The Future Is Here Today...Robots, Genetics, AI, Longevity, Singularity

TEDMED 2009 David Blaine Holds His Breath for 17 minutes (Video)

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by Aaron Saenz on January 26th, 2010
david blaine at tedmed 2009

David Blaine's record for holding his breath is almost as long as the talk he gave at TEDMED. Coincidence...or magic?

I’m a big TEDMED fan, so it seems like magic that the videos of the latest conference are starting to go live on their website for free. The first video available was also a little magical, it’s the presentation by David Blaine about his attempt to beat the record for holding one’s breath underwater. Now, considering the serious and groundbreaking nature of most of the TEDMED presentations, I was a little disappointed that the first video available wasn’t from a major scientific mind. Still, after watching all twenty minutes of Blaine’s talk I was really impressed with the scale of his attempt. Officially, I’m still skeptical whether or not he really did what he said or if it was an illusion. Judge for yourself by watching the full presentation after the break.

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Master List of 500+ TED Videos With Summaries

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by Aaron Saenz on October 14th, 2009

*update: We’ve learned that Emilymcmc is Emily McManus, editor of TED.com, see comment section

ted_logoNot sure who Emilymcmc is, not sure how she did this, but she has a great list of all the TED videos available online as a Google Document. Just follow the link above to the document then browse for your favorite talk. There are summaries and duration lengths to help you choose which presentation to watch. Click on the link in the first column and you get taken right to the video you want. You can sort the list by publishing date (roughly equal to presentation order), by conference, or by speaker first name. The presentations at Technology Entertainment and Design are usually great, and often mind blowing. I’m not sure who has time to watch all 537, but it would definitely be worth it.

These videos are just from TED and TED Global but they are current up through 2009. Hopefully we’ll see a master list for TEDMED and other related presentations sometime soon. In the meantime, enjoy the easy access to the talks. Thanks Emily!

Mprize: Your Children Could Be Immortal

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by Aaron Saenz on October 6th, 2009
Will scientific advancements in treating aging let our children eventually live forever?

Will scientific advancements in treating aging let our children eventually live forever?

If living forever isn’t enough motivation to get scientists to study longevity, maybe $3.8 million will work instead. That’s the current size of the Mprize, a special fund put forth by the Methuselah Foundation that seeks to encourage research into extending healthy human life. The prize is awarded to those scientists who can increase the lifespan of lab mice in the hopes that work performed on that species can be readily applied to humans. Can we live longer? Do we even want to? When will the average human life expectancy start to increase by more than a year each year? The Methuselah Foundation’s answers are yes, yes, and much sooner than you might think. Check out Aubrey De Grey’s discussion of longevity at TED 2005 in the video after the break. He’s very enthusiastic to say the least.

The history of offering a cash prize to help motivate research has a long and successful history. Mariners were finally able to determine their longitude at sea thanks to the aptly named Longitude Prize offered by the British government. Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight was in direct response to the Orteig prize. The modern day Xprize is inspiring new achievements in genomics, space flight, lunar exploration, and transportation efficiency. With the Mprize, the Methuselah Foundation may very well bring about a surge in the interest in increasing human lifespans within the next generation. As Aubrey De Grey points out, once human lifespans start increasing by an appreciable amount, further medical developments will occur during that lifespan increasing it even farther. We could eventually reach a sort of lifespan escape velocity and reach immortality. De Grey has since coined the concept as the Methuselarity. Catchy, huh?
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StickyBot Mimics Geckos To Climb Walls

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by Aaron Saenz on September 29th, 2009
The gecko-inspired StickyBot curls its toes to release the dry adhesive that allows it to cling to walls.

The gecko-inspired StickyBot curls its toes to release the dry adhesive that allows it to cling to walls.

When naming robots, I want to encourage all of you researchers to go for the obvious choice, that way we know what we’re getting. Case in point: Standford’s StickyBot. Giant robotic booger? No, it’s a robot that sticks to surfaces and climbs walls like a gecko. In fact, the robot looks almost exactly like a gecko and the adhesive on its padded feet are derived from the tiny hairs the lizards use to cling. Was ‘GeckoBot’ already taken? My faux outrage hardly matters though, because this wall climbing robot is one of the coolest biology-inspired robots out there. Check out StickyBot in action in the video after the break.

StickyBot’s feet are so good at clinging to smooth surfaces that they are used in other Standford robotic projects (as part of RiSE). The dry adhesive technique uses micro-hairs and intramolecular (van der waals) forces to stick bot to wall. Animal inspired robots are nothing new, and we’ve also seen robots help explain evolutionary biology. Still, when sciences work together, great things happen. Building better robots through biology and better understanding biology through studying robots will quicken advances in both fields. But don’t take my word for it. Robert Full, professor at UC Berkeley, gave a great talk at TED 2009 about interconnectivity between biology and robotics. Check out StickyBot around 3:30 in the video below.

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TEDMED 2009 is Coming – The Best of the Best Will Speak on Medicine

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by Aaron Saenz on September 25th, 2009

tedmed-2009It’s hard to find a group of speakers that are as famous, as inspiring, or as successful as those found at TED. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design – and occasionally- Medicine. TEDMED is the medically inclined offshoot of TED, and is run by Marc Hodosh and Richard Saul Wurman. The list of TED and TEDMED speakers is impressive. We’ve already shown you Catherine Mohr, Neil Gershenfeld, Eric Giler and many others. There’s about to be a whole new batch of videos as TEDMED 2009 takes off October 27th in San Diego. With more than 50 presentations, this year is going to be amazing.

Each TEDMED speaker is at the top of their field. We have spiritual gurus like Deepak Chopra, public health figures like CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, and Singularity Hub regulars like 23andMe’s Anne Wojiciki. Of course, sprinkled into the conference are more familiar names like Martha Stewart, Goldie Hawn, and David Blaine. Each presenter, celebrity or otherwise, has a tale to tell about the past, present, and future of medicine. There is literally no other conference on Earth that has such a diverse and star studded set of speakers.

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Catherine Mohr Promises More Robotic Surgery

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by Aaron Saenz on July 27th, 2009

No matter how much it begs, never give your robot a knife – it will want to play surgeon. Engineer, medical doctor, and inventor Catherine Mohr is pushing the boundaries of medicine by pioneering new robotically assisted surgery methods and devices. Using a simulator interface and remote controlled instruments, Mohr’s operating room of the future will be more video game than butcher’s slab. By focusing on fewer incisions, more flexibility, and more versatility the robotic surgeons of the future will allow you to heal faster and better. The good doctor described her vision at this year’s TED talks a few months ago. Stay tuned after the break for the video.

Catherine Mohr is on the cutting edge of robotic surgery. Photo by Liz Hafalia

Catherine Mohr is on the cutting edge of robotic surgery. Photo by Liz Hafalia

The wonderful thing about robotic surgery is that it is already here. Thousands of robotically assisted surgeries are performed every year in the U.S. The da Vinci robot, which has been around since 1999, and which Singularity Hub has discussed before, has become the most popular method for conducting prostatectomies. Surgeons are able to use 3D imaging, and intuitive controls to manipulate da Vinci’s pincers and clamps in a way that is more precise than typical manual surgeries. More importantly, they can do these procedures through just a few incisions rather than opening up the entire chest cavity. The combination of precision and minimal invasion allows these robots to sew a blood vessel onto a beating heart.

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Enter the AlloSphere: a 360° Audiovisual Research Dome

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by Drew Halley on May 14th, 2009

“Data analysis.” Sounds exciting, right? Most of us would sooner put out an eye than crunch some numbers. But what if you could trade in that Excel spreadsheet for a giant, 360 degree visual sphere with a kickin’ sound system? Science just got a whole lot trippier.

Photo courtesy of UCSB

The dome from outside, looking like a scene from one of the Myst games. Photo courtesy of UCSB

In the early days of science, checking out your data was easy: there wasn’t very much of it. Collecting data was the hard part; analyzing and cataloging it was a relatively straightforward affair.  But the times, they are a-changin’. Nowadays, complex research can spit out mountains of data, making analysis a confounding and time-consuming process. Plus, it can be pretty boring. That is, unless you have an AlloSphere handy.

The AlloSphere is a data presentation instrument – environment, really – that allows researchers to explore complex datasets in a fully immersive audiovisual environment. It is composed of two 5-meter radius hemispheres with a catwalk along the middle for researchers to stand on. From this perspective, they can watch visual representations of their data surround them, whether they are interested in neural activity or quantum fields. At the same time, other data can be represented in audio form, making the data exploration a multimedia affair. And to top it off, it’s real-time responsive, letting users manipulate the data they look at.

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Video: Juan Enriquez Explains The Biology Revolution At TED 2009

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by Keith Kleiner on March 23rd, 2009

Below we have posted a video of Juan Enriquez at the 2009 TED conference explaining the convergence of engineering in genetics, organs, and robotics.  Think you don’t have time for a 9 minute video?  We challenge you to listen to the first two minutes and see if you can take yourself away from watching the rest.

In 9 minutes Juan eloquently describes how major disruptive advances are coming to human civilization much faster than people realize.  This is exactly what Singularity Hub is all about!

  • Off the shelf biological components are being created that allow people to build organisms as if they were building a car or a machine.
  • Tissues and organs that will someday replace our old ones are being grown in the lab.
  • Man-made mechanical ears and eyes are on a path to not only match the capabilities of their natural counterparts, but shortly thereafter to exceed them.

So where will all of this take us?  According to Juan we are on a path that will convert us from Homo Sapien to what he calls Homo Evolutis, or “hominids that take direct and deliberate control over the evolution of their species…and others.  In other words Juan predicts a biologically based singularity, and it is coming in the next 100 years, no the next 1,000 years.

Check out the video below:

The above video was edited to take out the first 10 minutes of Juan’s talk, which focused on the US economy.  To see the full length, original video you can go here.  If you like Juan’s ideas, you might want to check out his 2007 TED talk or his 2003 TED talk.  You can read his bio.

Official Powerpoint from Kurzweil/Diamandis TED Presentation

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by Keith Kleiner on February 3rd, 2009

Today Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis officially unveiled Singularity University to the world during a presentation at the TED conference in Long Beach, CA.  Kurzweil began the talk with a roughly 6 minute introduction to the concept of the singularity, followed by a 3 minute explanation of Singularity University by Diamandis.  Below is the powerpoint presentation given by Kurzweil and Diamandis:

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