"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
-- Alan Kay

 

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Instead of creating weapons of mass destruction, we have to create a device of mass creation

 

 

- Content -

Exhibit One
Exhibit Two
Great Individuals
Food for Thought
Extraordinary Growth
(Long Term Global Demographic Trends 2000 - 2100)

 

 

 

- On a grand scale, the Universe -

 

Plasma (Matter)

The Principle of Computational Equivalence (Data)

Electromagnetism (Energy)

 

"…space plasma has a tendency towards a cellular structure. (…) one must conclude that space in general has a cellular structure."

-- Hannes Alfvén (page 6 from Cosmology In the Plasma Universe: An Introductory Exposition)

"And for example in a cellular automaton, space is not a continuum but instead consists just of discrete cells."

-- Stephen Wolfram (page 472 from A New Kind of Science)

"Our model presupposes an indefinitely large space of magnetic fields, where plasma is distributed uniformly in all directions. (A uniform distribution of plasma is not required in the simulations, but it does simplify the setup for the study of plasma filamentation.) If any other kind of nonuniformity is present, such as variations in electron temperature, vast and swirling electromagnetic fields develop that pinch the plasma into filaments. The filaments grow to the size of Tully's superclusters, billions of light-years long. The plasma within these clusters is further pinched into smaller, galaxy-size filaments, which interact for billions of years; eventually they collect and neutralize so much mass that gravity becomes a factor in the continued evolution. Thus is formed the full range of galaxy species. Like predawn mist beading on spider-web, the observable cosmos condenses out of the plasma background in progressively smaller steps, eventually forming stars, planets and moons. There is no expansion, and there need not be any final crunch. Unlike the universe envisioned in the big bang model, the plasma'universe evolves without beginning and without end: it is indefinitely ancient and has an indefinite lifetime in store."

-- Anthony L. Peratt (page 30 and 31 from Not with a Bang part A and Part B)

 

 

 

- On a small scale, the Creator Unit -

 

Atom laser (Matter)

The Principle of Computational Equivalence with ENS (Data)

Fusion (Energy)

 

"An atom laser is analogous to an optical laser, but it emits matter waves instead of electromagnetic waves. Its output is a coherent matter wave, a beam of atoms which can be focused to a pinpoint or can be collimated to travel large distances without spreading. The beam is coherent, which means, for instance, that atom laser beams can interfere with each other. Compared to an ordinary beam of atoms, the beam of an atom laser is extremely bright. One can describe laser-like atoms as atoms "marching in lockstep". Although there is no rigorous definition for the atom laser (or, for that matter, an optical laser), all people agree that brightness and coherence are the essential features."

-- Wolfgang Ketterle (from The Atom Laser)

"... in fact extremely simple underlying rules - that might for example potentially be implemented directly at the level of atoms - are often all that is needed. "

"And indeed one of the things that emerges from this book is that traditional engineering has actually considered only a tiny and quite unrepresentative fraction of all the kinds of systems and processes that are in principle possible."

"...it seems likely that a system could be set up in which just one or a few atoms would correspond to a cell in a system like a cellular automaton. And one thing this would mean is that doing computations would then translate almost directly into building actual physical structures out of atoms."

-- Stephen Wolfram (pages 11, 840 and 841 from A New Kind of Science)

...But a funny thing happened on the way to the chop shop. Maybe it was 11th-hour desperation, or some invisible bolt of providence visited on a few overworked scientists, a couple of whom lit on the simple idea of stringing the wire array, the spool-sized target at the centre of the Machine, with double, then triple, the tungsten wire. All of a sudden - Boom! Forty trillion watts! No one believed it. They reconfigured the Machine, boosting its X-ray production. Then someone, Melissa Douglas, thought to stack the arrays. Boom! Two hundred trillion watts in a single pulse! Short of a nuclear blast, it was the most energy ever released on earth, and suddenly, in 1998, after five decades of chasing the illusion of highyield fusion, of regarding it as some far-off Atlantis or dark galaxy's edge, the Z Machine was a third of the way there.

-- from the article A Machina called Z (more about Z here)

 

 

 

- Great Individuals -

 

Murray N. Rothbard
1926 - 1995

 

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
Socrates
Gregory Chaitin
1646 - 1716
469 - 399 BC
1947 - 2xxx

 

Leonardo Da Vinci
Nikola Tesla
Frans Veldman
Hannes Alfvén
Stephen Wolfram
1452 - 1519
1856 - 1943
1921 - 2010
1908 - 1995
1959 - 2xxx

 

Ludwig von Mises
Kurt Richebacher
1918 - 2007
1881 - 1973
1918 - 2007

 

Alfred Bork
1926 - 2007

 

 

 

- Food for Thought -

 

The Madness of Empire

"...In 1914, the only thing that would prevent Germany from remaining the world's largest economic and military power was a war. The prevention of a war involving Germany had been Bismarck's over-riding foreign policy aim since 1871, which is why he sponsored the 1884 Berlin Conference to ensure that clashes in the colonies would not involve European countries in a war, where Germany would have to choose sides... In 2003, the only thing that would prevent America from remaining the world's largest economic and military power was a war against Iraq, which would unite friends and foes against the US..."

Read more here

 

A Warning from History

"The other aspect that is so terrifying to contemplate is that virtually every step of the way, the Japanese leaders who concluded that military solutions had become unavoidable were very smart and very proud of their technical expertise, their special knowledge, their unsentimental “realism” in a threatening world. Many of these planners were, in our own phrase, “the best and the brightest.” We have detailed records of their deliberations and planning papers, and most are couched in highly rational terms. Each new escalation, each new extension of the empire, was deemed essential to the national interest. And even in retrospect, it is difficult to say at what point this so-called realism crossed the border into madness. But it was, in the end, madness."

Read more here

 

 

Disastrous Decisions

"What I'm going to suggest is a road map of factors in failures of group decision making. I'll divide the answers into a sequence of four somewhat fuzzily delineated categories. First of all, a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. Secondly, when the problem arrives, the group may fail to perceive the problem. Then, after they perceive the problem, they may fail even to try to solve the problem. Finally, they may try to solve it but may fail in their attempts to do so. While all this talking about reasons for failure and collapses of society may seem pessimistic, the flip side is optimistic: namely, successful decision-making. Perhaps if we understand the reasons why groups make bad decisions, we can use that knowledge as a check list to help groups make good decisions."

Read more here

 

The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla

Chapter 1: My Early Life

The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements. Speaking for myself, I have already had more than my full measure of this exquisite enjoyment; so much, that for many years my life was little short of continuous rapture. I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labor, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers...

Read more here

 

   

Engines of Creation

Our ability to arrange atoms lies at the foundation of technology. We have come far in our atom arranging, from chipping flint for arrowheads to machining aluminum for spaceships. We take pride in our technology, with our lifesaving drugs and desktop computers. Yet our spacecraft are still crude, our computers are still stupid, and the molecules in our tissues still slide into disorder, first destroying health, then life itself. For all our advances in arranging atoms, we still use primitive methods. With our present technology, we are still forced to handle atoms in unruly herds.

But the laws of nature leave plenty of room for progress, and the pressures of world competition are even now pushing us forward. For better or for worse, the greatest technological breakthrough in history is still to come.

Read more here


 

The New Alchemy

Could semiconductor technology do for material science what it has for computing?

Imagine a solid wall that, as the occasion demands, becomes completely transparent or transforms on one side into a giant video screen while the other side becomes either a solar panel or a heat pump that cools a room on a hot day. This is the promise of programmable matter—and it could make the technology revolution wrought by semiconductors to date look like a warm-up for the main act.

The idea of programmable matter began to seep into the popular consciousness in recent years through the works of aerospace-engineer-turned-science-fiction-author Wil McCarthy [right], who dubbed the new material wellstone in novels like The Collapsium (Del Rey, 2000). Now McCarthy has written his first nonfiction book about programmable matter, Hacking Matter: Levitating Chairs, Quantum Mirages and the Infinite Weirdness of Programmable Atoms. Associate Editor Stephen Cass talked to him about this bleeding-edge technology and how McCarthy himself is helping to transform science fiction into science fact.

Read more here