A diverse range of thought leaders will explore potentials in technological growth to solve some of humanities grandest challenges. Scientists, Engineers, Artists and Philosophers will discuss evidence-based research, community awareness of rapid technological change, and scenarios for navigating our future.
With leading scientists and technologists from various disciplines gathering to speak about the future of science and technology, the conference will be a battleground for the science that matters to anyone with a stake in the future. Our society continues to grapple with the ethical implications of developments in science and technology. This year we will discuss the promise and perils of machine intelligence, materials science, the immunology, medicine, and much more.
The Science, Technology & the Future conference will be held in Melbourne, Australia on November 30th – December 1st, 2013
The rate at which technology is changing our world--not just on a global level like space travel and instant worldwide communications but on the level of what we choose to wear, where we live, and what we eat--is staggeringly fast and getting faster all the time. The rate of change has become so fast that a concept that started off sounding like science fiction has become a widely expected outcome in the near future - a singularity referred to as The Spike.
At that point of singularity, the cumulative changes on all fronts will affect the existence of humanity as a species and cause a leap of evolution into a new state of being.
The New York Times bestseller that introduced the business world to a future that's already here--now in paperback with a new chapter about Long Tail Marketing and a new epilogue. Winner of the Gerald Loeb Award for Best Business Book of the Year In the most important business book since The Tipping Point, Chris Anderson shows how the future of commerce and culture isn't in hits, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve, but in what used to be regarded as misses--the endlessly long tail of that same curve. "It belongs on the shelf between The Tipping Point and Freakonomics."
--Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix "Anderson's insights . . . continue to influence Google's strategic thinking in a profound way." --Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google "Anyone who cares about media . . . must read this book." --Rob Glaser, CEO, RealNetworks
Large corporations, big governments, and other centralized organizations have long determined and dominated the way we work, access healthcare, get an education, feed ourselves, and generally go about our lives. The economist Ronald Coase, in his famous 1937 paper “The Nature of the Firm,” provided an economic explanation for this: Organizations lowered transaction costs, making the provision of goods and services cheap, efficient, and reliable. Today, this organizational advantage is rapidly disappearing. The Internet is lowering transaction costs—costs of connection, coordination, and trade—and pointing to a future that increasingly favors distributed sources and social solutions to some of our most immediate needs and our most intractable problems.
Marina is executive director of IFTF, a position she assumed in 2006. Since joining the institute in 1999, she has led a variety of programs and worked with hundreds of organizations in business, education, government, and philanthropy, bringing a future perspective to improve innovation capacity, develop strategies, and design new products and services. A native of Odessa, Ukraine, she is particularly well suited to see things from a global viewpoint. She has worked all over the world and feels equally at home in Silicon Valley, Europe, India, and Kazakhstan. She has been a guest blogger on BoingBoing.net and writes for IFTF and major media outlets. A frequent speaker on future organizational, technology, and social issues, Marina has keynoted such events as the World Business Forum, the National Association of Broadcasters annual convention, and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges annual conference.
The Industrial Revolution, powered by oil and other fossil fuels, is spiraling into a dangerous endgame. The price of gas and food are climbing, unemployment remains high, the housing market has tanked, consumer and government debt is soaring, and the recovery is slowing. Facing the prospect of a second collapse of the global economy, humanity is desperate for a sustainable economic game plan to take us into the future.
Here, Jeremy Rifkin explores how Internet technology and renewable energy are merging to create a powerful “Third Industrial Revolution.” He asks us to imagine hundreds of millions of people producing their own green energy in their homes, offices, and factories, and sharing it with each other in an “energy internet,” just like we now create and share information online.
Rifkin describes how the five-pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution will create thousands of businesses, millions of jobs, and usher in a fundamental reordering of human relationships, from hierarchical to lateral power, that will impact the way we conduct commerce, govern society, educate our children, and engage in civic life.
In Visions, physicist and author Michio Kaku examines the great scientific revolutions that have dramatically reshaped the twentieth century--the quantum mechanics, biogenetics, and artificial intelligence--and shows how they will change and alter science and the way we live.
The next century will witness more far-reaching scientific revolutions, as we make the transition from unraveling the secrets of nature to becoming masters of nature. We will no longer be passive bystanders to the dance of the universe, but will become creative choreographers of matter, life, and intelligence.
The first section of Visions presents a shocking look at a cyber-world infiltrated by millions of tiny intelligence systems. Part two illustrates how the decoding of DNA's genetic structure will allow humans the "godlike ability to manipulate life almost at will." Finally, VISIONS focuses on the future of quantum physics, in which physicists will perfect new ways to manipulate matter and harness the cosmic energy of the universe.
Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun.
The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander…and when that happens, it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple.
Darwin Among the Machines retraces the steps that led us into the digital wilderness, no less wild for being a universe of our own device. Introducing a cast of known and unknown characters, George B. Dyson traces the course of the information revolution, illuminating the lives and work of visionaries-from the time of Thomas Hobbes to the time of John von Neumann-who foresaw the development of artificial intelligence, artificial life, and artificial mind. This deep and elegant book derives both its title and its outlook from Samuel Butlers 1863 essay Darwin Among the Machines. Observing the beginnings of miniaturization, self-reproduction, and telecommunication among machines, Butler predicted that natures intelligence, only temporarily subservient to technology, would resurface to claim our creations as her own. Updating Butlers arguments, Dyson has distilled the historical record to chronicle the origins of digital telecommunications and the evolution of digital computers, beginning long before the time of Darwin and exploring the limits of Darwinian evolution to suggest what lies beyond.
Social thinkers in all fields are faced with one unavoidable question: what does it mean to be 'human' in the 21st century? As definitions between what is 'animal' and what is 'human' break down, and as emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and nano- and bio- technologies develop, accepted notions of humanity are rapidly evolving.
Humanity 2.0 is an ambitious and groundbreaking book, offering a sweeping overview of key historical, philosophical and theological moments that have shaped our understandings of humanity. Tackling head on the twin taboos that have always hovered over the scientific study of humanity - race and religion - Steve Fuller argues thar far from disappearing, they are being reinvented.
Fuller argues that these new developments will force us to decide which features of our current way of life - not least our bodies - are truly needed to remain human, and concludes with a consideration of these changes for ethical and social values more broadly.
