Comments on: Wild Cards

By: admin

admin — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 21:52:22 +0000

That’s impressively fact-based, but perhaps over-interpreted. It only looks like a year or so of treading water, on a longer-term price-collapse trend that leaves Moore’s Law in the dust. Expecting smoothly continuous economies in sequencing capability is too much (the transistor density / price Moore’s Law curve jitters about a little too).

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 18:03:40 +0000

The thousand dollar genome that was “five years away” five years ago is still five years away. There’s still plenty of milk left in the genomics/genetics cow, but the consumer-focused DNA revolution we were promised never seems to materialise.

The graphs at http://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/ show us that the last order of magnitude in cost reduction just isn’t happening. It appears to have nearly ground to a halt over the past two years or so. (This is probably one goverment estimate that;s accurate…)

Not sure about DNA synthesis though – for all I know that could still be making good progress. But sequencing is, at least for now, going nowhere.

By: admin

admin — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:04:09 +0000

Oddly, the Left thinks we're winning.

By: admin

admin — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 06:32:19 +0000

“The left singularity, the coming dark age, approaches faster than the technological singularity.” — That’s pretty much indisputable, but it’s possible — even probable — that massive technological disruption could take place well before true singularity.

I’m not convinced that genomics is slowing, and other technologies with evident disruptive potential include: crypto-currency, additive manufacturing (3D-printing), drone robotics, neuro-scanning (Hanson-world cometh) … even New Space. Since Left Singularity is inseparable from an ideal of regulatory control, a complexity deluge from unpredictable technologies could have a paralyzing effect (driving it into a premature state of policy seizure and administrative break-down).

By: James A. Donald

James A. Donald — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 04:39:58 +0000

The left singularity, the coming dark age, approaches faster than the technological singularity.

If DNA writing progresses, maybe the technological singularity will arrive first, but DNA writing appears to have gone the way of space travel.

By: survivingbabel

survivingbabel — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 00:44:56 +0000

Not to mention that, if fragility was really our top concern, our focus would need to be the moon and Mars, not shrinking cities and migrating excess populations.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:41:42 +0000

“A genetically engineered bio-weapon could make a city non-viable in a matter of hours.” — the same reasoning works for metazoa in general: bacteria are much less vulnerable to catastrophic threats than multicellular organisms. Cities, like other complex life-forms, produce enough new sophisticated functionality to overwhelm their fragility.

By: fotrkd

fotrkd — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:22:26 +0000

You could have levelled the same criticism at cities during the 14th Century when the Black Death did a good impression of the End Of The World. Spread along trade routes and exacerbated by high population density (and accompanying low public hygiene and sanitation levels), it made cities (particularly the dominant maritime ones of the time) dangerous places to be. But the challenges (or risks) of urban living don't prevent it from being the best model we've come up with for dynamically adapting to and incorporating rapid social or technological change on mass. Nor do they stop them being paved with gold or deter people (in the main) from dwelling in them (sanitoriums in magic mountains and smog come to mind... as does Sherlock Holmes and William Godwin - cities have always been horrible, disease and crime-ridden places: that's their charm! Though maybe Singapore works on a different aesthetic). And when serious problems do arise, solutions are sought (in the case of smog in the UK it was smokeless fuel and smoke free zones). But just as we don't stop using underground metro networks despite their obvious suitability for terrorist (or bio-weapon) attacks, we're not going to abandon cities unless their positive value seriously diminishes. The risk of a bio-attack in Shanghai 2025 is no different than a great fire in Rome in AD 64.

By: Roger

Roger — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:33:13 +0000

Singapore is a city. Cities originate in the Neolithic. They’ve been around for 10,000 years. Cities are dense agglomerations of people that need to import necessities like food. They haven’t fundamentally changed because the fundamental structure of centralized, urban power feeding on rural areas hasn’t changed. I don’t see how cities are particularly suited to the kinds of disruptive technologies discussed by “Donny”. Dense agglomerations of people dependent on imports and trade routes for necessities would appear to be among the most threatened by and vulnerable to new dangerous technologies. The Boston Marathon bombings which locked down the city were caused by pressure cooker bombs, which are basically 17th century technology. A genetically engineered bio-weapon could make a city non-viable in a matter of hours.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:09:02 +0000

I tend to agree, but “[e]xisting reactionary political structures” are quite thin on the ground.