The day is coming when only one out of every few people will need a traditional computer, said Steve Jobs at the D8 conference. "When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that's what you needed on the farms." Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular. "PCs are going to be like trucks," Jobs said. "They are still going to be around." However, he said, only "one out of x people will need them." Jobs said advances in chips and software will allow tablet devices like the iPad to do tasks that today are really only suited for a traditional computer, things like video editing and graphic arts work. (Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20006526-56.html)

"The Singularity is Near: A True Story About the Future," by filmmakers Anthony Waller, Ray Kurzweil, Ehren Koepf and Toshi Hoo, with Executive Producer Martine Rothblatt (Terasem Motion InfoCulture), makes its world premiere on Saturday, June 12, 2010 at the 30th Annual Breckenridge Film Festival. The feature-length documentary film presents the daring arguments from Kurzweil's New York Times bestselling book, "The Singularity is Near." He predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become trillions of times more powerful and increasingly merged with computers. This will be the dawning of a new civilization, enabling us to transcend our biological limitations. In Kurzweil's post-biological world, boundaries blur between human and machine, real and virtual. Human aging and illness are reversed, world hunger and poverty are solved, and we cure death. He maintains a radically optimistic view of the future course of human development while acknowledging profound new dangers. Kurzweil examines the social and philosophical implications of these profound changes and the potential threats they pose to human civilization in dialogues with big thinkers, including former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke; technologists Bill Joy, Mitch Kapor, Marvin Minsky, Eric Drexler, Sherry Turkle and Cynthia Breazeal; Future Shock author Alvin Toffler; civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz; venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and environmentalist Bill McKibben. Kurzweil illustrates the future with a narrative story about an "AI" seeking her human rights, featuring popular NCIS actress Pauley Perrette and personal development guru Tony Robbins. The Singularity Is Near offers a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny. The Breckenridge Theater (operating as the Backstage Theater) is located at 121 South Ridge Street, Breckenridge, CO 80424. A discussion with Ray Kurzweil will immediately follow the screening. Festival passes are available now or by phone at (970) 547-3100. More information (Source: )

With Google and Intel leading a charge by technology companies to change the face of television, the slow-moving industry is being forced into a radical rethink of its business model. The display industry is pushing three advances in television at once: 3D, Internet connectivity, and LED backlighting (enabling thinner sets using less power). (Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2ba158ea-6d15-11df-921a-00144feab49a.html)

A research team at Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) has produced human embryonic stem cells without contamination from the use of animal substances, by culturing them on a matrix of a human protein, laminin-511. Embryonic stem cells can be turned into any other type of cell in the body and have potential uses in replacing sick cells. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news194526873.html)

DNA replication could have first occurred in tiny pores around undersea vents, aided by membranes generated from fatty acids in the water, experiments by Ludwig Maximilian University researchers suggest. (Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627623.000-dna-replication-without-life.html)

I2T (Image to Text), a prototype computer vision system that can generate a live text description of what's happening in a feed from a surveillance camera, has been developed by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and ObjectVideo of Reston, VA. It puts a series of computer vision algorithms into a system that takes images or video frames as input, and spits out summaries of what they depict that can be searched using simple text search. (Song-Chun Zhu/UCLA) (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25439/?a=f)

"This is the beginning of the 3D revolution.... There is no reason to buy another PC unless it has 3D in it," advises Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, whose company has lined up partners including Asus, Sony, Cyberlink, Dell, Microsoft, Panasonic, and Toshiba to make 3D PCs. (Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364353,00.asp)

Asus introduced on Monday at the Computex show in Taipei two new Windows 7-based tablet computers, designed to compete with Apple's iPad: the Eee Pad (a keyboard-less laptop with Intel ULV Core 2 Duo processor in 10 and 12 inch verions) and the Eee Tablet (a hybrid e-book/entertainment/note-taking device with webcam and stylus), Eee Pad Asus Eee Tablet (Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20006390-1.html)

A Chinese supercomputer -- the Dawning Nebulae, based at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, China -- has achieved a sustained computing speed of 1.27 petaflops (quadrillion mathematical operations per second), ranking as the world's second fastest machine on the latest Top 500 list of supercomputers released Monday. The world's fastest computer remains the Cray Jaguar supercomputer, based at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, at 1.75 petaflops. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/science/01compute.html?ref=science)

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) plans to announce its Singularity Summit 2010 conference tomorrow, scheduled for August 14-15 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco. "This year, the conference shifts to a focus on neuroscience, bioscience, cognitive enhancement, and other explorations of what Vernor Vinge called 'intelligence amplification' (IA) -- the other route to the Singularity," said Michael Vassar, president of SIAI. Irene Pepperberg, author of "Alex & Me," who has pushed the frontier of animal intelligence with her research on African Gray Parrots, will explore the ethical and practical implications of non-human intelligence enhancement and of the creation of new intelligent life less powerful than ourselves. Futurist-inventor Ray Kurzweil will discuss reverse-engineering the brain and his forthcoming book, How the Mind Works and How to Build One. Allan Synder, Director, Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney, will explore the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation for the enhancement of narrow cognitive abilities. Joe Tsien will talk about the smarter rats and mice that he created by tuning the molecular substrate of the brain's learning mechanism. Steve Mann, "the world's first cyborg," will demonstrate his latest geek-chic inventions: wearable computers now used by almost 100,000 people. Other speakers will include magician-skeptic and MacArthur Genius Award winner James Randi; Gregory Stock (Redesigning Humans), former Director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at UCLA's School of Public Health; Terry Sejnowski, Professor and Laboratory Head, Salk Institute Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, who believes we are just ten years away from being able to upload ourselves; Ellen Heber-Katz, Professor, Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis Program at The Wistar Institute, who is investigating the molecular basis of wound regeneration in mutant mice, which can regenerate limbs, hearts, and spinal cords; Anita Goel, MD, physicist, and CEO of nanotechnology company Nanobiosym; and David Hanson, Founder & CEO, Hanson Robotics, who is creating the world's most realistic humanoid robots. Registration is $385 until June 7. Full disclosure: KurzweilAI.net is a media partner in Singularity Summit 2010. (Source: )

In a development that could lead to novel carbon composites and touch-screen displays, researchers from Rice University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology today unveiled a new method for producing bulk quantities of one-atom-thick sheets of carbon called graphene. Using concentrated solutions of graphene dissolved into acid, the scientists made transparent films that were electrically conductive. Such films could be useful in making touch screens that are less expensive than those used in today's smart phones. Yhe researchers also produced liquid crystals that could be spun into fibers, which could drive down the cost of the ultrastrong carbon composites used in the aerospace, automotive and construction industries. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news194418761.html)

More than 130,000 members of Kaiser Permanente in Northern California have volunteered to have their DNA scanned by robotic, high-speed gene-reading machines, as part of the largest human genome study of its kind ever attempted. The goal: help scientists uncover the genetic roots of chronic disease and, perhaps, to find out why some people live longer than others, including via telomere length measurements. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/science/30sfgenome.html?ref=science)

Nanotechnology promises ice cream that makes you feel full, saltier-tasting salt, less fattening fat, and increased nutritional value of everyday products. Nanofood supplements could even tackle global malnutrition. (Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627611.100-the-taste-of-tiny-putting-nanofoods-on-the-menu.html?full=true)

Scientists from four U.S. universities have created a way to use Rice University's self-assembled, light-activated nanoshells as building blocks for 2-D and 3-D structures that could find use in chemical sensors, nanolasers and light-absorbing metamaterials. (Rice University) The new materials are ideally suited for making ultrasensitive biological and chemical sensors, said study co-author Peter Nordlander, professor of physics and astronomy at Rice. He said they may also be useful in nanolasers and potentially in integrated photonic circuits that run off of light rather than electricity. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news194185863.html)

HP's ambitious CeNSE project ("Central Nervous System for the Earth") intends to create a worldwide network of sensors that is connected to the Internet, which in turn creates a feedback loop for objects and people. In time HP foresees services arising out of sensor data. Its first major project: a partnership with Shell on a seismic solution that has up to 1 million wireless sensor nodes. (Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sensors_next_big_wave_of_computing.php#more)

A Dutch team has developed a proof-of-concept device capable in theory of sequencing a complete human genome in a time measured in minutes and at a cost measured in pennies. It passes an individual DNA molecule at a time through a nanopore (created using an electron beam) in a sheet of graphene to measure the conductivity of a single DNA molecule. As these individual DNA molecules translocate through the pore, characteristic temporary conductance changes are observed in the ionic current through the nanopore, setting the stage for future genomic screening. (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25252/)

Robotics company Willow Garage has started a two-year project to work with institutions from around the world on new applications for its PR2 robot. Each of 11 teams will work on their own projects, but will share their open-source code with each other and the rest of the world. (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/25245/)

Researchers at the University of Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Studies have developed a magnetoencephalography (MEG) system that compensates for head movement, allowing researchers to see detailed activity in an active baby's brain without requiring sedation. (University of Washington Institute of Learning and Brain Sciences) (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/25430/?a=f)

New research by the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris used random noise played as a sound to probe how the human brain acquires auditory memories. In the experiment, when memories were formed, they emerged rapidly, performance became abruptly near-perfect, and multiple noises were remembered for several weeks. The researchers propose that rapid sensory plasticity could explain how the auditory brain creates useful memories from the ever-changing, but sometimes repeating, acoustical world. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news194102373.html)

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed a method for creating supramolecular assemblies of gold nanoparticles that function as highly efficient photothermal agents for delivery to tumors, using a laser beam to heat the nanoparticles above 374 degrees C, the temperature at which explosive microbubbles form. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news194078270.html)