Science Lush

Lush List 6/18/12: Udacity courses, Materials Science photos and LA Film Fest

Udacity courses

When it comes to higher education, I've often wondered when we'll switch to a model of distance learning. As four-year universities become pricier, ya' gotta think that at some point, somehow it'll be possible to just stay home in our jammies, stream our lectures, participate in weekly study groups via Google hangouts, and save a hell of a lot of money on room and board.

Sebastian Thrun is bringing that model a little closer to reality. His new venture, Udacity, is offering a selection of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), beginning on June 25th. In addition to Intro to Physics, the free classes include Algorithms: Crunching Social Networks and Intro to Statistics: Making Decisions Based on Data.

The idea is pretty simple: courses are broken down into units; each unit comes with corresponding homework; there are forums where you can interact with instructors and other students; and some classes offer the opportunity to take a certified exam, which does have a cost attached to it. For more details, check out the Udacity wiki.

Just because the classes free of charge, though, don't think you're getting off easy. Thrun was tenured at Stanford, where he taught artificial intelligence, and helped invent the self-driving car at Google. He was intrigued and inspired by the possibilities of online learning after teaching a MOOC on AI at Stanford. While Udacity students won't get an established University's recognition for their coursework, they might get something else more valuable - a job. Udacity is working directly with companies who are seeking employees with specific skill sets.

For more on MOOCs: Instruction for Masses Knocks Down Campus Walls [NYTimes]

Stats or physics not your thing? Open Culture has a list of 500 Free Online Courses from Top Universities.

 

Intro Video for Intro to Statistics.
I have actually signed up for this...remains to be seen if I am disciplined enough to tune in regularly when there's not a real grade at stake.

 

Science As Art

This very purty video from the Materials Research Society features a collection of photographs from their "Science as Art" competition. As described on their site:

Visualization methods provide an important tool in materials science for the analysis and presentation of scientific work. Images can often convey information in a way that tables of data or equations cannot match. Occasionally, scientific images transcend their role as a medium for transmitting information, and contain the aesthetic qualities that transform them into objects of beauty and art.

As a special feature of recent MRS Meetings, we have offered the popular Science as Art competitions, with entry open to all registered meeting attendees. 

My favorite images are Sedat Canli's "Rising Moon" and "Nano Graveyard" by Steven Herron.

[Source: Maria Bellantone]

Los Angeles Film Festival

So many movies, so little time!

The LAFF is in full swing in Downtown Los Angeles, with tons of movies, panels and events to satisfy your cinematic yearnings. Here are a few selections that might appeal to S'Lush readers...descriptions taken from LAFF program guide...

Robot and Frank: Frank is an aging ex-con, played to perfection by Frank Langella, living alone in a house filled with clutter and memories. When his son insists on buying him a robotic caretaker, he is quite resistant, futilely searching for an off switch on his new housemate. Over time, however, the two come to an understanding and even a friendship. But when Frank begins to re-explore old vices, it leads both him and his cybernetic pal down a dangerous path. With supporting performances by Susan Sarandon, James Marsden and Liv Tyler, Robot & Frank is a comic look at the very near future of family and friendship.[For a clip, check out EW's piece on the movie from Sundance]

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World: In this comedy that explores the funnier side of the apocalypse, an asteroid is hurtling through space on a collision course with Earth. Unlike some who decide to party their way out, Dodge, played to perfection by Steve Carell, is taking the news rather calmly, content to putter around his empty apartment until the end. Then he meets Penny, his spirited neighbor from across the hall, played in a delightful turn by Keira Knightley. With a stack of LPs clutched under her arms and a letter from Dodge's high school sweetheart in her hand, she convinces him to try and get his life together even as the world is falling apart.

The History of Future Folk: Sent to destroy the human race, General Trius, the most decorated soldier from planet Hondo, has a change of heart when he hears music for the first time. Taking on the alias Bill Hunt, Trius settles down in Brooklyn, where he starts a family and plays bluegrass banjo at the local tavern. When an assassin from Hondo comes to kill Trius, the two quickly bond over the power of music and form Future Folk — think Flight of the Concords from space. The duo rocks the house every night, but can they save Earth and Hondo from certain destruction in this wonderfully odd, surprisingly sweet sci-fi musical comedy?

 

 

 

'Transcendent Man' at AFI FEST: A Profile of Futurist Ray Kurzweil

I spent last week frolicking at AFI FEST, the annual film festival produced by the American Film Institute. Normally, I see a ton of movies, but this year I was tasked with covering AFI's DigiFest, a two-day event that showcases the work occurring at the Digital Content Lab, along with a curated presentation of cutting-edge sites, mobile applications and creative experiments in the digital space. For more on that, keep an eye out for my upcoming article on www.documentary.org.

Fortunately, I was able to make some time for movies, including Barry Ptolemy's TRANSCENDENT MAN, a documentary about inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. Made with Kurzweil's cooperation, the film examines the theories of the acclaimed author of THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR (2005), as well as his personal history. In addition to lots of featured screen time for Kurzweil, director Ptolemy has included interviews with a number of scientists, writers and futurists. He's included thoughts from both detractors and supporters of Kurzweil's ideas, including inventor Dean Kamen; Robert Metcalfe, Co-Inventor of the Ethernet; and Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading.

The film opens with a primer on Kurzweil's background and accomplishments. At the age of 17, he appeared on the show I'VE GOT A SECRET, playing music written by a computer he built. Among other devices, he was the chief inventor of the flat bed scanner, a reading machine for the blind and the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano. He holds numerous patents, as well as 16 honorary Doctorates, and received the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton in 1999.

TRANSCENDENT MAN explores Kurzweil's belief that there will be a "singularity," a future period when the pace of technological change is so rapid that humanity will not be able to handle it unless we borrow from the technology we are creating. Kurzweil's basis for this idea comes from mathematical models he constructed of the rates at which technology has evolved over the years, and the observation that information technology is advancing in an exponential – as opposed to linear – fashion. He predicts that the singularity will take place in 2045.

NEWSWEEK did a piece on the film in May 2009 after it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and does a lovely job of explaining exponential growth.

Kurzweil makes predictions based on a notion that he calls "the law of accelerating returns," which holds that technology does not advance in a linear fashion but rather at an exponential rate. It's the difference between 1-2-3-4-5 and 1-2-4-8-16. Go out 10 steps and the linear string has reached 10, while the exponential string is hitting 512. With an exponential progression, at first, when the numbers are small, the progress doesn't look like much. But each new breakthrough enables the next breakthrough to occur more quickly, so the rate of change accelerates. Represented on a graph, the line of progress looks like a hockey stick—it's flat for some years, and then there's a sudden rise, which gets misinterpreted as a sudden breakthrough when really it's just the continuation of an exponential progression, Kurzweil says.

In the film, Kurzweil states that the most important phenomenon in the universe is intelligence, and that developments in three key areas will bring about the singularity. Advances in genetics and biotech will allow us to reprogram our biology away from disease and aging. Developments in nanotechnology will lead to microscopic machines, smaller than blood cells, which will enhance our health from within our own bodies. Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will allow us to go beyond the limits of human intelligence and do li'l things like back up our brains.

Kurzweil makes no secret of the fact that he doesn't accept death, and that he believes that technology is the road to a form of immortality. This is where the film goes beyond being just another talking heads science program. Ptolemy delves into Kurzweil's family history, suggesting that his father's early death is partially responsible for the scientist's fascination with eternal life. Kurzweil was just 22 when his father passed away in 1970. He fully expects to be able to bring his dad – or a very close facsimile – back to "life" one day using a variety of technological advances, DNA information and artifacts from his father's life. Kurzweil may be a genius, but he's also a pack rat, and has boxes and boxes of letters, music, and artifacts from his father's life packed away until they can be applied to Dad 2.0.

So is Kurzweil a crackpot, brilliant...or both? He's got his fair share of supporters, such as Peter Diamandis, chairman and founder of the X Prize Foundation. Diamandis has signed on as Kurzweil's partner in Singularity University, a nine-week summer program which describes itself as an "interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges."

Others, however, take issue with Kurzweil on a number of different fronts. In the film, Dr. Hugo de Garis, a professor at Xiamen University under contract to build China's first artificial brain, says that neuroscience is still determining what intelligence actually is. He doesn't think Kurzweil takes into account the potential negative impact of these developments (something the fans of the The Terminator would probably agree with). This doom-and-gloom attitude doesn't faze Kurzweil; he responds to this criticism that the challenge of the 21st century will be to keep AI's "friendly," reflecting human values.

Supporter Diamandis expresses the idea that people who resist the process of being "upgraded" are actually resisting evolution, and won't survive. For me, this brings up the more philosophical question: at what point do we evolve into something completely different than that which we currently define as human? And is that "different thing" necessarily a bad thing?

After the film, there was a Q&A with Kurzweil and AFI programmer Lane Kneedler. An audience member asked Kurzweil his thoughts about immortality, posing the question: what is the point of creation once there is no death to frame meaning? The futurist answered that all limitations will not be thrown away, as there will always be a boundary of ignorance that we will aspire to conquer. He said, "I think death is a tragedy because it's a great loss. It robs us of what gives life meaning: having relationships...and creating."

Another audience member questioned Kurzweil about the where creativity fits in to his vision of the future, citing the example that an iPhone can download Shakespeare, but can't appreciate it. Intelligence and interpretation are not the same thing.

Kurzweil responded confidently, stating that while emotional intelligence is at the cutting edge of human intelligence, ultimately it's still a process that takes place in the brain. This means that when we complete the reverse engineering of the brain – which Kurzweil believes will happen within the next 20 years – we'll understand how emotional intelligence works just as we will every other activity that takes place in the brain. And once we comprehend those basic principles, we'll then be able to create systems that amplify them. Thus, the fusion of man and machine won't make us less human...we'll just understand much more about the processes that we currently define as human.