The Future And You

Randal L. Schwartz, the widely known computer programmer and programming consultant, is our featured guest today.Randal has acquired a level of renown through his longstanding work in popularizing and promoting the programming language called Perl. He has authored and co-authored many widely used books on the subject, and has written over 200 articles about it for various computer magazines.He is also the co-host of FLOSS Weekly (a podcast from the TWiT podcasting Network which features prominent guests from the free software/open source community).In today's interview Randal discusses the following topics:How ethanol is not only raising food prices world-wide but its production is also a major source of carbon dioxide (a concern for Global Warming), some have suggested that switch grass may be a better answer. Google's announced desire to offer free nation-wide wireless internet access; and the legal catch-22 that municipalities have always found themselves in when they tried to provide wi-fi at the taxpayer's expense. How passports with RFID chips can be hacked wirelessly as you walk through an airport; why it is that Japanese users are getting 25 times faster high-speed internet than American high-speed users; and how Netflix.com is scrambling to keep Hulu.com from outpacing them.Randal also describes his involvement with Geek Cruises and the Scientific American Cruises; his podcast FLOSS Weekly (which stands for Free Libre Open Source Software and may be found at twit.tv/floss); and his enthusiasm over a powerful new programming language called SeaSide. (Examples, BTW, of open source software include: Wikipedia, Blender, Gimp and Open Office.)Randal also gets to gloat over his prediction from last year because the New York Times has reported that pacemaker heart implants with wi-fi internet connections can be hacked through the internet by a hacker on the other side of the world, who can make the device stop working or even give the patient electric shocks strong enough to kill.Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 16, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 69 minutes]Randal L. Schwartz is a founding board member of the Perl Mongers, the worldwide Perl grassroots advocacy organization and, since 1985, has owned and operated Stonehenge Consulting Services which specializes in the teaching, training and programming of Perl.Also included in this episode is your host's eyewitness report on the Yuri's Night celebration that took place on April 12 in the city state of Extropia inside Second Life. David Brin (the award-winning and best-selling author) was the featured speaker. David was easily recognizable since his avatar wore a photorealistic skin created for the occasion by a skilled avatar artist.During the all-day festivities in Extropia your host: met two NASA representatives as well as some Russians, drove a moon buggy; sat inside a life-sized model of Yuri Gagarin's space capsule, danced with a wide variety of beautiful women, admired Vidal Tripsa's space suit (possibly the sexiest space suit ever), watched David Brin pack the house for his open forum discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of virtual worlds such as Second Life, and took over 300 photos of the day's events. (Many of which can be viewed on Flickr.)

Greg Bear, the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of more than thirty books of science fiction and fantasy, is our featured guest today.Greg Bear has served on political and scientific action committees and has advised Microsoft Corporation, the U.S. Army, the CIA, Sandia National Laboratories, and Homeland Security. And just recently--like your host--he has joined the advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation.In today's interview Greg Bear describes his TV appearance on The Daily Show with John Steward, movie deals which are in the works for his novels, and his recollections of his many conversations with the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke, including the very first time he met Sir Arthur back in 1968 when Greg was only 16 years old.He also talks of nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, technological immortality, mind uploading, and why he disagrees with some of the expectations of Transhumanists, and most of the expectations of Singularitarians.Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 9, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 62 minutes]Greg also discusses physics and string theory; life on extrasolar planets (including the surprisingly numerous super-hot planets which often orbit their stars in a matter of days); the world wide annual celebration of Yuri Gagarin's first human flight into space (which your host will be celebrating inside Second Life); Sir Arthur C. Clarke's many contributions to civilization; how technology will change future battlefields; and how Russia seems to be heading back into the cold war.He also reveals his excitement that The Science Fiction Museum in Seattle will be expanding to include fantasy, and possibly horror as well. He was on the advisory board for the science fiction museum in Seattle along with Ray Bradbury, Octavia Butler and Sir Arthur C. Clarke.Greg Bear's novel, Quantico, is a near-future thriller; while Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children form a sequence about viruses and human evolution. Blood Music deals with biotechnology, nanotechnology (including grey goo), the nature of consciousness and artificial intelligence.News items mentioned in this episode include:Robert J. Sawyer the award-winning author made two personal appearances inside Second Life on Sunday, April 6, 2008. The first in the Central Nexus building in Extropia Core, the second at a meeting of the Extropia Book Club.David Brin the award-winning author will be making a personal appearance inside Second Life on Saturday, April 12 in Extropia Core as part of the annual world-wide Yuri's Night celebrations of the first human in space. He will be the Spotlight Guest at Sophrosyne's Saturday Salon. Soph will interview David in an open discussion event from 1 PM to 2:30 PM Pacific Time.I am the Very Model of a Singularitarian is a clever music video now on youTube. Written and sung by Charlie Kam to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General from the popular musical play The Pirates of Penzance.www.WikiPatents.com is a public community which features a wiki-like interface for reviewing, rating, and discussing US patents and pending patent applications. It also offers free patent PDF downloads, file histories, and advanced patent searching. Users may also vote on the marketability and technical merits of patents and patent applications.

Dr. Gregory L. Matloff, astronomer and author of six popular books on astronomy and astronautics, is our featured guest. His latest book, Living Off the Land in Space, was co-authored with NASA's Les Johnson and Brooklyn artist C Bangs.Future and current trends in spaceflight and propulsion are covered in this interview, as well as all the following topics: where the big money will be made in space; space-based solutions to our energy problems on earth today; the inflatable space habitats and hotels that Robert Bigalow has started building; practical methods of asteroid mining and diverting; ion drives and solar sails; the likelihood of a new international space race; exoplanets in general but especially the new developing possibility of earth-like planets orbiting the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.Doctor Matloff also talks about the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke's book Rendezvous with Rama which opens with an asteroid impact wiping a quarter of Europe's cities and population off the map; new estimates of the Tunguska impact of 1908; as well as one particular earth-grazing asteroid which will be taking two pot-shots at humanity during the next two decades.Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 2, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 71 minutes]Doctor Matloff makes it clear that the future of spaceflight is Not likely to look like the spaceflight of the past. Nor is it likely to resemble the spaceflight generally described in science fiction.One of his early books, The Starflight Handbook: A Pioneer's Guide to Interstellar Travel, was co-authored with MIT science writer Eugene F. Mallove. Doctor Matloff has consulted for NASA on in-space propulsion systems and methods of protecting Earth from threatening objects. And he has also contributed to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), atmospheric modeling, space astronomy and navigation, and studies to produce energy from the wind.News Items described in this episode include:Robert J. Sawyer (bestselling author and former guest on this show) will be making a personal appearance inside Second Life. He will discuss the future of: AI, robotics, life extension, SETI, and more. Afterward, he will join the Extropia Book Club for their discussion of his latest novel, Rollback, which is now a finalist for the Hugo Award. The event will be held on April 6, 2008 at high noon (Pacific Time) in the Central Nexus building in Extropia Core inside Second Life.The New York Times has reported that pacemakers are now vulnerable to hacker attacks because device makers have begun designing them to connect to the Internet wirelessly.Google wants to offer nationwide Wi-Fi to everyone in America for Free. (This is not an April Fools joke.) On March 21, 2008 Google submitted a six-page letter to the FCC outlining processes and tests to avoid interference if they are granted use of a portion of those radio frequencies which will become available in 2009 when television ceases to broadcast analog transmissions.

Kim Stanley Robinson, the best selling and award-winning science fiction author is our featured guest. Probably best known for his Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars); his other novels include: Fifty Degrees Below, Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and most recently, Sixty Days and Counting.Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 26, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 83 minutes]In today's interview Kim Stanley Robinson covers many topics: his conversations with Sir Arthur C Clarke; how the TV show 24 encourages and justifies the use of torture; his observation that terrorists have become an exaggerated enemy; why English has become the world language; the vision he has tried to put forth in his latest novel Sixty Days and Counting; how frustrating it is that there are lots of exoplanets but we can't go look at them; and his worry that people are losing interest in space exploration because our ability to travel has not extended to the stars and is limited to our own solar system.He also speaks to the difficult issues of the deeper future including: his opinion of the Singularity; his expectations of Artificial Intelligence; why he has moderated some of his views about Nanotechnology (he used to be more dismissive); and just how long he thinks human longevity might become stretched.He also responds to the host's questions: What would people do differently if we all knew we were going to live for 300 years? How would this change civilization?Kim Stanley Robinson's writings have won the Hugo, the Nebula, the Asimov, the John W. Campbell, the Locus, and the World Fantasy Awards. He has a Bachelors degree in literature, a Masters in English, and a Ph.D. also in English. He considers science fiction to be one of the most powerful of all literary forms, which explains why his doctoral thesis was titled The Novels of Philip K. Dick.Other items in this episode include: the recent death of Sir Arthur C. Clarke (one of the hosts personal heroes); how the upcoming Yuri's Night celebrations will take place in two worlds instead of one (the anniversary of the first human in space); LED light bulbs; and an essay concerning the host's new theory about the origin of NGC-6543, also known as the Cat's Eye Nebula.

Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google (yes, THE Google) is our featured guest today.Peter is co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, the leading textbook in the field of AI. He has written more than fifty publications in the computer sciences - concentrating on Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, and Software Engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery. And he was the head of the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center, making him NASA's senior computer scientist.Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 19, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 97 minutes]Will machines someday think as well as humans? Will they think in the same way we do? Will they plan, be creative, invent things that are new and innovative? Will they feel emotions as we do? Will they feel compassion, fear, fondness, attachments based on familiarity?Peter Norvig answers all of these questions, as well as the obligatory scary question: If the IQ curve of AI rises long enough for their IQ to match our own, why would that curve stop rising? Won't their IQ continue increasing until they are ten times smarter than us, and then a hundred, and then a thousand? At what point might this stop? Is there a limit? Do you fear superhuman AI? Should anyone?He also describes his work at NASA concerning the Remote Agent and Mars Exploration Rovers, and what role AI played in it. He talks of the work Google is doing in AI, why Google is interested in AI, and if Google plans to have its search page converse with users.

David B. Coe the award-winning, and critically acclaimed, author of nine fantasy novels (some of which have been translated into no less than six languages, including Russian, German, Dutch, and French) is our featured guest today.David has a doctorate in American history from Stanford University, and he enjoys nature photography, bird and butterfly watching, and playing guitar.David talks about Wikipedia, e-books and Amazon's Kindle, Green investment funds, solar power, his belief that clean coal is decades away, and he once again emphasizes that if his fellow environmentalists are going to get serious about global warming they will have to find a way to embrace nuclear power.Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 12, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 82 minutes]David also describes the changing corporate climate concerning environmentalism. Being Green has become the In Thing for corporate marketing. Wal-Mart has become a leader in promoting Green. Saving the environment is now widely seen as good business.He explains why official decisions concerning which birds are, and are not, defined as separate species are based mostly on science, but also partly on politics, emotionalism, local tradition and sentimentality. An avid bird and butterfly watcher, he describes the trends in both, and mentions that butterflies are like the canary in the coal mine: they are an early indicator of damage to an ecosystem.He also responds with surprising candor to the host's question: For each of the current candidates (John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) what is the best and worst things that would probably happen during their presidency?Others who provide comment, feedback or receive an honorable mention in this episode include: Randal L. Schwartz, Shaun Ferrell, Rich Sigfrit, Mur Lafferty, Tee Morris, Khannea Suntzu and Extropia DaSilva (for her blog post entitled Snowcrashing into the Diamond age).

Michael Anissimov, the well known futurist, blogger and transhumanism activist is today's featured guest.Michael talks about many future-oriented topics such as: transhumanism and the singularity; cryonics and Paris Hilton; solar power verses nuclear power; synthetic biology and Craig Ventor's new artificial organism; and his own involvement with the founding of the Immortality Institute.The Immortality Institute is a life extension activist organization that today includes hundreds of paying members and an active online community. Michael was one of its co-founders though he was still in High School at the time.Currently Michael is the Lifeboat Foundation's fundraising Director for North America; He is very much involved with the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology; and was recently voted to join the board of the World Transhumanist Association.Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 5, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 71 minutes]In this interview Michael expresses his enthusiasm about the ongoing revitalization of the World Transhumanist Association, which includes the new webzine being put together by R. U. Serious.He also discuses two technologies he feels could have a radical destabilizing effect on the world once they reach a certain threshold--which they may do within 20 years. These technologies are molecular nanotechnology (MNT) and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). While their potential benefits are great, if not handled with extreme caution, he feels these technologies could cause disaster.He also describes the trends he sees going on within the transhumanist movement today, and how he expects these trends to play out during the next few years. For example, he sees that the general public is beginning to warm up to transhumanist ideas thanks to movies and TV; but that there is still a lot of fear of transhumanism among the religious right. He agrees that there are a lot of closet transhumanists who haven't come out yet. But he also says the new transhumanists seem to be of all ages, not just young people. He sees the next few years as a time of much greater acceptance of the transhumanist ideas and idealism.Michael is a science and technology writer and consultant based in San Francisco. He has given talks on futurist issues at seminars and conferences in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and at Yale University. His blog (acceleratingfuture.com) has become one of the primary focal points within the futurist community, including the communities of transhumanists and singularitarians. His blog features his own writings, the writings of others, as well as many important links to other sources of information about the future.

Philippe Van Nedervelde, international spokesperson for the Lifeboat Foundation, is today's featured guest. (He is also Executive Director for the Foresight Nanotech Institute in Europe, and a Global Task Force Member for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.) Philippe describes the Lifeboat Foundation, its work to define and evaluate the many coming risks to humankind, and how the foundation has already begun formulating specific recommendations on how we may prepare for these risks.This episode also contains an essay by your host describing the dramatic changes which the internet will experience in the next five to ten years; as well as an announcement of a presentation which will be given on March 9, 2008, at Extropia Core inside Second Life by the esteemed pioneers of international transhumanism and extropy: Natasha Vita-Moore and Anders Sandberg. Their topic: Do humans have a natural right to augmentation and enhancement?Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 27, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 93 minutes]Some of the risks include: unfriendly AI (Artificial Intelligence), devastating asteroid strikes, bioweapons and pandemics, replicating and nonreplicating nanoweapons, nuclear, biological, and nanotechnological attacks. But one of the scariest of these has become known as ADC (Asymmetric Destructive Capability), in which large scale destruction can be accomplished with relatively small scale resources. Another scary risk is called SIMaD, which stands for Single Individual Massively Destructive, or as Philippe describes it, The Unabomber on steroids.Philippe Van Nedervelde is a regular keynote speaker at conferences and other events, and has made presentations throughout Europe to audiences of all sizes and compositions including academic, business and governmental such as European Union parliamentary hearings.He is the award-winning founder, CEO and majority-owner of E-spaces, a VR production house which has delivered networked or multi-user Virtual Reality or tele-virtuality and interactive 3D graphics projects for customers including NASA, UNESCO, the European Commission, Flemish Government, Ericsson Business Networks, Nokia and IBM.Philippe holds a master's degree in communication as well as a post-graduate degree in Media and Information Science from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

Giulio Prisco (futurist, scientist, corporate consultant and until recently the Executive Director of the World Transhumanist Association) is today's featured guest. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and on the Global Task Force on Implications and Policy for CRN, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.Argent Bury (a digital person living exclusively within Second Life) provides an essay concerning the tension between immersionists and augmentationists within her virtual world.Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 20, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 79 minutes]Giulio Prisco also covers the prejudice and intolerance between immersionists and augmentationists, and mentions that the day before the interview, Cervantes University held its very first college class within Second Life, and discusses many aspects of the future of virtual realities.A virtual reality expert and consultant for companies wishing to use and benefit from many different VR platforms, Giulio describes what's available now, and what will be available in the decades to come. From the current photorealistic graphics, to the total immersion through full sensory feedback directly wired into the human nervous system.He describes various VR platforms including Second Life and its competitors, as well as the possibility that all the platforms will become linked together into a unified whole, just as the internet was once many separate little nets that could not share content.Giulio Prisco is also the Director of the futurist consulting consortium called FutureTag, as well as founder and CEO of Metafuturing (a company specializing in Science and Technology Consulting, Internet Services and Virtual Reality). Based in Madrid, Spain, he founded the Spanish transhumanist group FASTRA. He is a former physicist and computer scientist, as well as a former manager at ESA: the European Space Agency.