The greenhouse effect is a simple chemical reality: carbon compounds in the atmosphere trap heat, like a greenhouse roof. At the optimum level, atmospheric greenhouse gases make life as we know it possible; outside the optimum range, many stable geophysical processes become unstable, and civilization becomes harder to establish and secure. For most of the … Continue reading Climate Change is an Existential Threat & We Can Solve It
NOTE: Geoversiv was a Lunar-level sponsor of the Dawn of Private Space Science symposium in both 2017 and 2018. At the inaugural Dawn of Private Space Science Symposium, at Columbia University in June 2017, three organizations came together to chart a new course for collaborative networking of space-based Earth science resources. The Madison River Group … Continue reading Networking Earth Science Platforms to Finance
TheHotSpring.com :: Is the very thing we demand of our computers the thing that will make them intolerant of our humanity, if and when they awaken to an artificial intelligence? One of the fundamental problems in achieving a state of computational agility and independence that would allow us to say a synthetic entity has acquired ‘artificial intelligence’ is the problem of autonomy. If we give real autonomy to artificially intelligent machines, can we trust them to cooperate with us, in the ways we, as human beings prefer?
This is an ethical question as well as a practical one. There are real ethical risks inherent in creating devices, or even independently mobile entities, that use their own store of learned intelligence and independent decision-making to interact with or make decisions that affect the conditions of human life. Consigning human well-being or liberties to a system that privileges artificial intelligence for the sake of expediency of one kind or another might reduce the range of free choice available to human individuals.
Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence: Will It Understand or Reject Our Human Qualities?”
The New Scientist magazine is reporting on an intriguing and brazen new Pentagon program that would create living “OrthopterNets”, communication networks made of insects implanted with special technologies to modulate their wingbeats. Crickets, cicadas and katydids, all use their wings to generate sounds, the patterns of which communicate information to others of their kind. The Pentagon wants to use this natural communications network to prompt the insects to emit specific sounds in the presence of specific chemicals.
The result would be cyborg insects, living insects with technology integrated into their physical composition. The technology could have broad application, including “sniffing” applications in the search for toxins, concealed chemical or biological agents, hazmat detection, and even the search for survivors from natural disasters. A number of factors impede the timely locating of survivors buried in rubble after earthquakes or other major disasters.
Continue reading “Pentagon Cyborg-insect Program Could Save Quake Victims”
The Hot Spring Network (TheHotSpring.net) is a project of Casavaria Publishing, aiming to connect ‘idea people’ across the world. You can use The Hot Spring Network to connect with friends or to seek out people in your field or in a field of interest, to post links or share ideas, publish your own blog posts or share research, media or information generally.
Continue reading “The Hot Spring Network: Connecting Idea People to Fashion a Better Future”
The Poet Economist 