Disqus - Latest Comments for lablogga

Re: Unified health data climate

lablogga — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:00:58 -0000

Hi Daniel, thank you for the comments.

What do you think some of the key action-taking will be?

I think we are yet to understand the norms and uses of health self-management action-taking in the era of big data. So far from the QuantifiedSelf.com, there are interesting examples of people's reactions to having access to a substantially-sized health data climate. A standout theme is the criticality of making the data useful or it will be ignored.

One key action-taking possibility that has been raised recently is that if normal and abnormal body temperatures had been known for every individual in a community, the scale and threat of H1N1 flu could have been better estimated.
I think AI analysis techniques will become a standard feature of all big data. Just like social media and gaming principles are now a norm in websites, pattern recognition, natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and support vector machines could likely be included in standard data interpretation interfaces.

Re: Status of Stem Cell Research

lablogga — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 10:35:22 -0000

Hi Alexey,

Thank you, I appreciate your comments and further detail about the translational medicine process and different areas of stem cell research. I also was surprised at the "20 years no progress" pessimistic view stated by such industry leaders as Stanford's Irv Weissman who (as you point out on you blog http://hematopoiesis.info/) are simultaneously driving a lot of progress.

Re: Genomics: highest-impact near-term advance

lablogga — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:10:11 -0000

Hi Richard, its nice to hear from you, thank you for the comments. Genomics is moving very fast, its really time to start thinking about how things will be different within just a few years.

Re: Ultimate possibilities for life and technology

lablogga — Mon, 04 May 2009 11:01:15 -0000

Hi Cortana,

Thanks for your comments. To your first point, usually technology develops first and then the human maturity to manage it. Given the short-term focus of most human societies, it is unfortunate but not surprising that we are not preparing for the possible ramifications of revolutionary technology which is why I like to bring up the issues. To your second point, I think we may eventually find that intelligence is quite explainable.

Re: Ultimate possibilities for life and technology

lablogga — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:46:47 -0000

Hi John,

Thanks for the comment and book recommendation, I will check it out! John C. Wright's Golden Age trilogy was one of the best explorations I've seen of a future with a variety of digital and physical selves living in a society with different levels of advanced AIs.

Re: Ultimate possibilities for life and technology

lablogga — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:44:10 -0000

Hi Boris,

Thanks for the comment. I have some strong opinions on these issues that I did not go into here, particularly of the non-anthropogenic kind, but of course no one knows the answer to what the future will be like for sure. I think if some of these things start to arise, even the ability to make a digital backup copy of mindfiles, could open up a lot of possibilities for human intelligence.

Re: Dubai: possibilities or probabilities?

lablogga — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:41:10 -0000

Hi Cortana,

Thanks for the comments, I hope you are doing well. "Everything is architected" in Dubai, but thousands of people elect to live there freely, though often transiently and possibly in circumstances different and worse than they thought they would find, western ex-pats and third-world guest workers alike. 80% of Dubai is non-Emirate aliens. When benefits outweigh costs, humans make rational decisions, acting out of volition to achieve maximum utility.

Re: Dubai: possibilities or probabilities?

lablogga — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:42:38 -0000

Hi Leona,

Thanks for the comments and for stopping by, I hope you are well. I appreciate your points and agree, Amerocentrism is not the only game in town. I find the U.S. to be much less relevant to world citizens than Americans might think.

Re: Towards Robotic Cars: Ubu Dhabi Trackless Podcar City, Robotic Warehouses

lablogga — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 18:25:29 -0000

...envying the new build potential in the middle east, could be years before PRT appears in the US

Re: Show me the hardware apps!

lablogga — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 01:08:31 -0000

Hi Guy, now including RepRap, I didn't realize the community had grown so much. How many RepRap fabs would you say are currently in use worldwide?

Re: Youth mentoring adults

lablogga — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 23:43:42 -0000

Hi Chuck, thank you for the helpful aspects of your comment, the first level point is certainly that it is important for many audiences to understand how young people are using the Internet, the second order point is that these uses can be deployed beneficially by all age tiers.

Re: http://futurememes.blogspot.com/2008/12/status-of-life-sciences.html

lablogga — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:07:40 -0000

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the detailed comments. I agree, we will need a whole new generation of computing to surf and render the whole genome data usable, conventional and novel models of computing. Hopefully some of the semiconductor innovations will be ready like 3D circuits, photonic networks on a chip, larger wafers, software radios, programmable matter and so on. Cloud computing, Google's (not-yet-launched?) technical data service and other models could be good for data management and manipulation.

Hopefully individuals will contribute their data to large health databases that will be a public resource; the database sites or other users could provide data manipulation tools to sit on top of the repository.

Another great point to crowdsource the financing, maybe through health social networks or other peer-based Internet communities.

Re: Heard from the future…

lablogga — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:59:46 -0000

Hi Phaze1955. Thanks for the comments. Indeed, a good virtual world should be indistinguishable from any form of the physical world. For example, people have pointed out that we cannot prove that what we currently call the physical world is not virtual.

Re: Heard from the future…

lablogga — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:52:40 -0000

Hi Lee - Thanks for the funny comments. Exactly my points! Embodied in an early model nucleotide chassis at present, etc.

Re: http://futurememes.blogspot.com/2008/12/status-of-life-sciences.html

lablogga — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:22:58 -0000

Hi phaze1955, thanks for the comments. Nice creativity, grin! Whole genome sequencing does look to be arriving soon, especially with newtech from Pacific Biosciences and others. Simultaneously, we can focus on Step 2, massive actionability with the data.

Re: http://futurememes.blogspot.com/2008/12/status-of-life-sciences.html

lablogga — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:14:37 -0000

Hi mndoci, thanks for the comments. I agree, more robust quantitative analysis tools are needed in biosimulation. As you know, SimTK and others are moving as fast as they can.

The main funder in the PSS (post-scientific society) is venture capital and now, social venture capital. Patient crowd-sourced financing is another interesting potential business model.

Re: Top 10 Computing Trends for 2009

lablogga — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:19:19 -0000

Hi Phoebe, thanks for the comment.

I signed up for the Jinni beta, the 'movie genome project' makes it sound like Pandora for video.

Maybe the movie genome project could be a better approach to the NetFlix recommendation algorithm problem

Re: Human augmentation via bacterial biome

lablogga — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:34:49 -0000

Caltech synthetic biologist Christina Smolke notices that the human's on-board bacteria could be modified..."If you really want to apply a bacterium to a person, think about where they naturally exist and survive in a human while still trying to engineer new functions," More details are available here

Re: Examining tool complexity

lablogga — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:49:39 -0000

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the comment, yes, it is unfortunate how software dependency is creeping into more areas! And of course people friction is not a new challenge.

Melanie

Re: Can social capital markets move from niche to core?

lablogga — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:24:54 -0000

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the comment and outstanding job on the conference. Really a key step for SCM. Being a sustainable niche in the traditional markets would be a great accomplishment.

Re: Technology intervention is moral

lablogga — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:58:35 -0000

Hi Hiro,

Thanks for the comment and references. Of course interacting with other intelligent societies or representatives thereof is a fascinating topic to explore in science fiction.

Thinking about the examples you mention reminds me of how hampered we are by our own view, projecting human dreams and fears onto the other civilization when this is far from the truth.

I like the second and third books of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game series for a more informed human attempt at comprehending the objectives and culture of other intelligent species.

Thank you for distinguishing between intervene and interfere, interfere captures what I mean more closely, and I did not necessarily mean force-based intervention.

Re: Technology intervention is moral

lablogga — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:58:06 -0000

Hi Randal,

Thanks for the comment. I agree that imbuing aliens with our Earth attributes can lead to incorrect reasoning. In this analysis, I assumed that the more advanced society could safely interact with the lesser advanced one, and would therefore not have a Darwinist motivation to exterminate them, but there could be cases where the more advanced one could just terminate the less advanced one.

I think the more moral and humane path is to interfere, it is analogous to a doctor being equally to blame for a death when he/she knew a solution and did not implement it.

Re: Technology intervention is moral

lablogga — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:47:47 -0000

Hi Hiro,

Thanks for the additional comment, it will be interesting to see the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

It still has the same fallacy, that like "Childhood's End," it is strange that humans assume a property of interacting with a more advanced society is immediate resolution of all Earth-based conflicts and problems.

Re: Technology intervention is moral

lablogga — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:43:55 -0000

Hi Hiro,

Thanks for the comment and references. Of course interacting with other intelligent societies or representatives thereof is a fascinating topic to explore in science fiction.

Thinking about the examples you mention reminds me of how hampered we are by our own view, projecting human dreams and fears onto the other civilization when this is far from the truth.

I like the second and third books of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game series for a more informed human attempt at comprehending the objectives and culture of other intelligent species.

Thank you for distinguishing between intervene and interfere, interfere captures what I mean more closely, and I did not necessarily mean force-based intervention.

Re: Our beautiful future

lablogga — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:57:25 -0000

Hi Tim, thanks for the comment.

The self-assembled fulfillment of all our needs could be good. The self-assembly of our needs, coordinating them even less consciously than they are now could also be good, as long as they are in line with our master goals and principles. Need auto-generation and auto-fulfillment could really free up higher thought tiers for more interesting activity. For example, what if just the right amount of nanonutrients could provide nourishment instead of having to organize food for ourselves.

Maybe Tycrid and the Nvidia Tesla GPU HPC solutions could help facilitate these transitions.