Saturday, February 20, 2016

Hope and Future Nanotechnologies

"A Leader is a dealer in Hope" - Napoleon Bonaparte.

(... Notice it doesn't say *false* hope.)

This year at the Abundance 360 summit, I had the distinct delight of meeting Ray Kurzweil.


Described as the "rightful heir to Thomas Edison", and a prediction success rate of 86%, Mr Kurzweil's predictions about the future of human consciousness are:
  • in 2029 (or well, 2045), we will reach the singularity
  • in 2030, human brains will be able to connect to the cloud, allowing us to send emails and photos directly to the brain and to back up our thoughts and memories - via nanorobots
(The singularity is Mr Kurzweil's prediction of a point in time when improvements in artificial intelligence generates an intelligence explosion and surpasses human intelligence. Read more: Wikipedia and Kurzweil.AI)

Imagine what this means for the capacity of cognition, emotion, engagement, experiences... the presence and management of mental health conditions, intellectual pursuits and physical endeavours?

Read more: coverage on Huffington Post and Ray Kurzweil's talk on TED.

Neuro nanorobotics. The idea itself is appealing... to reach the corners of the human mind that have been hard to sweep clean, to scratch the itch that lies beyond the blood-brain barrier.

It is the ultimate in personalised medicine: robots derived from and integrating with your own DNA strands... Add to the trend of shrinking the size of technology and you have your own diagnostic, investigative and therapeutic agent swimming around your bloodstream.

Even better than that, according to Mr Kurzweil, is the augmentation of thought: the hybridisation of logical and emotional intelligence. Expansion of physical or quantitative (read: sheer volume) of the brain will lead to a qualitative leap in culture and technology. Want proof? We did it before - humans have a frontal cortex and our primate cousins do not.

Fortunately, we've got 14 years to get there.

And his answer to my question: "Where could I join the nanorobotics revolution?" (after all, it is the ultimate in personalised patient-centric medicine (hence my fascination): robots derived from and integrating with your own DNA strands...)

With a smile he said, "Why don't you apply to Singularity University?". :)


What are your suggestions? Where is the edge of neurorobotics research and who (or which institute) leads the field? 


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