The Future And You -- October 31, 2012

Ramez Naam (author, futurist and IT professional) is today's featured guest.

Topics: Internet Search Algorithms (what they are and how they do what they do); what and why he teaches at Singularity University; why he joined Humanity Plus and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies; why he believes (as does your host) that all human beings are transhumanists by their fundamental nature; why he dislikes the term "Transhumanist" even though he is one. We also discuss his article in Scientific American which describes how photovoltaic cells (solar cells) are undergoing an exponential price change similar to Moore's Law; why the power grid is not ready for widespread use of photovoltaic cells, and what needs to be done to make it ready; and the difference between smart grids and dumb grids.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the October 31, 2012 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 38 minutes]

Ramez Naam is an IT professional, futurist and author. His background is in computer software and high scale web services. He held leadership roles on early versions of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Internet Explorer. He was one of the early employees on the Bing search engine and led all of Program Management for Bing for two years and the Relevance and Ranking Team for four years. He is a member of Humanity Plus and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and he teaches at Singularity University. He is the author of the nonfiction book More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement which came out in 2005. And has a new book coming out in the spring of 2013 entitled The Infinite Resource: The Power of Innovation on a Finite Planet.

News Item: As of Oct. 28, 2012, every observation from the extrasolar planet survey made by Kepler since its launch in 2009 through June 27, 2012, is available to scientists and the public. What's more, all future data will be no longer exclusive to the Kepler science team, its guest observers, and its asteroseismology consortium members and will be available immediately to the public. This treasure-trove contains more than 16 terabytes of data and is housed at the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, or MAST, at the Space Telescope Science Institute. MAST is a huge data archive containing astronomical observations from 16 NASA space astronomy missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope. It is named in honor of Maryland U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski. Over the past three years the Kepler science team has discovered 77 confirmed planets and 2,321 planet candidates.