Ed Berger dot com

Technological singularity – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So in some circles debate over “the coming singularity” rages. The singularity is the point in time at which AI surpasses human intelligence or human intelligence is artifically enhanced. When the singularity occurs all bets are off and there is no way to predict the direction or amount of change that will occur to society and the species.

The primary concept to me is the scaling of intelligence such as could occrur by throwing more and more hardware at an AI. Also “natural selection” could be GREATLY speeded up by trying many variations of intelligence at a much faster pace than a human lifetime. The AI or post human will evolve at a pace almost inconceivable to us.

In addition you might want to check out Charles Stross’ Rough Guide to the Singularity . Charlles is really an excellent Science Fiction writer well worth reading on this and other subjects.
Ray Kurzweill has written the book “The Singularity Is Near” which is linked here (affiliate link).

Some folks think it is a good thing to be fostered and others think it is evil event to be controlled at all costs. Have you got an opinion?

FT.com / Home UK – Google to offer online market for retailers

This is interesting, although I think the article is missing the point. Apparently Google wants retailers to upload their stock and prices which they will then put on-line in Google Base an easily searchable form for consumers.

Google Base is also spoken of as an alternative for local classified advertisements (just what newspapers want to hear!). Now put these two ideas together with the Froogle price search and Google Maps. Voila.

What you get is an easily searchable product database that will tell you what price you can order the item for, how much it would cost locally both retail and used and finally give you a map to the local sources.

Now that would change the way I shop! How about you?

Programmable Web: The Web As Platform
Okay so you’ve heard that web 2.0 is about services and mash ups — what does that mean? It means that some web sites especially some of the big ones like Google and Yahoo have exposed an API that lets third party users create applications using their data and services. A mash up example might be real estate listings built on top of Google maps.

So now how would one go about finding these services and some examples of great mash ups? Well that’s easy! Just go to the link above and find out what’s exposed ;-} . This is really just emerging as a new use of the Internet, so the next great idea could easily come from you!

Even if you aren’t feeling creative the information on what is being done is just fascinating.