Nova Spivack – Minding the Planet

Frank Drake, the originator of the present-day radio-telescope-driven search for extraterrestrial intelligence — has written an editorial suggesting that his famous Drake Equation may need an update. In short, he believes his equation should be changed because there may be a lot more intelligent life out there than has been previously suggested. Related Posts:British Ministry [...]

Here’s an interesting speculation. Assume for the moment that our universe is in fact a simulation running on a vast computing system created a race of beings that is far more advanced than we can presently imagine. The next logical question would be, “Why would an advanced civilization want or need to undertake such a [...]

Change This, a project that helps to promote interesting new ideas so that they get noticed above the noise level of our culture has published my article on “A Physics of Ideas” as one of their featured Manifestos. They use an innovative PDF layout for easier reading, and they also provide a means for readers [...]

A Russian academician has predicted that bird-flu will stem to humans and kill up to one billion people around the world within 6 months of an outbreak. He says it is highly probable that a pandemic could take place within the next year. There is no evidence cited for his claims however he refers to [...]

Deep beneath the South Pole ice-cap is a strange fresh water lake — Lake Vostok. Lake Vostok is the subject of intense speculation, debate and strange conspiracy rumors. Because it hasn’t been exposed to our atmosphere since at least the last ice-age, it may contain ancient microorganisms that do not exist anywhere else on our [...]

Scientists have discovered that by blocking the effect of a gene called D2 in a particular part of the brain they can transform normal monkeys into “drones” that will work as hard as they can, continuously, on repetitive tasks, without needing any expection of reward to keep going. In other words, they can transform regular [...]

Great find from Rob Usey at Psydex Corporation: This article is a survey of the emerging field of “sociophysics” which attempts to apply statistical mechanics to predict human social behavior. It’s very cool stuff if you’re interested in social networks, memes, sociology and prediction science. The article discusses recent progress towards Isaac Asimov’s vision for [...]

Ok, just got back from seeing Primer – a very cool new indie sci-fi flick that you probably haven’t heard about yet, but will. If you liked the film, Pi, or you like your sci-fi with a double shot of science, then you are going to LOVE Primer. There are several things about this film [...]

This is an idea for a new way to navigate interactively through large audio sets, such as collections of thousands of music tracks, and to automatically or interactively learn and evolve interesting trajectories through such spaces. Related Posts:Powerpoint Deck: Making Sense of the Semantic Web, and TwineRadar Networks Announces Twine.comListen to this Discussion on the [...]

Following up on my earlier post about storing messages in DNA it might be interesting to explore ways to encode large volumes of data directly into parts of the human body. Messing with DNA is risky — it may be safer to store data in other parts of the human body (with the one potential [...]

In August of 2003, I posted an article that suggested the SETI folks ought to look at our own DNA to see if there happens to be a hidden message from aliens in there waiting to be discovered. Putting a message in human DNA, particularly in the junk DNA regions, is guaranteed (a) not to [...]

I wonder if anyone from MoveOn.Org or the Republicans will notice our GoMeme experiments? (Not that I’m taking sides — I’ll simply be happy if somebody wins the election!) Grassroots political campaigns could potentially really benefit from the techniques we’re testing here. For example, imagine a “blog meme” for a political campaign — a meme [...]

by Nova Spivack, http://www.novaspivack.com Original: July 8, 2004 Revised: February 5, 2005; February 28, 2010 (Permission to reprint or share this article is granted, with a citation to this Web Page: http://www.novaspivack.com/science/a-physics-of-ideas-measuring-the-physical-properties-of-memes) This paper provides an overview of a new approach to measuring the physical properties of ideas as they move in real-time through information [...]

Has anyone ever done a computer analysis of all known stars seen from Earth, to detect if there are any groups of stars that are identical (or linearly transformed) in different parts of the sky? For example, have they looked for identical sets, mirror image sets of stars, flipped image sets, slightly drifted but nearly [...]

Is it possible to send messages backwards in time? This may actually be a testable hypothesis today. Here is a possible way to test it. Let’s assume this is possible and that at some point in time in the future, humans on earth develop this technology. We can test whether or not this actually will [...]

Draft 1.1 for Review (integrates some fixes from readers) Nova Spivack (www.mindingtheplanet.net) INTRODUCTION This article presents some thoughts about the future of intelligence on Earth. In particular, I discuss the similarities between the Internet and the brain, and how I believe the emerging Semantic Web will make this similarity even greater. DISTRIBUTED INTELLIGENCE The Semantic [...]

Here’s an interesting article on another theory that suggests our universe is just an experiment in someone’s lab. Related Posts:British Ministry of Defense Chief Resigns; Cites Concerns About UFO'sBig Thinkers' Most Dangerous IdeasSimulated Universes and the Nature of ConsciousnessCreator of Sim City Previews Amazing New GameScientists Discuss their Beliefs in the Unknown

Here is a cool new kind of complex system I am thinking about a lot that we might call a “network-automaton” or a “graph automaton” — a system that evolves networks (graphs) over time. This rule is similar to cellular automata rules such as the famous “Life” rule discovered by John Conway, however instead of computing [...]

This is a very good article on the physics of scale-free networks such as the Web. Lately I have been getting increasingly interested in graph theory and also in knot theory. There is a similarity between networks and knots and it should be possible to do a mapping such that the theorems and algorithms of knot [...]

Notes: Many people have requested this graph and so I am posting my latest version of it. The Metaweb is the coming “intelligent Web” that is evolving from the convergence of the Web, Social Software and the Semantic Web. The Metaweb is starting to emerge as we shift from a Web focused on information to [...]

I have been thinking a lot recently about the distribution of prime numbers — in particular, I’ve been trying to figure out if there is a way to predict the sequence of gap sizes between primes. But anyway, in the course of that investigation I came across a really cool site about number spirals in [...]

It just occurred to me that distribution of primes looks VERY much like the output of a cellular automaton rule. This makes me wonder whether it might be possible to use a cellular automaton to generate prime numbers. If we can find the rule that generates the prime numbers, perhaps this rule has other important [...]

For the first time in recorded history a hurricane has formed in the south Atlantic, off the coast of Brazil. Is this a precursor of coming climate changes? Related Posts:Zooming Out in TimeBig Thinkers' Most Dangerous IdeasNew Ice Age Coming Much Sooner than Expected?We've Already Sent Life to Mars, It Turns Out…Fast Company Interview — [...]

Of course I’ve been tracking this one for nearly a year already, but now that mainstream press is discussing this I guess it’s ok to post it here without you all thinking I’m a wacko. The fact is that there are serious rumblings and changes taking place at Yellowstone and nobody knows what could happen [...]

This evening I had an interesting idea for a new way to look for patterns in the distribution of numbers such as the prime numbers and the digits of Pi. In a nutshell I propose that there may be patterns in these number sequences that might not be evident to a computer but could be [...]

I call it a Lifelog — Nokia calls it a “Lifeblog” (my terminology is better) — but it’s the same idea — a log of all the stuff you experience — your whole life, blogged and online. OK but the key is to make sure I can keep my lifeblog private — or at least [...]

One of the big changes that will be enabled by the coming Metaweb is the shift from application-centric computing to data-centric computing. As the Metaweb evolves, information will be imbued with increasingly sophisticated metadata. HTML provides metadata about formatting and links. XML provides metadata about structure and behavior. RDF, RDFS and OWL provide metadata about [...]

This article discusses new research in how the brain makes buying decisions and other choices — what is now called “neuromarketing”. Neuromarketing researchers seek to discover, and influence, the neurological forces at work inside the mind of potential customers. According to the article, most decisions are made subconsciously and are not necessarily rational at all [...]

I just found a really cool new fractal visualization based on the Mandelbrot set. A slight modification to the algorithm results in a Buddha-like image that is self-similar at every level of scale. Very nice. See this page for some very high quality visualizations from a very nice online Gallery of Computation that has a [...]

I am having an interesting conversation with Howard Bloom, author, memeticist, historian, scientist, and social theorist. We have been discussing network models of the universe and the underlying “metapatterns” that seem to unfold at every level of scale. Below is my reply to his recent note, followed by his note which is extremely well written [...]