This coming Saturday (May 13, 2006), there will be a Summit on the Singularity at Stanford University. If you're in the neighborhood, you want to be there. Everybody who's anybody on the subject will be there, including Ray Kurzweil, Eric Drexler, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Steve Jurvetson, and others.

Ray Kurzweil writes

The coming merger of human and machine intelligence will mark the next stage in the evolution of life. Based on models of technology development that I've used to forecast technological change successfully for more than 25 years, I believe computers will pass the Turing Test by 2029, and by the 2040s our civilization will be billions of times more intelligent. The implications for all aspects of human existence of this "singularity" are profound; but until now, few have begun to consider what may be the most important event in their lifetimes. I'm pleased to invite you to an exploration of the future awaiting us.

Michael Anissimov wrote this great article on Transhumanism. If you're not familiar with the concept, it is that the technology all around us is our next evolutionary step. Today, we think of computers and technologies as things around us, but they'll soon be part of us, and then replace us, much as we replaced cave men. We're building our own grandchildren.

Mr. Anissimov makes the observation that

Politicians and laypeople everywhere are beginning to get the picture - it matters less what you say than what technology you have at your disposal. This is why presidential speeches are peppered with mentions of the importance of alternative energy and the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Good technology improves the lives of millions and bad technology has the potential to murder millions. Social ideas are merely a footnote.

The Department of Defense's research arm, the Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA), has announced their latest challenge: build a robotic car that can traverse through urban settings for 60 miles in 6 hours. The challenge is designed to encourage research for the development of autonomous ground vehicles for use on the battlefield.

In the 2005 challenge, several cars successfully drove autonomously 175 miles through the Mojave desert. This year, the challenge is to drive through city environments, including understanding street signals, and merging into traffic safely.

This picture shows last year's winner, Stanford University's VW Toureg vehicle, named "Stanley".

For your amusement, I present my sixth grade science fair project. This would be from 1976. This gadget will add two binary numbers together. (You can also subtract by making one of the numbers negative). I called it BASC-1 (Binary Adding/Subtracting Calculator). In this picture, you can see it adding 75 + 103 = 178 (1001011 + 1100111 = 10110010). The thing was built in a box I got from a surplus store that was used to view microfilm. (for you young-uns, back before the internet, they used to keep archive documents (like old newspapers at the library) on little pieces of film called microfilm, and you'd use a viewer to project it onto a computer monitor sized screen). BASC is built onto the transluscent projection screen.

RFID is coming in a big way. If you aren't familiar with the term, RFID is a way to mark objects by applying a "tag" to them and identifing them using radio technology. The tags contain a unique identification number, and a reader can send them a signal that will cause them to transmit that id back to the reader. This technology is already used extensively by libraries (in each book), and as electronic access cards in many corporations.

RFID is growing in popularity quickly. Both Walmart and the Department of Defense have mandated that all of their vendors tag their merchandise with an RFID tag. Many other segments of society are moving towards using this technology.

Alexander Van de Rostyne built Pixelito, a 6.9 gram remote-control helicopter. Pixelito is fully functional, with 4 channels of control via infra red. It has no servos and no swashplate. The swashplate is the mechanism that allows the spinning blades to be tilted forward or back or side to side, allowing the pilot to control where the helicopter goes. (link from Stocktrader).

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Another shameless plug for Bill's art. This one's called Warren 5. I made it shortly after the great Warren Zevon passed away, though frankly I don't see any connection.

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Runbot is a two-legged robot that walks. fast. It's one foot tall and moves 3.5 leg-lengths per second, which is twice as fast as it's closest competitor, Spring Flamingo (developed at MIT). If Runbot were a human, it would be walking 10 feet per second. Runbot was developed at the University of Gottingen, the University of Glasgow and the University of Stirling in Scotland.

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Quaketronics is two brothers who make an inexpensive ($99) rig for shooting your own high-speed photographs. I met them at the Maker's Faire this last weekend (which was extremely cool, btw). This picture is of my son Alex popping a balloon.

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Completely Sequenced Genomes

Table of genomes which have been completely sequenced. This is updated regularly and is well-organized. Has lots of cool, relevant links.