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DESIGNER
m a g a z i n e
ISSUE 3 SUMMER 2009
BABY
CONTROVERSY
From
X PRIZE to
Singularity U
BIOHACKING
ARRIVES
Legalize
Sports
Doping?
WAS THAT
CHRIS CONTE’S A BOT OR
MICROBOTIC ART A HUMAN?
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Table
of Contents
AI
Brain-Computer
Interfacing:
From Prosthetic
Limbs to Telepathy Chips 16
The Great “Designer Baby”
Controversy of ‘09 24
10 The Virtual Cocoon 20 BIO “Roger Pederson, Won’t You Please Come
Home?”
11 Climb Inside a Virtual Sphere
22 ENHANCED: Optogenetics
12 Wearing the Internet
30 Andy Miah, Sports Doping, and the
13 Oh Rosie, Can You Bring Me My Slippers? Enhancement Enlightement
4
13 Live Long and Heavy 34 Biology for the Homebody
14 Fast Blasts 37 Here Come the Neurobots
18 FOREVER YOUNG Smart Biology 40 Unreal Tournament: Was That a Bot or a
Human?
summer 2009
Life on Mars with Pete Worden:
An Interview with the Director of the
48 NASA Ames Research Center
What if Travis Bickel
was “The Thing”?
An Interview with
Dennis Detwiller 72
The Man Behind
Biosphere 2 50
42 From X PRIZE to Singularity University: 62 Chris Conte: Cynthetic Series
An Interview with Peter Diamandis
67 Let A Hundred Futures Bloom
50 The Man Behind Biosphere 2:
An Interview with John Allen 70 Everything of the Dead: The Future of
Humanity is Zombie
56 Real Discrimination Against Digital People
78 Recommended Books 5
58 NANO It’s a Big Mistake to Overlook
Mid-Range Dangers 81 HUMOR Relinquishment, Step One
60 NEURO Running with the Dopes: Cheating
to be a Better Human
www.hplusmagazine.com
EXPERIENCE
NEURVANA.
PILLS THAT MAKE YOU
SMARTER, THINNER,
MORE SEXUALLY POTENT Publisher Betterhumans LLC
AND ACTIVATE LONGEVITY. James Clement - Co-Founder
Dan Stoicescu - Co-Founder
WITH BETA-PHENYLETHYLAMINE Editor-in-Chief R.U. Sirius
Managing Editor Jay Cornell
A Word From Dr. Richard Clark Kaufman Contributing Editor Surfdaddy Orca
NEURVANA Chief Science Officer,
Author, Biogerontologist
NEURVANA is an advancement in anti-aging
science for living a longer life and developing Design Infoswell Media, Inc
peak mental and physical performance. By
correcting underlying central metabolic imbal- Art Director Stephanie Fox
ances, NEURVANA produces a broad range of
desirable effects on improving human functions.
From slower aging to protecting against decline
and feeling good, NEURVANA delivers benefits
that every person of every age can quickly feel, Print Distribution Disticor
observe and appreciate.
David Latimer
NEURVANA™ Products contains...
beta-phenylethylamine (PEA), a naturally occur-
ring neurohormone / neurotransmitter (chemical
signal messenger between nerves) that’s normally Advertising James Clement
synthesized in the brain from the amino acid
phenylalanine. PEA has the unique ability to David Latimer
amplify the activity of the major neurotransmitters
and improve your life functions.
Patent-Pending Nanosphere Delivery System Contact info@hplusmagazine.com
NEURVANA™ is formulated with a patent
pending “Self-emulsifying Nanosphere Delivery
System.” It uses natural phospholipids and medi-
um-chain triglycerides to form a nanoemulsion Letters to the Editor editor@hplusmagazine.com
(covering) in the intestinal tract, enhancing
bioavailability (delivery) of PEA.
Proofreading Lori Selke
There are five NEURVANA Products in all. Click this ad to get FREE sample packs.
NEURVANA™ Pro NEURVANA™ Tranquil
This product embodies the core NEURVANA Everybody experiences occasional bouts of Snail Mail
concept. It features the brain neuro-amplifier anxiety, tension and insomnia. NEURVANA
beta-phenylethylamine for slower aging, youth- Tranquil restores calm. Through its combination h+ Magazine, 385 Vista Roma Way, #115, San Jose, CA
ful functioning, and peak body-and-mind per- of neural inhibitors you quickly relax, sleep
formance. It works wonders on boosting mood, soundly, block harmful stress, and your mind 95136
mental activity, attention, motivation, alertness, enters a serene, peaceful state.
energy, libido, creativity and awareness. NEURVANA™ SexualDesire
NEURVANA™ BodySlim This is the best product in the market for
How would you like to lose up to 10 pounds in improving sex in men and women. Its combi- Unsolicited manuscripts give us hives
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BodySlim's synergistic combination of thermo- produces a stronger sex drive, faster arousal,
genic calorie burners and the BodySlim better orgasms, and longer-lasting on-demand
Transformation Plan. They re-program your performance. Letters to the Editor
body to convert food and fat calories into NEURVANA™ Synchronicity
energy 24 hours a day for losing weight. Please email the editor at editor@hplusmagazine.com
The team of “chronobiotic” supplements
NEURVANA™ MoodBrightener “MoodBrightener & Tranquil” synchronize your
Think of it as a powerful biogenic pick-me-up. daily body rhythms for slower aging, mental
Its6 synergistic combination of neurotransmitters wellness, illness prevention, and optimal per-
activators will quickly dissolve depressive formance. SYNCHRONICITY combats jet lag,
moods. It will also ease away tension, block chronic fatigue, mood swings, depressive All materials © Betterhumans LLC 2009 unless otherwise
stressful feelings, increase attention, make you states, tension, mental fogginess, attention
feel great and give you pleasure. problems, memory loss, sexual problems, indicated. All copyrights for text revert to writers 90 days
addictions and low immunity.
NEURVANA TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE TODAY...
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summer
These statements have 2009 by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
not been evaluated
Futurist Heroes
We are privileged to know and to work with many Futurist Heroes.
However, we want to see this league of advocates for a positive future
in which poverty, scarcity, disease, and ignorance are erased from
humanity, grow much larger.
Watching the news as we do, we witness incredible breakthroughs
nearly every week. These are stories that would have been the “story of
the year” if they had happened just a decade ago. But these days, they
are quickly swept aside by the next breaking science story. They seem
to come at ever increasing speeds. In this sense, we are becoming ever
more aware of the implications of Moore’s Law being played out in the
“NBIC” (Nano, Bio, Info & Cogno) “Information Science” fields. James Clement
Co-Founder
Here at h + Magazine, we hope that (among other things) we can
inspire young people to study and get involved in the emerging “NBIC”
sciences and technologies so as to help us transcend our genetic/
biological limitations. We’re hoping that future generations will be
able to live incredibly long and healthy lifespans without disease, enjoy
higher intelligences (perhaps augmented by computers through brain-
computer interfaces), and generally be more productive and happy.
Join our h+ Community and help bring about this future – become a
Futurist Hero too.
Best wishes, Dan Stoicescu
Co-Founder
James Clement and Dan Stoicescu
Co-Publishers
7
Resources
Visit the h+ Community
http://www.hpluscommunity.com
www.hplusmagazine.com
Prepar
I
have tended to be a little less impressed with the rate of change than perhaps
some other techno-progressives have been. Technology’s best promises –
for curing cancer, ending scarcity, insuring mental health – not to mention
the more radical hopes for amplifying neurological function, expanding biological
lifespan, and creating strong problem-solving AI… what have you – have at times
seemed like chimera – the horizons recede just out of reach whenever we seem to
get close. We’ve all heard those predictions from the optimists in various fields:
“We will have (insert favorite breakthrough here) in five years.” Five years later
what do they say? “We will have this in five years.”
But I’ve been getting substantially more impressed lately. I’m not sure if it’s
just because I have the privilege of editing h+ (the magazine and the website), or
if the rate of acceleration is really starting to get interesting, but I suspect that it’s
the latter.
Scanning through the news items we’ve covered on our website over
the last couple of months we find (among many other astonishing
items) that:
Professor Nadrian Seeman has created
two-armed worker robots made of DNA.
Editor in Chief
An international team has cracked the
mammalian gene control code.
Scientists have used embryonic stem
8
cells to make synthetic blood.
British scientists have developed the
world’s first stem cell therapy to cure
the most common cause of blindness.
summer 2009
arefor
acceleration RU Sirius
So when I scan the evidence provided by my own magazine and
website, I am, in fact, convinced that fantastic breakthroughs
in NBIC (Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno) are happening all the time
and they are starting to influence our lives. The promises and
potentials for a radically different and (hopefully) far brighter
And scanning this issue of h+ Magazine, we find that: future implicit in these sciences are moving quickly from
theoretical possibility to laboratory breakthrough to hands-on
Nanotech researchers have achieved practice.
real-time atom manipulation Of course, promises are made to be broken. These hopeful
breakthroughs are running neck and neck with any number
Neurobots are manifesting individual of disaster scenarios. There are two wild cards in this race
behaviors and “are just about at the between resource/environmental collapse and a new dawn of
edge of the amount of size and health, prosperity, and novelty. One of them is plain dumb luck.
complexity found in real brains.” The only thing we can predict about the unpredictable is that
it will surprise us. The other is us. It’s going to take a lot of
Genescient expects to soon be intelligence and wisdom and social-navigational skill to bring
able to make designer supplements this accelerating mess of contradictions broadly describable
containing nutrients made using as the human (or transhuman) condition to a reasonably soft 9
detailed genomic information. landing with over 6 billion humans (and many other less crazy
species) on board.
… All this and gamebots are threatening
to pass the Turing Test. I hope h+ is contributing to that effort.
www.hplusmagazine.com
Virtual Reality
Virtual Cocoon
Tristan Guillford
CLImB InSIDe a
r F
esearchers from several universities in the or those of you who are tired of
uK have teamed up to develop an immersive button-mashing and are looking
virtual reality headset that stimulates all
to take your gaming experience
five senses. Designed for maximum realism, the
to a whole new level, or merely looking to
Vr helmet will be
THeY’re CALLING IT add a little spice to your typical workout,
equipped with high
definition video, “reAL VIrTuALITY.” welcome Virtusphere, Inc.
surround sound audio, special tubes that spray After 45 man-years, they have
simulated tastes and scents into waiting mouths developed a functional, easy-to-assemble
and noses, a fan that blows air to create hot or cold plastic sphere and base platform that fits
temperatures; and tactile devices for simulating inside a large living room. Just put on
touch.
goggles and climb into the sphere, and
A mock up of the Virtual Cocoon was
you’re interacting in the virtual world.
showcased at Pioneers ’09 on march 4th, a
Because you’re in a movable sphere,
technology conference put on by the engineering
and Physical sciences research Council at London’s you can jump, run, crouch, look around,
Olympia Conference Centre. In a press release by and walk without having
the ePsrC, project lead David Howard of the
university of York says: “Virtual reality projects
have typically only focused on one or two of
the five senses — usually sight and hearing.
We’re not aware of any other research
group anywhere else in the world doing
what we plan to do.”
10
The researchers estimate that it will
take at least five years before a commercial
model of the Virtual Cocoon is available
for purchase. They hope to have it on the
market for about 1,500 pounds, a little more
than $2,500 usD.
Photo courtesy of Virtusphere, Inc.
summer 2009...Finally?
VIrTUaL SPHere KrIsTI sCOTT
to worry about banging into the couch or being
bitten in the crotch by your excitable pet.
There are currently eighteen of these spheres
up and running in government and academic
locations such as the Office of Naval research,
the moscow Government and Olympic Bid
Committee, the A.s. Popov Central museum
of Communications, st. Petersburg state
university of Telecommunications and the
university of Washington.
Virtusphere is currently being used
for tourism, architectural design, and
training for dangerous professions, but
it is an attractive invention for the avid
gamer looking to really get their game on.
And for those of us who are shy at the gym,
the Virtusphere opens up the doors for us to
have a virtual personal trainer in our homes.
Or imagine going for a run on the beach or
on top of the Great Wall of China. select the
correct program and let your imagination —
and your legs — run wild.
11
Photo by Nadir Chanyshev
resOurCes
Virtuesphere
http://www.virtusphere.com
WWW.HPLusmAGAzINe.COmWearing the
Internet Surfdaddy Orca
W
ave your hand and the Rolex materializes wearable computing for
on your arm like so much smoke. And some time. “Wearable
then… poof… it’s gone. Open the palm computing hopes to shatter
of your hand and suddenly your calendar and phone this myth of how a computer
list overlay your life line. Use your fingers and thumb should be used,” states
to create a picture frame and snap a photo. Check the program’s web site,
the latest book reviews on Amazon and display the “A person’s computer
results on the pocketbook or newspaper you’re should be worn, much as
holding at the airport newsstand. eyeglasses or clothing are
Leave it to students at the MIT Media Lab to worn, and interact with the
develop a wearable computing system that turns user based on the context of
any surface into an interactive display screen. With the situation.”
Photos by Sam Ogden
an ordinary webcam and a battery-powered 3M Pattie Maes of the lab’s Fluid Interfaces
projector, they attached a mirror and connected group goes one step further. As the leader of a
Resources
it to an internet-enabled mobile phone. A mere team of seven graduate students that developed the
MIT Media Lab
12 $350 of off-the-shelf components and suddenly the system, she characterizes it as somewhat more than http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/
glass window at Macy’s, your car door, or your arm a wearable device — she refers to it as a digital MIT Fluid Interfaces Group
http://ambient.media.mit.edu
become a computer display. Want to Google the “sixth sense.” No, she can’t see dead people. But,
latest Dow Jones, Nasdaq, or S&P 500 returns? No as a recent TED demo shows — sans keyboard or Wired
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/02/
problem, just do a quick search on your shirt sleeve. monitor — she literally has the Internet cloud on her ted-digital-six
MIT’s Media Lab has explored the idea of arm (and her hands, and…).
summer 2009Oh Rosie, Can You Bring Me My Slippers?
Live Long
and Heavy
Stephanie Euin Cobb
Surfdaddy Orca
R E
osie, the Jetsons’ maid robot, is a sweet, nurturing cartoon robot. Not only does ating foods containing heavier isotopes of
she bring George his slippers, she washes his clothes, teaches his son to dribble common elements, such as hydrogen, carbon,
a basketball, and sings while vacuuming the rug. nitrogen or oxygen, increases the stability of
proteins. Research indicates this might protect against
The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot (STAIR) looks more like tubular shelving
the damage caused by free radicals and so reduce the
on a Segway than a robotic maid. It finds objects with its stereoscopic camera eyes and rate at which a human being ages.
grabs them with a robotic arm. Perhaps not unlike an early model of Rosie, STAIR can The experiments, conducted by Russian biochemist
interpret relatively ambiguous vocal commands, navigate around unfamiliar environments Mikhail Shchepinov were first reported in the medical
journal Rejuvenation Research (edited by gerontologist
and objects, and solve problems.
Dr. Aubrey de Grey) and then featured in New Scientist’s
“STAIR, please fetch the stapler from the lab,” says a researcher in a recent video. November 29, 2008
“I will go get the stapler for you,” replies STAIR. Avoiding obstacles, STAIR wheels into issue. According to
the next room and scans it looking for the stapler. Grabbing the stapler, it returns to the Shchepinov, dozens
of experiments have
researcher. “Here is your stapler,” says STAIR, “Have
proved that proteins,
a nice day.” fatty acids and DNA
h+ contributor Ben Goertzel, an organizer of can be influenced
this year’s Second Conference on Artificial General to resist oxidative
damage with the
Intelligence, characterizes general intelligence as
isotope effect.
“the ability to solve a variety of complex problems in Like regular
a variety of complex environments.” STAIR shows the water, heavy water’s
evolutionary transition that is occurring in artificial molecules are
composed of three
intelligence today — from the narrow AI of expert
atoms arranged like
systems to more generalized intelligence. As the a boomerang with
STAIR video demonstrates, the multitalented STAIR oxygen located in the
walks, talks, sees, hears, and solves problems in an elbow. But it differs
in that the two atoms
obstacle-laden lab environment.
attached to the central
Andrew Ng, the assistant professor of computer oxygen atom are
science at Stanford who led the development of STAIR, deuterium, an isotope
is optimistic that the many disciplines of AI are now of hydrogen that has
double hydrogen’s
mature enough to be integrated “to fulfill the grand AI
mass. Ice cubes made
Photo by Andrew Y. Ng
dream.” And no, this is not just a robotic maid to fetch of heavy water will
staplers or slippers, but rather computers that are as sink in ordinary water.
intelligent as people. Retrotope, a
company created to
research the isotope
effect and to develop
Resources
it into life-extending
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
http://stair.stanford.edu products, has been 13
feeding various
Computerworld
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=332273 amounts of heavy water to fruit flies. Large amounts
STAIR Fetches a Stapler Video proved deadly, while smaller quantities increased
http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/stair-fetches-a-stapler/14005507
lifespans up to 30 percent. Dr. de Grey is on Retrotope’s
“The Jetsons” – Rosie the Robot Scientific Advisory Board and Dr. Shchepinov is its co-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VyvnzhP2uM
founder and Chief Science Officer.
www.hplusmagazine.comreaL-TIme aTOm manIPULaTIOn USInG
a HIGH-SPeeD aFm
For over twenty years, investigators at the nanoscale have
been using AFms (atomic force microscopes) to image
individual atoms and push them into stable configurations
on a smooth surface. Now, for the first time, researchers
at the Nanophysics and soft matter Group at the university
of Bristol have built an AFm that operates so quickly that
nanofabrication can be conducted in real time. This could
be an important step to future technologies based on mass
nanofabrication.
The group’s improved AFm works by selectively
oxidizing silicon to produce a desired pattern. Instead of
FaST
conventional AFm tips, which move at about 1-100 µm/s —
not much faster than the speed of a crawling amoeba — this
new AFm can operate at speeds in excess of 1 cm/s, more
than 10,000 times faster.
BLaSTS
The penalty for such rapid operation is a faster
degradation rate for the AFm tip, which is made more durable
by covering it with a platinum coating. Though the AFm has
proven its ability to avoid damaging the nanostructures it is
working on, with no damage observed after more than 250
pass-overs, it did lose manufacturing resolution over the
MichaeL aniSSiMOV course of several experiments.DeTaILeD maPS OF HUman COrTeX InSPIreD neUrOrOBOTS
Olaf sporns, a professor at Indiana university, represents the leading edge of research into information flow within the brain, and in applying that
knowledge to create neurorobots that learn. Last year, his lab produced the first detailed map of the human cortex using a new and powerful type of brain
imaging called diffusion imaging. This map singled out a “cortical core” in the posterior medial and parietal cerebral cortex, sections of the brain near
the back of the head.
Network studies in fields like computer science and biology suggest that strongly interconnected central nodes often mediate functions responsible
for properties of the entire network. This suggests that the cortical core could be the key to treating cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia,
or for enhancing the human brain’s processing ability.
Besides his pioneering work in brain modeling, Dr. sporns also creates neurorobots piloted by cultures of a few thousand neurons to learn more about
how the human brain processes rewards. (For more on Neurobots, see also “Here Come the Neurobots” in this issue.)
`arTIFICIaL
mUSCLeS WITH THe mYeLIn InTeGrITY IS KeY
STIFFneSS OF DIamOnD COnTrIBUTInG FaCTOr In InTeLLIGenCe
ray Baughman is flexing some major artificial muscle. The using a powerful new extension of fmrI technology called
muscle he and his colleagues at the university of Texas in HArDI, scientist Paul Thompson and colleagues at the
Dallas have designed has so many advantages over past university of California, Los Angeles scanned the brains of
proposed projects that one wonders how such a major 23 sets of identical twins and the same number of fraternal
leap could occur without incremental progress in between. twins. The technology, which measures the amount of water
Baughman’s artificial muscle is a ribbon made of tangled diffusing through white matter in the brain, indirectly
carbon nanotube “aerogel,” meaning it is mostly empty measures the integrity of myelin sheathing and therefore the
space and weighs little more than its volume in air. speed of nerve impulses.
Despite its feather-light weight, the material is stiffer By extensive analysis and cross-checking of the
than diamond in its “long” direction, while stretchy like identical twins (who share 100% of their genetic material)
rubber in the “wide” direction. It is so stretchy, in fact, that and fraternal twins (who share 50%), the researchers
the application of a modest voltage causes it to widen by were able to determine that myelin integrity in parts of the
220%. It maintains these properties under an extremely brain that are important for intelligence is determined by
wide temperature range — from -320.8 °F (-196 °C), the genetics. This adds to previous research that found that the
temperature of liquid nitrogen, to 2,800 °F (1,538 °C ), above volume of the brain’s grey matter (which correlates with IQ)
the melting point of iron. No previous attempt at artificial is heritable, as is the amount of white matter, which provides
muscles even comes close to its potential usefulness. crucial connections between neurons.
There is one major drawback to these artificial muscles The researchers pointed out that the genetic
in their current form, however — they’re only as strong as determination of elements of intelligence isn’t immutable. To
human muscle by weight, meaning that a truly practical the contrary, it leaves the door open for future intelligence
version would need to be much denser, or have substantially enhancement therapies.
more volume.ai forever young Bio enhanced nano neuro humor
Brain-Computer
Interfacing:
From Prosthetic Limbs
to Telepathy Chips
Ben Goertzel
D
irect brain-computer interfacing (BCI) may sound fanciful, but it’s already a reality — and in coming decades it
will almost surely advance dramatically. Neuroscientists are gradually understanding the electrochemical signals by
which our brains encode thoughts and feelings; statistical and AI tools are getting better and better at interpreting
complex data. The image at left shows one aspect of the state of the art. In an experiment by a group of researchers from
the University of Pittsburgh published in a 2008 issue of Nature, a monkey
used signals read directly from its motor cortex to control a multiple-jointed
gripper with numerous degrees of freedom — causing the gripper to deliver
food into its mouth.
To d ay forth; just plug some flash memory into your cortex and the knowledge is
BCI research right there. There seems no fundamental reason all this and more can’t
is largely occur in the next few decades.
driven by The majority of today’s BCI research involves the connection of
the desire various electromechanical devices to the peripheral nervous system, as
to help the we’ve seen with cochlear and retinal implants, and artificial arms and legs;
handicapped or else the readout of a small set of brain-wave-based control signals, as
Photos courtesy of Motorlab, U. Pitt. School of Medicine
via cochlear implants, prosthetic limbs and the like — but the scope of in the Emotiv game controller (covered in h+ issue #1). Only a handful of
potential applications is far broader than this laudable but limited market. maverick researchers now explicitly pursue advanced forms of BCI that
The entertainment industry is already getting into the picture; there are seek to read more abstract thoughts from the brain. The main bottleneck
currently at least two companies (Emotiv Systems and Neural Impulse slowing this research is the lack of adequately accurate devices for
Activator) marketing BCI devices for video game control. measuring and stimulating the brain. In this regard, one critical research
As BCI technology develops, we can expect it to increasingly serve direction is the development of safe ways to implant more advanced BCI
the function of cognitive enhancement. I’m reasonably good at mental devices inside the skull. It will probably continue to be easier to read the
arithmetic and algebra, but I’d take an onboard calculator and computer brain state from within than without, though a breakthrough in “brain
16
algebra program any day. A neural interface to Google, Wikipedia imaging from the outside” can’t be ruled out. Scientists are exploring
and other online resources would be nice, too. And I wouldn’t mind an multiple radical brain imaging technologies, including devices involving
expanded short-term memory: no more repeating a phone number over carbon nanotubes and other nanotech-based materials, which seem to
and over until I find a place to write it down! Learning a foreign language? play more nicely with brain cells than conventional materials.
Forget the tedium of memorizing vocabulary, verb conjugations and so
summer 2009For now, many of our best insights into brain function have come hardest part of the job is often understanding what other people were
from studies placing electrodes deep inside the brain. Dr. rodrigo Quiroga thinking when they wrote the code that you have to deal with. social
and his colleagues have made great progress toward understanding how subgroups rejecting telepathy chips could become isolated, backwards
memories of faces, objects, animals and scenes are stored in sparse communities similar to the Amish today (who, it must be noted, don’t
neural subnetworks in the region of the brain called the medial temporal mind their backwardness and isolation at all).
lobe. understanding how the brain stores complex information is step ultimately, telepathy chips and related BCI devices could
one toward figuring out how to read this information into a computer. lead to the emergence of new forms of intelligence, “mindplexes”
composed of independent human minds, yet also possessing
Would you become suspicious if your a coherent self and consciousness at the higher level of the
telepathically-interlinked human group. AI systems could
husband or wife didn’t want to do a potentially join these mindplexes, reading from telepathy
telepathy-chip mind-meld after coming chips and projecting into the user’s minds not just answers
home late Friday night? to questions, but also original ideas conceived by the AIs that
they believe could benefit the humans. Humans who reject
And in time, even more fascinating possibilities may be realized. telepathic interplay with AIs could be at a significant disadvantage both
Consider the “telepathy chip” — a neural implant that allows the socially and economically. Nearly any job requiring insight and creativity
wearer to project their thoughts or feelings to others, and receive would benefit from a stream of “push technology” input from a savvy
thoughts or feelings from others. There seems no in-principle reason
why this can’t be done, but it raises a huge number of questions
philosophically, technically, psychologically and socially. It’s not clear
what percentage of a person’s thoughts and feelings would actually be
comprehensible to another person — in many cases, you might send
your thoughts to someone else only to find them interpreted as 90%
gobbledygook mixed up with concepts and images that are recognizable
to the receiver. It’s also not too hard to envision some of the social
and economic pressures that might arise surrounding telepathy chips.
Would you become suspicious if your husband or wife didn’t want to do
a telepathy-chip mind-meld after coming home late Friday night? might
you become suspicious of a potential romantic partner who wouldn’t
let you peek into his or her mind? What’s she trying to hide? Teams of
individuals linked via telepathy chips might achieve far greater efficiency
at some sorts of work than any group of detached individuals with
similar skill could. Computer programming comes to mind, where the AI. And wouldn’t your date with Jane tonight go better if your natural
charming personality were enhanced by a stream of witty anecdotes and
resOurCes sensitive, empathic statements supplied by an AI who has studied Jane’s
profile and history in the context of its comprehensive knowledge of
Nanoparticles to aid brain imaging
http://www.physorg.com/news78678220.html human relationships? Potentially all this could lead to the emergence of
Nanotube scaffolds for Neural Implants a global brain spanning human and artificial intelligence.
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/17525/?a=f
Invariant Visual representation by single Neurons in the Brain BCI is early-stage now, and we don’t know where it will lead
http://www.vis.caltech.edu/~rodri/papers/nature03687.pdf
exactly, but the near-term possibilities are dramatically fascinating and 17
Neural Impulse Actuator
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=neural+impulse+actuator&u the longer-term ones truly profound.
m=1&ie=uTF-8&ei=nL3nsYX4Op-OtgPhxK3hAQ&sa=X&oi=video_result_
group&resnum=7&ct=title#
emotiv systems
http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/neuro/epoc-neuroheadset
Ben Goertzel is the CeO of AI companies Novamente and Biomind, a math Ph.D.,
writer, philosopher, musician, and all-around futurist maniac.
WWW.HPLusmAGAzINe.COmai forever young Bio enhanced nano neuro humor
smart biology
to the
RESCUEAlex Lightman
A
s the Boomers begin to go gray and fragile, those with way
high expectations confront an uncomfortable fact — nobody
has done much about aging, throughout their lifetimes… and
they get angry.
How could this be?! Technology has carried us along on its broad
back, giving us computers, conveniences, Internet and media
wonders. But aches and pains foretell much bad news ahead.
We can do better, but to do it we’ll have to reinvent biology.
Face it: young or old, we can’t solve “the aging
problem” using the standard 20th Century research methods
of cell biology. Sure, they had some great success with some
other medical problems — nobody fears smallpox, polio and
other old school diseases. Diet and exercise help, too, (as
discussed in my last column.) But nobody has done much
directly about the mechanisms that erode our bodies.
Why? Because beyond our 20s, natural selection
doesn’t help us much. Once we start reproducing, all the
genes that break us down get passed on to the next generation.
It’s been that way throughout natural evolution. Aging arises
from a lack of natural selection in later adulthood.
So what’s the smart biology dodge around this? Make selection
work for us by forcing it to produce longer-lived animals. And then
learn from what forced selection tells us. That’s what the 21st Century
medicine man knows. We can already see him peeking around the
corner up ahead. He says: Your aging comes from multiple genetic
deficiencies, not a single biochemical problem.
Photos courtesy of Genescient
Michael Rose at UCI saw all this coming 30 years
ago. He started breeding longer and longer lived fruit flies
(Drosophila) by having them not keep their eggs to make the
next generation until much later in adult life. Do that in
humans and you’ll be trying to get babies out of 60 years
18 olds — not a promising route — though I guess the
Italians, with a 1.1 fertility rate (2.1 is replacement)
are trying.
Rose’s years of painstaking Methuselah
fly stud-servicing produced a fracking miracle:
flies that live 4.5 times longer than ordinary flies.
Do that with humans for 10,000 years – 500
summer 2009generations – and you’ll start approaching rose’s results. But to get the and studying organs, and organizes diseases mostly by spotlighting
advantages today you’d have to start back before there were cities. local disorders. Genomics can focus on entire organisms by looking at
That’s why smart biology uses “animals” — particularly insects, the entire picture.
that don’t live long — to squeeze those 10,000 years down to a career- You’ll know 21st Century medicine has arrived when you see
lifetime of about 40 years. (rose is in his 50s.) immortality pills featuring mixes of designer supplements. These will
What do the genetic inventories of these methuselah flies show? regulate your own genes to improve their resistance to the many ways
multiple, overlapping genomic pathways. About 75% of the genes do the things can go wrong. The plausible outcome of taking these pills will
same jobs in flies as they do in humans. We share these basic operating be bodies that don’t seem to age as fast and that can maintain vigor
systems with insects that we parted company from about a billion years long after the childbearing years, when we traditionally begin to show
ago. (Yes, intelligent design fanatics, you are related to mosquitoes. wear and tear.
suck it up. stop bugging me.) That’s what happened with michael rose’s methuselah flies.
Genescient Corporation acquired the use of the methuselah flies’ The Genescient labs track fly vigor by their mating frequency — they
genomics and has developed their implications for three years. Knowing count how often the flies get it on — and the numbers of eggs the
females lay. Those horny methuselahs beat out the other
You’ll know 21st Century medicine flies in the mating game. Basically, the more you want and
get sex, the longer you will live. Adult Friend Finder and
has arrived when you see Be Naughty, you are free to quote me on this.
After the first wave of designer supplements, we’ll see
immortality pills featuring mixes customized nutrigenomic pills. medicine will get tailored
to each personal genome. Targeting a person’s own suite of
of designer supplements. complex pathways, smart designer supplements and drugs
can propel the repair mechanisms and augmentations that
nature provided. This will benefit everyone, not just the
genomically fortunate.
that these complex genomic pathways can enhance resistance to the The 21st Century has scarcely begun, and already it looks as
many disorders of aging, their crucial step is to find substances that can though many who welcomed it in will see it out. The first person to
enhance the action of those pathways. Designer supplements containing live to 150 may be reading this right now.
nutrients made using detailed genomic information — a field called
nutrigenomics — are about to come to your
local supermarket, some of them using obscure
traditional medicines. This is the essence of a
21st Century approach to aging. Nothing like it
has existed before this year.
Noted hard science fiction author and
Genescient (which means ‘smart genes’)
cofounder Gregory Benford argues that there
seems no fundamental reason why we can’t live
to 150 years or even longer (“and you can have
sex up to 150 also”… I like that part). After
all, nature has done quite well on her own,
using pathways humans share and can now
understand. The 4,800-year-old bristlecone
pine, and koi fish over 200 years old, attest to
this, not to mention tortoises.
Nature took several billion years
developing these pathways; Genescient aims
to explore them rather like someone playing
19
simearth or spore: by speeding up generational times. The medical
technology emerging now acts
on these basic pathways to Alex Lightman is the author of the first book on 4G wireless, Brave New
resOurCes immediately affect all types of unwired World (Wiley) and founder of pioneering companies in 3-D and
genescient
http://www.genescient.com organs. Traditionally, medicine Hollywood websites, wearables, and IPv6. He welcomes friending on
focuses on disease by isolating Facebook.
WWW.HPLusmAGAzINe.COmAI FOreVer YOuNG BIO eNHANCeD NANO NeurO HumOr
rOGer PeDerSOn,
Won’t You Please Come Home?
moira A. Gunn, Ph.D.
A
bout five years ago, a cadre of British scientists flew
into san Francisco for a British Trade Commission
event, and the smart gal who organized it asked
me if I would consider interviewing them. Our previous
interactions had served up such stellar guests as Lord David
sainsbury, the British science minister, and sir richard
sykes, the rector (we would say “President”) of Imperial
College London. I thought it wise to simply trust her
judgment, and I was rewarded.
she showed up with five illustrious biotech guests, one
right after another. They included such luminaries as Dame
Julia Polak, now emeritus professor of Tissue engineering
and regenerative medicine at Imperial and one of Britain’s
longest surviving heart-lung recipients, and suzy Leather,
the head of the HFeA, the Human Fertilisation and
embryology Authority. If you haven’t heard of HFeA, it
“regulate[s] the storage of all eggs, sperm and embryos” in
the uK. It’s interesting that the Brits control it all down to
the strictest detail, while here in the us, it’s a genetic free-for-all: somewhere over
half a million fertilized embryos are on ice and in private hands, while no one even
thinks to count what’s laying around in sperm banks.
still, it was the last guest through the door that was the shocker: He was an
American. In fact, he was from san Francisco. roger Pederson was a stem cell
scientist at uCsF, and he had moved to the university of Cambridge for one very
simple reason: In 2001, President George W. Bush had put into place an executive
Order limiting federal funding to the 22 existing human stem cell lines. To roger, this
spelled disaster. He saw the handwriting on the laboratory wall and headed over to
england as soon as he could. While they heavily regulate the embryos and such, they
20
actually permit and fund stem cell research. What’s this? American scientists leaving
the u.s.? With a chuckle, the Brits described it as a “brain gain.”
The bottom line was that roger was a scientist — one at the top of his field. He
had to work. He saw moving to Cambridge as both a great opportunity and the only
real solution.
I hadn’t thought about him since that day… until today. At this writing, it’s
summer 2009march 9th, 2009, and President Barack dream described by the late actor Christopher embryo is not created during the conjugal
Obama has just signed an executive Order, reeve, but for roger Pederson, it’s an act, it’s unacceptable. The paper doesn’t
this one rescinding W’s defiant edict. I say undeniable indicator. He’s got to know that answer the question of what to do about all
“defiant” intentionally — twice, Congress a tsunami of drug applications are on their those humans who, indeed, have already been
voted to overturn this executive Order, and way to the FDA. He can Google the news created in the proverbial test tube, yet I can’t
twice, President Bush vetoed it. There was and know that the House of representatives help but feel for Louise Brown and how she
simply no talking to him about it. He believed voted $3.5 billion for the National Institutes herself might feel reading the Vatican paper.
what he believed, and that was all there was of Health into the economic stimulus package, Who would ever want to read something that
to it. and that the senate upped it to $10 billion. clearly states it is wrong for you to exist.
But in the meantime, the sensibilities of And now, President Obama has finally lifted Without a doubt, these are times of
the country have shifted. Congress has taken the blockading executive Order. so roger vertiginous change. We still have those
up the zeitgeist of the American people. Pederson has got to know that an avalanche of in opposition to stem cell research, who
Yes, some citizens will forever believe that science is being proposed — and he’s got to be believe fervently and have followed their
using very early stage embryos for research thinking long and hard about his situation. The moral compass. And there are those who
— humans eggs fertilized outside the body Brits have been very generous to him. They are driven by a different moral imperative
in a scientific lab — is morally wrong, but welcomed him with open arms. Can he cut and to develop these technologies for the good of
the great swath of Americans do not. In run? He’s got to have studies mid-stream. And humanity. Then there are many, many more
in the middle, who
Do they believe so strongly that faced with a severe spinal cord are simply trying
to get by and are
injury, they would say, “no, I won’t take this therapy”? worried about their
next paycheck, not
fact, they’re beginning to understand that students. And colleagues. And funders. Yeah, to mention the millions who have no health
DNA and genetics is hugely important. They just what do you do when the worm turns? insurance. Few of these people can believe
gulp down season after season of CsI. They roger is not the only one with a personal that stem cell research has anything to do
buy paternity kits for $29.99 at Walgreens. dilemma. Think of the people who have always with them. But the truth is – they would be
Pregnant women get tested for all kinds of been opposed to embryonic stem cell research. wrong. The promise of genetic diagnostics
genetic disorders, while women with breast Do they believe so strongly that faced with a and stem cell therapies is that we will be able
cancer can immediately discover whether the severe spinal cord injury, they would say, “No, to detect and fight disease and trauma, early,
drug Herceptin will work for them. everyone I won’t take this therapy”? Or will they, like effectively, and on a vastly cheaper basis than
has begun to suspect that within their most humans, seek whatever remedy they can ever before.
lifetimes, their DNA will tell them more about muster? everything tells me that we are at a
themselves than they ever imagined — their For others, it’s a question of faith, and fantastic turning point in history. The promise,
past, their present and their future. different religions have begun to register their the potential, the funding and the enormous,
so, roger Pederson, still a professor at positions. In December, the Vatican issued a ready and willing effort of all our scientists –
Cambridge, must know that right here in the paper concerning the Dignity of the Person for once, it looks like it’s all coming together.
united states, it’s a brand new day. Just weeks (Dignitas Personae). In it, in vitro fertilization so, roger Pederson – please come home.
after the inauguration, the FDA approved is ruled out. That’s right. “All techniques of Consider it an “all hands” meeting. Thank
the first-ever clinical trials enabling Geron … artificial fertilization … which substitute the Brits for their generosity, but frankly, we
Corporation to inject a stem cell therapeutic for the conjugal act are to be excluded.” It need you, and I know you wouldn’t want to
into newly-arriving patients with severe spinal doesn’t matter that it’s a married couple using miss it. You see, the “gene genie” is out of
cord injuries. For us, it’s the realization of a their own eggs and sperm. If the fertilized the bottle.
21
moira A. Gunn, Ph.D. hosts “BioTech Nation” on NPr Talk and NPr Live. she’s the author of “Welcome to BioTech Nation: my unexpected
Odyssey into the Land of small molecules, Lean Genes, and Big Ideas,” cited by the Library Journal as one of the “Best science Books of 2007.”
she will be awarded an honorary doctorate in science in may, 2009 by Purdue university.
Copyright 2009 moira A. Gunn
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