The Singularity Is Here, Software News, Impromtu Dinner Parties

Spent a very large portion of the weekend at the inaugural Australian Singularity Summit, where I gave a presentation on Social Formations in a Transhumanist World (plus notes from the presentation). Unexpectedly, I also ended up on two panels "Cultural responses to futurism" and "Future Dystopia or Utopia?". Was impressed with all the speakers at the conference - even when there was substantial disagreements; the intellectual and passionate battle at different times between Robert Sparrow, Hugo deGaris and Kevin Korb was just great. Spent a fair bit of time with _fustian, who engaged very intelligently throughout the conference. Possibly as a direct result of being at the conference, I have been invited (and accepted) membership to the Lifeboat Foundation advisory boards on Economics and Human Trajectories.

On a related topic Software Freedom Day is next Saturday at the State Library. In a possibly entirely accidental lead-up, Richard Stallman is speaking at the University of Melbourne and at RMIT the following day. Obviously, I intend to go to both meetings. Finally NVIDIA provides a surprisingly entertaining video of CPUs vs GPUs.

In the social agenda, caseopaya and I planned to have dinner with devilgirly on Thursday; received a 'phone call from darklion just before we were about to kick off mentioning he hadn't seen enough of us whilst he was over in Melbourne; so suddenly had a dinner party which included the aforementioned plus kremmen and Karen. Great night had by all, although Willsmere Estate did prove to be somewhat wheelchair-unfriendly.