If a definitive link between intellectual capacity and drug use does exist, it will likely be some time before anyone establishes one. Having said that, this much is for certain: history has more than its fair share of experimenting experimentalists. Let's meet 10 of history's most influential scientific and technological visionaries, along with their drugs of choice.
Depuis peu, des machines électroniques capables de produire des objets, fonctionnant à la manière d’imprimantes en trois dimensions, sont accessibles au grand public. Elles suscitent un engouement au sein d’une avant-garde qui y voit les ferments d’une nouvelle révolution industrielle. Mais les partisans de ces outils de bricolage technologique oublient souvent l’histoire qui les a vus naître.
"What's happening is if you have a great idea and the technical skills to implement it you can create disproportionate wealth very quickly," he said. "That's good by itself except it increases disparity."
That disparity, Khosla said, will only continue to grow as machine learning and big data technologies improves. Eventually, software will have the ability to replace everything from farmworkers picking lettuce to law clerks.
Meanwhile, former Twitter General Counsel Alex Macgillivray will be joining the White House as Deputy CTO, replacing Nicole Wong (who, as it hapens, was previously part of Legal at both Twitter and Google.)
Some of the biggest names in technology have been making the pilgrimage to the desert for years, happily blending in unnoticed. These include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Google founders, and Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon. But now a new set of younger rich techies are heading east, including Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, employees from Twitter, Zynga and Uber, and a slew of khaki-wearing venture capitalists.
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his landmark novel "Neuromancer," CHF favorite William Gibson returns to the Festival. This autumn he’ll celebrate the publication of his latest work, "The Peripheral," a high-tech thriller set partly in a decadent postapocalyptic future. Gibson is joined in conversation by author Carol Anshaw.
We could push for more automation, we could reduce the working week, and we could resist capitalism’s tendency to leave us as a surplus population. This sort of collective political project would see the newest wave of automation as an opportunity to drastically change our societies.
The United States and other developed countries are in the midst of a digital revolution that may be even more profound than the industrial revolutions of the past. Advances in robotics, cognitive computing and other digital technologies promise untold benefits in a world of leisure hard to imagine. But there is also a dark side to this technological change. It could lead to joblessness for most and extreme inequality, threatening economic health and political stability.
Tension over rising inequality and a lack of good-paying middle class jobs is growing in Silicon Valley and nearby San Francisco, the epicentre of computerisation and the information economy. In San Francisco, buses for Google, Facebook and other companies ferry high-paid tech workers to their jobs in Silicon Valley. This allows tens of thousands to live in the city, fuelling popular anger over gentrification and high housing prices that are pushing longtime residents out.
“The goal of the Enhanced Attribution (EA) program is to develop technologies for generating operationally and tactically relevant information about multiple concurrent independent malicious cyber campaigns, each involving several operators; and the means to share such information with any of a number of interested parties without putting at risk the sources and methods used for collection,” reads the project’s official site.
Unlike a rigid exoskeleton or even a flashy Iron-Man-like suit, the exosuit Walsh and his colleagues built consists of textiles and soft materials that attach to a person's legs, waist and back. The soft suit doesn't hinder people's movement, allowing them to walk like they aren't carrying a load at all, the researchers said.