Which spooks are running in the background,ya think?

I think nanotech is a little more transformational than you give it credit for, but on the whole, I agree. There are already research institutes like Janelia Farm doing cutting-edge neuroscience, and Creative Commons-licensed journal families like PLoS. So what, exactly, is so fundamentally different about this Google/NASA spinoff?

Maybe you haven’t “seen” a practical nanotech application, um, because those applications are nano?

Seriously, nanoparticles are now in thousands or household products. Let alone the stuff being developed for scientific labs, military, and space.

The implications of self cleaning surfaces alone constitute rapid technological change, change which is most likely being held back because we would rather not deal with wondering whether someone should still get paid a stipend or should just be left to starve after their job is completely devoured by an infinitely more efficient process.

change which is most likely being held back because we would rather not deal with wondering whether someone should still get paid a stipend or should just be left to starve after their job is completely devoured by an infinitely more efficient process.

yes, that’s right – the world’s most egotistical and testosterone-driven scientists have suppressed their findings in a conspiracy to protect janitors

My question for the skeptics would be: Do you think it is impossible to simulate the human brain?

The singularity relies on the idea of being able to build something “smarter” than yourself. If it’s possible to simulate human intelligence, then I don’t think it’s far fetched to see us try to improve upon it – and that is the core definition of the singularity. I don’t think I’ll see it in my lifetime but I’m interested in the possibility.

The scientists have already developed it. Japan demonstrated a fully self cleaning bathroom years ago.

It would be the investment class holding it back, if it is happening (which I can’t say for sure, hence the “most likely”, because I do think its likely). Perhaps you underestimate the chaos that would be caused if millions of janitors were suddenly out of work? Or maybe you underestimate the degree to which capitalists fight efficiency in order to have more people working for less?

Another problem is the cost of doing these things. Just because you can make a self cleaning bathroom, for instance, doesn’t mean you can do it cheaply yet.

As for the comment about loss of jobs for janitors, you underestimate who else would lose out if this happened. Companies that design cleaning supplies/chemicals would lose money too. Unfortunately the US is now apparently in the business of keeping failed businesses alive (auto companies, banks, etc.) and keeping the rich from losing money. We have socialism for the rich but let the poor people die from having a horrible healthcare system…but that’s another rant.

Sadly, a lot of people are also just plain scared of technology. The ethical debates about IVF and organ transplants went on far too long before the technology was implemented. We are facing worse hurdles now with stem cell research and nanotech. Ignorant people are scared of something they don’t understand. Until the majority are educated about these things I doubt we’ll see them in common use. I hope this Singularity University thing and the other similar programs help with that.

http://www.roughtype.com/images/su.jpg

I don’t underestimate who else could lose out. I know that many companies would go under. This is fine with me, because I do not believe one should have to “work” in a traditional sense to earn a “wage.” So old companies and industries failing is a huge bonus in my book, but only if we establish that humans deserve to eat, drink, and be sheltered regardless of whether there is any “work” left for them to perform.

It is just such a system that will be fought vigorously by the entrenched industries as well as the Puritan-work-ethic folks who would rather force people into low wage work that has literally become “worthless” (ie is obsolete due to technology) than to allow those same people to have enough money to survive even if there are no more “jobs” for them. Other companies will be campaigning to bring in those technologies, but will be uninterested and/or hostile to the idea of work-less wages.

You’re point is well taken that the cost of self cleaning surfaces may prove prohibitive at this point. Investment by governments in this technology (which also has the potential to seriously affect gender relations in many regions, as “house work” becomes a non-event) could jumpstart the process and reduce pricing much quicker than a market model based on selling this tech to 5 star hotels. It is to protect the entrenched status quo, as well as skirt the issue of society’s responsibilities to those whose jobs have been obsoleted, that governments are not focusing on efficiency-based nanotech and instead are developing robot mosquitoes to shoot insurgents in the neck with poison darts.

1875 – 1909 : Electricity, powered flight as a novelty, radio invented, Einstein’s glory days, telephone, fountain pen, internal combustion, motion pictures. Serious stuff, no doubt. Most of these, however, were still on the scale nanotech is at today. (well, not literally); no practical widespread applications, lots of pie-in-the-sky stuff. Yeah, it would be great to have a radio….but what am I going to use it for? Electric lights are great, if you can get electricity, etc. These things existed, but they were not widely used.

1975-2009 : Printers, reusable space flight, landing things on other planets, MRI, the spread of consumer-level PCs (MS-DOS and the IBM PC in the 80s), genetic engineering (research and clinical; insuiln, HGH, clotting factors, many others), the spread of effective organ transplant, the contact lens, CD-ROM & CDs, the cell phone, hybrid vehicles, and, of course, the internet and all that entails. These are the life-changing things that have been invented in that timeframe and currently impact our daily lives.

Things that are “close” in clude artificial organs (Jarvik (ok, as a first step), Alin Foundation, Abiomed), nanotech-based medications, manufacturing, and consumer products, the camera pill, DNA, RNA, and protein array technology, superconductor technology, fuel cells, and probably a dozen other things I don’t even know about.

I’ve worked in biotech for 13 years (currently a researcher at a university in the eastern US), and the pace here is amazing. If someone were to tell me in the late 1990s the things I can do today, I’d think it was far-fetched science fiction. I swear, some of this stuff is like Star Trek. For example, I really can engineer a tissue, run experiments on it, and observe the changes in real time, nondestructively, at micrometer resolution. I can take a sample from an experiment and assay it simultaneously for up to 128 different proteins. Proteins; not RNA, not DNA, but actual protein expression. And it takes only the better part of an afternoon.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/02/02/financial/f210207S78.DTL

The nine-week tuition at Singularity will be $25,000, but it will take more than money to gain admission. The university intends to focus on the brightest students who “have an interest in addressing big issues,” Diamandis said.

And out here in the real world, one gets research done by handing money TO people interested in looking into things, not taking money FROM them.

…My question for the skeptics would be: Do you think it is impossible to simulate the human brain?

I am not naive enough to think I can accurately predict what the distant future holds and thus I am agnostic in regards to the singularity. But I’m often surprised at the confidence that some people have that A.I. is on the verge of simulating a human-like intelligence.

The brain is more than a computing device running a piece of software. The human experience is a rich blend of sensory inputs, memories, connections, chemically induced emotional states, and a million other things that are difficult if not impossible to simulate in an algorithm- even an incredibly complex one.

Consider what a big difference a minor chemical imbalance or physical injury can make to an otherwise healthy human mind and you begin to understand what a challenge that a so-called “strong A.I.” actually presents.

Fight, fight in the darkening gloam!
For Eschaton State, our hallowed home!
Through whose eldritch halls
Ring the final calls
Of this bubble in the spacetime foam!