can someone merge this thread with Humanity 2.0? I love that thread, but this one has more responses.

"In a Generation, the World Will Be Unrecognizable"
By Michael Swanwick Posted Apr. 10, 2013

You probably missed it, but a paper in the March 28 issue of Science with the dry-as-dust title, “Amplifying Genetic Logic Gates,” marks a transformative moment in human history. Thanks to a synthetic snippet of DNA, it is now possible to use living genes as computers. This changes pretty much everything. In a generation, the world is going to be an unrecognizable place.

But first, the paper itself.

A team of bioengineers from Stanford University led by Drew Endy have created an artificial biological transistor. This “transcriptor,” as they call it, controls the flow of RNA polymerase along a living gene. If the transcriptor is oriented one way, the RNA polymerase flows. If the transcriptor is flipped, it doesn’t.

Transistors are the on-off switches that made compact computers possible before being replaced by much smaller logic gates. Transcriptors are their genetic equivalent—and radically smaller than anything used today to boot. But where your iPad has electricity flowing along wires, its biological equivalent will have enzymes (the aforementioned RNA polymerase) flowing along genes, making possible a computer so small that it can be inserted into a single-celled creature.

There’s a lot more technical detail in the paper, but that’s all you need to know to understand what’s coming. Anything that can be done with electronics now will soon be possible within a living organism. That organism might be an E. coli bacterium, a daisy, a frog or even you. The scientists were careful to use enzymes that would work in almost any living thing.

Imagine being able to inject all your electronic devices into your own body. Imagine having constant smartphone, email and social media access in your brain, so that you’ll never miss another text message, tweet, Facebook update or phone call from your mother ever again. It may not sound attractive. But it’s coming.

And that’s just the beginning.

Genetic engineers have long been able to rewrite genes in the laboratory. Genetic computing will give them the tools needed to do it within a living human being. Some of what ensures will be irresistible: Implanted sensors will detect cancers when they are so small, they can be eliminated in a single visit to the oncologist. Drugs will be manufactured within the body. Synthetic nerves will allow quadriplegics to walk again. The errors that cause genetic diseases will simply be rewritten.

As will the genes governing breast size, height, longevity, strength and the color of your eyes and skin. If eyebrow rings and ear plugs aren’t eye-catching enough for your taste, you’ll be able to grow tusks, feathers, or tentacles.

Anywhere you want them.

Things will really get interesting when genetic computing interacts with the human brain. In a few decades it should be possible to create neural pacemakers to cure epilepsy and quite possibly even schizophrenia. Shutting down the craving for illegal drugs or undesired sexual acts—undesired by you or your parents, it makes no difference—will be child’s play. It will be possible to house a felon in a prison without locks or guards, knowing that if he tries to leave, all voluntary muscle reflexes will shut down. Or, better yet, to operate him like a drone and use him to fight distant wars from the safety of a boiler-room in Houston.

Human drones are going to be of vital interest to every government on Earth. Once people can be operated by remote control, it will be possible to grab a dissident off the street and re-rig him to act as a spy on his own organization. Or else equip him with explosives, walk him into a mall and set him off, thus discrediting his cause.

There is already a great deal of legal resistance to implanting human genes in animals. But these implants will take place. All it will take is a billionaire who fancies himself a visionary and a nation willing to serve as a flag of convenience.

Can your dog be taught to speak? Will a chimpanzee ever graduate magna cum laude from Harvard? Could a human-porpoise hybrid serve an emissary between the two species? We may soon know.

All this is on its way. The technology cannot be stopped. It can only be understood and controlled. Now is the best of all possible times to start thinking about how this might be done.

One final thought, though. Frederik Pohl once stated that a good science fiction writer should be able to predict not only the automobile but the traffic jam. Not even the best predictor of futures, however, could have foreseen the profound changes the automobile would have on the sexual behavior of teenagers. New technology always has unforeseen implications.

If you think some of the possibilities raised here are strange, wait until you see the outcomes of genetic computation that can’t be predicted.