Catagraph.us

Maybe the previous post was overly optimistic. On the way to work today, I listened to a recorded talk given by Saul Griffith to The Long Now Foundation titled “Climate Change Recalculated”. The primary antagonist in Griffith’s speech is the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — climbing ever higher and directly influencing planetary temperatures. Give it a listen.

In any case, it emerges that Saul Griffith possesses an engaging, productive mind. Growing Machines is a particularly brilliant example of his labors. Watch the last few videos linked from that page and ask yourself this question: given a bucket of coded parts and some genetic patterns, what could you build?

If this is the kind of question which fills your eye sockets with the glittering fires of an overheating, greedy brain, you may also be interested in Legos. Have you seen Christopher Niemann’s recent, elegant work in that medium?

Recently, I began working my way through Accelerando, by Charles Stross. It’s an interesting — and suitably hyper and strange — novel set during an emerging technological singularity. A free edition is available if you’re interested.

The advent of “Depression 2.0″ has renewed my interest in the interaction of rapid technological advancement and global economics. Few meaningful conclusions may be drawn from the available commentary, however, save that humanity is notoriously terrible at prediction and particularly terrible at predicting changes in economics and technology.