programable matter

Is this for real because I feel like I just stepped into the future?

BioMimicry

2009 is already becoming the year of innovation. The Rockafellas kept thousands employed after the Great Depression with their passion for innovation. On the book front Market Rebels was recently released and talks about innovation acceptance. So have you considered your next innovation? Have you tried out biomimicry?

BioMimicry is on the rise and a smart way to approach the process of inventing. Reverse engineering isn't a new concept, but stealing from nature is a smart tactic every great innovator should keep on the back burner.

I don't want to make water wicking windows though, I'm talking about the more challenging concepts like creating a flying device devised from hummingbird wings, or creating an apparatus that allows a human to breathe underwater. These ideas are pretty far reaching but a lot of innovations currently in development are taking advantage of this strategy and making great progress.

Oh yeah, the world is ending

At the end of the year I like to predict what we'll see in the coming year. Actually it's still too early for this list, but it's not too early for my 2012 prediction. I have a feeling you're going to start seeing a lot of these in the weeks to come.

If you aren't familiar with the fear surrounding the Mayan calendar, it predicts that the world as we know it will end in the year 2012. It's a frighteningly interesting prediction because it's odd that a civilization ending in the 9th century would pick such a specific date for the apocalypse. People are paying attention because the Mayan culture made significant scientific advancements and developed an extremely accurate calendar, achievements that unlike Nostradamus' predictions are more substantiated.

The most common explanation of the end is based on disasters caused by sunspots and magnetic fields that will cause earth quakes, floods, etc. However there have been a few interesting discussions that have erupted in an effort to inspire change. Edward Burtynski talked at TED about how he's observed changes in civilazation and goes on to discuss China and how the rapid expansion of civilation is affecting our planet. His research is thorough in showing how rapidly we're depleting our limited supply of resources. He drives the point home when he discusses worldchanging.com and the effort that is still needed to get climate change back on course. His most interesting insight comes when he asks us our "progress" and how civilization is changing. Daniel Pinchbeck has his own hilarious theory about 2012. He dives off the deep end with post modern times and predicts that 2012 will usher in a signifcant advancement in civilization based around a more developed sense of conscious. Of course Hollywood doesn't miss a beat either, they've dumped the concept into another formfitting disaster film with a twist of aliens in 2012 the movie.

So many possibilties, they seem endless, Earthquakes, Evolution or Aliens. Or what about the Matrix hypothesis, we're just living in a computer simulation; or possibly Singualarity will come early and artificial intelligence will take over. Well my prediction is the obvious and unimaginative; we'll see a spike in gun, water and gasmask sales the week before 2012, just like we saw before Y2K; and then life will go on.


Edward Burtkynski - TED



Daniel Pinchbeck - Post Modern Times


2012 Film Teaser

Robot suit

The Japanese are at least 5 years ahead of the US in terms of technological advancement. So maybe it's a branding initiative of one Japanese firm called Cyberdyne to permeate US culture with it's newest product - Hal5. When I first read it I thought it was a joke, but Cyberdyne is for real. Cyberdyne is the company famously known in the film Terminator as creating the technology that led to robots taking over the world.

The main focus of this Japanese firm is to build suits that facilitate human movement. They provide seniors with the ability to stand and walk, they aid rescue workers in moving heavy debris and allow autoworkers to accomplish heavy moves with precision.

It seems like this recent progression has come about because of lighter robotic materials that also allow for strength without compromising speed or flexibility. Another firm called Applied Motion is working on robotic legs that allow humans to run up to 30 mph. Berekley Engineering is also working on a project that allows people to accomplish tasks with superhuman strength.

I guess it's not that much of a stretch to assume that this is a step in the direction of Singularity.

Our 10 Dimensions

As the Hadron Collider is making it possible for scientists to research physics at a new deeper level and so we're just starting to see new findings about subjects like how we understand space and time. A while back I came across a site called the tenth dimension that explained the 10 dimensions and think it segues nicely into this recently published article about new findings on the dimension of time and a theory about holography.

Are We Still Evolving?

I recenlty read an amazing article in Seed on Evolution. Here are the highlights:

Humans "showed up" 45,000 years ago and it doesn't appear that we've changed much in those years. It's easy to make that assumption since natural selection chooses the most fit to survive through reproductive success; the problem however is that we nurse our sick back to health. Mating isn't a privilege so even the less fit pass their genes on. Well the Human Genome and HapMap projects are changing what we know about how we're evolving. It appears that up to 10 % of the human genome appears to be evolving, but most mutations have a neutral effect, making them neither fitter or less fit. The HapMap project has found gene variations in some populations that were not present in other geographic areas, but are moving over time proving that genetic drift is occuring.

One of the best examples of recent human evolution is the spread of the mutation for adults who can digest milk. It popped up 8,000 years ago and has spread to most parts of the world, but not all, only 9 of 10 Asian Americans lack the mutation. Hawkes, an anthropolist studying demography and the constraints on our adaptation believes that the global population explosion that coincided w/ the agricultural revolution is the main driver of adaptive evolution. He exclaims that our world has changed rapidly and our DNA is still catching up. Hapmap has provided great insight because it lets us compare parts of the human genome that are different between people; it gives us a glipse at patterns of gene inheritance.

So now for the question at large: Are we getting smarter?

Several different studies have been conducted on the topic. Bruce Lahn an evolutionary geneticist raised some controversial issues because his work could easily be misinterpreted as claiming that brain evolution has occurred in some races but not others. The fact is we know very little about brain evolution and it's difficult to understand how intelligence is selected for. Here is one of his most interesting thoughts about the possibility of the evolution of intelligence: "500 million years ago earth experienced the Cambrian explosion, a rapid increase in diversification of life forms. It may take a long time to evolve certain components, but once you have them, very little evolutionary time could give you great diversity. The brain may take a long time to get to a certain level of intelligence and then, once it's there, it makes possible a cultural explosion."

He goes on to say intelligence builds on intelligence, increasing intelligence, increases the complexity of culture, which pressures intelligence levels to rise, which creates more complex culture and so on.

I'm fascinated by the way humans are evolving and becoming more intelligent. It's clear that some people are smarter than others; but that is somewhat of a subjective statement since there's mathematical intelligence, emotional intelligence, creative intelligence, etc. If we follow Lahn's theory it could be possible that these intelligences are merging. In this way maybe we are moving toward another explosion where the brain becomes able to do exponentially more than it has been. Time will tell.

What You're Hiding

Studying identical twins has always been fascinating. It's such a cool way to test how our environment affects our behavior; but as it turns out, these 'twin' tests may not be very good indicators at all.

We've decoded the human genome but it's only showed us how much more we still have to learn. We're just starting to toy with the findings that explain why humans express certain personality traits while others do not. Specifically, two identical twins may exhibit different personalities or one twin may develop cancer while the other does not. Studies on the epigenome ( a layer of biochemical material that turns genes on and off) are under heavy research. The study sets out to test how the epigenome determines how we develop, look and behave. More interestingly, these characteristics are influenced by environmental factors, meaning there is proof that who we are isn't all about nature.

The study that recently aired on PBS called Ghost In Your Genes talks about the way that a famine experienced by a boy during his young adulthood will influence the personalities of his grandchildren. It comes at an interesting time since I recently started researching my family history on Ancestry.com. I've realized how little I know about my own family tree; what does that mean to understanding my own future?

The study has some interesting implications regarding the choices we make and how our environment effects our offspring. It makes me wonder if inhaling smoke from the G.I. Joes I burned with my magnifiying glass as a kid is going to affect my grandkids, or if eating a bunch of B-12 vitamins and Folic Acid while you're pregnant can silence bad genes. I never had any doubt that coming from a nurturing family has made me a better acclimated individual, but now I'm wondering how far I can go to coax out the good genes.