Published in November 14th, 2008
Japanese consumers are known to be ardent gadget lovers, but that doesn’t mean that technology development is thriving in Japan. In fact, the country has been surprisingly inhospitable to entrepreneurs, as I recently discovered when I traveled to Tokyo for the Silicon Valley Connect trip. That could change, though — especially if smart people from [...]
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Published in October 31st, 2008
It’s been called the “rapture of the nerds,” but such derision didn’t stop an estimated 500 enthusiasts from showing up to the Singularity Institute’s conference in San Jose, Calif., last weekend to discuss the possibility of artificial intelligence overtaking that of humans.
That’s the concept of technological singularity, popularized by author and inventor Ray Kurzweil. Talking [...]
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Published in October 17th, 2008
Chipmaker Intel said this week that despite its record US$10.2 billion in revenue for the third quarter, the company is worried that the global economic crisis will affect future performance. Despite such a general malaise across the industry, however, there is some very good news on the tech front.
Buried under the cloud of economic [...]
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Published in October 17th, 2008
A new magazine called H+ has launched and I have an article in its first edition (”Science Fiction Gets Funding”). It’s edited by cyberculture icon RU Sirius and is published by Humanity Plus (aka the World Transhumanist Association). Here’s some media coverage of the launch: Boing Boing, Kurzweil.net.
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Published in October 3rd, 2008
The financial crisis currently consuming the U.S. has led tech industry leaders, such as Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, to speak out in favor of quick Congressional action. Tech stocks, as well as general stocks, have plummeted, and there is confusion over why this crisis is happening and spreading so fast. One explanation that makes a lot [...]
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Published in August 22nd, 2008
Nine months after Barack Obama, John McCain has unveiled his own technology plan for America. At last, both candidates can be graded for their long-term friendliness to the tech sector. You can read my analysis here, but the upshot is that Obama has multiple weaknesses, particularly when it comes to taxes, property rights, labor [...]
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Published in July 25th, 2008
When it comes to the Internet, Republican presidential candidate John McCain recently said that he’s “an illiterate who has to rely on his wife for any assistance he can get.” In an era where the Internet is playing an ever greater role, does such an admission matter, and does it say anything important about the [...]
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Published in July 11th, 2008
More than 200 scientists and longevity activists gathered at UCLA recently to discuss advancements in repairing humans. New technology is making it possible to imagine a world with ever greater life spans, but old world issues pervaded the discussions.
The Methuselah Foundation’s Aubrey de Grey organized the event and kicked it off with a theoretical explanation [...]
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Published in May 30th, 2008
Last week, President Bush signed into law the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which will protect individuals from employer and insurance discrimination based on the results of high-tech gene tests. Fighting discrimination is a good idea, but the lack of opposition to GINA points to some potentially serious problems.
GINA passed the Senate unanimously and [...]
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Published in May 16th, 2008
At last week’s UCLA Technology & Aging Conference, representatives from Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Toyota and other big-name firms discussed how technology is reshaping lifestyles for older individuals. However, important policy implications directly connected to these new tools went unspoken.
RFID (radio frequency identification) tags that can monitor the status of older individuals, face-recognition video systems that [...]
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Published in April 8th, 2008
As baby boomers are repainting the aging landscape, new products dedicated to fighting aging are cropping up. However, these products aren’t only for older generations — younger groups could also utilize them to detect problems early on.
Read more here.
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Published in March 7th, 2008
Google’s recent announcement that it is creating a home for personal health records online is a natural outgrowth of Silicon Valley’s Web 2.0 consumer Internet focus. The question this raises is whether a market-driven system is better for keeping health records than one run by the government.
Groups like the World Privacy Forum worry that initiatives [...]
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Published in February 22nd, 2008
This week marked the anniversary of the announcement that the satellite radio firms Sirius and XM plan to merge, yet so far the companies have not been allowed to consummate the marriage. That’s because regulators are standing in the way, backed by well-heeled Washington lobbyists out to prove that ridiculous ideas still have an impact [...]
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Published in February 8th, 2008
The next generation of parents is set to embrace genetic testing of kids for diseases that may occur later in life, according to a study published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics. This is big news given that many medical professionals oppose the practice and there is a movement in Congress to secure genetic [...]
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Published in January 26th, 2008
At this week’s Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Germany, renowned scientists Craig Venter, Ph.D., and Richard Dawkins wowed the audience with a conversation about genes and information technology. They discussed how evolution is becoming man-made, which brings up a number of interesting issues.
“Genetics has become a branch of information technology,” Dawkins opined. There’s a [...]
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Published in January 17th, 2008
Hillary Clinton is my friend. On MySpace, that is. If I were going to vote for the first candidate that responded to my social networking “friend†request, it would be her. Of course, that’s a silly idea, but with all the hoopla over politicians using new technologies, one might ask: How has Web 2.0 changed [...]
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Published in December 14th, 2007
New data released this week shows that human evolution is speeding up — an interesting development given that many in the scientific community are hopeful that humans can take greater control over the process. At a recent conference in San Diego, scholars discussed how various religious orders may perceive radical life extension, one potential path [...]
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Published in November 30th, 2007
Many telecom observers were stunned this week when Verizon announced it would open up its network to “wireless devices, software and applications not offered by the company.” This change in policy is good for consumers and worth closer examination, especially on the business side.
Verizon’s “walled garden” required consumers to use a Verizon-chosen phone in order [...]
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Published in November 16th, 2007
Presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-Texas) became the “Internet” candidate this month when 36,672 people contributed more than US$4 million online to his campaign in a single 24-hour period. This impressive feat demonstrates the power of an open source culture, a lesson that should not be lost when it comes to other important issues.
The campaign to [...]
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Published in November 2nd, 2007
America’s first baby boomer, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, recently signed up for the Social Security benefits that she will start to collect in January. The new phase of life that she and her generation are entering is creating demand for new industries that affect everyone, one of which involves “brain fitness.”
Brain fitness is exactly what it sounds [...]
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