Singularity Summit LIVE! (3)

11:22 AM

Sebastian Thrun is director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and is a world expert on robot-driven automobiles.

He is describing the amazing work that he and others have done in the DARPA-sponsored "Grand Challenge." It's very cool stuff, and he's showing some fascinating videos, but -- I'm not sure yet how he is going to relate this to the topic of the Singularity, which is, of course, the whole reason everyone is here.

However fascinating this is, in comparison to molecular manufacturing or strong artificial intelligence, his vision of "Autonomous Cars for Everyone" is not revolutionary or disuptive.

It was a good talk, but it did not belong on this program.

11:42

Cory Doctorow is starting now. His talk is titled: "Singularity or Dark Age? How the copyright wars threaten technological progress."

Uh-oh, he's a non-user of PowerPoint. We've reached a point in public speaking, I'm afraid, where one almost cannot deliver an interesting talk simply using a voice. I'm surprised and a little disappointed that Cory would make this mistake. You just can't make the same connection with the audience or achieve the same level of communication and comprehension when you are limited to the audio band only.

Worse yet, Cory's talk, like the previous speaker's, seems to have little relevance to what the focus of this summit was supposed to be.

Fortunately, Eric Drexler is up next, and I'm confident that he will get this seriously dragging conference back on track.

12:01 PM

"An information-driven revolution in manufacturing" -- that's how Eric Drexler introduced his topic.

He showed a slide of designed million-atom nanoscale structures made by folding DNA. "Atomically-precise protein and DNA design are now becoming routine."

Now he is showing a sheet of graphite made by self-assembly in "solution-phase synthesis." Next, a few simulations of "advanced molecular machinery" which is the stuff that he and others are working on at Nanorex.

Ooh, and now a still frame from the Productive Nanosystems video. I hope he shows the whole movie. Nope, it looks like he won't have time. Too bad.

Eric says "bogus criticism has fallen out of fashion," and he mentioned that "a technology roadmap [to MM] is underway."

LUNCH BREAK

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Comments

[michael vassar]

Funny. I agree with Cory that "power point corrupts absolutely".
In my opinion a good speaker can do much better with just voice than with slides when discussing most topics.

[StephenC]

I do like the power point slides that introduce the speakers though. I've seen some presentations that really help make the information clearer, and it helps me take notes. Any tool in the wrong hands has the potential for misuse...