Change Leaders Directory
Technology
and Innovation
Including: Developing and improving our tools
and infrastructure of accelerating change. Engineering intelligence
amplification (I.A.) and artificial/autonomous intelligence (A.I.).
Information, communications, energy, transportation, and other technologies
and the innovation processes surrounding them.
These
distinguished thought- and change-leaders are not affiliated with
ASF, but where we have contact information, they are all
formally invited to attend our annual conference, Accelerating
Change. Others to suggest? Please let
us know. Potential candidates should have published work that
deals uniquely, incisively and pragmatically with some scientific,
technological, business, or social dimension of accelerating change.
Female
and underrepresented minority
leaders are listed in green, and international
leaders in orange. Accompanying each individual's entry are sample
publications, and occasional ASF comments regarding topics of interest
for future Accelerating
Change or Acceleration
Studies conferences. Each
leader has been categorized on the basis of our subjective assessment,
from a small sample of their work. All may contact
us to edit, recategorize, multiply categorize, or delist their
entries at any time.
Chris Adami (Open
Problems in Artificial Life, 2000)
Richard Albright, Technology Roadmapping Scholar, Albright
Strategy Group.
Clark Aldrich, Simulations
and the Future of Learning, 2003; SimuLearn's
Virtual Leader.
Training the modern workforce through e-Learning
simulations.
James Bailey (After Thought, 1996)
William Sims Bainbridge, National Science Foundation. Homepage.
Workpage.
The
Future of Religion, 1986; Societal
Implications of Nanoscience & Nanotechnology, 2002;
Converging
Technologies for Improving Human Performance, 2002
Personality capture and NBIC convergence trends
Peter Bentley,
Senior Research Fellow, University College, London, UNITED
KINGDOM. Workpage.
Evolutionary
Design By Computers, 1999; Creative
Evolutionary Systems, 2001; Digital
Biology, 2002;
On
Growth, Form, and Computers, 2003
Merging evolutionary processes, developmental
biology and computer science.
Sergey Brin, Google
Managing large data sets in world of accelerating
information
Comment: Moore's law has driven a continued exponential growth of
general and scientific data (but not published scientific papers,
which are saturating) in recent decades. For a long time now, we
haven't been able to adequately navigate this exploding datacosm.
There have been new interfaces, but some, such as 3D visualization,
have been less valuable than pundits expected. The flood of new
data in genomics and proteomics is also providing new processing
and conceptual challenges. But the rapid growth of scientific, governmental
and corporate databases and the web itself are producing quantities
of data that challenge the limits of our best computers. New processing
platforms, distributed computing, grid computing, agent systems,
and superscalar simulation techniques are emerging, but our ability
to generate data permanently outruns our ability to process and
digest it, creating new economic opportunities.
George Bugliarello, Chancellor, Polytechnic U. Homepage.
"The
Biosoma: Synthesis of Biology, Machines, and Society",
2000
"Reflections
on Technological Literacy," 2000
James Burke, UNITED
KINGDOM, Connections,
1980; The
Day the Universe Changed, 1995; The
Pinball Effect, 1997; The
Knowledge Web, 1999; Circles,
2000
Technological innovation, diffusion, and assessment:
patterns and prospects
Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist, NASA
Langley Research Center.
Security threats from the rising power of individual
asymmetric destruction; Technology roadmapping; Web-based education
Nick Carr, Does
IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive
Advantage, 2004
The commoditization of many forms of IT and its
long-term leveling influence on competition.
Jim Clark, Chairman, World
Technology Network. Annual World Technology Summit. Broad coverage
of emerging technologies.
Jos De Mul,
Professor of Philosophy, Erasmus U, NETHERLANDS
The
Nature of Transhumanism
Eric Drexler, Foresight.org.
Homepage.
Nanosystems,
1992
Engines
of Creation, 1986
Karen Falkenberg,
Member, NAE/NRC Committee on Technology Literacy
Challenges in evaluating technological acceleration
Christine Finn,
Artifacts: An Archaeologist's
Year in Silicon Valley
Quotation: "Without a sense of the past, there is a danger of
raising a generation of change-junkies, weaned on the rush of accelerating
technologies, for whom history has no relevance. They would recognise
technological change only through its material culture—the stuff—brought
to them on the street and in a welter of media hits. In their world
where nothing stands still, they are left with no space to evaluate
why technological change happens and, crucially, its implications."
(more)
Steve Grand, Creature Labs. Homepage.
Creation,
2001
Simulation
Fred Hapgood, Technology writer. Homepage.
IT; virtual reality; underground urban development; policy
Jeff Harrow, The Harrow
Group, Editor, The Harrow Report (Formerly: Rapidly Changing
Face of Computing)
Danny Hillis (The
Connection Machine, 1989; Pattern
on the Stone, 1999 )
Computation; Singularity mechanisms and scenarios; The
"Long Now" perspective.
Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia
Comment: Nvidia, and other leading graphics processor developers,
in building the 'visual cortex technemes' of the coming substrate,
has been doubling its GPU transistor densities on a six to nine
month timescale in recent years, two times shorter than Moore's
Law (Wired 10.07, p. 102). Is this an unsustainable burst,
prior to commodification of these chips, or is it a persistent and
scalable new developmental standard?
Bart Kosko, Electrical Engineer, USC. Homepage.
Fuzzy
Thinking, 1993; Fuzzy
Future/Heaven in a Chip, 2000
Ray Kurzweil, AI Developer, KurzweilAI.net
The
Age of Intelligent Machines, 1992
The Age of Spiritual
Machines, 1999
"The Singularity
is Near", 2001
Double exponential growth, future of computation
Mark Madou, Microfabrication:
The Science of Miniaturization, 2002
Patti Maes,
Constructing Intelligent Agents, MIT
Scott Mize, AngstroVision. Advisory Chairman, Nanotech
Opportunity Report. Homepage.
The practical applications of near term nanotechnology.
Hans Moravec, Computer Scientist, CMU
Robot,
1999
Mind
Children, 1988
Scenarios for robotic and machine intelligence;
Computional learning paradigms
Pamela McCorduck,
Machines Who
Think, 1981, The Fifth Generation,
1983,
The Universal Machine, 1985, Rise of the Expert
Company, 1990,
The Futures of
Women, 1997
Theodore Modis (SWITZERLAND),
Predictions,
1992; Predictions:
10 Years Later, 2002
Forecasting
the Growth of Complexity and Change, Tech. Forecasting &
Social Change, 69, No 4, 2002.
Acceleration contrarian: "Global technological
inflection point circa 1990."
Patricia Moody (and
Dick Morley) The
Technology Machine: Manufacturing in 2020, 1999
Doug Mulhall, Our
Molecular Future, 2002. Nanotech and Ecology.
Cherry Murray, Lucent. Bell
Labs Senior VP of Physical Sciences Research
Enhancement of group communication, efficiency, and
creativity
Nils Nilsson
Emeritus Prof. of Engineering, Robotics Laboratory,
Stanford University
Teleo-Reactive
Robotics, Artificial Intelligence:
A New Synthesis, 1998
Charles Perrow, Normal
Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies, 1984/99;
Disasters Evermore?, 2007
Distributed systems, redundancy, and better government
regulation and oversight to minimize natural, industrial, and terrorist
disasters.
Mark Pesce
The
Playful World, 2000; VRML and virtual reality. Nanoenvironmental
debate.
Ian Pearson,
BT Exact Technologies (ENGLAND)
Christine Peterson,
Foresight.org. Homepage.
Unbounding
the Future, 1993
Nanotechnological accelerations
Rosalind Picard,
Affective Computing,
2000
Diane Piepol, Producer, USC
Institute for Creative Technologies
FlatWorld project: The race to digitally simulate reality.
Richard Rhodes
(Dark Sun, 1995) "The Nuclear Singularity."
Unusable weapons and the future of war.
Mihail Roco, NBIC
Convergence Conference
Nanotech, biotech, infotech, and cognitive science:
convergence technologies
Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google
Comment: Schmidt calculates that IT bandwidth has been doubling
every 12 months. (George Gilder originally proposed six months,
"Gilder's Law."). Schmidt's estimate was seconded by Probe
Research in a study of internet traffic 1997-2002. That Gilder's
revised law of bandwidth (12 months), like Poor's law (node density
doubling), is still hyperexponential vs. conventional Moore's law.
Other scholars (Brad De Long, 2002) have proposed that IT bandwidth
grows more slowly than processor power, which grows more slowly
than storage capacity.
John Sculley, Former CEO, Apple Computer
"In the near future, quantum microelectronics promises
to increase information processing capabilities by a factor of a
billion…"
Bob Schaller, Professor of Business, College of Southern
Maryland
Ph.D.: The Origins, Nature, and
Implications of Moore's Law, 1996 Homepage.
Workpage.
Larry Smarr, California Institute of Telecommunications and
Information Technology
Fred Stitt, San Francisco Institute of Architecture
Community space in an increasingly intelligent world
Ilkka Tuomi, FINLAND/SPAIN.
Bio.
"The
Lives and Death of Moore's Law," 2002.
Sherry Turkle,
Life on theScreen, The Second Self (Cyberspace,
MIT)
Nadejda Victor,
Program
for Human Environment, Rockefeller University
Author, "DRAMs as Model Organisms for the Study
of Technological Evolution." Technological Forecasting
and Social Change, 69 (2002).
Vernor Vinge, Mathematician, SDSU (Ret.); Science Fiction
Author
"The
Coming Technological Singularity," 1993
Singularity mechanisms, metrics, and scenarios
Peter Voss
Design approaches to the technological singularity;
Theories of general intelligence
Daniel Weld (First Law of Robotics, AAAI Safe Learning
Agents Section Chairs)
Strategies for safe learning agents
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Technological singularity mechanisms and scenarios;
Engineered "friendliness."
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