From Printing Press to Twitter: What Makes a Technology Pro-Democracy?
7 Feb, 2011
We’ve heard a lot about the role of social media, text messaging, and mobile phones in the uprising in Egypt. A lot has been said to credit them with fueling or at least organizing the protests and with getting word out to the outside…
R e a d M o r eLessons From Egypt : Encouraging Saudi Democracy & Beyond
7 Feb, 2011
I posted recently that the situation in Egypt provides important lessons for US foreign policy. Specifically, the US should have been pressing for democracy in Egypt decades ago, and making US military aid to Egypt contingent on steps towards a free press, free elections, and…
R e a d M o r eEgypt, Twitter, and the Collapse of Top-Heavy Societies
5 Feb, 2011
Watching the news about Egypt and the debate as to whether Twitter, Facebook, etc.. are inherently pro-democracy, I’m struck by a connection to Joseph Tainter’s 1988 classic, The Collapse of Complex Societies. Tainter speculates that societies ultimately face two problems. One, the marginal return on…
R e a d M o r eEgypt: Is Mandatory Conscription Pro-Democracy?
31 Jan, 2011
Watching the situation in Egypt, I’ve been struck repeatedly by how the Army has behaved. Today the Egyptian Army announced that it won’t use force against protesters. Earlier in the protests, we saw reports of Egyptian soldiers shaking hands with protesters and inviting them onto…
R e a d M o r eTurmoil in Egypt Shows Shortsightedness of US Foreign Policy
28 Jan, 2011
Over the last few days, Egyptians have taken to the streets, demanding that Egyptian president and dictator Hosni Mubarak step down. The protests so far haven’t had a religious or anti-American bent. They’re not Islamist. They are a wave of people – mostly young people…
R e a d M o r eSingularity Summit Talk: The Digital Biome – Re-Engineering Life on Earth to Survive and Thrive in the 21st Century
17 Aug, 2010
This weekend I was at the Singularity Summit in San Francisco. On Sunday I gave a talk called The Digital Biome – Re-Engineering Life on Earth to Survive and Thrive in the 21st Century. (Follow the link to see the slides on SlideShare.) The…
R e a d M o r eGlobal Warming: Risk of Methane Release from Frozen Tundra
5 Dec, 2008
Now this is scary. The linear rate of global warming, in and of itself, is scary only in the somewhat long term (100+ years or so). The real risk with global warming is runaway feed-forward loops. E.g., one that you hear about often is that…
R e a d M o r eAnders Sandberg, Aubrey de Grey, Nick Bostrom on Future of Human Aging
24 Nov, 2008
>Three of my friends and fellow futurists commenting on the future of future of human aging. Anders focuses on uploading the brain (the best preservation, but most challenging), Aubrey de Grey on our attitudes on change. And Nick Bostrom on the uncertainties implicit in the…
R e a d M o r eUncertainty and Conditioning
24 Nov, 2008
>The article below quotes research stating that uncertain outcome produces more uncertainty than clear negative outcomes. That makes sense from an adaptive standpoint. Makes me wonder if that is the the same mechanism underlying the advantage of inconsistent conditioning over consistent conditioning in operant behavior.…
R e a d M o r eWoman Gets New Windpipe Grown from Her Stem Cells
19 Nov, 2008
>Now this is really exciting. New Scientist: Woman Receives Windpipe Built from Her Stem Cells Organ transplants have lots of problems, from the number of donors and availability of the right organ, to the issues of transport and logistics, and especially immune rejection. For a…
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