Daily Archives: June 21, 2017

TRONDHEIM, Norway Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has set a deadline for humanity to save itself. Within in the next 100 years, he warns, we need to colonize Mars and other planets. If we dont, we may not survive climate change, disease, and other versions of doom were bound to inflict on ourselves this century.

Hawkings pessimistic take on humanity isnt new. But the super-famous scientist and author has been making the case more urgently in advance of the release of his new BBC documentary, Expedition New Earth, this summer.

And President Trumps decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement on June 1 has only upped the stakes, Hawking said in a talk delivered by Skype at the Starmus science and art festival on Tuesday.

Unlike Donald Trump, who may just have taken the most serious and wrong decision on climate this world has seen, I am arguing for the future of humanity and a long-term strategy to achieve this, Hawking, now 75 and still a professor at the University of Cambridge, said.

There is no new world, no utopia around the corner, on Earth, he added. We are running out of space, and the only places to go to are other worlds.

If you share Hawkings faith in the human imagination and fierce drive to explore, then these are hopeful words. Its conceivable that we could rekindle the excitement of the early days of space travel in the 1960s, and get more serious about it.

And Hawking has some concrete goals to guide us going forward. If were going to make his timeline for building new civilizations before we perish, heres what we need to do:

If these ideas sound familiar, its because billionaires like Elon Musk and Richard Branson, who are deeply invested in spaceflight, have been pushing them too. Some of Hawkings fellow physicists and astronomers also agree we could use an exit strategy. And theres now a small but growing community of aspiring space colonists prepping for life on Mars. (To be clear, Mars, for now, looks like a pretty deadly place.)

Last year, as Voxs Brian Resnick reported, Hawking, along with a Russian billionaire and Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg, concocted a scheme to build and send spacecraft the size of postage stamps to Alpha Centauri, the second-closest star to Earth, some 4.37 light-years away.

The plan, called Breakthrough Starshot, is ambitious, to say the least. A huge number of engineering hurdles would need to be cleared over the next couple of decades to make a launch possible. And its just a tiny example of what wed need to actually decamp to other planets and the moon.

Timetables like Hawkings are troubling to climate scientists and a whole lot of other people whod like to focus on fixing planet Earth, however. If we start looking for our salvation outside our solar system, they fear we may be dissuaded or distracted from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avert catastrophic climate change right now.

As Katherine Hayhoe, a renowned climate scientist at Texas Tech University and another Starmus speaker, tweeted during Hawkings talk on Tuesday:

And that's why cutting our carbon emissions is so essential to all of us: our planet, its people, and even the future of space exploration.

Hawking admits there are risks to the kind of audacious space exploration hes calling for. We dont know what or whom well find when we venture further afield.

But, he said Tuesday, with just a twinge of envy, "If there are beings on Alpha Centauri, they remain blissfully unaware of the rise of Donald Trump.

Why Stephen Hawking is more afraid of capitalism than robots

A neurologist explains how she helped Eddie Redmayne play Stephen Hawking

Heres Joey Stromberg on why space tourism is going to be utterly disappointing

The rest is here:

Stephen Hawking: it's time to get the hell off planet Earth - Vox

Technology evolved our species. From simple stone tools to satellites in space and reprogramming our DNA - our tools developed us in exponential ways.

The speed of change is mind blowing. The rate of change that would happen in an age or a lifetime is now happening on a daily basis. We are launching into a future where we can create and manipulate a virtual reality, where augmented humans become super humans and where super AI become our next evolutionary stage.

But what will be the fate of Homo-Sapiens? Where do we find ourselves in this new evolutionary stage?

Is this Techno-Utopia all its cracked up to be? And is it for everyone or just for the very wealthy and privileged, like most of the distributive technologies which have been transforming our reality at light speed.

What happens to us when we have super augmented humans and AIs running around amongst old-fashioned homo sapiens?

Augmented World Expo

In early June 2017, over 4500 participants, 351 speakers, and 212 exhibitors

Met at the Santa Clara convention center in Santa Clara, CA for the 8th Augmented Worlds Expo. The exhibition hall was filled with the latest and greatest Virtual Reality experiences, Augmented Reality technology and other cutting-edge technologies and companies. The event has grown and is becoming global with the Asian Expo coming in July 2017 and the European one in October 2017.

This year, beyond its excellent production quality, great speakers and an overall great experience, I also found an industry and subculture that is coming of age in many ways. It seems that the industry and its contributors and investors are privy to the distribution and transformation they are about to unleash on humanity.

For the first time in history, the difference Tech brought forward in this conference is about to create a superhuman. These technologies will change and augment homo-sapiens and what it means to be human.

To investigate more about the state of augmented humanity, I sat down with Jay Iorio, Director of Innovation of IEEE-SA, part of IEEE - the worlds largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.

I had a long and profound conversation with Jay, specifically focusing on ethics around the question I raised above: In a world where we have developed machines smarter, faster and more evolved than humans - how do we protect the rights of humanity?

Jay believes we have gotten to a stage where technology cannot escape the moral question. Virtual reality is promising a world without friction, but we grow through friction. With the evolution of smaller and smaller augmentative technology, we are nearing the stage of implants in our eyes and our brains.

As we talked, I thought of this great piece by Keiichi Matsuda HYPER-REALITY

For some, this could be the best thing - always on, always gamified existence. For others, including myself, this proves as a nightmare scenario where you cannot escape and already chaotic existence of urban life. Where the mind, already over saturated and bombarded by constant input, knows no rest.

My conversation with Jay went deeper into the time where we will be in this surreal new world where we are constantly on and cannot escape the digital reality:

IEEE did a Call To Action to try and build these conversations of ethics and free will into the emerging tech of AI[ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE], and AS [AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS], like an engineer building a security system within the platform, she is building.

So how do we start building Ethical interoperability built into the underlying code?

Jay Iorio is part of IEEE collaborative project called:

The General principles of this document, are reminiscent in a way to Asimovs three laws of Robotics:

In their deeper exploration they look into these sections:

In our conversation, Jay and I talked about the idea of ethics being mental or moral externalities (externalities are the consequences of economic activities by unrelated third parties. Pollution is one common externality created as a side product of industry and affects everyone).

As our civilizations become god-like and we obtain superpowers, not all of humanity will continue to move forward, and a lot will be left behind.

Humans are now in control of our evolution - but should we be?

We all need to become futurists, to understand what is coming and thus be able to assess what is happening.

We need to see how we use these technologies for good.

But we also need to remember that we can separate from our bodies and become detached minds - and is that truly where we want to go?

One of my favorite keynotes of the expo was by the brilliant Tish Shute, co-founder of Augmented Worlds Expo and Director of AR/VR at Huawei Technologies . Tish is a synthesist a corporate technology and product strategist, entrepreneur, and innovator. In her talk, Tish brought forward Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella 10 Laws for AI. These 10 laws embody a lot of what is also discussed in the ETHICALLY ALIGNED DESIGN document. These are questions and concepts that need to be raised as we are moving towards hailing a new age of intelligent machines and calling forth the singularity.

Tish brought forward the idea of XR - exponential reality. This definition wants to put together VR [Virtual Reality], MR [Mixed Reality] and AR [Augmented Reality] into a new categorization that looks at exponential humans. It seems that the most quoted person during this three days conference was Yuval Noah Harari:

Tish Shute

Yuvals quote is what it means to live in a world where people have super powers. Its not about upgrading our external tools, thats the old idea of AR - a new UI to the world. Weve moved beyond this. We arrived in times where soon we will have the abilities to upgrade the human body, augment it and the mind and merge it with our tools.

Tish Shute

And this is the three paths it may show. We at the beginning of a new era, as Yuval Calls our next evolutionary phase - Homo Deus - the God-Human.

The thread that was weaved through this event was the fear and awe of these technologies. On one side, the program kept using the tagline Super Powers to change the world but also acknowledging the dangers of these technologies. In his talk, Black Mirror / White Mirror: A Look at our Utopic and Dystopic AR Futures, Super Ventures partner and co-producer of AWE, Tom Emrich looks at both side of this conversation: from Empathy through VR immersive experiences, to super power to the people, which now focuses on helping people with disabilities but will expand to all of us: Gone will be the days where we are limited by the limitations we are born with. The only limitation will be whatever is in our pocket in terms of how much we can spend. Tom also discussed the potential of a quantum jump in spirituality and how the meme in the more spiritual world discusses the paradigm shift in human consciousness at the same time the technologist are hailing a huge shift.

On the contrary, these technologies might bring humanity to live in deep isolation, truth and reality might disintegrated and is the future of AR/VR will be one long digital interaction where we find ourselves isolated, alone and scared.

The big question is where does the Black Mirror, like the dystopian TV show brings forward, starts and where does the White Mirror starts?

My favorite talk of the event was the amazing storyteller and futurist, Jason Silva. Jason is by far, one of the more eloquent thinkers Ive seen in years.

His brand of inspirational videos on youtube, Shots of Awe aligned beautifully with the AWE of Augmented Worlds Expo. He gave an excellent talk about the evolution of humanity and how we are creating our evolutionary children with AI and augmented humans.

He reflected on how humanity has been using instruments to extend our agency, transcend and overcome our limits.

We are Living in the age of exponential change. The rate of change is beyond what our ancestors were used to in a few generations.

We used to live in a world that was linear and local and now we live in a world that global and exponential but our brains and intuition are still wired to think of change in a linear fashion.

Exponential transformation: the phones in our pockets, the tool you take for granted is a million times faster, a million smaller and a thousand times stronger than something that used to be half a building in size 40 years ago. And this is not changing - in 40 years our phones will be the size of a blood cell and will change us from within - all of this is not changing - its getting faster.

All the ways we can Steward the contents of our consciousness

Jason reflects in his talk, how Technology is the embodiment of human creativity in the world.

I got the chance to speak with Jason one on one and asked him about his view of the light and shadow of technology and what his view of technology as a real creator for change.

He reflected how technology could be demonized, not without reason but to keep a positive possibility for the future; positive vision is essential if we are to truly grow as a species.

If there is so much darkness in our collective narratives and all we are showing in our mainstream media is dystopia, his vision is of a techno-utopia where we become more human, more super, more conscious and more feeling. Jason wants to bring forward the meme of the White Mirror, the light to shine our shadows, and the optimism that we can become great evolved humans, who feel, experience and be entranced in states of bliss.

We become the architects of our future and we can envision a great one . One where we dont need to ever get down from our bliss and our highs. But in actuality, what David Pierce called, Paradise Engineering - creating pleasures and paradise beyond anything we can imagine, or as Jason said it in his newest Shots of Awe video - After the ecstasy, more Ecstasy.

In his book, Homo Deus - A brief history of tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari, who seems to be the prophet du jour of the augmented human and Dataism movement, looks at our species, the Sapiens as it evolves into the new Homo-Deus - the God-Human.

Our species is in crisis. But some believe that a crisis is our birth. But is it a birth of a new species that, like us, Homo-Sapiens, will destroy the less technologically advanced species that came before us, as we did to the Neanderthals. Or will it be a more human than human species, one that is not only highly intelligent but conscious and empathetic beyond our wildest dreams?

One that will engineer paradise, not only for themselves but for all beings sharing this beautiful planet earth.

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The Fear and AWE of Techno-Utopia - HuffPost

So just what is a utopia?

Way back in 1516 Englands Sir Thomas More used the word to describe a mythical island with ideal economic and social conditions where everyone was educated, wise, and prosperous. In other words, an ideally perfect political and social society.

In the modern world, Peter Drucker used the word or concept to describe an ideal Christian society.

So, who was Peter Drucker? Many will remember this American management sage, consultant, and educator. He was born in Austria and grew up in a liberal, Lutheran family, later becoming one of the most astute observers of organizational and managerial effectiveness. It was Drucker The Economist magazine described as the king of the management gurus. He was a leader in his field, and he focused on the enormous social benefits that can be achieved by what he referred to as uncompensated, volunteer efforts aimed at helping others.

We were surprised to learn that it was also Peter Drucker who, after his thorough study of its inner workings, boldly declared The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the only utopia that ever worked. Powerful, statement to be sure.

When interviewed by a Harvard-educated writer, Drucker was asked if it might be best to pencil out the word ever, to avoid stating his case too strongly. The founder of modern management took his pen and wrote ever back into the quote.

Drucker was fascinated with what he saw as the fruits of Mormonism in the multitude of effective service and educational activities successfully performed every day by hundreds of thousands of volunteers in the Church that some have described as a well-oiled machine.

With no paid clergy, its well known that the Mormons do carry out an amazingly rich variety of well-organized and effective educational and humanitarian service programs. This is true for people of all ages throughout the world. Studied simply as a functioning organization, Drucker could not get over the literally billions of dollars that would otherwise go to personnel and administrative costs now handled instead by dedicated volunteers who work daily in the trenches, so to speak.

Starting with six members led by Joseph Smith, Jr. in New York State in 1830, the Church continues to roll on with over 15 million members in 150 countries.

As converts, we are always amazed at the functioning of the priesthood leadership existent in the church to which we now belong. In our lifetime we have seen the amazing functioning of the many thousands of missionaries and volunteers, young and old, respond to acts of God, such as floods and tornados. We have witnessed immense projects in other countries such as the providing of fresh drinking water to people in remote villages, wheelchairs donated by the thousands, amazing educational opportunities made available to those less fortunate, and so much more.

Meanwhile, we always find it interesting to read and listen to others regarding their thoughts about our organization and beliefs -- such as Peter Drucker. We feel these various perspectives can help us make the effort to share especially the positive things about our various religious backgrounds. This, we feel is true -- knowing that so many dedicated churches and organizations do so much wonderful work in the world. It has been our joy to partner with several of these entities both in Africa and Polynesia, so we know whereof we speak.

Dean and Nancy Hoch are local public affairs representatives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. dean.nancy@gmail.com.

Excerpt from:

The only utopia that ever worked - Idaho State Journal

A dose of exaggeration is inevitable and occasionally welcome in politics. But in making his case for keeping control of New York schools, Mayor de Blasio is crossing the line into pulp fiction.

Standing in City Halls glorious rotunda, the mayor warned that any change would invite the return of chaos and corruption. The implied subtext, that he is running a smooth, honest operation, is so obviously untrue that he might well have winked and nodded.

To add irony to insult, he was surrounded by children holding Pass mayoral control signs as he insisted, We dont want our children treated as political pawns.

Hey, pawn, smile for the camera. No, wait, dont smile. Look sad and angry.

So it goes in the cynical swamp known as New York. The mayor who presides over one of the most corrupt and incompetent administrations in memory holds a rally for children that is dominated by union members where he warns that a nonexistent utopia is at risk.

The gathering was such a soulless gesture that even the teachers union, which has benefited the most from de Blasios tenure, skipped it as unnecessary.

Unhelpful would have been more accurate, for the greatest threat to mayoral control is this mayors false claim to have been a wise steward of the power Albany granted. His many failures, and especially his ruthless bid to strangle the charter movement, explain why the state Senate is threatening to let the power expire at the end of the month.

In theory, mayoral control is a no-brainer. In fact, under this mayor, the schools are slipping backward, even as the cost skyrockets.

Failure doesnt come cheap in de Blasios New York. The schools operating budget is $24.3billion, and another $6.5 billion covers pensions and debt service, according to the Department of Education. In addition, there is a $15.5 billion capital plan through fiscal year 2019.

This gusher of city, state and federal money defeats any claim that New York doesnt invest in its children. In fact, it invests like a drunken sailor, with similar results.

Credibility is also a casualty. The mayors team uses every loophole to lower standards, including on discipline, so they can pepper the debate with happy talk about statistical improvement.

And no teacher need fear the ax, even when students graduate without being able to read their diplomas.

The lack of consequences is exactly why then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg succeeded in gaining mayoral control in 2002. If it is now failing, why should it be continued?

After all, the current mayors brand of mayoral control amounts to union control, which takes the city back to the pre-Bloomberg era. Since de Blasio isnt using the power for actual progress, why not take it away?

The answer is the real tragedy: there is no reliable place to put the power. The history of New Yorks school wars illustrates the point.

The turbulence over decentralization, which involved racial politics and rank anti-Semitism, reached its peak under Mayor John V. Lindsay, who was so embattled that he was given no seats on the ruling Board of Education. Eventually, the mayor got two of the seven seats, with the five borough presidents each getting one.

The goal was to keep local control by forcing the mayor to win over at least two borough presidents to get a majority. In reality, the unions controlled most of the borough leaders, so no chancellor could get the job or take action without union approval, which immediately doomed reform.

Mayors Ed Koch, David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani chafed under the structure because it made them responsible for the budget without the authority to make real change. Going back to a system of fractured power, then, isnt a step forward.

The awful truth is that mayoral control is the best solution, but it wont work as long as the mayors name is de Blasio. The only hope is partial that Albany exercises greater oversight to prevent disaster, which is what Senate leader John Flanagan is offering City Hall.

Flanagan, a Long Island Republican, wants better answers on how the city spends billions of state taxpayer dollars. And he wants de Blasio to get out of the way of adding more charters. Those are reasonable demands, and the mayor is foolish to reject them.

That he does so shows his arrogance, and his hypocrisy in pretending to care about at-risk children. The best charter schools have broken through the barriers of race, class and ZIP code to show that most children can meet high standards.

Yet the mayor resists for one simple reason: As the chief errand boy of the unions, he is sworn to protect them from charter competition. Unions give him money and votes and he lets them run the schools, the results be damned.

Thats the truth, the whole truth, and everything else is fiction.

Another day, another attempted terror attack in Europe. Yesterday, it was Belgium, the day before, it was Paris.

Most intelligence analysts say that the Islamic State is stepping up individual attacks in response to the fact that American and coalition forces are shrinking the territory it controls in Iraq and Syria. The theory is that the barbarians want to inflict civilian casualties in the West to distract attention from their battlefield defeats.

Whatever the truth, the facts compel tighter restrictions on potential jihadists who are already on law enforcements radar.

Unfortunately, a lax approach still dominates. For example, officials admitted that the man who rammed a car filled with guns and gas canisters into a police van on the Champs-Elyses had a gun permit despite being on Frances terror watch list.

Why does that keep happening? Nearly every major attack, including many in the US, involve men suspected of being radicalized, yet they were free to carry out their mayhem.

Numbers are part of the problem, with Great Britain watching some 23,000 people. That takes enormous police power, with much of it certain to be wasted.

But what is the alternative? Public safety must come first or western cities will become full-time war zones.

Stop the presses! Tuesdays New York Times did not have a single front-page story accusing President Trump of doing anything dastardly, despicable or just different.

Even more stunning, there was a David Brooks column inside saying it is striking how little evidence there is that any underlying crime occurred that there was any actual collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russians.

Hmmm. Inquiring minds want to know, whats up, Gray Lady?

Thats going to leave a mark.

A story headlined Skiers Hit the Slopes in Bikini Tops as Californias Endless Winter Endures a Heat Wave contained the not-so-sexy facts: Patrol workers describe dealing with brutal skin abrasions on bare-skinned skiers who fall.

Ouch!

Read this article:

The truth about mayoral control under de Blasio - New York Post