Religion

Religion is a very important part of most people's lives.

It is cental to everything we do, how we think and how we approach life and its' challenges.
As a Realist I view most situations, problems and life in general, very objectively.
Also, I am a little bit of a pessimist rather than an optimist.  I tend to identify problems in order to begin making a solution.  My view of life and the universe is very simple and objective and I base my beliefs on Science.  Our universe is roughly 13.5 billion years old, our earth 4.5 billion years and we humans roughly 250 000 years.  Our closest living relative is the chimpanzee as we share 98% or our DNA with them.
Science paints a very clear and consistent picture of how our world started and how we had come to be.  It does not however teach us how to cope with life's challenges and problems.  Traditional Religions saticefies the need we have for guidance, optimism and hope and continued peer support.  It however fails at proving itself as the truth of how we came into existance.  
It is clear from all scientific studies on Religion and everything immediately related to it, such as human genetics, etc. that all Religions are purely inventions of the human mind for the human mind.  There are very practical and understandable reasons why man invented Religion for himself.  One of the most obvious ones is that even scientificly mided people, of any age in history and the present, cannot answer the most enduring question of all time:  How did we come into beign? 
One of the plausible theories on the birth of our universe is the "Multiverse" theory.
Simply put, our universe exists inside another universe which could also have billions more universes.  The problem with this theory is the very same problem with the idea that a god / gods had created our universe.
The problem is that whatever created our universe, could not have created itself.  Therefore, the god / beign / process that created our universe must also have been created by a higher god / beign / process in another dimention or unverse outside that one, and so on.  So it is very much a paradox that we perhaps would never solve.  
Two things are very certain though:  
1.  Scientic information that we had gathered on our universe and ourselves are very accurate and proves some of  Religions claims wrong ( such as the claim that we were created at once and that there was no evolutionary process at work ).
2.  Even though Science has surpassed Religion on answering most questions we had of our world and ourselves, we still need Religion's guidance, social support systems, otimism rather than pessimism, etc.


No matter what one's Religion, as humans, we can relate to each other.  We understand each other's needs for a prosperous and productive life, a peaceful living environment, a bright future, etc.  


We should always strive for creating a better life for ourselves, our families and future generations.




Thank you, be sure to join me again for more on the "Future of Religion" and other topics.

Life Systems Design

It is important to lay a ground framework for Life Systems Design ( Designing living creatures ).

When we reach the singularity or perhaps even before then, we need to be aware that the sheer scope or diversity of life will increase as there will be many more creatures that will exist and with many more capabilities than before.

It is important to classify all of these creatures as our whole social structure will depend on which LS gets access to what resources and so forth.


Key factors in Life Systems Design are the follwing:

Conciousness
Different states and types of conciousness.


Intelligence
Processing power, types of processing systems used types of neural networks, digital computing, etc, and many other aspects.

Sensory Experience
Number and type of input / output sensors, quality of sensors, quality of sensory processing ability.

Mind shifting
The ability to shift or the whole or part of one's mind to other bodies, virtual worlds, etc or making one's own body availiable for viewing by 3rd parties
( Viewin and experiencing from your perspective but not control your body or thoughts, also be able to view and control a body or other object remotely ).

Conectedness
How connected the life system is and to whom or to what, eg: is the LS connected to a public network like the internet?  What parts are connected, etc.


Physical Body 
Body size, materials used, locomotion methods, offensive and defensive capabilities or remote control of these capabilities, etc.


Location access
which locations the LS has access to including physical locations and virtual ones.


Power
Ability to access, store, use, distribute electricity or other sources of power.


Data and Information
Ability to capture, access, store, use, distribute data and information.


Thanks everyone.

Join me again for more info on future topics.

Some beliefs I have regarding conciousness:

I think that every animal with a brain is concious, plants I am not so sure of yet, as they don't have brains?

Conciousness is not to be confused with Intelligence. It is merely the potential to harbour and produce Intelligent effects.

Conciousness not a mysterious or supernatural phenomenon but rather a "supremely natural" phenomenon.  Meaning that is is very much natural but the effect or result is such that which we attribute to something magical or supernatural.

Conciousness today, has a mystery associated with it just like the flat earth had a few thousand years ago.  People thought the earth was flat, concluded that it must have an edge and imagined what lies beyond that edge ( seamonsters and the like ).

With conciousness, the mystery will also disappear when we realize just how easy it is to dissect and reproduce and enhance it.

Conciousness very, very, very, stupidly easy to make / produce.
( Especially for simpler artificial creatures ).


Join me again for more info on conciousness, future bmx design, AI, and more...

Happy New Year!

I would like to wish everyone a happy and prospersous new year.

May all your endevours be successful.


Thank you very much for your continued support and interest in my blog.

Future Smart Phones and Mobile Computing Devices

The following are some Ideas and possibilities for Future Smart Phones, and Future Computing Devices.  Some Ideas are well known.  Others may be new and unexplored.  These Ideas are based on the premise that in about 5 years time, 3D layered chips and photonics will be available on the market.


1)  Many Apps making use of artificial neural networks ( ANN ).
     Off-Line, single and multi-user apps and web apps.
 

2)  Local and Internet Networked / Cloud / Swarm / Crowd / MOb Processing.
     Where one node starts the application and others join and add their           
     processing power.
     Especially useful in artificial neural networks apps.
     Wireless mostly but perhaps wired also.
 

3)   Hardware Neural Network Chips.
      ( Built-in & add-on ).
 
 Hardware neural network chips are said to be 1 000 times faster than emulating neurons with a digital computer.
The radical increase in processing capabilities, necessitates hardware ANN chips to be used in smart phones and future notebooks.
 This is also an analogue rather than digital technology because it directly emulates biological neurons.


4)  Different types of Artificial Neural Network Chips.
     Different Algorithms emulated in silicon hardware chips.

     ( Hopfield, Kohonen, HTM, Etc. )
 

5)  Hardware link-able ANN chips linked to each other or linked to a hub on .
 

6)  Hot-swappable artificial neural network chips.
 

7)  Fibre optic cables used for local peripheral and network connections.
     Essentially this will be USB cables on steroids.


These are only a few possibilities.

Be sure to join us next time as we explore technologies relating to artificial neural networks, future smart phones and future personal computing devices.


Happy Holidays 
 

New Super- and Disruptive Computing Technology on the Horizon

There are new and super powerful computing technology being researched at IBM and other companies that could speed up our computers 100 - 1 000 times. 

Watch these short video clips to understand what they are:

These new technologies seems totally anti-Moore's Law which states that computing technology doubles every 18 months or so. Or perhaps Moore's Law only applies to the shrinking of transistors on the CPU chip and not packaging of the CPU cores on the chip?

Perhaps later both technologies can be combined and make again new computing technology that is again a 1 000 times faster than that generation of computers.

What is good about this new CPU technology is that it is still 100% digital  technology and not quantum computing technology which is said to be extremely hard to program and operate. 


Join me again as we explore and generate Ideas for these technologies.

Reverse Engineering the Brain - Numenta and HTM Technology

The following Youtube videos are a great introduction to how our brains work and the progress that have been made in reverse engineering our brains.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oozFn2d45tg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjpWISEIl44

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpekuvG4JMg

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

It is about a scientist, Jeff Hawkins and his company Numenta, who have
discovered and developed HTM: Hierarchical Temporal Memory technology.  Basically it is a specific type of artificial neural network that models the neurons and other structures of our biological brains.

HTM technology is the most advanced and accurate description to date that can replicate how we humans process, store, learn and recall information.

There are a lot of revelations and insight to how our brains work, how complex yet extremely simple our brains are and what type of applications the technology can be used for.  One application the technology is used for is pattern recognition. An example is computer vision applications eg: Tracking moving objects, like cars, in a scene.

This is a really great introduction to HTM technology so watch the videos when you can.

I am not entirely certain of this but I think IBM Watson supercomputer
is based on this technology.

Numenta has also released a free software toolkit and computer vision application which can be trained to recognize certain patterns eg: a car, a chair, a person, etc. in an image or video.
For more on HTM visit Numenta's website: www.numenta.com

Join me again for more info on HTM, 3D Computing Chips, AI and more...