The Golden 20s of the 20th century began with the end of WW1 and ended with the stock market crash of 1929. It was considered the decade that was the calm before the storm. However, it was a decade of sweeping technological change and innovation that transformed industrial productivity, life in general and in turn the world economy. It improved the general well-being of many. Electricity, the internal combustion engine and radio changed everyday life forever.

CODEBREAKER tells the story of one of the most important people of the 20th century. Alan Turing set in motion the computer age and his World War II codebreaking helped save two million lives. Yet few people have heard his name, know his tragic story, or understand his legacy. In 1954, Turing committed suicide at age 41 after being forced to undergo hormone therapy to “fix” his sexual orientation. He left behind a lasting legacy and lingering questions about what else he might have accomplished if society had embraced his unique genius instead of rejecting it.

Eccerobot At the swissnex San Francisco conference earlier this year, scientists from Switzerland and the US discussed their research on humanoid robots, cognitive robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI). Talk revolved around how some robots self-reflect, self-improve, and adapt to new circumstances, and whether it’s possible for robots of the future to possess the same cognitive characteristics as humans. more …

From the website: John was a legendary computer scientist at Stanford University who developed time-sharing, invented LISP, and founded the field of Artificial Intelligence.* In March 2011 John launched Project JMC with the objective to make his work more approachable and accessible. The Project JMC team is continuing to help realize his objective. In this site you will find all John’s work, including his social commentary, and acknowledgements of his outstanding contributions and impact.

How do robots see the world? How do they gather meaning from our streets, cities, media and from us? This is an experiment in found machine-vision footage, exploring the aesthetics of the robot eye.

Cory Doctorow’s latest talk ‘The Coming War on General Purpose Computing’ really puts things in perspective about life in the 21st century. This got me thinking more about functional programming languages and how they could be a future casualty in a similar way that we currently see the intentional limitation/crippling of turing machines. What if Paul Graham missed something very dark in his essay The Hundred-Year Language ? The essay does not mention the potential role that government, industry and academia might play in the development, legality and distortion of such a language.

In 1972 Ed Catmull (founder of Pixar) and his colleagues created the world’s first 3D rendered movie, an animated version of Ed’s left hand. This is the film that they produced. It includes some “making of” footage (around 1:30) and some other early experiments.

White paper : To a mathematical theory of evolution and biological creativity We present an information-theoretic analysis of Darwin’s theory of evolution, modeled as a hill-climbing algorithm on a fitness landscape. Our space of possible organisms consists of computer programs, which are subjected to random mutations. We study the random walk of in-creasing fitness made by a single mutating organism. In two different models we are able to show that evolution will occur and to characterize

Artificial Intuition – A New Possible Path To Artificial Intelligence – by Monica Anderson Artificial Intelligence was born in Computer Science departments, and inherited their value sets including Correctness. This mindset, this necessity to be logical, provable, and correct has been a fatal roadblock for Artificial Intelligence since its inception. The world is Bizarre, and Logic can not describe it. Artificial Intuition will easily outperform Logic based Artificial Intelligence for almost any problem in a Bizarre problem domain.

Quotes from Don E. Knuth : “If we make an unbiased examination of the accomplishments made by mathematicians to the real world of computer programming, we are forced to conclude that, so far, the theory has actually done more harm than good. There are numerous instances in which theoretical “advances” have actually stifled the development of computer programming, and in some cases they have even made it take several steps backward!

Sonoluminescence: A Galaxy of Nanostars Created in a Beaker (NASA) The Idea Factory – Learning to Think at MIT, Pepper White : “This is a personal story of the educational process at one of the world’s great technological universities. Pepper White entered MIT in 1981 and received his master’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1984. His account of his experiences, written in diary form, offers insight into graduate school life in general—including the loneliness and even desperation that can result from the intense pressure to succeed—and the purposes of engineering education in particular.

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley : Re-reading but not from any paradise-engineering paranoia perspective. Simply insightful, focused and a great style. First covered this in high school decades ago. It’s ironic and deviously cool that this was actually course mandated at my high school ! (Have yet to finish Island.) Pugetopolis – Knute Berger : The Seattle analog of Palahniuk’s A Walk in Portland, Oregon. Useful because apparently Seattle is one of America’s most difficult cities to grok.