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I’m on break from the Convergence 08 conference , a conference on emerging technologies in Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology and Biotech.

It’s an interesting format for a conference: the morning has scheduled speakers, and the afternoons are in unconference format – if you want to present or discuss something, you show up, pick a time slot and put it on the board.

It’s crazy – there are 16 concurrent running sessions to choose from. How do you choose?

With difficulty, that’s how.

I had some reservations in regards to lumping all these different pursuits together. It seems overly pragmatic: after all, the common denominators of these emerging technologies isn’t a technical one. Artificial intelligence doesn’t (yet) have much to contribute to life extension or nanotechnology, and vice vera. The only real things these fields have in common is that they are speculative, have much less public and financial support than they deserve, and >eventually< hold promise for turning the world on it’s head – eventually.

However, so far, it has been a very good conferece, I’ve met lots of great people, and with so many different discussions set up there is plenty of opportunity for everyone to focus on whatever specific interests brought them here.

I’ll be writing up my notes at my other blog, when I have a moment to get them down.

Things that are going on right now are very complicated. Anyone who thinks they completely understand is kidding themselves. That said, it is possible to get a general handle on things, though unfortunately, television and even NPR, until now, have got the problem ass backward. I want all my friends to hear this show. Because you will enjoy it, and come away from it the wiser. And, right now, you need to know this stuff.

The ‘bailout’ won’t help anyone outside of financial institutions, mostly overseas. It was done under threat from the Chinese government, and was effective at resolving or delaying the problem as if it had been flushed down a toilet. Incidentally, it was just as effective in restoring ‘liquidity’ or make ‘credit’ available. The problem on Wall Street is a crisis of trust, nor some confabulated financial concept.

In any case, here is the clearest, most concise  and yet comprehensive presentation yet on the problem. It’s also entertaining: This American Life is a priceless institution. Let Ira Glass’s podcast take you through the economic crisis and the ultimate solution we require.

This American Life

This is both scary and heartbreaking. People just up and walk away. I hope they are ok, wherever they are.

EDIT: I’m making a bit of a habit of retracting my words, but this time, I’m pretty happy about it. Congress didn’t pass the bill this time. Time will tell if the end of the world is actually at hand, but my gut feeling is that a bunch of people – average minded, decent, reasonable people, with an emphasis on the average of mind – really don’t know how the economy works, haven’t taken the time to find out, because they are busy being politicians, and got blindsided by a couple of much smarter, yet very  deluded people, who ought to know better into making a stupendous blunder, in the face of something even more, colossally, gigantically bad.

So, there is going to be another attempt shortly to do this, but the main thing that we should be all doing is getting ready for the inevitable. However, since we are guessing on a continuum, however bad you >reasonably< think it might get, keep in mind that chances are you are wrong by a bit, either up or down. So, prepare accordingly for the most reasonable, worst case scenario.

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Crap! Now there are THREE hurricanes on their way to NOLA, with another forming on the african coast.

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This is the latest forecast as of 1:43 pm PST.

I’m enjoying this gorgeous documentary series on satellites and satellite technology. It’s not just for Britainites or satellite buffs – it’s more about the amazing ways we can see our planet and use that image to optimize our lives.