As well as the X Prizes, Mr. Diamandis is cofounder and chairman of Singularity University, where the futurist Ray Kurzweil’s ideas of exponentially accelerating technology are explored. Despite being unusually optimistic myself about what lies ahead for humanity, I’m not yet convinced that we are about to see almost infinite rates of technological improvement — Mr. Kurzweil’s singularity — resulting, for example, in the indefinite extension of life. […]

Education Many of the world’s critical problems have a common root in ignorance, and educational technologies provide an unprecedented opportunity to reach billions of people, and build a future characterized by informed dialog, foresight, and systems that work. How can technology be used to provide personalized education to the world’s developing areas?

Security In a world plagued by wars, terrorism, and crime, nations seek many different kinds of security for their citizens, as well as freedom from fear and corruption. How can exponential technology be used to address and improve global security issues?

Energy Our civilization fundamentally depends on energy, and we need to make a rapid transition from low-efficiency systems and high dependence on fossil fuels, to high efficiency systems and cost-effective renewable fuels. How can exponential technologies be used to provide humanity with low-cost and abundant energy to meet their needs for prosperity?

Global Health There are large and growing discontinuities between current knowledge of public health and medicine and its effective application around the world – millions suffer and die from preventable diseases, and the entire world remains at risk of pandemics. How can technology be used to provide billions with low-cost, ubiquitous healthcare, and help to identify and prevent pandemics?

Poverty Living standards have increased significantly in the past two centuries, but more than 20% of the world today lives in extreme poverty —  unable to access resources that address their problems. How can exponential technologies be leveraged to create new jobs and wealth to alleviate poverty?

Space The grand challenge of space includes abundant energy and material resources, a planetary-scale network of sensors and systems measuring global conditions, and a vast, open frontier for exploration – but humans haven’t yet built industrial-strength solutions to realize these opportunities rapidly and cost effectively. How can the vast and abundant energy and material resources of space be used to address many of humanity’s grand challenges?

These areas were chosen because they are among the most pressing global grand challenges. And, based on the caliber of applications we’ve reviewed and students already selected, the class of GSP11 will be some of the most ready to develop the future-focused and innovative solutions required to effectively address each area. As always, we look forward to working with GSP11 to addressing these areas, and to help shape a more positive future!

The GSP11 summer program runs 10 -weeks, from June 19 through August 28, 2011. With the help of world- class faculty from academia, business, and government, the purpose of Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program is to educate, inform, and prepare a generation of leaders for future disruption and opportunities created by exponentially advancing technologies and to apply that knowledge to solve humanity’s Grand Challenges.

You can apply online at singularityu.org/apply.

Applications will be evaluated and student selections made four times over the coming 6 months, with final admissions notifications going out by April 30, 2011. Completed applications will be considered during each of the four admissions rounds.

GSP 2009 alum Ross Shott is taking the helm as SU’s Admissions Director. For any questions about Singularity University’s application process, Ross can be reached at applications@singularityu.org. We hope you can join us!

Singularity University co-founders Dr. Ray Kurzweil and Dr. Peter H. Diamandis will formally introduce the GSP-10 class and introduce the students to their 10-week exploration of the convergence of science, exponentially accelerating technologies, and grand challenges. Dr. Larry Brilliant of the Skoll Urgent Threat Fund will keynote the event.

“The past year has demonstrated pressing global challenges, as well as a significant shift in the zeitgeist for exponential and accelerating technologies,” said Dr. Ray Kurzweil, co-founder and chancellor, Singularity University. “It is only through the scale of exponentially growing information technologies that we can meet these challenges.  It is our goal at Singularity University to foster a deep understanding of these technologies and through the team projects to directly solve urgent world needs.”

Ten Weeks of Study, A Lifetime of Innovation

The Graduate Summer Program is a ten-week interdisciplinary curriculum designed to facilitate understanding, collaboration, and innovation across a broad range of carefully chosen scientific and technological disciplines whose developments are exponentially accelerating. In addition to lectures and workshops with world-class leaders, students can also participate in hands-on excursions to leading Silicon Valley labs and companies, and exposure to NASA’s many technologies.

From more than 1,600 pre-applicants, the 80 graduate and post-graduate students in the summer program were chosen based on their level of expertise in individual “tracks,” demonstrated entrepreneurial and leadership skills, and their commitment to addressing and solving important issues facing our world. Taught by the leading minds in their respective fields, the GSP curriculum tracks include: future studies and forecasting; policy, law and ethics; finance and entrepreneurship; networks and computing systems; biotechnology and bioinformatics; nanotechnology; medicine, neuroscience and human enhancement; AI and robotics; energy and ecological systems; and space and physical sciences.

And the keystone of the GSP, the challenging Ten to the Ninth Power Plus (10^9+) group projects, are designed to positively affect at least one billion people within the next 10 years in five key areas. SU faculty chose five challenges for this year’s class: home energy, water, vertical farming, up-cycling, and space exploration.

“The biggest changes affecting the world today, such as the financial crisis, the growth of social media, medical technologies, aspects of climate change, are all rooted in accelerating and exponential factors,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, co-founder and chairman at Singularity University. “Billion dollar companies are popping up overnight while century-old companies are folding. Our 10-week Graduate Studies Program is an extraordinary program for graduate and post-graduate students to understand exponential technologies, their projected growth, their disruptive nature and their ability change the world. Students gain a working knowledge of ten different “exponential tracks,” as well as take an interdisciplinary deep dive to learn how to better manage and navigate these technologies. This year’s class of students are incredibly accomplished and truly exceptional, we expect the effects of the GSP graduates and their 10^9+ projects to be far-reaching and positively affect humanity’s challenges.”

We certainly agree with the acceleration in technology and the enormous impacts they continue to have on our lives.  But the major benefits also come with major costs and risks — the oil disaster in the Gulf is a clear example of that. It’s also clear that many people around the world — including policy makers or business leaders — would like a better handle on the dramatic impact rapidly advancing technologies have on society. The impact of the financial crisis, itself rooted in accelerating factors, is a further example.

We work to bring together students from around the world and from a wide variety of backgrounds: they are researchers and teachers, NGO workers and social and business entrepreneurs. Next Saturday, 80 students from 35 countries will start a 10-week intensive Graduate Studies Program that is the heart of Singularity University.

In Week One, we’ll bring together global experts in our grand challenges to examine the characteristics of home energy, clean water, the future of food production, and upcycling of consumer waste. They’ll learn what’s been tried, what’s worked, and what’s failed in these areas. After that, they’ll spend half the program getting unique interdisciplinary views of accelerating technologies — including the state of the art and what might be possible in the next decade.  The second half is spent entirely on a set of team projects leveraging these technologies and working on products and services that can help people address them. The four team projects from our inaugural summer are a great testament to our approach.

Our curriculum spends significant time on the risks of these accelerating technologies as well as the benefits. We logically conclude it is probable that these technologies are coming, whether people like them or not, and it’s quite important to try to study them and their consequences, both good and bad. Some may see optimistic projections as wishful thinking, and indeed there are those who believe in a better future simply because they like the idea. But even if one assigns a low probability to the world changing events and technologies we study in our sessions, the effects are so dramatic that it would be an error not to have a place to study them.

Mr. Kurzweil has often stated that war is a very expensive method of human development, while technology has been an extraordinarily powerful and inexpensive method. We at Singularity University agree: our view is that these accelerating technologies can actually scale to meet the needs of our Grand Challenges.

Salim Ismail
CEO & Executive Director
Singularity University

While the flesh-and-blood version of Mr. Brin sat miles away at a computer capable of remotely steering a robot, the gizmo rolling around here consisted of a printer-size base with wheels attached to a boxy, head-height screen glowing with an image of Mr. Brin’s face.

The BrinBot obeyed its human commander and sputtered around from group to group, talking to attendees about Google and other topics via a videoconferencing system.

The BrinBot was hardly something out of Star Trek. It had a rudimentary, no-frills design and was a hodgepodge of loosely integrated technologies. Yet it also smacked of a future that the Singularity University founders hold dear and often discuss with a techno-utopian bravado: the arrival of the Singularity — a time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when a superior intelligence will dominate and life will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state. […]

See the Photo Slideshow

As one of the companies launched from last year’s 10^9 team projects, CiviGuard is making great progress in the challenge to positively impact one billion people within 10 years. We look forward to following their successes throughout the year and beyond!

CiviGuard and City of Manor, Texas Partner to Bring Emergency Communications 2.0 to Citizens | CiviGuard to Announce First Government Customer at Gov 2.0 Expo

CiviGuard, a pioneer in Emergency Communications 2.0, announced the City of Manor, Texas as its first public sector customer.  CiviGuard and Manor will collaborate on a pilot deployment of the CiviGuard platform, which delivers authoritative, location-specific alerts and guidance in real-time to civilian populations via smartphones. CiviGuard will discuss details of the partnership and initial deployment during a keynote presentation at the Gov 2.0 Conference in Washington, DC later today.

The CiviGuard platform is the first in the world to deliver near real-time information from authorities to civilians by combining cutting-edge smartphone technologies such as HTML5, cloud-based infrastructure, multi-touch scenario management and intelligent multi-channel message distribution into a single offering.

“We are thrilled to be announcing Manor, Texas as CiviGuard’s first public sector client at the prestigious Gov 2.0 Expo,” said CiviGuard CEO & co-founder Zubin Wadia.  “Manor has a proven reputation and appetite for innovative technology solutions that focus on enhancing the way citizens interact with their government. This partnership is the first step towards achieving our goal of making CiviGuard’s platform the global standard for Emergency Communication 2.0.”

“The City of Manor was thoroughly impressed by the innate capabilities of CiviGuard’s cutting-edge emergency communications solution,” said Dustin Haisler, CIO for Manor, Texas. “CiviGuard’s advantage is clear – its rapid-messaging capabilities, its location-specific alert focus, and cross-platform optimization enable the City’s first responders to more effectively disseminate crucial, actionable information to civilians in crisis situations. The City of Manor prides itself on making sure government is more accessible, efficient and responsive to the needs of its citizens and we feel confident that CiviGuard will be a solid partner to further our citizen-centric approach to governance.”

CiviGuard presented at the Gov 2.0 Expo keynote kick-off on Tuesday, May 25 at 5:20pm (EDT) at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. Please visit http://www.gov2expo.com/gov2expo2010/public/schedule/detail/14850 for presentation details.

We are in an era of accelerating change, moving toward a future that will be profoundly different from the past we grew up in. But what will the nature of that change be? What will the future look like?

For the last 7 days I have been in an executive program designed by Singularity University to give some insight into that complex question. We looked at a number of technological fields, lectured by experts assembled to give us some idea as to where current research is and to where it is going. We visited some of the cutting-edge companies here in Silicon Valley.

Just as interesting, I got to visit with 44 of my fellow information seekers from 15 countries and extremely diverse backgrounds, along with a dozen college students, as well as the faculty. The group ranged from very successful entrepreneurs to academics to relatively high-level government workers to starry-eyed young people just starting out. There were a lot more applicants than could be accommodated, and the staff did a good job of choosing a group of people who all “brought something to the table” besides their entry fee of $15,000. The days were typically 14-15 hours, and there was a lot of discussion amongst us on the topics of the day.

This week we depart from my usual letter on finance and economics so I can report on a few of the ideas I came across. Some truly grabbed my interest, some confirmed my thinking, and others quite frankly either disappointed or alarmed me. This will not be my normal narrative, but rather short observations cribbed from my notes and thoughts.

As I am on (yet again) a plane to San Antonio for a speech tomorrow morning, there will not be the usual links; and in some cases I must confess I made notes without writing down the name of the speaker. Mea culpa. So, sit back and let me share what has been a great week. (And I suspect that a few of you will be happy that we are ignoring Greece for at least one week!)

I, Robot

I think the positive surprise takeaway (for me at least) was how far we have advanced in artificial intelligence and especially robotics. Artificial intelligence has been promised to us for decades, and has been a disappointment for so long that I have consigned it to the dustbin of my research. Ditto for robots. I mean, seriously, if the Roomba (a glorified vacuum cleaner) is the best we can do after decades of work, how are AI and robots going to change the world? This is hardly the world that I grew up reading about in Isaac Asimov’s brilliant I, Robot sci-fi series some 40 years ago.

It is all well and good for a single-purpose robot to be designed to make a spot weld on a car, but a general-purpose robot seemed a long way off. As far as AI goes, I am reminded of the old joke about a young geek who specializes in AI sitting at a bar, and this gorgeous blond comes up to him and they begin to talk. One thing leads to another and they end up in her room, where he proceeds to spend the entire night telling her how good things are going to be. AI has been a lot of talk for decades, and as with our geek, not much more.

Three-time shuttle astronaut Dan Barry discusses his experiences in space and the future of robotics during Singularity University's program.

The robotic sessions were led by Dan Barry, a three-time astronaut and veteran of many space station adventures (as well as appearing on “Survivor!”). What I saw onscreen and heard about has made me rethink my doubts about robotics. There are significant strides being made in mobility and utility in robotics. I saw robots walking on four feet through very difficult terrain, on ice, and up stairs. Robot “hands” are a lot further along than I had thought. Mobile robots on wheels, and walking balanced on two feet, are working today.

The ability of robots to recognize their surroundings, to differentiate between a table and a glass on the table (which is a very difficult thing to program), to pick up the glass, etc. is advancing at a fairly good pace. Dan is an enthusiastic advocate, and it was easy to get infected with his vision, but I can see a robotics industry in the 2020s actually having some significance in the US and world economy. We explored all manner of potential uses for robots, some with more economic potential than others. I am often asked where the jobs of the future will come from. It may be in robotics.

I was particularly drawn to the personal assistant robot. It is actually plausible to design a robot to be the “maid” in a home, to be able to purchase groceries, to assist the elderly, etc. These are the repeatable types of tasks that can be programmed and learned. We may only be ten years away from a nascent and powerful new industry. Now, this is not the robot of I, Robot. It will not have intellectual conversations with you. But it will respond to voice commands and clean up, put away toys, etc. Cooking, however, other than microwave foods, is a LOT harder. You will have to make your own omelets for a few decades.

The Mauldin Test

When (if ever) do we get computers that are self-aware? Alan Turing proposed in 1950 what has become known as the Turing Test of a machine’s ability to demonstrate intelligence. It proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural-language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which tries to appear human. All participants are placed in isolated locations. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test.

One participant suggested that in the future, as we get closer to true AI, computers should be tasked with designing the next generation of AI and computers. I pointed at that if we were to do so, then the Turing Test might not be the best way to determine if we had true artificial intelligence rather than just extremely sophisticated programs. I proposed the Mauldin Test. When a computer tells us that it no longer wishes to program a smarter computer, we will have arrived at the point of self-awareness and survival instinct. I suggest that is true AI. Just a thought.

Who Stole My Nanotech?

Ralph Merkle regaled us with the promise of nanotechnology to make anything and everything. Very tiny molecular machines would assemble all manner of things, from roads and homes to furniture to computers. The problem is that this was pretty much the same speech he was giving ten years ago. Not much progress has been made in the ensuing decade. This was perhaps the most disappointing note at the conference for me.

Let me differentiate between nanotech and nanoscale. Nanotech is the ability of very small machines to build useful objects one atom and molecule at a time. Nanoscale is the technology that creates very small objects to do useful things. An example would be carbon nanotubes, which are proving to have all sorts of useful properties.

There is very little money being put into actual nanotech research. We are at least two decades and hundreds of billions away from Merkle’s (and Freitas’ and others’) vision, if even then. It is still in the arena of pure research, far from any potential commercial application. And there does not seem to be a lot of research in the field.

Nanoscale, however, is a different story. Batteries made from carbon nanotubes hold tremendous promise for better storage (by 400 times less weight per watt output). Filtering of seawater to produce fresh water, increased computer speed and power – there is a long and rapidly growing list of nanoscale advances.

If we ever do get actual molecular nanotech, it may look more like biotech, as we slip in on nanotech from the side. After all, combine a few cells and you eventually get a human being. For some, this is the path to robust nanotech.

Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink

And speaking of water (above), I was hoping to hear that we were further along with the cheap purification of water. I queried several venture capitalists, who see literally thousands and thousands of business proposals. While lots of people are working on it, they are aware of nothing on the near horizon. Water may be my #1 concern about the future. It is an intractable problem and one that must be solved. There is Microsoft- or Google-type wealth awaiting the team that creates an inexpensive way to purify water. Water management will be a major issue in the future. There are those who think we will go to war over oil or energy in the future. I rather doubt it. Water rights are going to be the issue that will divide nations and peoples unless we can find new technologies to create cheap supplies of fresh water and move it to where it is needed.

The Promise of Biotech

Ok, I am on record of late with my view that biotech is going to be a bubble in the latter part of this decade. I am actually starting to invest in smaller-cap biotech companies that hold what I think is significant potential intellectual property. In conversations with my fellow attendees, I think the consensus is that biotech holds the most immediate promise for transforming our lives.

A little background. The human genome project was launched in 1990. It cost $3 billion. At the time, detractors said it was a waste of time, as it would take a thousand years – and they were right, if you assumed then-current technology. It actually took only 11 years (to 2001), as new technologies were constantly invented. Craig Venter started Celera in 1998 and finished in a dead heat with the government for a fraction of the cost, at around $300 million.

Where are we now? Ray McCauley of Illumina told us of a machine they make that can do the entire human genome in one week. The cost of the machine is $750,000. He predicts that by 2013 the cost of doing your personal genome will be around $100, and in the future the cost will be as little as $1.

A prize has been offered for the first team to sequence 100 human genomes for $10,000 each in ten days or less. The $10 million USD prize, donated by diamond prospector Steward Blusson, will be claimable until the deadline of 4 October 2013. Many scientists around the world think it is highly likely the prize will be claimed before the deadline, probably substantially before.

Moore’s Law says computing power is doubling every few years? That’s so slow and old hat by biotech standards. Genome “power” is doubling every six months. It will be routine for you to get your own human template in a few years.

Those expensive toys that do your genome? Jun Wang (for some firm) in China bought 128 of them. That is the equivalent of being able to process the entire NCBI genome databank every 15 minutes. Although Ray would not say, I got the impression the Chinese simply opened their checkbook and said “How many will you sell us?”

Put this into context. Arguably one of the true US experts on stem cells, Mike West of Biotime, is also going to China to do a joint venture with the leading stem cell researcher there. They will be in human trials soon. (It’s the same story with International Stem Cell Research, which is going to Russia.) Mike lamented to me over dinner that he could not get the trial speed he needs here in the US. There are a lot of other areas of research that are going offshore, too. Biotech is an area where the US has a clear lead today. We are in danger of losing that. Someone at the FDA needs to start a program that can keep up with the warp speed of change in the biotech world, or watch our lead go to the rest of the world, which is quite willing to leapfrog us. For all the talk about jobs, you would think someone would pay attention here.

DIY-Bio

I don’t know how I feel about this next one. It has possibilities for both good and evil. Do It Yourself Biotech (DIY-Bio) is becoming a real movement, akin to the movement created by computer nerds in 1975, looking to build their own personal computers. But the real difference now is that this time they are connected by the internet.

The movement is just what it sounds like. The equipment and technology to do genetic experiments is getting cheaper and easier to access. Literally, some people do it in their closets. Want to drop a duck gene into a pig cell? That could be fun. Do you get a pig that can fly? But you can also test the water ecology around you and do other quite socially useful things, and even have a chance to stumble on a real advance. One teen group in New York recently bought a lot of fish from various restaurants and stores. Their genetic testing determined that 35% of what was sold as a particular type of fish was something else. Just cover it up with sauce and who can tell?

I like the idea of ten thousand people randomly working on solutions to real problems. But, and this is a big but, playing with genes seems a little problematic to me in a non-lab setting. The presenter pointed out that there are all types of really bad bugs out there, and the human race has survived, but somehow that did not allay my concerns.

The next presentation was from Special Agent Edward You of the FBI, who told us that the FBI is paying attention. That made me feel better, until he basically said they were not sure what to do. We can’t dial back the clock, but some self-policing mechanism needs to be set up. As one person pointed out, we require all sorts of licenses for people who want to dive into the ocean. Increased complexity (diving into caves, for instance) requires additional licenses.

I am generally your basic libertarian. Let people do what they want to do – but I think I draw the line here. Access to equipment, materials, etc. ought to require some sort of license and some awareness training. Call me old-fashioned, but just as we don’t let kids randomly experiment with uranium, maybe we should think about how we go about playing God. Don’t get me wrong, I want people experimenting and pushing the edges. I just want someone supervising the sandbox.

Random Takeaways

OK, the next few pages are going to be short paragraphs from my notes, with no real connections among them. Very stream of consciousness. Take a deep breath and dive in. The major cost of biotech is people. China has cheap people, and that may give them an advantage.

In regards to the DIY-Bio movement, one of attendees behind me said, “OK, does this mean in the future we buy 99-cent bio apps for our iBiophone?” Think about that for a second. Just a few years ago, the thought of 100,000 iPhone apps for a few bucks or even pennies or free seemed ridiculous. Now it is commonplace. By the way, I met a young kid from India. He has an app to turn my letter into a very easy iPhone app and is also programming for the rest of the phone world. Watch for me on your phone in a few months. It is indeed a brave new world.

The theme of the conference was accelerating technology. Things are going faster and faster. I had a thought. Our bodies can take only so much acceleration before we pass out. Will an increasingly fast world have the same effect on our minds? Is there a limit to how much change we can adapt to? Just a question; not sure of the answer.

Greg Papadopoulos, who is the Chief Technology Officer of Sun Microsystems, gave us his thoughts on the breakthroughs that are likely to happen and will change the world as we know it. New approaches to energy efficiency are on the horizon in 5-10 years. We will see a major breakthrough in memory, which will make the ability to remember (store) things really cheap. He speculated that there will be a new energy technology that will come out of left field to completely change the energy equation. By the way, this prediction showed up several times, from a variety of speakers. (I must admit that is also my personal prediction as well.) Greg thinks we will have silicon photonics by 2020 (think faster, more powerful computers). Quantum computing is way out there, but biocomputing may be here in the mid to late 2020s.

Steve Jurvetson, the #1 most influential geek (according to Wired, I think) simply blew us away. I would like to tie him to a chair for five hours and find out why he invested the billions of dollars in the scores of companies he has helped launch. He is focusing on clean tech, as is a lot of Silicon Valley. He sees 5,000 business plans a year. He talks about how we are soon in for Perpetual Future Shock. There are 6 x 10 to the 21 microbes in the ocean. There are microbes that only exist in certain parts of the ocean. We have only begun to explore the world. It is going to take a long time to switch to renewables. Maybe by 2030. He is blown away by how many incredible ideas there are. This is a guy who did his EE major at Stanford in 2.5 years and was #1 in his class. Intimidatingly smart.

As an aside, someone mentioned that at the TED Talks a few weeks ago, Bill Gates made a major commitment to nuclear energy. Did you know that the nuclear waste we already have could power the US for centuries? The technology exists to use it, as France has done for a long time. If someone truly thinks the US should be energy independent from foreign oil, this is the path. And it is green! Why not government-guaranteed loans for nuclear power and a requirement that every state or locality find a place to put a nuclear plant in their area. Pick a locale. If you choose not to put one “in your backyard” then you pay double for your power, which makes the power for the areas that choose to have nuclear plants free! That would attract some voters for nuclear plants. We need to stop sending money to the rest of the world for oil. Now that is stimulus you can believe in! (OK, off my soapbox.)

Another speaker saw potential game changers in low-cost photovoltaics and a smart grid. (Let’s hope he’s right!) He also speculated and laid out the technology to use CO2 as a source for fuel. Basically, you take CO2-emitting sources and use them to feed biofuel farms. Seems plausible.

Christopher deCharms, CEO of Omneuron, blew me away. Seems they can recognize patterns in your brain when you see certain (simple) objects. And they are teaching patients to control certain regions of their brains that have to do with pain. They are having some success, although he stressed that it was early and the tests were rudimentary. That aside, that we are even potentially in that world is amazing.

Jason Bobe from the Personal Genome Project at the Harvard Medical School talked about how they intend to first publish (publicly) 100 personal genomes and then go on to 100,000 in order to create a database for researchers to use to find correlations between certain genes and diseases. I plan to volunteer to be part of that initial 100, if they will take me. I really don’t care who knows my genome, and if it will help move the science forward I am more than ready.

They are also moving beyond the human genome. They can now “sample” your blood to see what kind of exposure to certain diseases, metals, cancers, etc. you have had and then relate that to your genes. That is going to produce some very powerful and controversial results. But what we learn is going to give us clues to how to fight all sorts of diseases.

Jason noted that people who participate have no guarantee of being anonymous. It seems some young man a few years ago, upon hearing that he was the offspring of an anonymous sperm donor, did some research and found out who his father was. “Surprise! I’m your anonymous son!”

In the future, the world will get turned on its head. Instead of 15 minutes of fame, you will only get 15 minutes of anonymity. The day before something is seen as a breakthrough, it is a crazy idea.

One guy was asking for dollar bills and other small foreign currency. They are doing DNA samples to see where and how many people have touched a particular dollar bill. In the not too distant future, you’d better be careful who you pay with cash if you don’t want to be traced.

Futurist James Canton, Ph.D, is a regular speaker at Singularity University. He founded the Institute for Global Futures, a San Francisco based think tank that forecasts innovations and trends. IGF provides futures research and strategy consulting to the Fortune 1000, associations and governments.

Dr. James Canton gave a very interesting talk on the future of the internet. He predicts that within 3-5 years we will live in a blended reality. Everything will be connected. The internet will become self-assembling. In the near future, information will find you rather than the other way around. Future networks will mimic living ecosystems. Web 3.0 will be the Collaborative Web. Not human to human, but human to machine to avatar to network. I am not sure what that means exactly, but he was quite convincing.

Information that finds you? Will there even be a need for me in the future? He too thought the really big surprise in the future would be a new source of energy, not to mention a new search topology with more predictive analytic search. There is a lot more, and if I can get a link to his speech I will.

Home Again, Cambridge, and Cincinnati

I spoke this morning at the Cambridge Research conference. This is a group of their top brokers coming together for a weekend of strategy sessions. This is a bunch of smart guys.

My annual Strategic Investment Conference, cosponsored with my friends at Altegris Investments, will be held April 22-24, 2010,  in La Jolla, California. The speaker lineup is powerful. Already committed are Dr. Gary Shilling, David Rosenberg, Dr. Lacy Hunt, Dr. Niall Ferguson, Jon Sundt, and George Friedman, as well as your humble analyst. We are talking with several other equally exciting speakers and expect those to firm up shortly.

Look at that lineup. These are the guys who got the calls right over the past few years. They called the housing crisis, the credit bubble, and the recession. And, in my opinion, these are some of the best in the world at giving us ideas about where we are headed.

Comments from those who attend the annual affair generally run along the lines of, “This is the best conference we have ever been to.” And each year it seems to get better. This year we are going to focus on “The End Game,” that is, on the paths the various nations are likely to take as they try to solve their various deficit problems, and how that will affect the world and local economies and our investments. We make sure you have access to our speakers and get your questions answered, and you’ll come away with excellent, practical investment ideas.

Your believing-the-future-is-going-to-be-better analyst,
John Mauldin
John@FrontlineThoughts.com

Copyright 2010 John Mauldin. All Rights Reserved
reprinted with permission

John Mauldin, bestselling author and recognized financial expert, is editor of  Thoughts From the Frontline, read by over 1 million readers each week. He is a frequent contributor to The Financial Times, The Daily Reckoning and a frequent guest on CNBC and Bloomberg TV.

His recent book, Bull’s Eye Investing, was a New York Times bestseller. Mauldin’s upcoming book, The Millennium Wave: Prosper and Profit in a Future of Accelerating Change, explores the coming decade where change will “come faster and be more profound than at any time in history,” and gives investors “the strategies necessary to profit from what he predicts will happen.”  This article is reprinted with permission from John Mauldin and Advisor Perspectives.

An early round of applications has already been evaluated, and an initial selection of acceptances have been made. Over the next two weeks, our faculty will continue evaluating the applications and submitting their recommendations based on academic excellence, leadership qualities and passion for solving Grand Challenges. Finally, the Board will then meet and finalize the acceptances.

The next key date will be March 31, when the main batch of acceptances will be sent out. A second and final round of acceptances will be made shortly thereafter.

Best of luck to all the applicants!

Salim Ismail
Executive Director

CNET correspondent Daniel Terdiman shadowed Executive Program participant Rob Nail during one of his first days at Singularity University’s Winter 2010 Executive Program.

The Internet of the future is an intelligent network capable of proactively acting on our needs, following us wherever we go, helping provide us with focused health care, and possibly ushering in a new energy paradigm.

This is the vision that James Canton, CEO of San Francisco-based Institute for Global Futures think tank, shared with students in the executive program of Singularity University. His broad-reaching, theoretical talk here Wednesday touched on many of the same elements of the all-encompassing network more or less overlaid on people’s consciousnesses in science fiction by the likes of Vernor Vinge. Still, Canton’s vision seemed plausible, particularly in light of the curriculum of so-called exponential technologies being taught at Singularity University, which kicked off its first classes last summer.

Canton’s vision of this future Internet begins with four key drivers: telepresence, mobility, artificial intelligence, and specific vertical market segments such as health care.

In a straw poll of the 40-odd students in the Singularity program, the majority felt that mobility was the most important of those drivers, and Canton said this made sense given that billions of people use the Internet and that the figure will only grow. The idea, then, would be for the Internet of the future to comprise large numbers of networks talking to nodes that are independently communicating with one other, “having their own conversation,” he said.

Indeed, Canton predicted a future in which the Internet is embedded just about everywhere: in every imaginable kind of object — from TVs to phones to walls — and that every product and device (even people) will have an IP address. He added that while such a vision may seem distant, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has already approved a chip that could be embedded in people’s bodies. In Miami, he noted, the latest fad is women wearing clothes with chips embedded that can be scanned to verify their identities so that they don’t need to carry purses.

Similarly, he said, government workers in Mexico City can’t get into buildings without having some sort of wearable identification chip. […]

When: Thursday, March 4 @ 7:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Where: NASA Ames, Building 943, Eagle Room. Directions can be found here.

RSVP: http://singularityu-johnmauldin.eventbrite.com/, attendance is free.

John Mauldin is the President of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC (MWA), an investment advisory firm. Mauldin is a multiple NYT best-selling author and recognized financial expert. He is a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg and many radio shows across the country. He is the editor of “Thoughts from the Frontline,” the highly acclaimed, free weekly economic and investment e-letter that goes to over 1 million subscribers each week.

CNET correspondent Daniel Terdiman shadowed Executive Program participant Rob Nail during one of his first days at Singularity University’s Winter 2010 Executive Program.

 For Rob Nail, Saturday was a bonanza of opportunity. Over dinner that night in building 20 at the NASA Ames Research Center here, Nail found himself discussing 3D printing and housing with X Prize CEO Peter Diamandis. Already, Nail had been considering buying some farming land in Northern California and had been interested in the nascent concept of 3D printed buildings. He told Diamandis that he wanted to try that on the land.

“He says,” Nail recalled, “I want to make this introduction,” and grabbed Nail, pulling him a few tables over to the side where the two put their heads together with one of the founders of a start-up that recently began working on building 3D printed housing for developing nations.

For Nail, himself an entrepreneur who has spent several months looking for companies to invest in or advise, the quick meeting may have been the start of something long-term. “I will probably have a relationship” with the start-up’s co-founder, he said. “It’s an opportunity for me to get involved as a seed investor, and to advise and help out. He’s just starting out…and we have a common connection with this passionate interest for housing, robotics and 3D printing.”

For Diamandis, putting Nail together with a potential business partner was emblematic of his own young venture, Singularity University, or SU, which seeks to put some of the brightest minds on the planet together to explore what is known as exponentially growing technologies. And earlier that evening, after they’d sat through eight hours of high-energy lectures on artificial intelligence, autonomous robotics and biotechnology, and bioinformatics, Diamandis stood up and welcomed his new charges — a group of 43 participants in the second 10-day Singularity University executive program — to the “family.” […]