StoryCorps Podcast

StoryCorps is quickly becoming one of my favorite weekly podcasts. The stories are fantastic, nearly always thought-provoking, touching or just plain interesting. Like this one about a social worker who was mugged in the Bronx, and ends up befriending the would-be mugger. You can sign up for the StoryCorps podcast here.

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, "Look, I guess you're going to have to pay for this bill 'cause you have my money and I can't pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I'll gladly treat you." The teen "didn't even think about it" and returned the wallet, Diaz says. "I gave him $20 ... I figure maybe it'll help him. I don't know."
Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen's knife — "and he gave it to me."

Prophet of the Singularity

Wired has a profile of Ray Kurzweil, the prophet of the Singularity, the moment when technology will surpass human intelligence, leading to a shift in the evolution of intelligence. Kurzeil believes this will happen in our lifetimes.

According to Grossman and other singularitarians, immortality will arrive in stages. First, lifestyle and aggressive antiaging therapies will allow more people to approach the 125-year limit of the natural human lifespan. This is bridge one. Meanwhile, advanced medical technology will begin to fix some of the underlying biological causes of aging, allowing this natural limit to be surpassed. This is bridge two. Finally, computers become so powerful that they can model human consciousness. This will permit us to download our personalities into nonbiological substrates. When we cross this third bridge, we become information. And then, as long as we maintain multiple copies of ourselves to protect against a system crash, we won't die.

One Step Closer to the Singularity

The latest issue of Seed magazine has an amazing article about Deep Blue, an attempt to use a supercomputer to virtually simulate the neural synapses of a small part of a mouse brain. The money quote is on page 6, but the entire article is worth a read.

After assembling a three-dimensional model of 10,000 virtual neurons, the scientists began feeding the simulation electrical impulses, which were designed to replicate the currents constantly rippling through a real rat brain... Clusters of connected neurons began to fire in close synchrony: the cells were wiring themselves together.

"This all happened on its own," Markram says. "It was entirely spontaneous." For the Blue Brain team, it was a thrilling breakthrough. After years of hard work, they were finally able to watch their make-believe brain develop, synapse by synapse. The microchips were turning themselves into a mind.