An article and a follow-up thought. First, Bruce’s thoughts: that before generalized AI can spin up, the specialized functions will be spun off as products:

https://www.nextnature.net/2015/02/interview-bruce-sterling-on-the-convergence-of-humans-and-machines/

Zed –

Reaching this goal is inevitable, just as the development of nuclear technology…

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Well, the Turkey City Writer’s Workshop last week gave much food for thought when it comes to the current fictional form of this work, and how well or how poorly I’m conveying the themes of very long term archival within that work. As might be guessed, that kernel is buried too deeply and obscurely, and it’s time for some excision.

I’m quite…[Read more]

I’m excited to say that the JBIS (Journal of the British Interplanetary Society) preprint for my coauthored paper of last August is at last up on academia.edu —

(Xrisk 101): Existential Risk for Interstellar Advocates

This paper presents an evolution of my work on the concept of very long term archives, post-Long Now Internship, and begins work…[Read more]

Geoffrey –

I saw recent mention of this piece at CityLab — https://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/07/the-surprisingly-strong-case-for-colonizing-venus/373560/ — and was glad to see your work mentioned in the coverage.

I am sometimes surprised that Venus is so often passed over. Sure, its challenges are formidable. But it’s far closer in distance…[Read more]

It seems that one direction to go with this would be towards the model of Bracewell probes — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe — and as an idea, it deserves a solid spot in Project Hieroglyph’s conversation, agreed.

Problems to do with yielding Friendly AI — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligence — would be…[Read more]

Alan –

Thanks for these thoughts. In light of them, I thought you might enjoy (attached) one of the renderings to come in an upcoming article in the Journal for the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS). It’s of a Lunar Vessel, much as you suggest. In this rendering, surrounding the physical plant are solar power facilities.

My hunch is that…[Read more]

In April’s installment on Centauri Dreams, my continuing design fiction series on very long term archival’s unexpected potential glances at three powerful design concepts, two of which are fairly related.

The two related approaches are concepts for long-term habitats (and communities are a form of archival, as each animal or plant is a living…[Read more]

I can empathize with your struggle. It does remain the case that, even once one has cultivated a growing network, getting traction with any one particular approach takes tremendous, sustained effort, simply because everyone you’ve worked to connect with is laser-focused on the approaches they themselves care most about already. (This is…[Read more]

It can be argued that natural selection will take care of itself, and is in that way impossible to set back. But biodiversity is its own reward, and carries with it many generations of debugging. So I agree with Will on this; to balk at preserving biodiversity is an ethical error as well as a strategic one, in terms of its impact on the future…[Read more]

For March, my design fiction series on Centauri Dreams takes a turn towards the psychological and mythopoetic. Might the construction of mentoring and assistive artificial intelligence be facilitated by the creation of comprehensive archives on our deepest mythic structures, symbols, and mythemes?

Woven Light: Augmented Dreamstate

Here I circle…[Read more]

Because of the time likely needed to piece together solutions to the many problems driving oceanic extinction rates, it seems prudent to focus some attention on backing up the biosphere while we, as a species, struggle to survive puberty.

This approach is suggested in Gregory Benford’s 1992 paper Saving the Library of Life, though his focus there…[Read more]

This month’s update on Centauri Dreams extrapolates the potential of a comprehensive archive into the far future, with an advanced Vessel serving as the nervous system of an ambient artificial intelligence whose body is a starship.

These fictional excursions are helping to paint the potential extending from the concept of truly resilient, r…[Read more]

Monthly Update: This month’s Centauri Dreams post on very long term archives takes a turn towards the fictional, as I try my hand at design fiction based upon an envisioned discovery of some key holographic data storage and representation technologies, and the synchronicities leading to them. I open with a brief summary of design fiction and a…[Read more]

By way of update, my next Centauri Dreams guest post on this proposal has gone live. This installment covers a lot of ground, from feedback on the prior draft architectural forms for possible vessels to redundant and resilient dedicated power sources and hardening installation power against contingencies. It also begins to sketch out a design…[Read more]

Bruce, it’s great to have your voice in the mix; actually, a 1992 speech you gave at a library conference (LITA San Francisco), in which you mentioned the notion of “deep archival” at the end, was an early inspiration for me. https://goo.gl/xwX36p

Geoffrey, I share some skepticism over the very-long-term resilience of most things we can…[Read more]