Elevate and Evolve | Cannabis & Psychedelic Culture Blog
Derby the dog was born with malformed front legs. Derby’s awesome owner sought help after being unsatisfied with the current wheeled options to assist disabled dogs.
The result was a set of custom designed, 3D printed prosthetic legs that allow Derby to run and play, just like any normal dog.
Solar Roadways have successfully funded their IndieGogo campaign, raising 2 million dollars for their project.
– A Nationwide Solar Roadway System could produce more clean renewable energy than a country uses as a whole
– Heating elements to keep roads snow and ice free
– LEDs to make road lines and signage
– Attached cable corridor to store and treat stormwater & provide a “home” for power and data cables
– Electric Vehicles will be able to charge from parking lots and driveways after roadway is in place, mutual induction technology allowing for charging while driving.
They also claim roads will be smarter and safer as a whole.
It sounds too good to be true, and perhaps it is.
I’m a fan of hearing both sides of a story, and the video below takes a critical view of Solar Roadways and its claims.
I’m not sure if Solar Roadways are the answer to the many questions being asked of humanity, but there are a few things we know for sure.
We need new systems that are stable-state, self-sustaining and will work in concert with the Earth to sustain and enrich its vast web of life.
It’s not too late, and ideas like this, if not perfect, are at least moving us in the right general direction.
What do you think?
The Lycurgus Cup, as it is known due to its depiction of a scene involving King Lycurgus of Thrace, is a 1,600-year-old jade green Roman chalice that changes colour depending on the direction of the light upon it.
It baffled scientists ever since the glass chalice was acquired by the British Museum in the 1950s. They could not work out why the cup appeared jade green when lit from the front, but blood red when lit from behind.
The mystery was solved in 1990, when researchers in England scrutinized broken fragments under a microscope and discovered that the Roman artisans were nanotechnology pioneers:
They had impregnated the glass with particles of silver and gold, ground down until they were as small as 50 nanometres in diameter, less than one-thousandth the size of a grain of table salt.
The work was so precise that there is no way that the resulting effect was an accident. In fact, the exact mixture of the previous metals suggests that the Romans had perfected the use of nanoparticles. When hit with light, electrons belonging to the metal flecks vibrate in ways that alter the colour depending on the observer’s position.
The super-sensitive technology used by the Romans might help diagnose human disease or pinpoint biohazards at security checkpoints. Gang Logan Liu, engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his colleagues, conducted a study last year in which they created a plastic plate filled with gold or silver nanoparticles, essentially creating an array that was equivalent to the Lycurgus Cup.
When they applied different solutions to the plate, such as water, oil, sugar and salt, the colours changed. The prototype was 100 times more sensitive to altered levels of salt in solution than current commercial sensors using similar techniques.
It’s not the first time Roman technology has been studied. Scientists studying the composition of Roman concrete, submerged under the Mediterranean Sea for the last 2,000 years, discovered that it was superior to the modern-day concrete in terms of durability and being less environmentally damaging.
The knowledge gained is now being used to improve the concrete we use today.
> 1600 Year Old Roman Goblet | Rise Earth
Human life throughout history has developed in alternating waves of migration and settlement. Navigating this duality between exploration and settlement, movement and stillness is a fundamental essence of what it means to be human.
In the aftermath of global wars and natural disasters, the world has witnessed the displacement of millions of people across continents. Refugees seeking shelter from disasters carry from their homes what they can and resettle in unknown lands, often starting with nothing but a tent to call home.
Designed by Abeer Seikaly, “Weaving a home” reexamines the traditional architectural concept of refugee shelters by creating a technical, structural fabric that expands to enclose and contracts for mobility while providing the comforts of contemporary life (heat, running water, electricity, storage, etc.)
Design is supposed to give form to a gap in people’s needs.
This lightweight, mobile, structural fabric could potentially close the gap between need and desire as people metaphorically weave their lives back together, physically weaving their built environment into a place both new and familiar, transient and rooted, private and connected.
In this space, the refugees find a place to pause from their turbulent worlds, a place to weave the tapestry of their new lives.
They weave their shelter into a home.
> Structural Fabric Weaves Tent Shelters into Communities | Abeer Seikaly
Google has created a new initiative: The Street Art Project, an ambitious endeavor to document street art around the world.
The project has launched with over 5,000 images and 100 exhibitions covering an international array of artists and street art hot spots.
For an example of an exhibition, see Google’s documentation of New York City’s famed 5 Pointz project.
Some art is also explorable via street view — for an example see the Tour Paris 13 building.
The British Institute of Posthuman Studies provides a visual explanation of the three dominant areas of transhumanism: super longevity, super intelligence and super wellbeing,
The revolutionary ideas of thinkers Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil and David Pearce are briefly covered in the clip.
Transhumanism is an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.
– Nick Bostrom, A history of transhumanist thought – Journal of Evolution and Technology.
Astronaut Suni Williams gives an in-depth tour inside The International Space Station.
Suni does a great job taking us through the different modules. Showing off everything from the kitchen to the work stations, Suni even takes the time to show us the bathroom and viewing stations.
NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, Expedition 38 flight engineer, equipped with a bungee harness, exercises on the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT) in the Tranquility node of the International Space Station, Nov. 9, 2013.
NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins, Expedition 38 flight engineer, poses for a photo with his Thanksgiving meal in the Unity node of the International Space Station, Nov. 28, 2013.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi, Expedition 23 flight engineer, adds potable water to a soft beverage container at the galley in the Zvezda Service Module of the International Space Station, May 26, 2010.
NASA astronaut Catherine (Cady) Coleman assists cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev of Russia’s Federal Space Agency with a haircut in the Kibo laboratory on the International Space Station, Jan. 15, 2011. Kondratyev and Coleman used a vacuum cleaner to remove free-floating hair particles from the air.
As technology speeds forward, humans are beginning to imagine a day when robots will fill roles in our society, like those explored in science fiction.
But what should we be thinking about today, as robots like military and delivery drones become a part of our society?
How should robots be programmed to interact with us?
How should we treat robots?
And who is responsible for a robot’s actions?
As we look at the unexpected impact of new technologies, we are obligated to consider the moral and ethical implications of robotics.
Featured Speakers:
Peter Asaro, PhD Assistant Professor, The New School
Wendell Wallach, Ethicist & Scholar, Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics
Kate Darling, Robot Ethics Researcher, MIT Media Lab
In 2005, artist Jennifer Kanary’s sister-in-law committed suicide while suffering from a psychotic episode.
This event led Jennifer to develop Labyrinth Psychotica, an experience designed to give people more insight into how it feels to suffer through psychosis.
Empathy is key to being able to help those suffering from psychosis. Jennifer hopes that her wearable technology will:
Help people understand what it’s like to have strange thoughts and to experience different realities simultaneously.
To achieve this goal, users are strapped into virtual reality gear and transported into the mind of a psychotic girl named Jamie. The whole experience lasts twelve minutes, during which ‘normal’ reality gets increasingly intertwined with Jamie’s psychotic reality, making it more and more difficult to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not.
Recent advances in technology have been influenced by the mind expanding movement of the psychedelic ’60s generation.
The creature that ate the mushrooms and then started doing art on the caves is the same species that hallucinated starships into existence.
– Jason Silva, Shots of Awe
Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, inventor, and philosopher known to many of his friends and fans as “Bucky” Fuller. He developed numerous inventions, the most famous of which is the geodesic dome.
Bucky designed his inventions with the core belief that there are more than enough resources available to feed and house every single human being in the world.
Fuller’s philosophy claims that convoluted politics and unnecessary labor are the biggest obstacles of human progress:
We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest.
The youth of today is absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living.
We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors.
The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.
Man is operating on a fundamental fallacy that assumes there is nowhere nearly enough resources to go around and never will be. The idea that man is supposed to be a failure and therefore has to prove his right to live has led to a division in consciousness:
“It has to be you or me. I must show I can earn my living, and let other people go die.”
On this basis, society has been assuming it is a handout or socialist system if you’re not “earning a living” at some job somebody has set out for you.
So we have the idea of a job as something you have to do that you don’t like in contrast to what your mind tells you needs to be done or what you’d like to do.
A brief look at Buckminster Fuller and his legacy, now more relevant than ever.
Technological advances continue at an exponential pace. Our brightest minds and unstoppable doers bring about a new way of living. It is quickly becoming apparent that the only thing holding back the human race is the human race itself.
As we embrace new ways of thinking and new ways of doing; we will find new ways of co-existing. From the economy to medicine; technology is changing all facets of the human world.
The time to let go of outdated self-serving enterprises is here; this is the time to accept ideas that encompass values beyond profit, power and persecution.
Today we have robots that can self-replicate, re-assemble after being kicked apart, shape-shift, swarm, create emergent effects, build other robots, slither like a snake, jump to the tops of buildings, walk like a pack mule, and run faster than a human. They even have their own internet. Put it all together and you realize that we’re in the midst of a robotic revolution that’s poised to change virtually everything.
Humans are creators. The rise of robotics in the workplace leads to more free time for humans to create and experience. As robots continue to take the place of humans in areas of life that are menial and dangerous; the human experience will evolve.
“Energy recovery from waste” — a process that typically involves the production of electricity or biofuels (like methane, methanol, ethanol or synthetic fuels) by burning it. Cities like Edmonton, Alberta are already doing it — and they’re scaling up. By next year, Edmonton’s Waste-to-Biofuels Facility will convert more than 100,000 tons of municipal solid waste into 38 million litres of biofuels annually. Moreover, their waste-based biofuels can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60% compared to gasoline. This largely overlooked revolution is turning garbage (including plastic) into a precious resource. Already today, Sweden is importing waste from its European neighbors to fuel its garbage-to-energy program.
Waste management plus a new source of energy; this kind of thinking and problem solving is what the future holds.
Though we’re in the midst of the biotechnology revolution, our attention tends to get focused on such things as stem cells, tissue engineering, genome mapping, and new pharmaceuticals. What’s often lost in the discussion is the fact that we already have the ability to go directly into our DNA and swap genes at will. We can essentially trade bad genes for good, allowing us to treat or prevent diseases (such as muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis) — interventions that don’t require drugs or surgery. And just as significantly, gene therapy could eventually give rise genetic enhancements (like increased memory or intelligence) and life extension therapies.
The future of healthcare is only limited by the desire for profits in our current social structure. As our socio-economic views change; the way we approach health care will follow suit.
The idea of digital currency is slowing starting to make the rounds, including the potential for Bitcoin, but what many of us don’t realize is that’s it’s here to stay. Sure, it’s had a rough start, but once established and disseminated, electronic cash will allow for efficient and convenient online exchanges — and all without the need for those pesky banks.
The rise of the Bitcoin is a sign of the changing times. Value is derived by humans, the true value lies within humans. It has always been this way but we often believe that money holds value on its own. Currency is the exchange of human worth in physical form and the value correlates to the stock put into yourself. This change is still murky as economics pushes the gears that make this current world turn. But these outdated policies and practices will give way to new and improved systems. That is how our current system came into being in the first place.
A recent innovation in solar power technology is starting to take the world by storm. It’s called concentrated solar power (CSP), and it’s a massively distributed system for extracting solar energy with mirrors and lenses. It works by focusing the incoming sunlight into a highly concentrated area. The result is a highly scale-able and efficient energy source that is allowing for gigawatt sized solar power plants. Another similar technology, what’s called concentrated photovoltaics, results in concentrated sunlight being converted to heat, which in turn gets converted to electricity. CPV plants will not only solve much of the world’s energy needs, it will also double as a desalination station.
Thanks to the rise of the nascent field of organic electronics, it’s likely that we’ll rework the body’s biological systems and introduce new organic components altogether. Already today, scientists have engineered cyborg tissue that can sense its environment.Other researchers have invented chemical circuits that can channel neurotransmitters instead of electric voltages. And as Mark Changizi has suggested, future humans will continue to harness the powers of their biological constitutions and engage in what Stanislas Dehaene calls neuronal recycling.
These are only some of the technological advances that will change humanity. I’m excited for the present day advancements and the future we are all building together. How about you?
