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Presented at the JTET conference this morning:

Arthur M. Harkins, Ph.D. (USA)
John Moravec, Ph.D. (USA)
University of Minnesota

Abstract

This presentation is concerned with complex subjects, but presents them in ways that audiences can understand and professionally contemplate. The core concept of the paper is “sustainable innovation,” which presumes the necessity for continuous innovation to cope with changes wrought by technology, socioeconomic trends, global climate transformations, celestial changes, and by change itself.

Background

Ray Kurzweil has written that machines and software are beginning to challenge the supremacy and hegemony of humans over other species. Kurzweil argues that ever-shortening ‘S-curves’ of electronic hardware and software development are creating pressures to bond humans and machines into various networks and systems. Some of these include self-flyable Airbus aircraft, early implants (such as pacemakers and hearing amplifiers), and the later prospect of artificial eyes and adjunct cybernetic brains.

Kurzweil’s projections include step-by-step ‘dovetailing’ of humans with artificial systems. This process is already creating ‘gray areas’ between humans and such devices as robot arms and artificial kidneys. These and many other aspects of Kurzweil’s thinking appear to justify assertions that Trans-Humanity (TH) is evolving, and very quickly, as a complex ecology of cyborgs. The long-term prospect of uploading human central nervous system contents into non-biological units would complete the transition to a radical new embodiment of intelligence, which may be called Post Humanity (PH).

Foreground

In all of this great change, why must schools stress sustainable innovation? With the help of education, how can young people retain and grow their individuality? How can they continuously reconfigure their collective memberships with others, including those within cyberspace? This paper will explore such questions and related ones by creating and discussing short sustainable innovation scenarios illustrating the roles of formal and informal educational systems. The paper will construct scenarios for two different types of sustainable innovation: those based on anticipating and creating the futures of TH, and those based on PH. The ethics and morality of both sustainable innovation types will be suggested by metrics associated with personal and collective choices.

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The folks at the Technology Evangelist blog did a remarkable job in recording Ray Kurzweil’s talk at the Killer App Expo and feeding video to the net. Benjamin J. Higginbotham writes:

Ray Kurzweil is a pioneer in the fields of optical character recognition, health, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, technological singularity and futurism. At the Killer App Expo in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Ray gave the evening Keynote speech. We were fortunate enough to have two HD cameras at the conference and grabbed the entire keynote with house audio. Whereas we would normally cut this 80 minute presentation into a 10 to 15 minute chunk, Ray’s material was so good, so inspiring that we have decided to leave it complete. If you’re an Apple TV user, this is a great bit to watch in full 720p. I hope you enjoy this as much as we did.

Speaking on innovations in education, Kurzweil stated: “Telepresence is really on the cutting edge of this sharing of information. It is form of virtual reality and it is really a harventure of what’s to come. I think it is a tremendously powerful thing to be able to have a world renowned medical expert to be really present with you if the patient is may be in Africa or something. Education to really feel like you are with an educator and just the ability to meet with each other, human communication is one of things that makes us unique, but Telepresence is on the cutting edge of our being able to meet without being limited by geographical limitations and as broadband gets higher and higher quality all these other display technologies get higher and higher resolution to the reality of Telepresence in a virtual reality is getting more and more compelling. Ultimately you will all compete very well with real reality, so in the case in the universities that students not necessarily got a class they can watch it using video conferencing on the Internet archived, it is perhaps looks crude compared to real reality today, it is actually quite satisfactory, but ultimately it will be just as realistic as being there and the ability to really meet including all of the senses without the people using Telepresence, I think it is quite revolutionary, things like Second Life as a whole another virtual reality environment, now looks crude today, but think how crude video games were when they started pong with stimulation of tennis, but it is was pretty crude, these games have become quite realistic. Things like Second Life will be a whole virtual reality environment that’s ultimately be as competing with real reality with many advantages.”

Ray Kurzweil is going to be interactively live on C-SPAN2’s “Book TV” this coming Sunday from 1100-1400 CST. Here is the blurb from this morning’s NYT:

“Join us for a live conversation with Ray Kurzweil, author of several books about artificial intelligence, including The Age of Spiritual Machines, and his latest, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Participate in the discussion by calling in or e-mailing your questions.”

Future Shock - Robots!