Ray Kurzweil on “The Web within Us”

Author and futurologist cum technologist Ray Kurzweil recently gave a talk at Google about his latest book, “The Web Within Us: How Minds and Machines Become One.” There are a lot of things here for Buddhists to think about. But first let’s have a look at the talk:

Filed under: computer , future, humans, machine, mind, Ray Kurzweil, science, self, technology, web

Call for Chapter Proposals

Proposal Submission Deadline: July 15, 2009

Full Chapter Submission Deadline: September 30, 2009

Genomics and Bioethics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Technologies and Advancements

A book edited by Dr. Soraj Hongladarom
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

To be published by IGI Global: http://www.igi-global.com/requests/details.asp?ID=641

Introduction
Today’s world is one in which science and technology play an essential role in almost every aspect of life. Almost all of the changes that are taking place are due to advances in science and technology, as can be seen in the emergence of the Internet, which has enabled information to explode exponentially in the past few years, and biotechnology, which has made such scenarios as human cloning and genetic manipulation of organisms an everyday reality.

Nowadays the two technologies are being seamlessly merged together. Genetic information technology, made possible by the use of information technology in the life sciences, has created a number of ethical and social concerns. It seems now that plants and animals, indeed potentially all organisms, are malleable to the needs and desires of human beings. The human genome sequence, perhaps what constitutes the essence of human beings, is now no more than a piece of information that can be stored and manipulated by computers, not unlike other types of data such as house registrations and health records.

This merging of information and biological technologies has created a whole host of questions related to its social, ethical, cultural, economic and legal contexts. What is most interesting is how one could understand these social and ethical ramifications in the context of the world’s cultures and historical traditions. The voluminous literature on the ethical, social and legal aspects of life sciences and biotechnology show that there is indeed a very large variety of problems related to the social and cultural contexts of science and technology. However, what is lacking in this literature is a sustained effort to comprehend the complex range of questions and issues that emerge when these scientific and technological advancements have found a way to the socio-cultural fabric of the world’s cultures, including, but not limited to, Asian, African, and European societies, cultures and communities.

Thus, chapter proposals for the book, entitled Genomics and Bioethics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Technologies and Advancements, are being called in order to fulfill this lacuna.

Objective of the Book
The objective of the book is thus to contribute to the existing gap in interdisciplinary research on comparative studies of cultural, social and ethical implications of genomics and bioinformatics. The focus will be ethical, social, cultural, and legal implications of genetics, genomics and genetic databanking as they are related to concrete cultural and historical traditions.

Target Audience
The book should be of interest to a wide range of researchers and academics, due to its interdisciplinary and integrative feature. Philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, scholars in area studies, computer scientists, biologists, geneticists, health care professionals, and policy makers, among others, should find this book useful for their work and research. The book could be a very good textbook for students in a variety of fields as well, including genomics, bioethics, bioinformatics, philosophy and others.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Cultural or religious perspectives on genomics, bioinformatics, databanking
• Legal perspectives from various countries on these issues
• Genetic privacy
• Property rights and personality rights in genomics and bioinformatics
• The role of informed consent
• Comparative studies of biobanking
• Genomic, bioinformatics and biobanking in developing countries

Submission Procedure
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before July 15, 2009, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by July 31, 2009 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by September 30, 2009. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project. Additional information regarding this publication can also be found at http://www.stc.arts.chula.ac.th/Genomics/

Publisher
This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference” and “IGI Publishing” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit http://www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in late 2010.

Important Dates
July 15, 2009: Proposal Submission Deadline
July 31, 2009: Notification of Acceptance
September 30, 2009: Full Chapter Submission
November 15, 2009: Review Results Returned
December 15, 2009: Revised Chapter Submission
January 15, 2010: Final Acceptance Notification

Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (MS Word or OpenOffice document) to:
Dr. Soraj Hongladarom
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts
CHULALONGKORN UNIVERSITY, BANGKOK, THAILAND
Tel.: +66(0)2218 4756 • Fax: +66(0)2218 4755
E-mail: hsoraj@chula.ac.th
Book website: http://www.stc.arts.chula.ac.th/Genomics/

Filed under: computer , bioethics, bioinformatics, computer, information technology, life sciences, philosophy, science

Safari 4 Public Beta

Right now I am typing this post in Apple’s new Safari 4 browser. The program has just come out yesterday and is now getting a lot of reviews, most of them positive I think.

If you are familiar with Safari, this browser looks rather the same as the previous ones. However, the main difference is that there is a page called “Top Sites” where you can see all your favorite sites in one glance. The first pages of the sites are displayed in a grid pattern familiar to those who use the Leopard system (10.5). Since I don’t own iPhone or iPod yet, I can’t tell whether this feature looks like the patterns there.

Another thing is that the tabs are now on top of the page itself. This takes a little while to get used to. At first I thought the new tab was not there when I opened a new tab. But then the tabs are on top, meaning that the look and feel of each pages remains the same after a new tab is opened.

There is one thing that Safari has not been able to solve. There are some web sites that the program just can’t open. Take this one as an example — http://researchers.in.th/ It is a portal for blogs by researchers in Thailand, but Safari just won’t open it. I thought the new version would be able to solve this problem, but it did not. When I opened it with Safari, I got only an empty page.

But after all this is a very good browser. There is also a version for Windows, so you might want to try for yourself. Just go to www.apple.com

There is one serious bug in the browser that either Apple or WordPress will have to handle. When I tried to add a link to a post here, the screen turn opaque as usual, but then I can’t fill in the blank to put in the link, and the screen freezes. So I was lucky to have another tab already open. I closed the frozen tab and open the live one.

Filed under: computer , Apple, browser, internet, Mac OS X, Safari, wordpress

New design

I have changed the design of the blog again. This time it should be easier on the eyes. This kind of shows how computer has evolved during these years. Perhaps some of us still remember the time when all texts on the screen are white or green under the black background of the screen itself. Yes, I am talking about the old DOS era when all that the screen could show was the text based letters.

So this will perhaps be the template for the blog for a while. Unless, of course newer designs come along…

Filed under: computer , change, design, impermanence, template, wordpress

Firefox 3.0.4

Good news. Mozilla has released the newest version of Firefox, version 3.0.4, which official recognizes Thai language. So this is long overdue considering that there are around 65 million native speakers of Thai language in the world. Those who would like to install this new version and have the Thai language browser can go to this link.

Filed under: computer , Firefox, internet, Thai, Thai language, web browser

Firefox 3 on the Mac

I am now writing this post on the newly downloaded Firefox 3 for the Mac. It works really well. I really the feature that the program guesses the website I am going to go to by just typing a few letters of the URL. The program manages Thai language much better than the previous version. Now the word cutting algorithm is working so the Thai language text looks much nicer.

Another nifty feature is a tab on “Most Visited” sites so I don’t have to look at the bookmarks all the time. Well, I am trying to look for something I don’t like in this program. And there is one thing. I have another machine that runs the Panther version of Mac OS X. Unfortunately, Firefox does not run on Panther, but to me it is a hassle to upgrade the OS, so right now Firefox 3 runs only on my main computer.

Filed under: computer , Firefox, Mac OS X, open source, Thai fonts, Thai language, web browser

Firefox 3

As of this writing, I am now downloading the brand new Firefox 3 from Mozilla onto my machine. And by so doing I am contributing to the world record downloading drive, which I am sure with break all the previous records given the high publicity the software has received in recent weeks. What is quite amazing this time is that there are so many languages available for download. However, there is no Thai version yet, which is really surprising given that much smaller languages are available. I don’t where all the Thai programmers are within the open source community. There must be some because there are those who have developed localized software for OpenOffice and something like that. So for now I will have to settle for the American language version.

Firefox 3 promises to be the best software yet for web browsing. This is a tall order and it would be great to see how Microsoft comes up with a response. I have always been a big fan of the open source community, and am now using NeoOffice for most of my writing. The program is still quite slow, but it recognizes Thai fonts perfectly and it is free so I don’t much to complain.

I listened to a BBC video clip on the software and perhaps a chief programmer of the browser told the reporter that what distinguishes Firefox 3 from its predecessor is how the program manages memories and other resources so that it become a faster and leaner program. Take that into consideration, Microsoft. For a list of new features of Firefox 3, go to this link. What I should like most is the ability to zoom into any part of the webpage to watch it more closely. This is a very good feature for someone like me who needs eyeglasses and have a lot of troubles reading small letters.

So I will unpack the file now and try the software. I’ll report back on how the software works.

Filed under: computer , amazing event, Firefox, Internet Explorer, lack of Thai localization, Microsoft, Mozilla, open source, software, Thai localization, web browser

Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Those of you who follow computer news might know by now that Apple has unveiled a plan for a next major revision of its Mac OS X operating system. The code name now is “Snow Leopard.” Well, I had thought that the next name would be something like “Lion,” but I was wrong and perhaps the people at Apple might be thinking that the name “Lion” should be saved for the last and most powerful version yet. So for now they seem to have settled on the snow leopard, perhaps implying there will be more members of the feline family to come.

Well, there is a post here in WordPress about snow leopards. It says that the animal is an endangered species and need to be protected. This, of course, does not imply that Apple’s new Mac OS version is in the endangered species list. But it is good to make the comparison any way. Perhaps Apple might contribute some portion of its Snow Leopard sales to the helping save snow leopards, a majestic creature in the Himalayas and Central Asia.

As for myself, I am still stuck back in the timeline with Mac OS X 10.4, code named “Tiger” (perhaps also in the endangered species list, by the way). I don’t see a reason why I need to upgrade my computer to using the “Leopard” version. My machine works very well. I put it up as a server, which means I turn it on all the time. It serves as the host of the website of the Center for Ethics of Science and Technology and so far it is working very well. The machine is a Macmini, which is really surprising how this little thing could function so well having been continuously turned on for years without any problems. A lot of credit to Apple here!

That is only one part of my connection and perhaps an ongoing love affair with the cats. Another part is that I have five cats at home, and by the way, Apple has not yet named one of its versions “Cats” yet.

Filed under: animals, computer , endangered species, Mac OS X, operating system, snow leopard

การปรับขนาดตัวหนังสือ

ผมเขียนภาษาไทยในบล๊อกนี้ไม่บ่อยนัก เพราะคิดว่าคนที่อ่านบล๊อกนี้ก็อ่านภาษาอังกฤษกันได้หมดอยู่แล้ว อย่างไรก็ตาม หากตัวหนังสือภาษาไทย (หรือภาษาอังกฤษ) ในบล๊อกนี้เล็กเกินไป คุณก็สามารถปรับขนาดได้เอง โดยถ้าใช้โปรแกรม Internet Explorer ก็ไปที่เมนู View แล้วไปที่ Text size แล้วก็เลือกขนาดให้ใหญ่ขึ้นตามต้องการได้ครับ

 

Filed under: Language, computer , blog, text size issue, Thai fonts, Thai language, wordpress

Commodore 64

Talking about old times, my first computer was a brand new Commodore 64c which I proudly bought in cash from Sears in Bloomington, Indiana in 1987. I remember that before actually buying that one I walked around inside the store for more than half an hour, and then I finally decided to buy it. I took very good care of the computer, so much so that whenever I finished using it I would put it back on the plastic wrappings that came with the original box and put the whole thing back in the box, only to take the computer back out again when i used it. It was only a while afterwards that I finally put the computer on a permanent place on a desk, connecting it with a monochrome monitor (I was not rich then, and am still not rich now), a 9-pin dot matrix printer and most importantly a floppy disk drive that takes so long to load a program that I usually go for a cup of coffee or finish watching an episode of sitcom before coming back to the computer again.

I also remember keying the games and other programs from the Commodore magazines in HEX format. How much time you actually had when you were a student! Then I waited with excitement to see how the fruit of my patient keying actually worked. And after I knew how to program the sound on the computer’s surprisingly good music chip, I enjoyed myself further.

I remember all this because I actually wrote my entire Ph.D. dissertation on this little machine! All 280 or so pages of it, divided into several files. These files won’t be readable by any modern machine any more, except for some very special gadgets. But that is a moot point, because the 5 and 1/4 inch floppy on which my dissertation files were saved were long gone. The physical floppies might still be there in the closet somewhere, but I doubt that any machine could read them any longer.

Filed under: computer , Commodore 64, impermanence, memories, nostalgia, old computers, writing a dissertation