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Strategic Insights in Accelerating Technological Change

6 September, 2005
Newsletter Permalink: http://accelerating.org/newsletter/2005/6sep05.html
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Accelerating Change 2005 kicks off in 10 days - register now!

Don't miss your chance to meet Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil, Esther Dyson, Steve Jurvetson, David Fogel, George Gilder, and our 40 other world-class speakers and 300 forward-looking attendees at AC2005! ATimes readers can register for only $400 using the special AC2005-ATIMES registration code by 6pm on September 12.


Themes: AI and IA

Artificial intelligence (AI), broadly defined, improves the intelligence, capacity, and autonomy of our technology. Intelligence amplification (IA) empowers human beings and their social, political, and economic environments. Read more ...

Speakers
Accelerating Change speakers emphasize a mix of analysis, forecasting, and action plans and examples, using multidisciplinary inquiry and a synthesis of technical, entrepreneurial, and social development dialogs. Don't want to miss your favorite speaker? See the conference schedule.

Speakers Class of '05

Daniel G. Amen
SPECT and the Future of Mental Health
Janna Anderson
Imagining the Internet
Sonia Arrison
Emcee
Ruzena Bajcsy
What Should Be the Ultimate Goal of Our Education?
Peter Barrett
IPTV's Promise & the Creation of the Networked Digital Home
Peter Bishop
Foresight Consulting Tutorial
T. Colin Campbell
Changing the World One Bite at a Time
Jamais Cascio
Rise of the Participatory Panopticon
Tom Conger
Foresight Consulting Tutorial
Esther Dyson
The Accountable Net
Mark Finnern
Introduction to Intelligence Amplification
David Fogel
Accelerating Problem Solving by Combining Machine & Human Learning
Dileep George
New Models in Neural Science
George Gilder
Foresight Consulting Tutorial
Marcos Guillen
Cortical Emulators Rapidly Coming to Market
Moira Gunn
Special Host of Q&A With Ray
Bruno Haid
Complementing Worlds: Social Software, Protocols, & Algorithms
Robert Hecht-Nielsen (live via video) The Fundamental Mechanism of Cognition Joi Ito
The Future of Blogging
Neil Jacobstein
The Evolution of AI Applications

Shun-jie Ji
Sir, Why Futures Studies?


Steve Jurvetson
Open Genes, Memes, & Dreams
Ron Kaplan
Converging on Conversation
Mike Korns
Investment Tutorial

Ray Kurzweil
When Humans Transcend Biology

Sister Denise Lawrence
The Role of Meditation in Intelligent Learning

Alex Lightman
Globalization to the Edge

Patrick Lincoln
Prospects for Computing at the Right Level of Abstraction

Julian Lombardi
The Social Dimension of Croquet

Thomas Malone
The Future of Work

Harold Morowitz
Living Cells and Self Replicating Bots: Nanoscience & Biology
Peter Norvig
AI in the Middle Between Authors & Learners
Beth Noveck
Peer to Patent: Collective Intelligence for our Intellectual Property System
Bruno Olshausen
Neuroscience & Future Prospects for Intelligent Systems
Cory Ondrejka
Second Life Tutorial and
One Thing to Tell the World About Video Games
Jerry Paffendorf
Brave New Virtual Worlds
Scott Rafer
Smart Agents are People, not Software

Robin Raskin
Aren't We Forgetting Something? Social Responsibility
in Cyberspace

Philip Rosedale
Tipping the Metaverse
Blake Ross
When Hacker Met Seller: The Next Generation of Coders
Rudy Rucker
The Third Intellectual Revolution: Everything is a Computation
John Smart
How to Be a Tech Futurist: A Developmental Perspective on Accelerating Change
David Smith
The Social Dimension of Croquet
Cecily Sommers
Culture: The New Economy of Customer-Centric, Bottom-Up Innovation
Melanie Swan
Emcee
Jon Udell
Annotating the Planet: Freedom & Control in the New Era of Interactive Mapping
T. Sibley Verbeck
Moderator
Vernor Vinge
Can We Avoid a Hard Takeoff? Speculations on Issues in AI & IA
Terry Winograd
Teaching Innovation: Inventing the d.School


Attendees
Many of our past attendees have told us that while they think the speakers at Accelerating Change are great, what they love most are the in-between times when they get to meet and talk with the other unique attendees. We are proud of attracting intelligent, interesting, and action-oriented individuals to our events! This year, we have even more interactive networking opportunities than ever, with our Birds of a Feather Sessions and Participant Statements. If you haven't already, be sure to submit your participant statement by September 12th.

Tutorials
AC2005's Future Academy professional development tutorials provide skill-building experience for our entrepreneurial, technology-adept, future-minded, and innovation-oriented attendees. They are led by successful, forward-thinking experts, good at helping you gain high-value ideas and processes in a small group setting.This year's sessions cover topics in Foresight Consulting (with Peter Bishop, Tom Conger, and George Gilder), Investment (with Mike Korns), and Second Life (with Cory Ondrejka and Linden Lab staff).

Tech Night
Tech Night, our Friday evening reception, early registration, and technology demos (with no-host dinner afterward), will take place on September 16th from 6-9 PM at SAP Labs in Palo Alto, next door to Xerox PARC and two miles from Stanford University (Driving Directions). Tech Night is a free event for all AC2005 participants and provides a great opportunity to engage with the creators of some impactful new technologies. SAP Labs is an architecturally innovative building in a beautiful setting, making it an ideal place for our conference warm-up. If you are planning on attending Tech Night, please e-RSVP to Iveta Brigis.

Pictures of SAP Labs and the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab's unveiling of Buddy Buzz at Tech Night 2004:



200 Free Advance Copies of Singularity is Near
Keynote speaker and internationally-renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil will present free signed advance copies of his upcoming book, The Singularity is Near, which will be released nationally four days after the conference, to the first 200 registrants at Accelerating Change 2005. Additional copies will also be available for sale to conference participants. One of 2005's most anticipated new books, The Singularity is Near extensively makes the provocative case for accelerating and increasingly human-surpassing technological and computer advances in coming decades, and proposes a global "phase transition" circa 2040 where many forms of higher human thinking may be exceeded by global computing systems.

Kurzweil argues these systems will be seen not as separate from us, but as our increasingly personalized electronic extensions. If true, how can we ensure this will be an economically productive, socially stabilizing, and individually empowering transition? What are the major risks to be avoided? How do we protect the freedoms of those not interested in participating in this "digital future?" What might prevent or delay this scenario?

Attendees will have ample opportunity to explore these issues in an extended Q&A with Ray at AC2005, moderated by science radio personality Moira Gunn, host of NPR’s Tech Nation. Mr. Kurzweil is an inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, a winner of the Lemelson-MIT prize and the National Medal of Technology, and the founder of nine very successful technology companies. His internationally best-selling 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence has been published in nine languages.


What's Next in Commercial or Consumer Robotics? Win A Roomba at AC2005
Robotics pioneer iRobot has donated five Roombas to Accelerating Change 2005. We will give away these ingenious machines for the best 100-word (or less) answers to the question "What's Next in Commercial or Consumer Robotics?" by AC2005 attendees by 2pm on Sunday, Sept 18th. These brief, paragraph-length ideas can propose new commercial or consumer robots, new features for future Roombas, new and untapped market segments for existing or future robots, new technologies, or any other innovation you think needs to be or will soon be addressed. The time horizon can be as short as next year, and should be limited to ten years. You can discuss research, development, production, marketing, or any other aspect of the business model. All ideas are released to the public domain.

The five winners will be picked anonymously (and subjectively) by our panel of judges Sunday afternoon, and all ideas will be forwarded to Colin Angle, Rodney Brooks, Helen Greiner, and the other smart folks at iRobot after the event, along with the email addresses of the submitters. Are you an AC2005 registrant? Bring your 100 word entries to the conference, where we'll post them on a 3x5" index card. No more than five entries per AC2005 registrant, please. Can you make a clean sweep?

High School Scholarships

This year, up to 10 future-interested high school students are being awarded scholarships to attend Accelerating Change 2005 courtesy of the University of Advancing Technology, one of the nation's leading educational institutions for IT-oriented students. Education is an important part of ASF's nonprofit mission. We are honored to partner with UAT to bring young, dynamic minds to our annual event. There are still scholarships available, and if you know any high school students who would enjoy and benefit from attending the conference, please direct them to the scholarship page.

Co-locating Groups

We are also pleased to announce that three future-oriented groups are co-locating at AC2005. The American Cancer Society’s Futuring & Innovation Center led by Randy Moss, the FBI Futures Working Group led by Carl Jensen, and a group of Omidyar.net members led by Thomas Kriese.

ASF Mission
The ASF is an educational 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Los Angeles, California, engaged in research, education, consulting, and selective advocacy of communities and technologies of accelerating change. Our mission:
1. Promoting a multidisciplinary and critical understanding of accelerating technological change in service to professional competency and economic, political, social and personal development.
2. Helping business and society examine the opportunities and risks of accelerating rates of change through our conferences, publications, discussion groups, websites, and community.
3. Improving the way individuals and organizations look at the future by improving the fields of Futures Studies and Acceleration and Development Studies. Read more ...

Conference Sponsors:

Robotics Trends' second annual RoboNexus Conference & Exposition is being held on October 6-9, 2005 at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, CA. RoboNexus is the largest robotics event in the Western Hemisphere, and will feature a multifaceted educational forum and exposition designed to bring together all of the key participants driving the emerging $4B mobile robotics and intelligent systems. RoboNexus will feature the largest robotics business and consumer exposition in the North America and will highlight robotics products, technologies and competitions, along with robots from the foremost companies and research labs in the world.

The event website is http://www.robonexus.com. To register for the event and save $100 off the regular conference rates, go to http://www.robonexus.com/registration.htm and use priority code RNCD100.


October 22-27, 2005 - Advancing Beneficial Nanotech: Focusing on the Cutting Edge
13th Foresight Conference, Sponsored by the Foresight Nanotech Institute

Advancing Beneficial Nanotechnology focuses on the latest nanotechnology applications, research initiatives, public policy issues, and the future vision of nanotechnology. Speakers including Peter Diamandis, XPrize; Jerry Mander, International Forum of Globalization; Randy Hayes, Rainforest Action Network; Aubrey de Grey, University of Cambridge; Adam Werbach, Conservationist; George Atkinson, US Department of State and many more, will discuss important goals for nanotechnology including developing clean energy solutions, providing clean water, improving human health, space development and making powerful information technology available worldwide.

Discount to ATimes readers: If you are attending 3.5 days of the conference and register by September 1, 2005, the regular registration fee is $695. To register with your $100 discount, follow this link. http://foresight.org/conference2005/registration.html. Choose the option of attendance. then type in your special rate code “Accelerating". Type in the total amount due – this is your discounted rate of $595. Proceed to register and your discount will be processed automatically.

ASF is playing a founding role in the first ever Second Life Community Convention at the New York Law School, October 8-9. Jerry Paffendorf, ASF Community Director and moderator of the Second Life Future Salon, is a leading organizer of the event which will bring together 160 Second Life residents, virtual world entrepreneurs, designers, and scholars of cyberspace to explore and create the future of the 3D World Wide Web, often dubbed the Metaverse. The event is a co-located extension of the New York Law School's third annual State of Play conference on law, virtual worlds, and video games. It is possible to attend both events back-to-back for several days of uniquely high-level discussion and networking on the twin themes of emerging online worlds and graphical Web interfaces.


Call for Submissions
ASF is always seeking interesting submissions for our Accelerating Times (AT) web publication. AT is a "free and priceless" monthly newsletter covering scientific, technological, business, policy, and social dialogs in accelerating change. Anyone may submit scan hits, mini-articles, pictures, artwork, quotes and questions to mail(at)accelerating.org. Accepted work will appear, fully credited, in future issues. Also please submit your feedback on Accelerating Times articles to the Future Salon Weblog, beneath each article as posted. Thanks!

ASF


Register for AC2005!


Conference Themes: AI & IA

Speaker Lineup

Attendees

Future Academy Tutorials

Tech Night at SAP Labs

Kurzweil's Singularity is Near


Win a Roomba

High School Scholarships

Co-Locating Groups

ASF Mission

Conference Sponsors

Coming Events

AC2005 SPONSORS

Lead Sponsor


Platinum Sponsor




Gold Sponsors











Global Awareness Sponsor



High School Scholarship Sponsor



Bronze Sponsors



COMING EVENTS

Accelerating Change 2005
September 16-18
Palo Alto, CA

Telecosm 2005
September 26-28
Lake Tahoe, CA

MIT Emerging Technologies Conference
September 28-29
Cambridge, MA

RoboNexus
October 6-9
San Jose, CA

Second Life Community Convention
October 8-9
New York, NY


Pop!Tech 2005
October 19-22
Camden, ME

Foresight Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology
October 22-27
San Francisco, CA

SUBSCRIBE: http://accelerating.org/atsignup.html
Thanks for telling your acceleration-aware friends.