Category Archives: Singularity

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

DeepMind Has Trained an AI to Control Nuclear FusionAmit Katwala | WiredDeepMinds AI was able to autonomously figure out how to create these [plasma] shapes by manipulating the magnetic coils in the right wayboth in the simulation and when the scientists ran the same experiments for real inside the TCV tokamak to validate the simulation. It represents a significant step, says Fasoli, one that could influence the design of future tokamaks or even speed up the path to viable fusion reactors.

The Quest to Make a Digital Replica of Your BrainGrace Browne | WiredDigital twins are already used in manufacturing, industry, and aerospace. Now an [EU-funded] project called Neurotwin wants to make virtual copies of brains. The Neurotwin team is hoping the model can be used to predict the effects of stimulation for the treatment of neurological disorders, including epilepsy and Alzheimers disease.

Listen to an AI Voice Actor Try and Flirt With YouJames Vincent | The VergeSonantic, an AI voice startup, says its made a minor breakthrough in its development of audio deepfakes, creating a synthetic voice that can express subtleties like teasing and flirtation. The company says the key to its advance is the incorporation ofnon-speech sounds into its audio; training its AI models to recreate those small intakes of breathtiny scoffs and half-hidden chucklesthat give real speech its stamp of biological authenticity.

Scientists Say Theyve Found a Way to Create Universal Donor LungsEd Cara | GizmodoResearchers in Canada say theyve found a way to help people who otherwise would be left languishing on the organ transplant list. In new research this week, they detail converting lungs from people with type A blood into lungs that could be donated to anyone, without heavily damaging them or causing acute rejection. Assuming the teams work is further validated and tested to be safe, it may someday expand the pool of universal donor lungs.

This Super-Realistic Virtual World Is a Driving School for AIWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology ReviewWaabi World takes the use of simulation to another level. The world itself is generated and controlled by AI, which acts as both driving instructor and stage manageridentifying the AI drivers weaknesses and then rearranging the virtual environment to test them. Waabi World teaches multiple AI drivers different abilities at the same time before combining them into a single skill set. It all happens nonstop and without human input, says Urtasun.

Clearview AI Aims to Put Almost Every Human in Facial Recognition DatabaseJon Brodkin | Ars TechnicaiClearview AI is telling investors it is on track to have 100 billion facial photos in its database within a year, enough to ensure almost everyone in the world will be identifiable, according to a financial presentation from December obtained by The Washington Post, the Post reported today. The December presentation was part of an effort to obtain new funding from investors, so 100 billion facial images is more of a goal than a firm plan. However, the presentation said that Clearview has already racked up 10 billion images and is adding 1.5 billion images a month, the Post wrote.

Worlds Smallest 0.56-Micron Pixel Heralds the End of Camera BumpsAndy Zahn | Digital TrendsThese pixels are so small that they are now dwarfed by the wavelength of red light, breaking a previously held notion that this wavelengths size was a lower limit at which a pixel could be created. Omnivision used proprietary technology that they have developed to embed the photodiode deeper into silicon, which enabled them to develop the worlds smallest pixel.

Is Reddit a Better Search Engine Than Google?Mark Sullivan | Fast CompanyA new story anticipating the decline and fall of Google Search comes out about every month, but a blog post Tuesday, called Google Search Is Dying by the blogger DKB was different. The blog shot up to the top of Hacker News on Tuesday, and is already the 11th most upvoted post on Hacker News of all time, with more than 1,500 comments. The core argument is that many people have become so disappointed inor distrustful ofgood old Google search results that they now append the term reddit to the end of their queries.

Image Credit: Fredrik Solli Wandem / Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 19) - Singularity Hub

These Industrials stocks are trading higher:

-Metal Arts Ord Shs (MTRT) stock is trading at $7.71, a gain of $1.71, or 28.33%, on high volume. Metal Arts CO Inc gets a Sentiment Score of Bullish from InvestorsObserver. -Singularity Future Technology Ltd (SGLY) stock is trading at $7.22, an increase of $1.07, or 17.32%, on high volume. Singularity Future Technology Lt gets a Sentiment Score of Neutral from InvestorsObserver. Singularity Future Technology Lt next reports earnings on February18. -Generac Holdings Inc. (GNRC) stock is trading at $314.61, a rise of $38.15, or 13.8%, on high volume. Generac Holdings Inc gets a Sentiment Score of Very Bearish from InvestorsObserver and receives an average analyst recommendation of Strong Buy with a price target of $470.41. -SFL Corporation Ltd (SFL) stock is trading at $9.62, a gain of $0.88, or 10.31%, on high volume. Ship Finance International gets a Sentiment Score of Bullish from InvestorsObserver and receives an average analyst recommendation of Strong Buy with a price target of $9.33.

Find the top stocks in the Industrials Sector here.

Find the top stocks in the Industrials Sector here.

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Industrials Stocks on the Move Wednesday: MTRT, SGLY, GNRC, SFL, EVLV, WIRE, SIDU, MNTS - InvestorsObserver

In this third podcast discussion, Dont Blame Me, Im a Meat Robot, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and theology professor Joshua Farris discuss how a belief in God is compatible with science. Egnor argues that belief in God is a necessity, to prevent science going off the rails:

A partial transcript, notes, and links follow:

Michael Egnor: I wanted to talk just a little bit about philosophy of science and its relation to theology. First question is, is a belief in God compatible with the practice of science? It seems like a silly question, but its actually a pretty hot question nowadays

Joshua Farris: Theres this common idea that when we proceed utilizing the method of methodological naturalism as methodological naturalism is often taken to be just science it just is science. And science proceeds in a way that has no need for ghosts, angels, or eerie spirits, or God. In fact, we have no need for consciousness itself.

So you have people like the psychologist Bruce Hood, who are operating out of this sort of framework, who make these wild claims And so he goes on to suggest that we no longer need any idea of this free willing-self. Instead, we need to reexamine whats behind our thoughts and behavior, because science doesnt give us a free willing-self or a conscious self. There is no more need for that.

Note: University of Bristol developmental psychology professor, Bruce Hood, is the author of The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity (2012): Those who embrace the self as an individual in the West, or a member of the group in the East, feel fulfilled and purposeful. This experience seems incredibly real but a wealth of recent scientific evidence reveals that this notion of the independent, coherent self is an illusion it is not what it seems. From the Publisher

Michael Egnor: The odd thing, if you think about it, why would any one try to convince other people that there is no free will? Because if there is no free will, then other people arent free to choose to agree or disagree. I mean, just the whole process of discourse presupposes the option of choosing. And if everythings guided simply by physical interactions, then we all just reflex preparations anyway, and why bother? That just amazes me.

Joshua Farris: Thats right. Why would you try to persuade me of that?

Michael Egnor: Right. The other thing is that the philosophers and scientists who argue that the notion of God and spirits and things like that are superfluous to science, are the same people who propose that an uncountable number of universes exist within the multiverse. And of course, they invoke that to try to defend a naturalistic understanding of the fine tuning of the universe and so on. So theyll posit the existence of uncountable other universes, thats not too strange. But the idea that there might be a God is crazy, and just off the plate.

Unless one presumes that they just dont want to face up to God. If you want to get rid of God, thats the way to do it; you just stipulate that he doesnt exist. And then you cant do science without him and then you make up all sorts of crazy stuff and call it science.

Joshua Farris: Jerry Coyne at the University of Chicago makes claims like this: In This Idea Must Die, he states quote, The illusion of agency is so powerful that even strong incompatiblists like myself will always act as if we had choices, even though we know we dont. We have no choice in the matter.

Note: This Idea Must Die (2015): In 2014 [editor John Brock] asked 175 brilliant minds to ponder: What scientific idea needs to be put aside in order to make room for new ideas to advance? The answers are as surprising as they are illuminating. From the Publisher

Michael Egnor: The funny thing is that the exact opposite is true. They do have choices and they pretend that they dont. Ive interacted with Coyne quite a bit. We go back and forth on blog debates.

And hes quite hilarious. He actually put up a post on his blog a couple years ago showing, I think, a dented fender on his car. Somebody in the faculty parking lot had bumped into his car and then drove off. And didnt own up to it.

I said, well, if the guy had no free will, how can you blame him? I mean, if it was a meat robot, theres no blame, theres no accountability. No more than if the wind knocks over a tree branch, it just happened

The denial of free will is an extraordinarily dangerous idea. I actually think its among the most dangerous ideas put forth by materialists who put forth a lot of dangerous ideas. And the reason is that the denial of free will is the core of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism entails reducing human beings to livestock, and then to hurting them and culling them as you see fit. Hitler didnt gas six million Jews because they were individually culpable. There were no trials, they werent convicted of any crimes. They were basically treated like livestock that you wanted to get rid of.

And if there is no free will, its true that there is no guilt. But theres also no innocence And if you want to stop crime, you can do it very efficiently by just imprisoning people who might commit crimes. Why wait to prove their guilt? Its much more efficient.

Note: In Minority Report (2002), starring Tom Cruise, In a future where a special police unit is able to arrest murderers before they commit their crimes, an officer from that unit is himself accused of a future murder.

Joshua Farris: Why not put them away or put them out of misery early on, right? So that we dont have to deal with it, yes. Yes, right.

Michael Egnor: Nobody puts a coyote raiding their chicken coop on trial. They just shoot it. Because coyotes dont have free will; coyotes just do what they do. So, yeah. Its deadly stuff. Its a deadly idea. And we dont realize how bad it is. Its not just an academic question.

Michael Egnor: Heres a question. Can you demonstrate Gods existence scientifically?

Joshua Farris: I guess it really goes back to a more fundamental question about what we mean by science and what science is Theres excellent work in natural theology being done today by philosophers who have made pretty valiant attempts to develop arguments that move in the direction of demonstrating Gods existence. And utilizing nature as a sort of independent source that we can derive our premises from, and develop logically airtight arguments that demonstrate Gods existence.

Im sympathetic to those proposals. The way that I approach natural theology is more along the lines of a kind of logic of discovery, from a vantage point of a pre-commitment to theism. In my case particular,ly Christian theism, that has a particular lens on the world, that does a better job of explaining certain things in the world.

Ultimately, theism provides better causal explanation for, say, consciousness and the implications following from consciousness, as we were just discussing. Seems to me that the various properties and powers that follow from consciousness lend themselves to all sorts of theistic implications. And this is why many scientists want to get away from those consequences. And so they have to effectively eliminate the conscious-self, the free willing-self, in order to avoid those implications to theism.

Michael Egnor: The definition of science that I like and think works the best comes really from the classical philosophers: Science is the systematic study of effects according to their causes. So it has three characteristics: Its systematic. So its not just hunches and occasionally doing stuff, but actually sit down and studying it. Its a study of effects of things in nature as they are. And the study is focused on the causes of those effects and the natural science, which would include theology, ethics and music and all sorts of things. Natural science would be the systematic study of natural effects according to their causes.

There are effects in nature that have extra-natural causes. The Big Bang was the beginning of nature. Whatever caused the Big Bang was outside of nature. I think that singularities at the core of black holes are extra-natural things. They arent defined in physics, theyre outside of physics.

Joshua Farris: But they would still be within the domain of science, according to your definition?

Michael Egnor: Of course. Because singularities are solutions to the field equations of relativity that blow up, that basically go to infinity because something is divided by zero. That is, if you actually do the equations, the number becomes infinitely large, and thats a singularity.

Mathematically thats not defined. Division by zero is not considered a defined function in mathematics. And so singularities within physics, arent defined. Their effects are defined.

So we can know a singularity by its effects, but we cant know what it is because its not defined. If you look at the classical ways of knowing God, there are three ways that God can be known. We cant know him in himself as he actually is, at least not in this life. But we can know him by what he is not. We can know him by his effects in the world, and we can know him by analogy, which was St. Thomas

Joshua Farris: Thats very Thomistic of you.

Michael Egnor: Yes, yes. Thats classic St. Thomas. But he got a lot from Boethius. And the interesting thing is that, if you look at the way science handles singularities, its the same three. It knows singularities by what they are not. They dont have dimensions. They dont have temperature or color or things like that. Theyre known by their effects in the world. They gave rise to the Big Bang. Theyre at the core of black holes. And we can know them by analogy. Singularities are often depicted as depressions, in like a stretched rubber membrane. If theres rubber membrane in spacetime, a singularity is an infinitely deep depression in that membrane.

So science deals with singularities just the same way as St. Thomas said we had to deal with God. Now, thats not to say that singularities are God. Its saying is that science can deal with things outside of nature. And does all the time.

In fact, numbers are outside of nature. The number four is not a natural thing. There are groups of four things in nature. There are four trees in my front yard. Four tires on a car. But the number four is not a thing in nature. It has no location, it has no weight. Its not a natural thing. But its invoked in science constantly.

I think the supernatural can cause things in nature. It does all the time, if we define things that are undefined in the natural world as supernatural.

Joshua Farris: So that wouldnt fit very well within the confines of what most are considering methodological naturalism.

Michael Egnor: But methodological naturalism is bad science; its ideological science. Its saying that no matter what the cause of something is, were going to exclude anything thats not a natural cause, which is junk science. Thats basically saying we dont care what the real cause is. Were going to impose this structure on it, knowing that that could very well lead to causes that arent real. As I said, the definition of science is the systematic study of natural effects according to causes. Any cause, whether its natural or supernatural, I think, is the best definition of science. If the supernatural cause is the cause, then you go for it.

Joshua Farris: So on your definition, were basically studying causes and effects. And some are natural and some are supernatural. The study of revelation or the theological study of revelation, on that definition would be considered science as well?

Michael Egnor: Yeah. And the classical philosophers did consider it. I mean, theology was the queen of the sciences. And the only thing that distinguishes science as we know it today is that its the study of natural effects. We restrict our study to effects in nature, and thats what natural science is. But we dont restrict our study of causes of those natural effects to nature. The causes can be anything, wherever the evidence leads.

Joshua Farris: So as a practicing scientist, do you think that there is still today, at least in the academic practice of science, is there any place, or at least any robust place for theology to enter into the scientific discussions?

Michael Egnor: Theology is in all scientific discussions. Its everywhere, either acknowledged or denied.A very good example of this: I am of the very firmly held opinion that all proofs of Gods existence, all of them, are scientific proofs. Many theists say, well, science cant really prove God. But all genuine proofs of the existence of God proof meaning inferential lines of reasoning are scientific proofs. The reason is that, in St. Thomass view, and I think hes right on this, existence is absolutely distinct from essence.

That something exists is a different thing than what that something is. And therefore you cant demonstrate the existence of anything, the that-ness of anything, by just describing the what-ness of it. Which means, for example, that the ontological proof is not valid. And St. Thomas famously rejected that proof, because theres no existence in it. Theres no evidence. Its a formal logical proof and formal logical proofs cannot prove anything outside of formal logical things. And God is not a formal logical thing, hes an existing thing.

Note: One of the most fascinating arguments for the existence of an all-perfect God is the ontological argument. While there are several different versions of the argument, all purport to show that it is self-contradictory to deny that there exists a greatest possible being. Thus, on this general line of argument, it is a necessary truth that such a being exists; and this being is the God of traditional Western theism. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

So you have to have evidence to prove the existence of anything. So to prove existence at the end, you have to start with the existence of something. And thats inductive proof. When you start with evidence and then use some formal system to arrive at inference to best explanation, thats an inductive line of reasoning. And science is just inductive reasoning applied to nature. So the proofs of Gods existence are also inductive proofs, and they have the same structure as scientific proofs.

A very good example is the Prime Mover argument. The Prime Mover argument, basically, is that change exists in nature. And that it is not possible to have an infinite regress of instrumental causes in a system of change, without having at the foundation of this instrumental series of causes, an unmoved mover, a Prime Mover that is not itself moved. Thats a scientific argument. Because you start with the empirical observation of change in nature, and you reason through a formal way to what must be true of the cause of that change.

Thats the same thing as is done in evolutionary biology, looking at nature, reasoning back to what causes the change in species. Same thing thats done in physics. What causes this radioactive isotope to emit that electron? So I believe all valid proofs of Gods existence are scientific theories.

So when you say, can science be done without theology? At least if one is talking about natural theology, science and natural theology are completely intertwined.

Joshua Farris: Some day Id love to chat more about how we can develop fruitful research programs to integrate the two a bit more consciously and explicitly in print. So the question seems obvious, but I just dont see a lot of robust theological and scientific engagement taking place right now. And how it is that theology can actually offer any sort of voice in the contemporary scientific conversations.

Or how the scientific practitioner can consciously bring God into the mix and supply a logic that gives us a fruitful way of discerning where God is acting in the present world right now. Its hard for me to see that actually taking place where theology has largely been marginalized in the higher ed systems, at least in the US. And its almost well, its just almost irrelevant these days. And its certainly irrelevant in scientific discussions.

Michael Egnor: Well, its irrelevant, but it even goes further. If you are a practicing scientist and you bring theology into your science, youre unemployed. Thats it. I have a friend whos a leading biologist, who is a devout Christian. And I talked to him one time about intelligent design and all of that. And he said he would give anything to be involved in it because he really believes in it. But if I ever said a word publicly, I would never get another grant.

And hes exactly right. He would be totally canceled. So in that sense, theology is already in science, in a negative sense. That if you make any appeal to God, youre done.

Michael Egnor: So theres no separating theology and science. I mean, if you look at, for example, even Aquinas Five Ways. That the first way by change, the second way by causation, the third by contingent existence, the fourth by degrees of perfection, and then the fifth by regularity in nature. All of them are scientific statements. Every single one. Change. How do you account for change? There has to be an Unmoved Mover. Thats a scientific line of reasoning

Michael Egnor: And punishing people for bringing them up, in a sense, is theology in science, only its negative theology But that is theology in science its just used as a cudgel instead of as an aid.

Joshua Farris: Right. And thats why it is difficult right now to articulate in our contemporary situation, how theology can be the queen of the sciences. If its not functioning in any sort of robust way in how science is conducted and how the conclusions are interpreted.

Michael Egnor: Well, it depends on how you define theology. If you define theology as including the philosophical and methodological exclusion of inference to God from scientific work I think that is a theological statement. Theology can be negative. If you define theology as including that, then all science nowadays is theological, in a sense that you better not talk about God.

So theres no escaping it. Theres just no escaping God. Theres no escaping inference to God. You can choose to refer to God in your work, or you could choose to refuse to refer to God and to punish people who do, but its all theology.

Joshua Farris: I hadnt thought about that. Thats a very Thomistic way of thinking. There are classical reformed ways of thinking about science and theology that depart from Thomas. Herman Dooyeweerd, the systematic theologian, would say that theology is one science among other sciences, and philosophy serves the foundational role and philosophies foundational to all the sciences. So theres some demarcating role thats given to philosophy as a way of demarcating the different disciplines and how we parse out the different disciplines

Michael Egnor: Heres a good, I think, retort to that notion that philosophy is the foundation of sciences rather than theology. Without theology, there is no real ground for believing in the existence of anything outside of your mind and the validity of your concepts and the validity of your perceptions. I mean solipsism makes just as much sense from a purely philosophical perspective as does the ordinary way of looking at the world. How do you know that I really exist? That what youre listening to is coming from a person like you.

At least in theology, the inference is that God is not evil. That God wouldnt deceive you like that. In philosophy, how do you know? So I dont see how philosophy can be the ground How can you study the natural world if philosophy offers no actual proof that the natural world even exists?

Joshua Farris: I guess you could take philosophy as being rooted in a reliabilist understanding and common sense. And so thats the starting point.

Michael Egnor: Right. You have to believe that reason is reliable. And in my view, that cannot be grounded in itself. It has to be grounded elsewhere. Obviously, the only other elsewhere on tap would be God. So theology, I think really is the queen of the sciences. And frankly, all scientists practice it. I mean, every scientist is a theologian of sorts.

Joshua Farris: At least implicitly, despite what they might say, right?

Michael Egnor: Right implicitly. Obviously, very few of them are the least bit aware of it because scientists are, almost without exception, the worst philosophers on earth. Theyre terrible philosophers. And they do things all the time that they dont understand.

Here are the previous segments:

A neurosurgeon and a philosopher debate mind vs. body. Philosopher Joshua Farris defends controversial Cartesian dualism. Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor critiques it but thinks it may account for near-death experiences. They both critique emergentism, the view that the mind, while not merely what the brain does, emerges from the brain and has no separate existence or origin.

How does dualism understand personal identity? Both neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and theology professor Joshua Harris acknowledge weaknesses in their philosophies understanding of personal identity. Aristotelianism, in Egnors view, interprets the mind brain relationship better but Cartesianism, in Harriss view, interprets personal identity better.

How does dualism understand personal identity? Both neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and theology professor Joshua Harris acknowledge weaknesses in their philosophies understanding of personal identity. Aristotelianism, in Egnors view, interprets the mind brain relationship better but Cartesianism, in Harriss view, interprets personal identity better.

You may also wish to read:

How did Descartes come to make such a mess of dualism? Mathematician Ren Descartes strictly separated mind and matter in a way that left the mind very vulnerable. After Descartes started the idea that only minds have experiences, materialist philosophers dispensed with mind, then puzzled over how matter has experiences.

and

Dualism is best option for understanding the mind and the brain. Theories that attempt to show that the mind does not really exist clearly dont work and never did. Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor reviews the mind-brain theories for East Meets West: Theology Unleashed. He think dualism makes the best sense of the evidence.

See the rest here:

Excluding All Reference to God From Science Is A Form of Theology - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

The Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) said it opened an online registration site for Medical Korea 2022, the nations largest healthcare conference, at http://www.medicalkorea2022.kr.

Medical Korea 2022, hosted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and organized by the KHIDI, will run in-person and online events.

The in-person conference will occur at Coex ASEM Ballroom in Gangnam-gu,Seoul, from March 10-11 and the virtual one from March 10-15.

The healthcare event will provide an opportunity for leading healthcare experts to share their insights and prospects of the global healthcare industry, KHIDI said.

Under the theme of Global Healthcare, a New Leap Forward, Medical Korea 2022 will have six sessions global healthcare, smart elderly care services, digital healthcare future strategy forum, cooperation for co-prosperity between Medical Korea and the global healthcare industry, possibilities and the future of convergence and overseas expansion model of the health industry, and global healthcare policy and management forum.

Renowned scholars are joining the event.

Mauro Guillen, author of 2030: How Todays Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything and dean of the Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, will deliver his keynote speech.

Daniel Kraft, faculty chair for Medicine of the Singularity University, and other health experts will discuss strategies for the global healthcare industrys growth in the post-Covid-19 era, KHIDI said.

Various side events include a seminar on a new metaverse-based global healthcare strategy.

Korean health companies will attend business meetings in-person while foreign buyers can join online, according to KHIDI.

The event site will have digital healthcare showrooms using VR and AR technology to showcase advanced technologies of Korean healthcare companies, it added.

Visit link:

Online registration opened for Medical Korea 2022 < Policy < - KBR - Korea Biomedical Review

It used to be the stuff of science fiction: bringing a long-dead species back from extinction by painstakingly piecing together its full DNA sequence, or genome.

Its not quite as straightforward as Jurassic Park would have us believe, but in the age of DNA editing, the idea of cloning an extinct species is no longer purely the realm of fantasy.

Our team at the DNA Zoo has hopefully taken a step towards creating a blueprint to clone one of Australias most loved, and most missed, extinct species: the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger.

Weve done it not by studying the thylacine itself, but by completing a chromosome-length 3D genome map of one of its closest living relatives: the numbat.

The striped, termite-eating numbat is Western Australias faunal emblem, and now lives only in small pockets of that state, although it once roamed throughout southern Australia. Crucially, numbats and thylacines shared a common ancestor that lived some time between 35 million and 41 million years agorelatively recently in evolutionary terms.

Evolutionary tree showing the kinship between numbats and thylacines. Image Credit: DNA Zoo/UWA, author provided

Both these enigmatic creatures have stripes, but thats not where the similarity endsas much as 95% of their DNA may be identical.

Decoding the full numbat genome therefore raises the tantalizing prospect of being able to piece together the thylacines genetic sequence, which in turn would offer the tantalizing prospect of reintroducing one of Australias most iconic lost species.

No doubt this will be more challenging than the famous bid to resurrect the woolly mammoth using DNA from the Asian elephant. But the release of the numbat genome makes the thylacines resurrection a more realistic prospect than ever before.

The numbat is the latest marsupial genome sequence from this family compiled by our team at the DNA Zoo, following on from the Tasmanian devil, quoll, and dunnart. Weve acquired samples of more than 500 mammals from around the world, and aim to make all their genomes available for conservation and open-access research.

We are also working on a detailed genomic analysis of most Australian carnivorous marsupials, and will ultimately produce a full peer-reviewed publication in a journal. But now, by sharing the sequence publicly at this stage of our research, we can offer a valuable resource to other scientists and conservationists studying numbats and other marsupials. Given the conservation threats they face, time is ticking fast.

The first draft of the Tasmanian tiger genome was pieced together in 2018, using century-old museum samples. But this version is very fragmentaryseveral key gaps still need to be filled to piece this puzzle together into a comprehensive genome sequence. Unfortunately, the old museum samples didnt provide enough high-quality DNA to resolve these issues.

So how do you reconstruct something without some seemingly essential ingredients? This is where the genome of the thylacines closest living cousinthe numbatcan help. Our new high-resolution numbat genome map can help us fill in the missing bits of the thylacine genome.

There will still be significant hurdles between having a complete thylacine genome and cloning a thylacine for real. But what takes this scenario from science fiction to potential reality is CRISPR gene-editing technologya set of enzymes that allow scientists to target very particular snippets of DNA.

CRISPR has been referred to as a kind of molecular scissors that allow the precise selection and insertion of DNA from specimens, making the de-extinction of the thylacine or other species a realistic prospect by allowing geneticists to selectively repair the missing bits of its genome.

With the help of this and other synthetic biology tools, geneticists could conceivably piece together a set of chromosomes that could then be inserted into an egg cell with its existing nucleus removed, allowing the new DNA to act as the eggs genetic blueprint. This is the technique being pursued by a US research group aiming to clone the mammoth by using the DNA of its closest living relative, the Asian elephant, to fill in the missing bits of mammoth DNA.

Around the world, rapid advancements in embryology and genetics are opening up the possibility of resurrecting extinct speciesor at least creating something thats close enough to the original that it will develop and grow properly.

In 1996, British scientists successfully cloned a sheep, called Dolly. Then, in 2017, Chinese researchers used the same technique to create two genetically identical long-tailed macaques.

Through the growing field of synthetic biology and precise genome-editing technologies such as CRISPR, Harvard geneticist George Church has launched Colossal, a biotech company that has initially set on creating an elephant-mammoth hybrid, with the first calves expected in six years.

Of course, the numbat is one of Australias most loved native marsupials in its own right.

Like the Tasmanian Tiger, it too was on the verge of extinction during the late 20th century, but extensive conservation efforts as well as government and community intervention are helping its numbers gradually bounce back.

Still, with fewer than 1,000 numbats left in the wild and the species still officially listed as endangered, our genetic blueprint hopefully paves the way for better numbat conservation information for our scientists on the front line. Many of these scientists are fighting the very genetic diseases threatening to exterminate numbats.

There is a still a long road ahead before the thylacine could be cloned. But if it works, the end goal of any de-extinction effort surely is to reintroduce animals to the wild.

If that were to happen, the thylacine already has one advantage over many de-extinction candidates: appropriate habitat. With reserves covering about half of Tasmania today, there would be ample places for thylacines to live, still teeming with the prey animals they used to eat.

There is no question it could be reintroduced to the Tasmanian bush. There is also good reason to do so: the thylacine was Tasmanias key carnivore. Putting it back atop the food chain could help restabilize ecosystems that are under threat.

If and when that dream becomes reality, thylacines would owe a debt of gratitude to their little cousin, the humble numbat.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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How the Newly Decoded Numbat Genome Could Help Bring the Tasmanian Tiger Back From Extinction - Singularity Hub

Theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack, author of The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking) (2020) lists, in an essay based on her book, a number of facts about our universe that make it hard for us to even fathom it. Even astronomers, she says, have a hard time:

Here in the Solar System, space and time are both more or less well-behaved, but when you have to deal with the cosmos as a whole, you have to factor in the fact that it refuses to sit still for its fitting If you look at a galaxy far, far away, not only do you have to factor in that the image youre looking at is old, you have to account for the fact that its no longer where it was when you saw it.

Yes, because of expansion and relativity, space is always changing. So is time.

Even time is distorted by the stretching of space. We can watch the brightening and dimming of that exploding star, as the shockwave tears through it, and say it took about 100 days to fade away. But if we compare it with a supernova nearby, on average, well see that the distant one takes a few days longer. From our perspective, its exploding in slow motion.

And that has a weird effect when we examine the age of the universe:

The distance to our cosmic horizon is not, as you might expect, 13.8 billion light-years. As we discussed above, distances are weird in an expanding universe. Something that was 13.8 billion light-years away when its light started the journey toward us is much farther away now. If you factor all that in, that glowing plasma we see at the very edge of the observable universe is actually somewhere around 45 billion light-years away now.

One thing about the universe that troubles Mack is that it looks too perfect:

That background light we see right at the cosmic horizon, that afterglow of the Big Bang, tells us that a simple evolution from a singularity to the big beautiful universe we enjoy now just doesnt make sense.

The problem is that the Big Bangs afterglow, what we refer to as the cosmic microwave background, is too perfect. To an absurd degree of precision (one part in 100,000), it looks the same, in every direction. Same colour (or, rather, frequency, since its microwave light), same spectrum, same intensity. The reason thats a problem is because theres no reason why two regions on opposite sides of the sky should match in that way. Even if everything started together, wrapped up in a singularity, the way it expanded outward should have introduced extreme differences in different parts of the early cosmos. Regions that are now far apart from each other in the expanding fireball stage of cosmic evolution never had a chance to come to an agreement on what temperature to be. The cosmic microwave background should be drastically different on one side of the sky than it is on the other.

But now the diligent reader must ask a question: Too perfect for what, exactly? If the universe was designed, as most people assume, it might be similar in all directions for the same reasons as the spokes on a bicycle wheel are similar in all directions. Certainly, if we are ever in a position to explore any part of our universe, such similarity will turn out to be a great advantage.

Mack explores many issues in cosmology and her essay is a most interesting read.

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Recent science papers support science fiction premises. There isnt a crystal clear boundary; both science and science fiction achievements require imagination. Of course, science can deal only in fact but many of the facts scientists are unearthing can support science fiction premises. Here are five examples.

and

A physicist defends imperfection in our universe: Its essential.We owe our existence to the fact that our universe is full of lopsided, not balanced, quantities. Great physicist Paul Dirac discovered antimatter by assuming symmetry (a quality of perfection). But in the details, the wheels came off.

Read the original here:

Why a Science Fiction View of the Universe Makes Sense - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Two babies have received the first-ever gene therapy for Tay-Sachs disease after over 14 years of development.

Tay-Sachs is a severe neurological disease caused by a deficiency in an enzyme called HexA. This enzyme breaks down a fatlike substance that normally exists in very small, harmless amounts in the brain. Without HexA, however, this fatlike substance can accumulate to toxic levels that damage and kill neurons.

One of the symptoms of this disease was first described in 1883 by British ophthalmologist Warren Tay, who saw a cherry-red spot on the back of the eye of affected infants. In 1887, American neurologist Bernard Sachs described the profound neurological symptoms of Tay-Sachs in a seminal paper:

Nothing abnormal was noticed until the age of two to three months, when the parents observed that the child was much more listless than children of that age. The child would ordinarily lay upon its back, and was never able to change its position it never attempted any voluntary movement the child grew steadily weaker, it ceased to take its food properly, its bronchial troubles increased, and finally, pneumonia set in, it died August, 1886.

This dismal description of Tay-Sachs remains current, and those with the disease usually die by age five. Some people develop Tay-Sachs later in life, with symptoms starting in their teens that get progressively worse over many decades.

I am a member of a team of researchers from UMass Chan Medical School and Auburn University who developed a gene therapy that may help get around this barrier. Our treatment uses two harmless viral vectors to deliver DNA instructions to brain cells that teach them how to produce the missing enzyme. Similar techniques have been used to treat a number of related diseases and other conditions.

Unfortunately there is still no treatment for Tay-Sachs. Aggressive medical treatment can extend survival but doesnt improve neurological function. The only effective way to treat Tay-Sachs is to restore the HexA enzyme in the brain. This is difficult, however, because the blood-brain barrier prevents most molecules from passing into the brain.

In the case of Tay-Sachs, these DNA instructions enter the nucleus of these cells and stay there, allowing for long-term production of HexA. Based on our previous studies successfully testing our gene therapy on different animal species, we believe that delivering the treatment to a central part of the brain allows the enzyme to travel along its connections to other regions and to be distributed throughout the entire brain.

The first child who received our gene therapy treatment was age two and a half, with late-stage disease symptoms. Three months after treatment, they had better muscle control and could focus their eyes. Now at age five, the child is in stable health and is seizure-free, which usually isnt possible for patients at this age. A second child treated at age seven months had improved brain development by the three-month follow-up and remains seizure-free at a little over age two.

More testing is needed to confirm whether our treatment can fully stop disease progression. Given that this was the first time our treatment was given to humans, we used a conservative dose below the maximum therapeutic effects we saw in our animal studies. My colleagues and I are currently conducting a follow-up clinical trial to test the safety and efficacy of increasing doses in a larger number of patients.

The increasing cost of manufacturing these treatments makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to develop and test gene therapy for many ultrarare diseases where the number of patients worldwide is very small and profitability low.

We were able to deliver these treatments to the children in our ongoing clinical trials thanks only to funding from a generous family whose own child is a participant. This grassroots approach is a common theme in ultrarare disease research; development and testing are often supported by parents, foundations and federal grants.

Our Translational Institute for Molecular Therapeutics program at UMass Chan Medical School focuses on developing more viral vector gene therapies for an ever-expanding number of ultra-rare diseases in collaboration with families and foundations. We believe every patient afflicted with any of the approximately 7,000 rare diseases worldwide deserves a chance at a normal life.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: esudroff / 95 images

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First Gene Therapy for Tay-Sachs Disease Successfully Given to Two Children - Singularity Hub

If it takes two to tango, well be dancing up a metaphorical storm this week: This Tuesday is the once-in-a-lifetime date of 2/22/22. Thanks to the dates repeating numbers, its considered an angel number in numerology, or a number bearing a particular energy or universal message. In this case, the meaning of the date 2/22/22 is about connections and coming togethernot just in one-on-one pairs, but among larger groups and communities, as well.

Two is the number of intuition, observation, and relationships, says numerologist Jasmine Wolfe. If you think back to the date 2/2/22 earlier this monthalso replete with big two energyyou might be able to pinpoint certain revelations within your relationships or partnerships that bubbled up then. But now, you could say the universe is doubling down on that vibe. The appearance of six twos in one date reflects our human need for cooperation and teamwork, according to numerologist Johanna Agusta. This day is a great one to reflect on how we communicate with our loved ones, and to seek to maintain an open-heart connection, she says.

The standout singularity of the date 2/22/22 has made it the most popular day of this month for weddings, according to e-commerce wedding platform Zolawhich is really saying a lot, given Tuesdays are historically the least popular day of the week to get married. And according to numerologist Jesse Kalsi, these couples may have the right idea, in terms of how to best embrace 2/22/22 energy. This day is a good one to perform actions that fortify the love you feel for your partner, he says. If you can engage in activities that are productive to your relationship, the Venus energies that rule this year will become even more pronounced and deliver a renewed sense of hope and opportunity.

Sensitivity and empathy may be more prominent on this day, suggesting that you could become extra aware of a need for a shift in your relationship habits. Johanna Agusta, numerologist

More specifically, this Twos-day, as some are aptly nicknaming it, could surface our deep-rooted desire for balance and harmony with others. Sensitivity and empathy may be more prominent on this day, suggesting that you could become extra aware of a need for a shift in your relationship habits, says Agusta.

If youre in a partnership, that positive change could be as simple as letting go of a grudge, apologizing for a misstep, or even planning a date night to reignite a sexy spark. And if you've recently come to any new understandings about relationships in your life (Venus retrograde, anyone?), it's very possible that they'll crystallize around this day and help inform a more authentic, intimate route forward.

If youre single? The 2/22/22 energy is supportive for a self-care day steeped in peaceful activities like yoga, meditation, or whatever brings a sense of you back to you. (After all, its tough to be fully present in a relationship if you arent able to be fully present solo.) On the flip side, if youre already operating at your highest octave, 2/22/22 is a prime day for a first date. You may find that you have a heightened sense of appeal to a potential partner on this day, making it a conducive day to meeting someone new, says Kalsi.

Viewing the date 2/22/22 from a broader numerological lens will bring into focus another key element within: the appearance of the master number 22, which is the number of the master builder, says Wolfe. This is the number associated with building something bigger than yourself. And its about what we can build when we work together, she says.

This teamwork-makes-the-dream-work vibe could bring about a moment of progress after two years of relative stagnancy, says Kalsi: Business energies may be put into motion once more, and solutions to challenging dilemmas could become clearer on this day. That is, the number two doesnt just reflect love-based connections; its also about the kind of mental connections that can lead to a-ha moments and the type of interpersonal collaborations that can bring about innovation.

If you break down the full date, 2/22/2022, in numerological fashion by adding all of the numbers together until you reduce to a single digit, youll find even more support for this abundant outlook. The final number you get is three (here's the math: 2+2+2+2+0+2+2=12; 1+2=3), which is associated with the beneficent planet of Jupiter and all its expansive energy, says Kalsi. Like Jupiter, the number three reflects spirituality, higher education, and a sense of charity for those in need, he says.

Taken together, those themes underscore our connections to our communities and the world as a wholewhich Wolfe says is where the true meaning of the date 2/22/22 lies: This is a day that can help us move forward as a global society, hopefully closer to a resolution that can benefit us all.

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Numerologists Say the Once-in-a-Lifetime Date 2/22/22 Will Deliver Big Energy for Connections - Well+Good

In a recent issue of The Atlantic, novelist and playwright Ayad Akhtar argues that we have now arrived in the age of the Singularity, the hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in never-before-foreseeable changes to the human condition.

Akhtar says this point has come upon us not through a Terminator-esque weapons program, but through social media, through the advertising-industrial complex, and through the pervasive commoditization of normal human functions. All these avenues have eroded a sense of genuine dialogue between ideologies, reduced humanity to marketable props, and muddied the waters of truth in our culture.

These technological advancements have swept over us very quickly, promising to enhance our understanding through amassing more and more information. Akhtar laments these rapid changes and suggests that the counter-testimony is to embrace a set-apart way of living that is not fearful of going against cultural norms. Such determination is an act of sheer bravery in our world.

Psalm 25 is an acrostic song of petition, whose writer desperately seeks YHWHs intervention in the midst of deeply felt jeopardy. The psalmist has placed their grounds for hope in YHWHs steadfast love as an alternative to their own pursuits of truth. Rather than relying on the veracity of their own perspective or on the market-driven promises of the culture, the psalmist cries out to God:

Make me to know your ways, O LORD;teach me your paths.Lead me in your truth, and teach me,for you are the God of my salvation;for you I wait all day long. (Psalm 25:4-5)

For this psalmist, the starting place for salvation is the acknowledgment of their own inability to discern truth or paths that lead to life. The psalmist admits there is no alternative source of protection from enemies, from endless self-doubt or from vapid truths; it is only YHWH who can provide genuine salvation, only YHWH who can provide a path toward meaning, and only YHWH who can provide generative wisdom.

In the life of faith, I do not believe there is any greater task of Christian discipleship than to offer an alternative path out of the Singularity-invaded culture and into the gospel-centric home of truth and wisdom.

In the life of faith, I do not believe there is any greater task of Christian discipleship than to offer an alternative path out of the Singularity-invaded culture and into the gospel-centric home of truth and wisdom. There is no doubt that the very concept of truth itself has become diluted in our culture. The ramifications of that dilution have led to an erosion of communal trust and a tendency for our culture to paint those with whom we disagree in as unsavory a light as possible.

The Singularity also has employed deceptive and unseen algorithms that inaccurately portray the world in such a way so that our already-held worldview is merely affirmed rather than being healthily challenged. Akhtar observes: Having ones bias confirmed endlessly by a curated cascade of information reflecting back to you your preferences and opinions, second after second, understandably breeds an illusion of certainty. But certainty is nothing like wisdom; it might be something closer to wisdoms opposite.

Psalm 25 encourages the people of God not to seek truth merely in the advancements of their culture or in the depths of their own perspective, but to recognize their own neediness for wisdom and to live in ways that counter the continual commoditization of the human experience. When Gods people adhere to such humility, they are more generous with how they view themselves and with how they view their neighbors.

So Patrick Miller, in his reflection on the commandment against bearing false witness, can accurately and prophetically claim:

One of the primary dangers in the church today is the danger of not telling the truth about what ones theological opponent says. When that happens, communal trust and the good neighborhood of the church will crumble, not in the face of differing views of moral and theological issues but on an underlying and profound mendacity.

It is the task of communities of faith to reject the false promises of certainty to which the Singularity continually lures us. Instead, we are called to join with the psalmist in declaring faith in YHWH who keeps covenant with salvation, truth and genuine wisdom.

Tyler Tankersleyserves as senior pastor of Ardmore Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C. He is a graduate of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. This reflection was written as a submission for the retreat Poems for Dangerous Times: A Gathering Around the Psalms. Tyler will be leading a workshop at this retreat on the intersections of technological trends and the Psalms.

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YHWH vs. the Singularity Baptist News Global - Baptist News Global

A couple months ago, friends and business contacts started asking me for a crash course on my professional research studying virtual environments. Their interest reflects an explosionwhich youve probably noticedof noise and hype surrounding something called the metaverse.

This article is an introduction for a complete or almost beginner. Theres plenty of mainstream coverage on the topic, but it often conflates concepts: virtual reality is not the metaverse (though its related), and crypto/Web3 by itself is not the metaverse (though also related). Confusing, I know. Whether youre a businessperson or bystander, this is my best effort to lay everything out.

In 99.99% of cases, provided the term is used correctly, you could replace the word metaverse with internet and the sentence will mean the same thing. So why is everyone using this fancy new word? I think analyst Doug Thompson said it very well when he noted that were using the term as a proxy for a sense that everything is about to change.

So if the metaverse is just the internetwhat about the internet is about to change? To answer that question, Ive broken this article into four parts:

For those that want my definition of the metaverse up front, Id say: The metaverse is the internet, but its also a spatial (and often 3D), game-engine-driven collection of virtual environments. There is a lot missing from this definition (like avatars), but if youre like many people, that will already sound like a made-up buzzword salad.

Lets explore.

To understand the changes coming to life online, you have to start with the seemingly obvious way we currently access the internet: computers.

And to understand where were headed, you have to look at the history of computer interfaces. By computer interface, Im referring to the way that humans interact with digital machines to get them to do what we want.

We take for granted how easy and intuitive working with computers has become in our lifetimes, but it wasnt always so easy.

In the middle of the 20th century, the programming language engineers used to get a computer to do things involved sticking their hands into the actual machines to wire cables. (Also, most early computer programmers were women.)

Then engineers invented a new interface using punch cards, which allowed us to keep our hands to ourselves.

After punch cards came command lines (like MS-DOS), which were a breakthrough because you could interact by typing words. But the real mainstream moment for computers was the invention of the graphical user interface (GUI). This is when working with computers came to involve clicking pictures and is what most of us take for granted as just how they work today. GUIs are now used in everything from ATMs to ticketing machines, and theyre the reason ordinary, non-programmer people like us can use them.

Why go through this history?

The point is that at every stage in the development just described, working with computers became easier, more accessible, and more people could use them.

Clay Bavor, at Google, whose description of this history and insights I am borrowing here, puts it this way:

Over the past several decades, every time people made computers work more like we doevery time we removed a layer of abstraction between us and themcomputers became more broadly accessible, useful, and valuable to us. We, in turn, became more capable and productive.

Today, the next great computing interface is emergingit just doesnt have a good name yet. You may have heard about concepts like augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, immersive computing, or whatever two-letter acronym.

What all of these concepts share is that they involve the use of three-dimensional space. That is a very big deal.

My colleague at Singularity University, interface designer Jody Medich, taught me just how important 3D space is for the human brain. Which makes sense. We are born into 3D space. We grow up living in 3D space. It would make sense that our brains and bodies are built to interact in 3D space.

So this term spatial computing is becoming a commonly used way to refer to these interfaces. Be careful not to conflate this with the metaverse, since many spatial computing people dont consider themselves to be involved with, or a part of, all this metaverse nonsense. But it is related, and well come to that.

One other way to think of this is to consider why we dont typically see grandparents playing video game consoles. It takes time to develop the motor skills to smash buttons on a controller in the right way. Similarly, we take for granted that at some point we had to learn the motor skills to type.

We do, however, see more grandparents playing systems like the Nintendo Wii. You pick up a controller and swing your arms. Intuitive, easy, and anyone can do it. Thats a spatial interface. The big deal is that more people, including many more grandparents, could become comfortable using computers.

Generally, you should also think of spatial things as having the properties of moving around in space. In this sense, though not controlled using a spatial interface, a traditional video game like Fortnite is spatial (you move around), whereas a Zoom call is not. I dont want to complicate things, but spatial audio is another thing too.

To explain why this matters, I often use the example of Protectwise (now a Verizon company). They build tools to help cybersecurity professionals detect threats to their computer systems. Typically, a cybersecurity person lives life inside dashboards looking at log files to sense whats happening. What if that data could be turned into a spatial environment? Now patrolling your companys computer system is like playing a video game. More people could do that since its more intuitive. Take a look:

Spatial computing like this is coming to life online.

Game engines may be one of the most consequential technologies of the next decade. I know that might sound a little crazy. But hear me out.

A game engine is the software tool developers use to build (and run) video games. In these software programs you can upload 3D objects, apply rules for how those objects can move, add sounds, etc. The Protectwise thing shown above was made using the Unity game engine.

In business, the term video game is also misleading, since it suggests something recreational or non-serious. But as the world becomes more digital, game engines are powering the computing interfaces for all sorts of industries.

Aaron Lewis nicely points out, game engines are basically eating the world. Urban planning, architecture, automotive engineering firms, live music and events, filmmaking, etc. have all shifted a lot of their workflows/design processes to Unreal Engine and Unity.

Take the new electric Hummer as an example; the first car to have an Unreal-Engine-based interface. The vehicle takes information from its sensors and visualizes it in 3D on the dashboard. This is spatial computing in the real world.

Another jargon-y term you might start to hear is digital twin, which is the idea that physical things (like a Hummer) can use its sensor data to create a software copy of itself inside a computer. This lets humans interact with simulated industrial objects as if theyre computers.

A famous example is Hong Kong International Airports Terminal 1 which uses a digital twin in the Unity game engine to give facilities managers a real-time view of passenger activity and equipment that might need repairs. Think of it like the terminals 3D selfie.

While theres more happening in the world of game engines than I can go into, there are two engines to know: Unreal and Unity. Unreal is owned by Epic Games, the publisher who owns Fortnite, and Unity is a large publicly traded company. (Personally, Ive only ever used Unity since its designed to be somewhat beginner-friendly.)

The last thing you should know about game engines is that they are going to see mind-bending levels of improvement this decade. You might not have seen the internet lose its collective mind over the demo release of the newest Unreal Engine 5, but everyone went nuts. For an approachable summary of why its a big deal, Estella Tse gave me a really clear explanation.

And if you have 20 minutes to spare, my classmate sent me this, and it blew my mind:

The takeaway is that this decade, graphics will stop looking like graphics. The limit for how high game resolution can be is falling away, and well see photorealistic virtual environments that look like real life. This means you should try to see past the cartoonish aesthetic todays metaverse coverage will put in your mind.

For example, imagine what that means for something like Beyond Sports, a Dutch company that uses Unity and real-time positional data taken from sports to render live events as they are happening inside virtual reality. Picture this in 10 yearswalking around inside a game live with your friendsand now were approaching what we might be doing in the metaverse.

And here we can introduce the first part of a good definition of what the term metaverse is pointing toward:

If you start paying attention to it, youll notice game engines everywhere, which is especially true for.

Now that weve introduced spatial computing and game engines, weve arrived where most mainstream coverage of the metaverse picks as its starting point.

Virtual environments are the places well be logging into in tomorrows internet. They are also a tricky thing to define. In many ways, Twitter and Discord (an online messaging platform) are already virtual environments where people meet and exchange messages and information.

The virtual environments Im exploring here, however, are the spatial ones built in game engines, and there are two kinds to explore. First is real-world augmented reality (think Pokmon Go).

The other is the more traditional online or purely digital virtual environments you have to sit down at a computer (or put on a VR headset) to access, though this distinction is arbitrary and already falling away.

Pokmon Go is a helpful example of AR in the real world. Its a spatial game, built using Unity, that overlays 3D characters on the physical world. Does that mean we can consider Pokmon Go to be part of the metaverse? Well yeah, sort of I guess, sure, whos to say (I guess Im saying). The current definition is slippery. Were still in the define your terms stage, so be careful of that in the media.

In the future, it wont just be gamesthe entire physical world will be like a canvas we can paint with data.

To make this all happen, technology companies are scrambling to build whats referred to as the mirrorworld or AR cloud. These words mean the same thing as digital twin from earlier. Just extend the airport terminal concept to the entire Earth, and you have a tool to build virtual stuff on top of our everyday world. If you want to go deeper on this, I wrote this article exploring its impact on society.

This is all another way of saying the internet is spilling out of our phones and computers and merging with physical realityand its why that Hummer might be part of the metaverse. See, for example, how Niantic (the company who publishes Pokmon Go), market their technology to developers.

So, the metaverse wont just be random cartoon game worlds built by developers. It will also be digital replicas of very real spaces, likely the whole planet, and digital twins of industrial stuff like your car. It will eventually come to include sitting in your backyard with family members beamed in as avatars or putting on a VR headset to walk around other cities in real time.

Next, lets explore more traditional virtual worlds. Perhaps the most well-known example is a platform called Second Life, which was a huge phenomenon roughly 15 years ago and is still big today.

If youre not familiar, Second Life is a collection of virtual worlds built by users that you can explore as an avatar. Millions of users signed up, and lots of stuff happens there. Its also a good reminder that anytime you see the media claim that something is the first virtual-based whatever, thats very likely not true.

A very real economy exists in Second Life, where users buy and sell virtual goods and services, and it has its own currency; the Linden Dollar.

Today, theres a whole suite of platforms that could be thought of as successors to Second Life. One of these, Rec Room, just raised $145 million at a $3.5 billion valuation; this stuff is getting serious. Other platforms include VRChat, Altspace, Decentraland, and Somnium Space, among many others.

Another trendy thing to do in metaverse-speak is talk about how games like Fortnite and Roblox are fledgling metaverse experiences (which is true). On the surface, they come masked as games, but underneath they are spatial environments where people meet up and increasingly go to Travis Scott or Lil Nas X concerts.

The ultimate vision of the metaverse is that all of these experiences (Beyond Sports, Pokmon Go, Fortnite, Roblox) will become an interconnected network of virtual environmentsin other words, the internet, but for experiencing stuff.

My own journey into all this started several years ago on a platform called Sansar, originally launched by the same company behind Second Life. Here, my friend Sam is showing me around a space built by one of their users; Fnatic (one of the biggest eSports teams in the world). Im in a VR headset at home in San Francisco while Sam is in Los Angeles:

What struck me is that I was walking around with Sam inside the internet. Also, here was a retail e-commerce site to buy clothes online. Just like the world wide web must have struck CEOs in the mid-90s as an oddity that may (or may not) be relevant for their business, todays CEOs are probably scratching their heads observing all this metaverse noise.

I will say that just as most companies today have a website, at some point most companies will have a 3D virtual environment of some kind.

With spatial computing, game engines, and virtual environments like these, were closing the gap between experiences you have in real life (going to a concert, hanging out with friends, etc.) and experiences mediated by a computer online. This is what concepts like Ready Player One (a book by Ernest Cline adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg) are pointing toward.

And here we get our next helpful description of the metaverse:

To tie it all back together the metaverse is the internet, but also a spatial (and often 3D), game-engine-driven collection of virtual environments.

And just as todays internet has absorbed vast portions of our economic activity, tomorrows metaverse will consist of massiveoh no, please not NFTshere it comes

One of my favorite statistics is that Second Life still supports an annual economy worth roughly $500 million (that number has grown during the pandemic). The GDP of Second Life is larger than the economies of some real-world countries.

Fortnite, a game that doesnt cost a penny to play, still earned $9 billion in 2018 and 2019. How? They sell in-game stuff for players to express themselves in a variety of ways including virtual clothing, dance moves, and other items. In some ways the metaverse is just a giant virtual fashion industry.

If that sounds silly or weird, just think about how someone carefully plans what clothes to wear or what profile picture to use on LinkedIn. We care about how we express ourselves in the world. If were going to spend an increased portion of our time online, its not so silly to expect people will want to buy expensive Gucci bags to carry around Roblox.

So where do NFTs fit into all of this? Among other uses, NFTs offer the infrastructure to let people take custody of this virtual stuff.

I hate to do this, but its worth taking one giant step back to unpack what an NFT actually is.

The first thing to note is that NFTs run on blockchains. A blockchain is really just a fancy Excel spreadsheet that keeps track of who owns what (like what a bank does to keep track of who owns what money). Today, we rely on centralized authorities like banks to keep track of how much money is in which accounts as cash is shuffled between people and businesses. The idea behind a blockchain is that everyone just gets a copy of the same spreadsheet, and the big deal/breakthrough is that through complicated cryptography (which is where the crypto in cryptocurrency comes from) all those spreadsheets communicate and agree about which transactions are legitimate.

No more needing central trusted authorities. No way to hack, change, or mess around with what the spreadsheet says.

NFT stands for non-fungible token. The key word is fungible which just means you can exchange something for an equivalent version, and it will be equally valuable (bitcoin is fungible because it doesnt matter which bitcoin you have they are all equally valuable). Non-fungible is the opposite: each item is unique. This is why were seeing a lot of digital art being bought and sold using NFTs. NFTs use blockchains to determine who owns what.

This shift toward a decentralized way of managing life online is called Web3 (a word youll hear more and more and is worth getting to know).

Lets use a real example. Maybe you saw the front page of The Wall Street Journal this summer when an NFT for a digital image sold for $69 million.

Let me save you $69 million and share the link where that images file lives online. You can save it to your computer, and now you also own the file. Right? Well, kind of, but not in the sense everyone cares about.

Most media coverage doesnt explain this, but most NFTs are not the thing itself; in this case the JPEG file. The NFT is the token associated with the metadata that points at the thing. Heres the metadata for that NFT, by the way. There is something called an on-chain NFT, but we wont go there.

The reason NFTs and the metaverse are conflated so often is that theres an expectation that they may power these virtual economies by acting as the infrastructure mediating the exchange of information and assets online.

To be clear, this is not yet a universally agreed upon idea. Second Life, Fortnite, and plenty of other platforms have been doing just fine without NFTs. But one reason NFT/crypto is one of the noisiest places on the internet is because its fast-paced, novel, and supported by an absurd amount of money.

I dont mean that in a negative way; but this area is the unmapped, build-it-as-we-go, unsettled frontier of life online. There are some fascinating projects at the front end of this, but whether NFTs do or dont power some dematerialized system of capitalism misses the point that NFTs are likely more important than just owning stuff.

Now we can tie together everything weve learned about the metaverse and review a recent scene from an online event to explore the way NFTs might play a role.

Here is the Metaverse Festival (yes, a real thing) that was headlined by performances from global stars like Deadmau5. It happened in the browser-based Decentraland (a spatial, game-engine-driven, virtual environment).

Its Friday night, and you head to the nightlife district of Decentraland (a plot of land which is an NFT). To get in you must be of age. You carry an identity token (which could be an NFT), to verify your eligibility for entrance.

You notice someone wearing a hoodie (an NFT) from RTFKT, a virtual apparel company recently acquired by Nike. Those are expensive, Im told.

Its free to enter, because the event is sponsored by Kraken, who wants to be the cryptobank of the metaverse. By attending, youre issued whats called a proof of attendance protocol token, or POAP (that is an NFT).

Later, when you sign up at Kraken, they offer a discount to those who can show, with that token, they attended the event.

Metaverse or no metaverse, as John Palmer explains, NFTs mean the internet becomes a place where everyone has an inventory. Earlier we mentioned the metaverse is an interconnected collection of experiences, and if thats the case, you might want to carry your single identity, history, and inventory of assets around with you. If that sounds familiar its basically giving users back their own cookies and personal data from big companies. I dont want to go there; but its why a lot of people are worried about Facebook/Meta building a centralized metaverse instead of one that is open and decentralized.

Ive gone way down an NFT rabbit hole here, but its worth stitching together the spatial computing/virtual world developments with whats been happening in crypto/Web3. When I started this research seven-ish years ago, crypto people were far away and somewhere else. Today, I now have to explore Web3 stuff too, since these areas are merging.

If youre still herethank youyou might still be wondering: So, what? How does any of this meaningfully improve anything about the world, or even the internet? How is any of this better than what we have today? Honestly, fair point.

Lots of people will have points of view, and I wont advocate one perspective or another. But I do have a personal anecdote.

At the start of my MBA program, the UK government had implemented a rule that no more than six people could be together indoors. For 300 zero-chill/connect on LinkedIn business students, thats a tough start to the year.

We even tried a full Zoom call with all of us.

My classmates will remember me as that kid who threw some weird internet house party using a platform called High Fidelity. It employs spatial audio, so you only hear the people clumped around you. It took some getting used to but was a reasonable way to get 150 of us, as basic 2D avatars, moving around in a shared online space.

What the metaverse enables, through dimensional space, is a way to replicate some but not all natural human behaviors, which you cant replicate in existing online spaces such as Slack, Discord, or Zoom. There are times you want the magical chaos of unplanned social interaction mediated by personal space.

In the professional world, Im endlessly fascinated by this company which runs a 60,000-person organization from inside a virtual world built in Unity. The founder of that software company tells me that when you have to actually walk your avatar from meeting to meeting, theres opportunities for chance encounters youd never get jumping from Zoom to Zoom.

Ive also used that same software to run learning programs, and likewise, there are moving around the room type learning activities I could never run using Zoom.

Additionally, the metaverse might grow to become a more intuitive internet. Just like spatial computing interfaces are easier to use, websites may become like walking into physical stores, something our brains and bodies might better understand.

But it goes without saying, we wont replace real-world experiences nor should we want to. We also wont stop using todays platforms, like video-conferencing. The metaverse is just the evolutionary next stage of the internet, and offers a new suite of communication tools that will be more helpful for some things and less for others.

To conclude: this is all a long-winded way of saying the metaverse is the internet. But spatial. And built with game engines. And probably NFTs. And who knows where that takes us

This article is republished with permission from the authors Medium page. Read the original article.

Image Credit: The first selfie the author ever took as an avatar.

Excerpt from:

What Is the Metaverse? A Beginner's Guide to Tech's Latest Obsession - Singularity Hub