Week 11: Post your Blog Entries as Comments to my Main Post Each Week

Post by Sunday at midnight.


NOTE TO CLASS:

On Thursday, we finished Garreau and the "GRINs" technological futures/scenarios. If you were absent you missed some interesting videos. Here's another:

Amputee Patrick demonstrates his new bionic hand
May 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13378036

"Last year, Patrick, a 24-year-old Austrian, decided to have his dysfunctional hand amputated and replaced with a bionic hand. He lost the use of his left hand after being electrocuted at work.

Here he demonstrates the extra movement his new bionic hand has given him, opening a bottle and tying his shoelaces, and tests a prototype hand which will give him additional wrist movement."

'Thought-controlled' wheelchair unveiled
February 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12458553

"Scientists in Switzerland have devised a prototype "thought-controlled" wheelchair. The chair can be guided by brain signals which are detected by a cap worn by the user and interpreted by a computer. Here, the researchers behind it discuss and demonstrate the wheelchair at their facilities at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Details of the work have been presented to the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC."

Brain orchestra's world premiere (2009)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8020904.stm

"Musicians use their brain waves to play computer-generated notes while led by an 'emotional conductor' in Prague. The graphs of those brain waves are projected onto one of two large screens above the orchestra. The performers launch sounds or affect their frequencies using EEG systems that measure their brain activity. Two of the performers were given a task to watch a screen in front of them, with flashing rows and columns of letters, and told to look for a particular letter. When they see it, 300 thousandths of a second later a signal appears in the EEG, causing a note to play."

The blind rock climber who sees with his tongue
May 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13358608

"Erik Weihenmayer went blind when he was 13 years old but new technology enables him to see with his tongue. The BrainPort device gives him a sense of space and, together with a friend nearby, helps him scale Utah's formidable Castleton Rock."


Project to build computer model of human brain takes off

London, May 16, 2011

A team of scientists has assembled in Switzerland and Germany to attempt the unthinkable -- building a computer model of human brain. It could potentially open the way to cures for various diseases such as Parkinson's.

Called the Human Brain Project, but dubbed 'Team Frankenstein', scientists claim it could also lead to intelligent robots and supercomputers which would dwarf those currently in existence.

Henry Markram, a neuroscientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, has assembled a team of nine top European scientists for the research effort.

"This is one of the three grand challenges for humanity. We need to understand earth, space and the brain. We need to understand what makes us human," Markram said, reports the Daily Mail.

Scientists and researchers on the Brain Project believe that if they secure the funding, they will be able to replicate mankind's most vital organ in 12 years.

The applications for it if successful are enormous; drug companies for instance would be able to dramatically shorten testing times by bypassing humans to test new medicaments on the computer model.

Supercomputers at the Jülich Research Center near Cologne, Germany, are earmarked to play a vital role in the research which Makram says will involve ‘a tsunami of data’.

Jülich neuroscientist Katrin Amunts has begun work on a detailed atlas of the brain which involved slicing one into 8,000 parts which were then digitalized with a scanner.

Makram added: ‘It is not impossible to build a human brain. We can do it in just over 10 years.

‘This will, when successful, help two billion people annually who suffer from some type of brain impairment.’

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http://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a222032.html


Meanwhile, billions of people starve in the same world. Garreau said mind-machine interfaces were "military experimental" in 2004 at DARPA. Now there are market applications and artistic applications from 2009 to 2011 expanding everywhere.


Next week, we

a. discuss some geopolitical trends of powerful countries and
b. discuss some powerful non-democratic trends in the early 21st century.

Look in the syllabus at the following books.

1. Friedman (digital), read the China and U.S. chapters.
2. Engdahl (digital), skim
3. Engdahl (printed packet), skim
4. Klein (digital), Just read the first chapter.

Friedman concentrates on probable trends and his futurist scenarios of who will dominate the 21st century.

The other books document important trends that will assuredly have an effect on geopolitical power in the 21st century.

I plan to catch up next week on our blog coverage as well. I had your extra credit mid-terms in class today. If you didn't get them, I will bring them next week as well.