A couple of books on the go at the moment that I borrowed from the library after seeing them on a couple of blogs.

Firstly, A Case Of Conscience by James Blish, which is centred around a Jesuit biologists struggle with finding the perfect, moral alien society that doesn’t have any understanding of God. In a similar vein to later books like Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow and Children of God, and to a certain extent Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead.

The book is part of the excellent SF Masterworks for Gollancz, a series of reprinted classic or significant science fiction works.

Other related links:

• SF Masterworks – Wikipedia
• A Case of Conscience – Wikipedia
• The SF Site Featured Review: A Case Of Conscience

I’ve read some other of Blish’s work before but had never come across this one until I say it mentioned on The Sci Fi Catholic: The Sacred & the Profane (with the follow article The Sci Fi Catholic: The Sacred & the Profane Part 2, Christian Tragedy?)

The second book is As Far As We Know: Conversations about Science, Life and the Universe by Paul Callaghan and Kim Hill, with excellent complementary illustrations by Dylan Horrocks. It’s a collection of edited transcripts of the conversations about science between physicist Paul Callaghan and Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand National: Saturday Morning with Kim Hill.

Found via Physics illustrations published – Dylan’s blog

I’m enjoying both books, and the ‘As Far As We Know“ book is good for dipping into for a quick chapter or two.

A couple of links came to my attention this week. Firstly, the Singularity Institute have started a blog to promote ideas about the technological singularity (Greenflame » Pondering the Singularity (Again)), and at the same time I came across the bioethics podcasts from The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity. Both have interesting material on them, though they have quite different perspectives.

Here’s a selection of other links that relate to different people and groups looking at the future. It’s an eclectic mix pitched at a variety of levels, so caveat lector.

• NetFuture: Technology and Human Responsibility
• World Transhumanist Association
• Nick Bostrom’s home page – Transhumanist, philosopher and director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.
• Sentient Developments – by transhumanist George Dvorsky. There’s a podcast too.
• Changesurfer Consulting by James Hughes and the related Cyborg Democracy. Hughes is Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
• KurzweilAI.net – Techno-optimistic news and views linked in with Ray Kurzweil’s vision of a better future.
• Betterhumans.com – Community site for techno-progressives/optimists.
• The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network
• BioCentre // The Centre for Bioethics & Public Policy (UK)
• Center on Nanotechnology & Society
• Toi te Taiao: New Zealand’s Bioethics Council
• Bioethics Centre, Dunedin School of Medicine, New Zealand
• InterChurch Bioethics Council (NZ)
• Society, Religion and Technology Project (Scotland)

Nowhere near an exhaustive list, but it’s a start.

Interview with Rodney Brooks, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab on where he thinks robotics will go in the future. See Sizing up the coming robotics revolution | Newsmakers | CNET News.com.

In another of those areas where traditional boundaries become contested, scientists are working on developing a synthetic blood substitute for medical emergencies. (BBC NEWS | UK | England | North Yorkshire | Scientists create ‘plastic’ blood)

I wonder how this ‘blood’ will be considered by those communities that attach a special significance to human blood.

Technology Review: The World’s First Powered Ankle has an article on a new prosthetic ankle that functions in such a way as to add energy to walking, helping to reduce the effort required to use the prosthesis.

See also: MIT’s Robo Sapiens page and Greenflame » Robot avatars and other such things.

This report on the announcement of an extra-solar planet (ie. one orbiting another star) that lies within the zone where water would be a fluid and is relatively small looks interesting. See SPACE.com — Major Discovery: New Planet Could Harbor Water and Life.

This looks promising. Touch is much harder to simulate in VR than sound and vision. This development seems to bring it a bit close. See Haptic glove to touch on virtual fabrics – tech – 13 February 2007 – New Scientist.

Various links related to convergent technologies (nano-, bio-, information technologies and cognitive science):

• Biosingularity – Techno-progressive blog that tracks new developments in bio- and medical technologies. (More on singularitarianism at Greenflame: Pondering the Singularity (Again)).
• The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines – Alternatives to the big four search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com.
• The Discover Interview: Marvin Minsky – Interview with one of the perennial figures in artificial intelligence.
• U.S. university to build ‘soft-bodied’ robots – Moving beyond ‘hard’, inorganic models for robotics and instead looking to ‘soft’ organic/biological models.
• Wired News: A Wheelchair That Reads Your Mind – Research into a physically non-invasive brain-computer interface to aid with control of mobility devices.

Just erased and reinstalled everything on the iBook to get over the wobbles it was developing at the end of the thesis writing. In the process found these links I’d saved earlier.

Ashley X links:

• WIRED Blogs: Bodyhack – Brain-Damaged Girl Will Stay Young Forever
• Parents defend decision to keep girl a child – World – Times Online
• The “Ashley Treatment”: The Ashley Treatment – Parent’s open letter about Ashley.
• IEET – Helping families care for the helpless by George Dvorsky (Sentient Developments). [Techno-progressive/transhumanist] Dvorsky also talks in more depth in his podcast about this. See Sentient Developments podcast (8 Jan 2007).
• IHS :: HNN :: Ashley X: What Should Parents Do? – Some good questions and other links in there.
• Ashley Treatment – Wikipedia
• Ship of Fools: Ashley X

Other links

• New Statesman – Imaginary friends – Ursula Le Guin on the need for tales of talking animals and fantastical adventure for all ages.
• Wired 15.01: It’s Alive! – On building Pleo – a lifelike robot toy.
• The Christian Century – Templeton Foundation fights ID tag
• FreeMacWare.com : Free Software For Macs via Lindsay at Random Murmurings: Frustration

New images and other media from the ongoing Cassini-Huygens probe to Saturn. I’m continually amazed at probes like this, and the ability of the technical staff to extract/construct images etc. from the raw data supplied by the probe.
See:

• Cassini Imaging Diary
• NASA – Cassini-Huygens: Close Encounter with Saturn
• JPL – Cassini-Huygens Home