The Internet of the future is an intelligent network capable of proactively acting on our needs, following us wherever we go, helping provide us with focused health care, and possibly ushering in a new energy paradigm.

This is the vision that James Canton, CEO of San Francisco-based Institute for Global Futures think tank, shared with students in the executive program of Singularity University. His broad-reaching, theoretical talk here Wednesday touched on many of the same elements of the all-encompassing network more or less overlaid on people’s consciousnesses in science fiction by the likes of Vernor Vinge. Still, Canton’s vision seemed plausible, particularly in light of the curriculum of so-called exponential technologies being taught at Singularity University, which kicked off its first classes last summer.

Canton’s vision of this future Internet begins with four key drivers: telepresence, mobility, artificial intelligence, and specific vertical market segments such as health care.

In a straw poll of the 40-odd students in the Singularity program, the majority felt that mobility was the most important of those drivers, and Canton said this made sense given that billions of people use the Internet and that the figure will only grow. The idea, then, would be for the Internet of the future to comprise large numbers of networks talking to nodes that are independently communicating with one other, “having their own conversation,” he said.

Indeed, Canton predicted a future in which the Internet is embedded just about everywhere: in every imaginable kind of object–from TVs to phones to walls–and that every product and device–even people–will have an IP address. He added that while such a vision may seem distant, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has already approved a chip that could be embedded in people’s bodies. In Miami, he noted, the latest fad is women wearing clothes with chips embedded that can be scanned to verify their identities so that they don’t need to carry purses.

Similarly, he said, government workers in Mexico City can’t get into buildings without having some sort of wearable identification chip.

It will be a key component, then, of the Internet of the future, Canton predicted, that everything will have an IP address and that, thus, we will be living in a “blended reality” where information is constantly streaming at and around us across physical and digital artifacts.

Proactive search
Today, Canton said, in order to find information online, we have to turn on our computers and go look for it. “But what if you didn’t have to do that?” he asked the executive students. “What if it found you?”

The idea, he said, is a worldwide system of intuitive networks that pay attention to us, know our likes and desires, and proactively feed us the information we need to act on such preferences.

“We’re on the cusp of that,” he said, with the Internet “intuitively sensing who you are, and what your needs are and paying attention to your behavior and to what you think is important.”

Such systems wouldn’t just be with you at home. They would travel with you everywhere, he suggested. The kinds of devices we see as discrete today–our phones, computers, TVs, and cars–will “at the end of the day, all…get mashed up,” he said.

That means, he said, that each of us will have our own “personal Internet layer…that lives in your own personal Internet cloud [and] deciphers what’s next” for us.

It’s not clear when such a system will be functional, he acknowledged, given that it would require a great deal of artificial intelligence that has not yet made its way into consumer technology. But it’s not so far off, he suggested. In fact, he said, as much as 30 percent of the technology necessary for such concepts to be part of our everyday lives has already been built. And what’s in the lab today, he pointed out, is in the marketplace tomorrow.

Canton added that the model for such AI-based systems is one that already dominates the planet: biology. The networks of the future will mimic living ecosystems, he said.

At Singularity University, students are getting high-level, intense lectures on fields of study such as nanotechnology, biotech, AI, robotics, bioinformatics, and the like–all of which fall under the rubric of exponentially growing technology. And the Internet of the future is essentially a mashup of these technologies, Canton said.

As a result, the Internet will be smart in a way we can barely imagine today and could finally help us solve systemic crises like health care and poverty while creating thousands, perhaps millions, of new companies in the process–or even entirely new markets.

Megacities
As the Earth’s population expands, it will result in the blossoming of dozens of new megacities, Canton said, but current data infrastructures are incapable of handling the needs of the new metropolises. “There is not enough storage or bandwidth to deal with this reality,” he said. “We have to get better…at how we enable that future to emerge.”

Perhaps as many as 80 of the next 100 megacities will require next-generation Web infrastructure, he predicted, and society will have to find ways to “migrate to that infrastructure.”

Ultimately, the “one key bucket of technology” that may drive the future of the Internet is quantum mechanics, Canton said, and that will create new dynamics such as humans being able to “design space and time” and the possibility that the contents of the entire U.S. Library of Congress could fit on something no bigger than a thumbnail.

In the process, we may be able to access and process in real time so much medical data that we will have the wherewithal to eliminate huge numbers of deaths or illnesses.
Internet 3, 4 and 5
Some may feel that it’s too early to be defining such a future, but Canton clearly isn’t one of them. We are currently living in the “Middle Ages” when it comes to computing networks, he said, and we are surrounded by dumb devices and machines that cannot think for themselves.

However, he said, an “Internet 3″ will be a “collaborative Web” that will have at its root a cooperation between people and machines.

His vision of an “Internet 4″ includes evolutionary networking that has a major self-organizing principle and has human reproduction as an inspiration. “Internet 5″ will mimic living ecosystems and feature smart and aware physical spaces, embedded intelligence, and systems that can take actions such transferring energy among themselves as needed.

“It’s not that far out,” Canton said. “I believe it’s already started.”

Original story at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10463685-52.html.

When: Thursday, March 4 @ 7:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Where: NASA Ames, Building 943, Eagle Room. Directions can be found here.

RSVP: http://singularityu-johnmauldin.eventbrite.com/, attendance is free.

John Mauldin is the President of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC (MWA), an investment advisory firm. Mauldin is a multiple NYT Best Selling author and recognized financial expert. He is a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg and many radio shows across the country. He is the editor of Thoughts from the Frontline, the highly acclaimed, free weekly economic and investment e-letter that goes to over 1 million subscribers each week.

The following post appeared on TechNewsWorld on February 24, 2010.

This year’s Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference showcased a wide variety of gadgets and ideas, one of the most interesting beingMicrosoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) new “augmented reality” mapping technology. Clearly, exponentially growing technologies are set to change social communications, bringing up a number of touchy privacy and control questions.

Demonstrating the ability not only to see photo representations of streets — similar to Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) Street View — but also to go inside a building, see three-dimensional graphics all around, and see other users’ flickrphotos overlaid on the map, Microsoft’s Bing maps architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas wowed the crowd.

Those features alone are a significant upgrade to maps as most of us know them, but then Arcas took it a step further, showing how a live 4G video broadcast from a friend’s cellphone in Seattle’s Pike Market could be integrated with the maps function.

This is “the foundation for augmented reality,” said Arcas, referring to the mixing of virtual worlds with reality.

Less Help, Please

Almost everyone will be impressed with such advances, except perhaps privacy hawks and those who don’t want big anonymous cities turned into places where real-time movements can be monitored like those in a small town.

Indeed, it was ironic that these new social mapping features, which could have big privacy implications, were announced the same week that Google was taking major heat for its rollout of Buzz, a Twitter-like social networking tool built into Gmail.

One of the major problems with Buzz was that it initially tried to “help” users by automatically having them follow the people they emailed the most. While that might sound like a good idea in theory, in reality many people have conversations with people that they don’t want others to know about — for example, messages between a doctor and his psychiatric patients, or conversations between ex-spouses about their kids.

Fortunately, the great thing about a dynamic marketplace is that when a company goes a bit too far, like Google did with Buzz, the public backlash usually produces a quick fix to the problem. In response to user outcry, for example, Google quickly changed its auto-follow system to a friendlier auto-recommendation system.

New Social Norm?

Such mistakes and corrections are common while market leaders work to strike a balance between user control and functionality. Recall, for instance, the trashing of Facebook’s Beacon feature that broadcast in the users’ News Feed outside-Facebook purchases for items like movie tickets.

It’s not that users didn’t like the Facebook News Feed — it’s just that they didn’t think it was such a great idea for outside companies to surprise them by publishing their spending habits without their permission. Other companies in the industry should take such lessons seriously going forward.

For instance, a live video broadcast is cool, but what happens when multiple broadcasts combine with face recognition technology — perhaps to allow for real-time cyber-stalking? Hopefully, the brilliant people working on augmented reality are thinking about how they might allow users to opt out as well as opt in to this amazing new social networking space. If they aren’t considering it, perhaps that creates an opportunity for new companies to fill the void.

Although tech heavy-hitters like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have argued that making personal data public is the new “social norm,” it’s likely that real-time physical privacy is still highly valued. Consider, for instance, how many people tweet about being somewhere after the event is over.

The TED conference confirmed that exponentially growing technologies are pushing social communications in exciting directions. Meanwhile, expectations of privacy have certainly evolved since the Internet became popular, but the issues haven’t disappeared.

As self-broadcasting tools, geo-location games, and live mapping with cameras continue to grow in popularity, the companies that provide them can protect their business interests by working to expand the user’s freedom of choice.

Original post at http://www.technewsworld.com/story/The-Trouble-With-Augmented-Reality-and-Other-Cool-Tech-69413.html

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–For Rob Nail, Saturday was a bonanza of opportunity.

Over dinner that night in building 20 at the NASA Ames Research Center here, Nail found himself discussing 3D printing and housing with X Prize CEO Peter Diamandis. Already, Nail had been considering buying some farming land in Northern California and had been interested in the nascent concept of 3D printed buildings. He told Diamandis that he wanted to try that on the land.

“He says,” Nail recalled, “I want to make this introduction,” and grabbed Nail, pulling him a few tables over to the side where the two put their heads together with one of the founders of a start-up that recently began working on building 3D printed housing for developing nations.

For Nail, himself an entrepreneur who has spent several months looking for companies to invest in or advise, the quick meeting may have been the start of something long-term. “I will probably have a relationship” with the start-up’s co-founder, he said. “It’s an opportunity for me to get involved as a seed investor, and to advise and help out. He’s just starting out…and we have a common connection with this passionate interest for housing, robotics and 3D printing.”

For Diamandis, putting Nail together with a potential business partner was emblematic of his own young venture, Singularity University, or SU, which seeks to put some of the brightest minds on the planet together to explore what is known as exponentially growing technologies. And earlier that evening, after they’d sat through eight hours of high-energy lectures on artificial intelligence, autonomous robotics and biotechnology, and bioinformatics, Diamandis stood up and welcomed his new charges–a group of 43 participants in the second 10-day Singularity University executive program–to the “family.”

More at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10461995-52.html.

Marthin De Beer, Senior Vice President, Emerging Technologies Group at Cisco, speaks about his process for going from idea to billion dollar business. Filmed during the 2009 Graduate Summer Program at Singularity University.

Singularity University (SU) announced the dates for the second year of its Graduate Studies Program (GSP), and a 200% class size increase to accommodate 80 of the top students from around the globe. In addition, SU is pleased to announce the availability of numerous full and partial scholarships for the GSP.

“The past year has demonstrated tremendous global challenges, and demonstrated a significant shift in the zeitgeist for exponential and accelerating technologies,” said Dr. Ray Kurzweil, co-founder and chancellor, Singularity University. “Exponential technologies, such as nanotechnology and robotics, have the scale to meet the demands of the current and coming global challenges. Singularity University fosters students’ understanding of these accelerating technologies to create a better and more productive world.”

Ten Weeks of Study, A Lifetime of Innovation

The Graduate Summer Program is a ten-week interdisciplinary curriculum designed to facilitate understanding, collaboration, and innovation across a broad range of carefully chosen scientific and technological disciplines whose developments are exponentially accelerating. In addition to lectures and workshops with world-class leaders, students can also participate in hands-on excursions to leading Silicon Valley labs and companies, Zero G sub-orbital flights, and exposure to NASA’s many technologies. Concluding with a challenging group project to positively affect humanity’s grand challenges, the Graduate Studies Program will begin June 19 and end with Closing Ceremonies on August 28.

Newly designed for 80 graduate and post-graduate students, participants in the summer program are chosen based on their level of expertise in individual “tracks,” demonstrated entrepreneurial and leadership skills, and their commitment to addressing and solving important issues facing our world. Taught by the leading minds in their respective fields, the Graduate Studies Program tracks include: future studies and forecasting; policy, law and ethics; finance and entrepreneurship; networks and computing systems; biotechnology and bioinformatics; nanotechnology; medicine, neuroscience and human enhancement; AI and robotics; energy and ecological systems; and space and physical sciences.

“The biggest issues facing the world today, such as the financial crisis, swine flu and aspects of climate change, are all rooted in accelerating and exponential factors,” said Sonia Arrison, Board Member at Singularity University and Senior Fellow at Pacific Research Institute. “The Graduate Studies Program is an excellent opportunity for graduate and post-graduate students to enhance their traditional academic work with an interdisciplinary deep dive into groundbreaking innovations and disruptive technologies that can address these exponential factors, and provide an ‘over-the-horizon view’ so as to better manage and navigate them. Based on the early work of the inaugural GSP class, we expect the effects of GSP graduates to be far-reaching and positively affect humanity’s challenges.”

Becoming a Student of Singularity University’s GSP-10

The Graduate Studies Program is an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study and exchange knowledge and information with the leading minds of today, and the leaders of tomorrow. Students and graduates also become part of Singularity University Network (SUN), enabling on-going connections with the community of other students, faculty, and staff – a valuable business resource.

Applications are now being accepted for the second Graduate Studies Program, and demand is high for the limited number of spots still available. A number of full and partial tuition scholarships are available to qualified students. For more information and to apply, please visit http://singularityu.org/programs/graduate-studies-program/.

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Part Two:

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Neil Jacobstein, co-Chair of the AI and Robotics track at Singularity University. Filmed during the November 2009 Executive Program at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA.

Demonstrating its commitment to a broader, women-focused initiative, Singularity University (SU) — the academic institution with the goal of preparing the next generation of leaders to address “humanity’s grand challenges” — recently became a Corporate Sponsor of She’s Geeky, a series of national technology unConferences for women. With the sponsorship, SU underscores its continued commitment to supporting and advancing women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), as well as raising awareness among young women about the STEM “cool factor.” SU kicked off its sponsorship with the She’s Geeky unConference held on January 26, 2010 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

Shawna Pandya (GSP-09 Alum), with SU's Susan Fonseca-Klein, Nhu Anh Can, and Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom at the the January 26 She's Geeky unConference at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

“During the past decade, some of the most significant advancements and job opportunities have come from the STEM fields,” said Susan Fonseca-Klein, VP of Operations and Founding Architect at Singularity University. “This growth is accelerating, and is expected to do so through this decade and beyond. With She’s Geeky, SU has the opportunity to support women as they create and harness the latest innovations. We can also encourage young women’s interest and education in STEM fields, showing them that being a ‘geek’ can lead to a better and brighter future – like Marissa Mayer as the first female engineer at Google. Geek really is the new black, as they say.”

She’s Geeky hosts unConferences across the US to give women in STEM technologies an opportunity to get together to learn from each other, and discuss the unique issues they face in their respective fields. Following the successful and well-attended Bay Area conference in January 2010, additional conferences are planned throughout 2010.

“This sponsorship is just the first formal step in our initiative to support women in technology. In Singularity University’s inaugural year, women represented over a third of the Executive and summer Graduate Studies Programs, respectively,” added Fonseca-Klein. “As we continue progress on our initiative, we fully expect to increase those numbers, and expand our engagement with the women in technology community.”

Philip Rosedale, founder of Second Life, discusses the future of virtual worlds. Filmed at Singularity University’s Graduate Student Program 2009, NASA Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley.

Ray Kurzweil discusses the future of BCI (Brain-Computer Interfaces) at a workshop at the X-Prize lab at MIT, January 2010. This workshop was co-sponsored by Singularity University.