Short Attention Span Theater

From the stage, Cory Doctorow takes a photo of the audience at the Singularity Summit at Stanford. He recommends continuous partial attention. So I took a photo of him, in some strange loop… which brings us to the podium, where Douglas Hofstadter used some original cartoons to refute Ray Kurzweil’s earlier prediction of uploading human intelligence to a computer substrate.

Of course, if uploading becomes possible, we will likely upload a primate before a human (given FDA regulation, and the need to do animal trials…), and that could get pretty interesting (Templeton’s blog). Imagine hyperintelligence originating from a hedonistic bisexual sisterhood of bonobos…. The future’s so bright…

Sebastian Thrun showed some great videos from Stanley, as it won the DARPA autonomous robotic vehicle race. The next race will be the DARPA “Urban Challenge” in Nov 2007. The vehicle will need to obey California driving laws on city streets. Thrun suggested that people living in Palo Alto watch out.

(whew… just finished four conferences in the past five days… a bit of a whirlwind)