Cool advanced user-interface video

Very nice attention to detail on the user-interface widgets…


World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

How I stopped worrying and learned to love technofixes

Peter Thiel writes regarding the failure of Democracy to preserve freedom and some possible technofix strategies. He includes are thoughts about creating freedom in Cyberspace, Outer space or on the high seas. I think it would be interesting to build certain distributed Internet apps that could change the dynamics of freedom, including reputation systems, gifting/barter systems and user-controlled Internet apps.
[Read more →]

Simplified nanobot anti-aging solution

[ I’ve started this article 2 years ago – will post it now even though I feel it is incomplete. ]

I’d like to propose a somewhat simplified approach to eliminate aging, given early-stage molecular robots and following the SENS approach to aging.

Results in this approach depend on equal amounts of creation of new cells and destruction of old cells to exponentially reduce the amount of aging related defects in the body over time.

Aubrey de Grey proposes 7 mechanisms for aging, which are believed to be comprehensive: [Read more →]

Chris Phoenix on Nanotech Fast Takeoff

Chris Phoenix is writing an interesting series of articles over at CRN about the dynamics of the development of molecular engineering.

His thesis, as far as I understand it after the first three articles, is that we’re likely to see a fast takeoff, because it’s easy to achieve excellent results after you’ve achieved good enough.

One example is error rate – going past an adequate error rate to a superlative one just requires additional purification / error correcting steps. Other things that may improve very quickly once a workable solution is found are reaction rates – which are exponentially dependent on positional accuracy / stiffness.