-
Interview: CBS Sunday Morning Primetime Special “Forever Young: Searching for the Fountain of Youth”
I was interviewed for a segment on cryonics that aired in a CBS Sunday Morning primetime special titled “Forever Young: Searching for the Fountain of Youth” in November 2021.
-
My Statement About Transhumanism, Life Extension, and Related Organizations and Movements
I am no longer involved with most transhumanist, life extension, singularity, and other futurist and emerging technology organizations and movements.
-
Second Dose of Vaccine & I’m Thankful
A lot of my friends and family were concerned when I reported side effects from my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. I appreciate your love and concern and I’m so sorry that I scared you! You make me feel cared for and loved! I want to be clearer about this than I was last…
-
h+
Richard designed, developed, and maintained the original h+ Tucson website as well as the expanded h+ website for multiple chapters and new transhumanist-related content, including a gallery of transhumanist art, links, and other resources.
-
Space as Solace During a Government Shutdown
The recent space activities I’m writing and posting about provide solace during this government shutdown that has furloughed most NASA and related departments employees and contractors.
-
Meet Arrokoth
Meet Ultima Thule (later designated 486958 Arrokoth.)
-
New Year, New Day, New Image of Arrokoth
During a morning press briefing aired on NASA TV on New Year’s Day 2019, New Horizons mission team leaders revealed the latest best image of 486958 Arrokoth.
-
New Horizons at 486958 Arrokoth
6.5 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away from where some Earthlings are celebrating New Year’s Eve, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is beginning its close flyby of a tiny world in the Kuiper Belt known as Ultima Thule (later designated 486958 Arrokoth.)
-
InSight Lander on Mars
As we do, the HiRISE team took a high resolution image of the InSight lander safe on the surface of Mars.
-
“Getting some air, Atlas?”
Boston Dynamics occasionally uploads these short videos demonstrating their latest robotics technology and capabilities. I’m always amazed by the leap forward in movement smoothness and efficiency. 🤖
-
The Economic Singularity by Calum Chace
Much of The Economic Singularity by Calum Chace is devoted to supporting the argument that machines will take over many and eventually most jobs from humans.
-
Now Humanity Feels the Tug of Proxima b, Too
It’s good to be skeptical, but it’s also nice to see rumors confirmed by real and exciting announcements: the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced today the detection of an exoplanet orbiting the nearby star Proxima Centauri. At a minimum mass 1.3 times that of the Earth’s, Proxima b might be a rocky world. With an orbit of 11.2…
-
Frontier Channel 16 Years Later
I started posting online news and commentary about science and technology on January 18, 2000, and I eventually named that effort Frontier Channel. After a few weeks of short posts, I didn’t get back to posting again until January 2002. Two years after that, I finally started posting in earnest, and Frontier Channel enjoyed a nice run with frequent articles through…
-
Regarding Rumors of Earth-Like Planet Orbiting Proxima Centauri
We’ve been here before: the media gets wind of a possible discovery made by a long-running science project and before there is a peer-reviewed scientific paper published and a press conference, speculation runs wild. In the age of social media, gossip spreads at the speed of the share, and in this digital game of telephone, the…
-
Recent Article about Kim Suozzi, Cryonics, and Alcor in The New York Times
Three years ago this October, Kim Suozzi spoke at the Alcor 2012 Conference about her impending death due to brain cancer and her hopes in cryonics and technology for a second future. I remember it was a remarkable, difficult, and emotional talk and I also remember the applause when she finished speaking. She passed away a…
-
Pluto Before New Horizons
Consider what those of us can see in the night sky with healthy eyes, without any tools, far from city lights. Away from the dazzle of Sun’s day the Moon at night is, of course, the brightest above all. The visible stars make an obvious and fixed, so it seems, pattern that fills the celestial hemisphere.…
-
Pluto and Charon in Color and in Tantalizing Detail
[Post edited on Monday, June 22, 2015 to correct my misunderstanding about the provenance of the remarkable color image below.] Tonight I was browsing the latest raw images of Pluto and Charon taken by New Horizons today from only 27.7 million kilometers away and I realized that when you zoom in, Charon is just beginning…
-
New Horizons at Pluto
This is it! Pluto is the last of the classical nine planets to be visited by a spacecraft from Earth. The New Horizons spacecraft will take close-up images and capture other useful data as it speeds by Pluto and its moons on July 14, 2015. This will complete the imaging grand tour of our solar system…
-
CES 2015 and the TV of Your Dreams
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015 is this week, so there are all sorts of television technologies being shown off by consumer electronics companies. Here is a brief breakdown, as I understand it: Ultra HD (4K) The next jump up in television screen resolution is Ultra HD, offering 4 times the number of pixels in…
-
Meet Me in WhatsApp
While Sarah Lacy’s “Follow the photos: The real reason Facebook just paid almost 10% of its market cap for WhatsApp” analysis is well done and likely part of the rationale behind Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp for a staggering $19 billion, I think SimonDSG and samueljesse in the comment section are closest to articulating what is…
-
The Future Wants You Healthy
Read Richard’s current thoughts about transhumanism and related fringe topics here. Last year I turned 40 years old. Within thirty years I will be 70. I’m participating in The Quantified Diet study because I want to be active, healthy, and involved over the next few decades. These thirty years cover various mind-boggling predictions about technology…
-
The Bittersweet Years
Susan Fonseca gave a talk last January at a TEDx event in San Jose, California about waiting for promising emerging technologies to arrive. Her father passed away for need of an organ despite promising advances in 3-D printing. Fonseca’s experience is a poignant illustration of what I refer to as “The Bittersweet Years”. Technological progress…
-
Technology Trends in 2013
Read Richard’s current thoughts about transhumanism and related fringe topics here. Internet In the second quarter of 2013, Akamai found that 24% of those people with internet connectivity in the United States had speeds higher than 10 Mbps, allowing them to stream audio and high definition video with relative ease. Globally, the percentage stood at…
-
Race Against the Machine by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Race Against the Machine is only 5 chapters long, but it provides perhaps the most cogent explanation yet for how technology can lead to both incredible productivity gains and an increasing divide between classes.
-
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Issaacson’s biography of Jobs is a fantastic book, and it confirms my suspicion that the coming decades are going to be devastating, hopeful, terrifying, and haunting, all at once, simply because we humans have yet to fully comprehend what technology has unleashed.
-
Craig Mod Visits ROBOT RESTAURANT
Craig Mod Visits ROBOT RESTAURANT Craig Mod describes eloquently and with great humor a strange new place. And, yes, ROBOT RESTAURANT is now my number one most desired place to visit in all the world.
-
Udacity Pivots and Education Remains Difficult
While tens of thousands of people might sign up for a single massive open online course (MOOC), very few of them complete the course, and very few of those demonstrate competence with and retain what they have learned. So Udacity – founded by MOOC proponent Sebastian Thrun – has pivoted, slightly, according to this article from…
-
News Bytes – Wednesday, June 19, 2013
3-D Printing Via TechCrunch: “Stratasys Acquiring MakerBot in $403M Deal, Combined Company Will Likely Dominate 3D Printing Industry“ Robotics Indiegogo project: “Help Make Me the World’s Smartest Robot“ Space Science Kickstarter project: Planetary Resources’ “ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone” Kickstarter project reaches U.S.$1 million with 11 days to go METI “Shouting at the Cosmos”…
-
“Kurzweil joins Google” – KurzweilAI
“Kurzweil joins Google to work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing” – KurzweilAI I think many of us are probably overreacting a bit to this news, but the announcement certainly evokes visions of a nexus of activities and breakthroughs leading to the Technological Singularity. The announcement, though, is short on detail and long…
-
Craig Mod’s Subcompact Publishing Concept
Craig Mod is writer, designer, and publisher exploring the possibilities of digital books. He recently wrote about “Subcompact Publishing” that spawned a lot of discourse across the web. As you may recall, this year I have been spending a lot of time posting about digital publishing, in fact devoting one of my boards on Pinterest…
-
News Bytes – Thursday, December 06, 2012
“Manufacturing coming back to the United States” and “YouTube redesign”, in today’s News Bytes here on Frontier Channel.
-
The Jobs Problem: Discuss
Read Richard’s current thoughts about transhumanism and related fringe topics here. Last time I offered a few suggestions about what you and I can do about the jobs problem, being that this is a problem of demographics and technology, and you and I are technology enthusiasts. Local, national, and global discussions that FINALLY places demographics…
-
The Jobs Problem
Read Richard’s current thoughts about transhumanism and related fringe topics here. Last week’s jobs report from the United States Department of Labor was HORRIFIC, but this is not a problem of politics or ideology problem; it is a problem of demographics and technology: The trends are unprecedented. Politicians are pointing fingers and thinking linearly, instead of…
-
Jason Silva
Post 3 of 3 about the people using video and other media to help inspire all of us to discuss and create our own shared future. I am regularly watching their latest thought-provoking videos. Jason Silva has emerged as a leading spokesperson for the call to create a positive future for all of humanity. Whether…
-
Ramona Pringle
Post 2 of 3 about the people using video and other media to help inspire all of us to discuss and create our own shared future. I am regularly watching their latest thought-provoking videos. Ramona Pringle created and hosts “rdigitalife”, a web series about “the evolving relationship betwen humanity and technology”. The series began earlier…
-
Anna Stillwell
Post 1 of 3 about the people using video and other media to help inspire all of us to discuss and create our own shared future. I am regularly watching their latest thought-provoking videos. Anna Stillwell and The Human Project [DEFUNCT] are using diversity as a powerful tool for exploring – and defining – humanity, technology, and…
-
Technology Trends in 2014 (from 2012)
Read Richard’s current thoughts about transhumanism and related fringe topics here. (While these trends are United States-centric, most of them also apply to other developed countries, and will soon apply to developing countries as well.) Internet A significant fraction of households now have 100-200 mbps broadband connections, with pockets of 400 mpbs connections spreading to…
-
Technology Trends in 2012 (From 2012)
Read Richard’s current thoughts about transhumanism and related fringe topics here. (While these trends are United States-centric, most of them also apply to other developed countries, and will soon apply to developing countries as well.) In 2012, nearly everyone will benefit from faster internet speeds, 1080p video will be everywhere, vast and flexible LCD displays…
-
Fundraising for Emerging Technologies Organizations in 2012
The following emerging technology organizations are raising money for 2012. Over the past few years the amount of money being donated to these types of causes has grown exponentially, but that was starting from about zero. Now that ideas like healthy life extension, accelerating technology, Friendly AGI and the Technological Singularity have gone mainstream, there…
-
Kickstarter – The Methuselah Generation
Trailer for a documentary – filmed in 3D – about longevity. The filmmakers are raising money to finish the film via Kickstarter.
-
“Robotics” YouTube Playlist
-
“Visions of the Future” YouTube Playlist
-
Digital Media is Just a Battle That Will Soon Be Long Forgotten
Google took Google Music, previously a cloud storage solution for music files, out of beta today and added Google+ integration and music purchases from three of the four major labels as well as many independent labels. The result? An iTunes competitor and most of the pieces for a digital media platform to rival the platforms…
-
Kickstarter – Hypothes.is – Taking peer review to the Internet.
Kickstarter – Hypothes.is – Taking peer review to the Internet.
-
Google+ Zero
When Google Wave was announced, I immediately took to a platform that seemed to combine all of the productivity tools I used. It was an exciting time and my brain was full of ideas about how Wave would fit into work and the other projects I was interested in starting. When Wave was cancelled, I…
-
The Rise of Human-to-Machine Communication
From the perspective of you and me, Web 2.0 has been all about human-to-human communication. Sure, this communication is mediated by increasingly sophisticated machine-to-machine interactions, but from blogs to social networks to new media, best practices to graphic design to standards, we consider human-to-human communication to be central to the web as we know it…
-
Kurzweil AI News: “Discovery may lead to cure for drug addiction”
Kurzweil AI News: “Discovery may lead to cure for drug addiction” The debate over whether or not it is possible to cure addiction, adultery, obesity, mental illness, and even criminal behavior is over. While the interactions between genetics and environment are complex, the tools to manipulate ourselves at the molecular level are emerging, nature versus nurture…
-
Apple’s Subscription Gamble
Apple announced their digital media subscription service for the iOS App Store today and reaction has been all over the place, though for certain classes of people it has been overwhelmingly negative. Developers and publishers especially are not happy with the service requirements. For digital media like streaming video from Netflix, Hulu Plus; streaming music…
-
“Back to the Future” Photography
“Back to the Future” Photography Very cool idea from a photographer with amazing (and sometimes a little NSFW and surprising) results.
-
“A Fight to Win the Future: Computers vs. Humans” in NYTimes
“A Fight to Win the Future: Computers vs. Humans” in NYTimes “Virtually any job that now involves answering questions and conducting commercial transactions by telephone will soon be at risk.”
Frontier Channel
News and commentary about the Great Frontiers
Image Credit: ISS007-E-10807 (21 July 2003) – Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center
You must be logged in to post a comment.