by cameron | Nov 27, 2007 | Podcast, singularity, Uncategorized
Yesterday, November 26, was the third anniversary of G’Day World and Australian podcasting. What started off as an experiment to see how to record two Skype calls turned into a full-time job. Check out the first show here. I hope that’s a lesson to all the kids out there. If an idiot like me can make a living out doing something fun like making podcasts, what can smart folks like you do?
That said, I still feel like we’re just starting. I’m frustrated on a daily basis with how little I have achieved in the last three years and the road ahead seems daunting and exciting at the same time. Not a bad way to be actually.
I’d like to thank everyone who has listened, commented, provided advice, support and money to the show over the last three years. I especially want to thank my guests and co-hosts. It’s been great to share the journey with you. I especially want to thank my family to allowing me to piss $500,000 of our life savings into TPN without lopping off my nads. And to my TPN partners (aka the ‘hosts’), Mano , and the guys from AnyWebCam.com who have kept us running over the last couple of months – without your continued support and vision, none of this would be possible.
I thought I’d take this opportunity to review some of the 300+ shows that I think have been significant (in no particular order):
#147 – John Romero – creator of DOOM
#242 – Vint Cerf – co-inventor of TCP/IP and hence the Internet
#42 – Dr Aubrey de Grey – life extension researcher
#56 – Noam Chomsky – world’s leading intellectual and critic of American foreign policy
#57 – Ray Kurzweil – scientist and author, prophet of the Technological Singularity
#60 – David Weinberger – co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto”
#61 – Doc Searls – co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto”
#264 – Dr Peter Ellyard, Futurist (Part 4) – Australia’s leading futurist
#243 – Dr Peter Ellyard (part 3) – Australia’s leading futurist
#238 – Eliezer Yudkowsky – world leading AI researcher and futurist
#302 – Dr John Demartini on overcoming your fears – inspirational speaker and author
#271 – Vernor Vinge, SF Author Extraordinaire – Award-winning SF author, predicted the cyberspace in 1981
#290 – Julian Burnside QC – one of Australia’s highest profile barristers and human rights advocates
There are heaps more but this is a start.
by cameron | Sep 6, 2007 | singularity, transhumanism
Via Simon Sharwood’s twitter, I just learned that Vernor Vinge’s “Rainbows End” has just won the coveted ‘Best Novel’ award at the Hugo Awards! A massive congratulations from all at TPN to Vernor. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend getting yourself a copy of RAINBOWS END. It is a brilliant imagining of what the net will probably look like in 2025.
Vinge was recently on G’Day World and I guess this is as good a time as any to give it another plug! Listen to my July 2007 interview with Vernor Vinge here.
by cameron | Aug 2, 2007 | Podcast, science, singularity
Rodney Brooks is Panasonic Professor of Robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also Chief Technical Officer and sits on the Board of iRobot Corp. From July 1, 2003 until June 30, 2007, he was director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; prior to that, he was director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
He chatted with me this morning about my deep-seated obsession to have a humanoid robot and HAL-like AI.
Prof Brooks will be speaking at the Singularity Summit in California next month. Get your tickets here.
For more reading about the current state of robots:
NY Times article “The Real Transformers”
Honda’s ASIMO
The robot fly spy
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:
Friends Of G’Day World
MODM
The Podcast Network
If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.
Add me to your Twitter account.
Do me a solid and digg the show.
Get the TPN version of Particls.
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.
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The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
by cameron | Jul 31, 2007 | Podcast, singularity, transhumanism
Today I had the fortune to chat with another living legend – Vernor Vinge (pronounced “vin-jee” as in, he explained off air, “stingy”). While VV may not have the public profile of a William Gibson or Neal Stephenson, in geek circles no SF author carries more respect. Why is it so?
In 1981 Vernor wrote a novella called TRUE NAMES which was the one of the earliest stories to present a fully realized concept of cyberspace which he called the “Other Plane” and which people accessed by attaching electrodes to their scalp. Inside the Other Plane, people hid their “true names” from the Government by creating avatars with pseudonyms – sound familiar? This was several years before NEUROMANCER (William Gibson, 1984) or SNOW CRASH (Neal Stephenson, 1992) and is therefore a seminal work in cyberpunk fiction.
Vinge’s novels A FIRE UPON THE DEEP (1992) and A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY (1999) both won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. In 1993 he wrote an essay called “The Coming Technological Singularity” which popularized that term.
His latest novel, RAINBOWS END, is a masterpiece of near-future Sci-Fi which explores the world circa 2025. Marc Andreessen called it “the clearest and most plausible extrapolation of modern technology trends forward to the year 2025 that you can imagine.” It has been nominated for the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
You can learn more about the huge potential ramifications of the Singularity by attending the Singularity Summit 2007.
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:
Friends Of G’Day World
MODM
The Podcast Network
If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.
Add me to your Twitter account.
Do me a solid and digg the show.
Get the TPN version of Particls.
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
by cameron | Jul 7, 2007 | Podcast, science, singularity, technology
Wendell Wallach is a lecturer and consultant at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics where he chairs the working research group on Technology and Ethics, leads a seminar for bioethics interns, and functions as a senior coordinator for other working groups and projects. He has lectured worldwide, published many articles, and is presently writing two books. Cybersoul explores the ways in which cognitive science and the Information Age are altering our understanding of human decision-making and ethics. Machine Morality: From Aristotle to Asimov and Beyond, which Wendell is co-authoring and which will be published by MIT Press, explores the prospects for designing computer systems capable of making moral decisions. Wendell is recognized as one of the leaders in the new field of Machine Ethics, and designed the first course anywhere on this subject, which he has taught twice at Yale.
Wendell is one of the speakers at the upcoming Singularity Summit.
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.
Add me to your Twitter account.
Do me a solid and digg the show.
Get the TPN version of Particls?
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
by cameron | Jul 5, 2007 | Podcast, singularity
J. Storrs Hall is an independent scientist and author. His most recent book is Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine, and he was the founding Chief Scientist of Nanorex, Inc, which is developing a CAD system for nanomechanical engineering, is currently a member of Nanorex’ Scientific Advisory Board, and is a Research Fellow of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. He is also known as the originator of the Utility Fog concept.
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.
Add me to your Twitter account.
Do me a solid and digg the show.
Get the TPN version of Particls?
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
