A, B, C, D, E, F.... Google and the Technological Singularity

I had an interesting conversation last night with some friend in which I said the only futuristic event that I am certain of is The Technological Singularity. I am not sure when it will happen and it may or may not be in my lifetime, but today I saw an interesting TED talk by Kevin Kelly in which he discusses the 5000 day history of the web and tries to predict what will happen in the next 5000 days. By his rough calculations, the web currently is on the same order of complexity as the human brain. Since the web increases in power every year, a feat that we humans have yet to accomplish, this means that by 2040 the web will have more processing power than all of humankind (which sounds a bit like the singularity to me). He also talks about the previous different stages of the web, from linking computers to linking pages and now linking data, and how once everything is connected (via RFID, the net, or whatever) we will become just as dependent on the web as we have on other technologies such as the alphabet. While I do not agree with all of his predictions, it is a very fascinating view of what we may have in-store for the future.

Deferential Geo-whatamy?

There are many things in this world that I will probably never truly understand (women being one of them ;-) but I like to hear people who do understand or at least understand many orders of magnitude more than I do try and explain things in simple terms. Quantum Mechanics and particle physics are two of those things that I have little hope of ever really understanding, but ideas like String Theory and big toys like the Large Hadron Collider simply fascinate me. I ran into a great TED presentation by Garrett Lisi who is an adventure sports enthusiast (aka surf and snow bum) and is an up and comer in the world of theoretical physics. About a year ago Lisi released a paper called "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything," which uses a complex, multi-dimensional, differentiable manifold shape called the E₈ to try and unify all of the forces of physics. It presents yet another alternative to String Theory, which the LHC should help to prove or disprove, but until then you can watch the following great presentation to see how things might work:

My Christmas wish will come true this year!

While the Sin City 2 movie is not due out for another few years and the long awaited Watchmen movie is still 5 months away, it looks like Christmas will come, um, at Christmas this year when Frank Miller gives us all the gift of another cinematic masterpiece called The Spirit. I just saw the trailer this morning, and I am very excited.

And if that wasn't enough... Kevin Smith is making a porno on October 31st!

Here's another red-band preview for the movie, which is one you will probably never see at your local theater.