Exponential change ahead for ... people

Kurzweil gives a keynote at the Game Developers Conference, providing an update to some of his Singularity predictions. He also shows a handheld he developed that can accurately read cursive. His predictions include biotech enhancements and exponential longevity.

Now that information technology is affecting medicine, Kurzweil projected that in 15 years, the life expectancy of people will start expanding at the rate of more than a year for every year that passes, essentially not only delaying death, but actually pushing it further away with each passing day.

http://www.news.com/Kurzweil-Exponential-change-ahead-for-games,-people/2100-1043_3-6231644.html?tag=newsmap

Drexler quote about nanotechnology

"The technology underlying cell repair systems will allow people to change their bodies in ways that range from the trivial to the amazing to the bizarre. Such changes have few obvious limits. Some people may shed human form as a caterpillar transforms itself to take the air; others may bring plain humanity to a new perfection. Some people will simply cure their warts, ignore the new butterflies, and go fishing."

-K.Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology

Microscopic robotic surgeons modeled

Microscopic robots flowing in our bloodstream could carry out future surgeries.

Pisa University Professor Paolo Dario showed off models of microscopic robot surgeons that will zoom through the bloodstream to carry out emergency surgery in places human hands find hard to get at.

He said the Aracne bots, controlled by external joysticks, would be ''like something out of Fantastic Voyage'' - a cult 1960s sci-fi flick starring Raquel Welch.

http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2008-02-20_120190597.html

Microfiber fabric generates electricity

A fabric-based nanogenerator could become an efficient way to generate electricity and recharge batteries, allowing you to indefinitely power personal electrical items such as a GPS, radio, light, or cell phone while off the grid.

U.S. scientists have developed a microfiber fabric that generates its own electricity, making enough current to recharge a cell phone or ensure that a small MP3 music player never runs out of power.

The fiber-based nanogenerator would be a simple and economical way to harvest energy from the physical movement. What the fabric does is it translates the mechanical movement of your body into electricity.

..the material could be used by hikers and soldiers in the field and also to power tiny sensors used in biomedicine or environmental monitoring.

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1334900820080213?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

DNA manufacturing

Science is now on the verge of using the building blocks of life itself to assemble machines.

"With DNA, chipmakers could phase out multibillion fabrication facilities stocked with lithography systems, which cost tens of millions of dollars, and the other "top-down" style equipment.
Potentially, DNA techniques could allow manufacturers to produce features that are smaller than patterns that could be achieved even with the most advanced lithography systems, predicted Wallraff. E-beam lithography, which is extremely difficult to use in mass manufacturing, goes down to 10 nanometers. "

http://www.news.com/IBM-experimenting-with-DNA-to-build-chips/2100-1008_3-6231183.html?tag=nefd.lede

Racetrack memory with 100 times the capacity of current memory

Singularity Summit predictions included storing the Library of Congress on your iPod in the next few years. (hopefully Natural Language Processing capability will advance as well to enable speech-based queries) New Racetrack memory with 100 times the capacity of current memory could make this a near-term reality:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/technology/11storage.html?_r=2&ref=technology&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology roadmap
http://e-drexler.com/p/07/00/1204TechnologyRoadmap.html