JASON SILVA: Today I'm gonna talk about 5 things that I'm really excited about.
First off I'd like to tell you about an idea that has totally captivated my imagination.
It's called transcension.
Now, get ready for this.
Transcension is a theory, it's a hypothesis, that attempts to account for Fermi's Paradox.
Now, Fermi's Paradox is a question that asks, "If the universe is so infinitely large and
there's so many billions of galaxies and billions of solar systems that would have had so much
time to develop intelligent life, that would have had so much time to spread throughout
the galaxy, then how come we don't see evidence of any of those technologically advanced civilizations
anywhere?
But eventually our technology reaches a point where simultaneously with this expansion we're
also pioneering more and more STEM compression which is the compression of space, time, energy,
and matter.
You have denser and denser spaces where more and more computation and complexity is occurring.
Now, eventually, we're going to be having computation on the nano scale.
Then we're going to have computation on the femto scale.
At that point, we'll be non-biological intelligence that's operating at the femto scale inhabiting
virtual worlds that will continue to be subject to that STEM compression.
At that point we won't bother with the expansionist tendency anymore, we'll have more density
occurring, more complexity, more computation on even smaller scales than that until we
create, literally, black hole-like conditions and we disappear out of the visible universe
by all accounts.
And of course, black holes are considered the ultimate computation substrate because
it's the ultimate density.
And then once we disappear out of the visible universe in those black hole-like environments,
we'll be sling-shotted to the end of time.
That's where we'll meet all the other civilizations and high-five each other.
We won't need bodies.
We'll just be consciousness living in virtual reality.
We're practicing already.
Look at all the movies about this stuff.
I'm very excited about synthetic biology.
There's a project at the University of Edinburgh that I've mentioned previously that is bringing
together…it's called "Synthetic Aesthetics" and they're bringing together designers and
biologists and creatives to talk about biology as a new canvas for aesthetic design.
So I'm really interested in the fact that biology is becoming a new instrument for human
creativity.
So just like Beethoven had the musical instrument and, you know, Mozart had the musical instrument,
and Van Gogh had the oil painting, now biology itself.
So I imagine a Shakespearean sonnet written in genomes.
What are we gonna make with that?
What new forms of beauty?
I mean look at what we do with bricks and cement.
Look at some of these cathedrals and skyscrapers.
What are we gonna make out of biology?
That's really exciting to me.
Synthetic biology.
I'm really excited by Singularity University which was co-founded by Ray Kurzweil and Peter
Diamandis and what's amazing about this place is it's, you know, it's teaching people specifically
about these exponentially emerging information technologies and the convergence of A.I.,
artificial intelligence, biotech, nanotech, and how the convergence of all of these three
can be used and leveraged to address the grand challenges of humanity.
So they're teaching people about exponential growth, something that's crucially important,
and all the students that come there are challenged with the task of coming up with a product
or an invention that can help a billion people.
See these are the levels of ambitions that we're on..that we're in today, where a few
group of really passionate individuals can actually hope to address a problem that affects
a billion people and I think that's kind of amazing.
That's the power of these exponential growth curves.
And the fact that Singularity University, a whole institution to teach people about
this stuff, is around I think is key and more people should know about it.
Yeah, very cool stuff.
Check out singularityu.org.
Well I'm a TED junkie.
The Technology, Entertainment, and Design conference has basically become a platform
where big ideas and intellectuals can be the rock stars, you know.
Someone had mentioned that the fact that these talks have accumulated over 100 million views
on the web is proof that people are hungry for meaningful discourse and big beautiful
ideas.
You know, it's the ultimate antidote against the likes of Jersey Shore.
We're not getting dumber, we're getting smarter.
Just look at how many people are watching TED talks.
And I've been to the conference.
I think it's wonderful . I think they understand the importance of good packaged design.
They understand the importance of aesthetics, of presentation, of lighting, all these things
that..how to dress up an idea so that it sticks, so that it goes viral.
And I think..I think they're wonderful.
I think they're making the world a better place.
Oh yeah, I'm kind of an aviation junkie as well and I'm really excited about Boeing's
new aircraft, it's called the 787 Dreamliner.
And this might make me sound kind of like a geek but this airplane is the most advanced
aircraft ever built.
It's got bigger windows that any other plane in history.
The windows don't have like little things that you pull down to close them, like you
touch the screen and it has three different types of ways to dim it.
It has higher humidity than any other aircraft ever made so you won't get as dehydrated after
you fly.
It's got all sorts of new enhancements in lighting and it's the first airplane where
the insides were designed by designers and aesthetic experts rather than just engineers
so they were informed by how a person's psyche is affected when they walk into a plane and
they were, you know, making sure that all of those things were accounted for to give
you an experience that was more holistic and..and…soothing to your psyche when you're propelling at 500
miles per hour through the air and I'm really excited to fly in it.
The power of an aircraft to take you somewhere else so quickly is kind of magical, don't
you think?
I mean it's a quick reminder that we are the gods that we invented.
Every time you get a jet plane.
So I'm excited about the Dreamliner.
Good job, Boeing.