Here is an excerpt:

When the 1860 conference began, chemistry was in a total state of disarray. Although most chemists believed in atoms and molecules, nobody could agree on molecular formulas. Even simple molecules such as water were hotly debated: Most leading chemists at the time claimed that water’s molecular formula was OH, and a minority argued that it was H₂O. More complex molecules were an even bigger battleground: At least 19 different representations of acetic acid were being used in textbooks of that era.

The motivation for the conference is obvious. Read the entire article to understand its significance.

Image Source: Fox News

Its not surprise that technology has been influenced heavily by people wanting to have sex or see other people have sex. Along the lines of what Scott Adams noted, in the vernacular, technology is driven forward by ostensible nerds, and as noted in the movie “Revenge of the Nerds”, nerds think only about sex when not thinking of being a genius. So any new technology that comes around, you can bet your money on it being used for something related to sex (and/or porn). Historically, when printing press came out, we had porn books follow soon; in the VHS vs. BetaMax war, VHS won primarily because porn videos were released in VHS and not in BetaMax (because BetaMax tapes, at least initially, were only 60 min. long); similarly when cameras came out, we had porn photographs. Why when Poloroids came out, you had home made porn hitting the cultural market in no time! So where is technology driving sex/porn now (or is it the other way around)?^[1]

My first true realization that technology really was all about sex came about in 2005 soon after the iPod came out. In 2005 or so came the iBuzz, which was essentially an iPod-powered-vibrator whose ‘buzz’ was essentially music activated. From then to now, the adult entertainment industry (that how they liked to be called BTW) has been leapfrogging with the technology, and in some cases, driving the technology. For instance, take iBuzz, technology soon improved around it to where now you have Freestyle (NSFW)which is the wireless version of the iBuzz with increased compatibility and quieter motors. Now if that wasn’t good enough for you, you have the Talk2Me (NSFW) which adds an interactive component to the whole deal: it comes with a built-in mic to turn vocalizations into vibrations; so now you can basically talk yourself into an orgasm (WTF)! Oh, and it gets better, the website advertises “Use it as a standard vibe or with your favorite song, your lover’s voice, a podcast, or your boyfriend’s video game.” You boyfriend’s video game?!?! So instead of having sex (which apparently is the second best thing you can do as a couple), let your boyfriend play a video game that you can orgasm to!

But if you insist on having sex (with your partner), but are geographically separated, or somehow detest the idea of having actual physical contact, then Virtual-Stick Synchro is the one for you! This is actually the next technological jump from phone sex. Its as close to virtual reality (and I mean ‘real’ reality, not a pixelated version) and extra-sensory tools that we have gotten with reliability. This tool has a ‘male’ stick for the woman and a ‘female’ hole for the man, and they are hooked up to each other via the internet, with webcams, mics, and other conventional communication mechanisms, and whatever each individual does to/with the stick (resp., or the hole), it’s sensed, transmitted, and replicated by the hole (resp., the stick). It aims to reduce a long distance relationship to a co-existential one in the 5th dimension.

But what if you don’t have a (willing) partner and still insist on having sex. Looks like we have technology working hard for you folks to! Until now, your only reasonable recourse was a blowup doll. Not anymore: recently showcased at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas is Roxxxy TrueCompanion (NSFW). A TrueCompanion is the world first sexbot, that’s right, it’s a robot designed for sex! Its not science fiction anymore. It was artificial intelligence and mutliple personalities depending on your taste.It has sensors all over its body and so it can actually ‘feel’ whatever you are doing to it, and respond appropriately.

The motivation for Roxxxy is a testimony to the argument that nerds really do only think about sex (when they are thinking about being a genius). Now Roxxxy was created by Douglas Hines who was a researcher at Bell Labs (where he learned about the cutting edge in artificial intelligence). Douglas lost a good friends when the twin towers fell on 9/11. Douglas thought that it was sad to not be able to ever talk to him again. So, this made Douglas think seriously about how to implement a robotic representation of a person and have it reflect that person’s personality. And what came out of such a somber thought and effort is a Sexbot! Go figure :-)

Wonder where technology will take us next. My bet is that the publicity surrounding stem cells has less to do with curing diseases and more with the opportunities it provides us to have sex in many more different ways (much like many other technologies preceding it). I think what they are really going for is the Love Lump (NSFW). Any other predictions anyone?

References:
[1] Source: http://www.abc.net.au/science/wings/episode5.htm ^

The statement on the website says:

Zeitgeist was created as a non-profit filmiac expression to inspire people to start looking at the world from a more critical perspective and to understand that very often things are not what the population at large think they are. The information in Zeitgeist was established over a year long period of research and the current Source page on this site lists the basic sources used / referenced. Soon, an Interactive Transcript will be online with detailed footnotes and links so exact sources and further research can be relayed.

…

Here’s the movie for your viewing. Note that the movie is 2 hours long, so make sure you have enough time to watch it. But I guarantee that you will have strong opinions about it one way or the other.
Don’t forget to check out the Clarifications (which dented my confidence in the authenticity of the ‘facts’ in the movie), and the Sources sections.

Without further ado, here’s the movie :)

Fortunately for me, I am a computer science student, and I have the technical background to take a crack at this question. I know, a student of philsophy would be better equipped than I am, but when you are dealing with computational theory the lines get blurred, exteremly blurred. One of the assistant professors in computer science did his bachelors in philosophy and while pursuing his masters, specialized logic and stumbled upon computer science, going on to do a PhD in it. One of the best teachers I have taken a course under.

What is logic? Unfortunately we enounter a stumbling block at the very begining here. There no universally accepted definition for logic. The most general one I could come across was in MSN Encarta. It says “Logic is a science dealing with the principles of valid reasoning and argument. The study of logic is the effort to determine the conditions under which one is justified in passing from given statements, called premises, to a conclusion that is claimed to follow from them.” This is a fairly generic definition that includes most, but not all, of what logic is. This also gives me enough ammo to attack it with.

Traditionally, logic is bivariate. That is to say that there can be only two values to a statement, viz., ‘true’ and ‘false’. Logic also says all that is not false is true. It works well when you are dealing with the limited universe as defined by your premises. But the real question is, how valid can this be in reality? Not very. Consider the statement ‘It will rain tomorrow’, is it true? It is possible, but we cannot say it is true. This is not allowed in traditional logic. A statment can either be true or false, nothing else. How are we to try and understand the world, the natural, the supernatural or the divine with something as limited as this?

Granted, that we can do better than this. We do have multi-valued logic systems. But they fail too. They cant take you very far without stumbling on the rules that they created themselves. To illustrate one such example with bivariate logic, consider the statement ‘This statement is false’. Its simply a statement talking about itself. Can we assign a truth value to it? Just try and you will realize that it is not possible. You will run into contradictions either way. How useful is a tool that isnt powerful enough to talk about itself?

One might argue that is indeed the nature of all tools and intelligence. We havent been able to figure out how our own brain works, and logic is an invention of man, how can u expect logic to be able to explain itself? Going by that argument, our quest for Truth is an excercise in futility because the Truth is much bigger and more profound that ourselves, and if we arent powerful enough to understand how we work, then how can we be expected to understand Truth?

Going back to the definition, logic as a system can be employed only under the existance of premises, i.e., statements that are assumed to be true. In mathematics, they are refered to as axioms. What if we dont have any assumptions? What we seek is the ultimate truth, the truth above and beyond all truth. We wish to gain the knowledge that will explain the universe we live in, starting from nothing, void, no assumptions. Call it what you wish, enlightenment, nirvana, Truth, God. You choice of the name is your choice of the path that you wish to follow to get to the destination. How do you employ logic here? It isnt even valid anymore.

The natural question to ask is, how does logic work so well for science, if it fails miserably trying to explain nature? After all, isnt science a quest for understanding nature? Logic does remarkably well for science and engineering simply because the language and universe of science and engineering is mathematics. It is a severly limited universe, and one invented by man. My math professor said it best when he explained “What are numbers? Numbers are things you do arthmetic with. What is arthmetic? Arthmetic is what you do with numbers.” That’s how math starts off. Those are its assumptions – existance of numbers and arthmetic.

This makes me question science as a tool to understanding the unverse. It is such an adhoc, weak and approximate means. It isnt even consistent with itself. In fact Godel, one of the most influential logicians of the twentieth century, proved that any self-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe integer arithmetic will allow for “true” propositions about integers that can not be proven from the axioms. So science cannot be right about things simply because the logic system that it relies on is not consistent, is flawed. Science was always a quest for explainations, never the truth anyway.

Patents are typically awarded to inventions and new ideas. The idea is to give an incentive to the inventors for sharing their inventions with the public. In exchange for sharing the invention, the inventor is given monopoly over its use for 17 years.The patent holder can license its use, or may even choose to refuse to do so, or even sell his patent rights to others. Also independent reinvention of the same technique by someone else does not give them the right to use it.

This workes fine for inventions is all branches of science and arts, but fails miserably in case of computer algorithms. In case of hardware design, or automobile design or any physical system, design of one component is likely to affect others. Hence interoperability is not always guaranteed. Due to various factors like temperature, pressure, presence of other chemicals etc. one particular technique used in one physical system may fail in another. However, this is not the case with computer algorithms. For instance, behaviour of a pointer is the same, regardless of whether it is referred to inside a while loop, or outside it, from a function or otherwise. The behaviour of a pointer is not distorted because to where or how it is called. But similar analogy may not apply in case of physical systems, the mechanism used by a CD player mounted on a stable platform will not work in case of a discman. The CD will end up skipping forever due to the vibrations and shocks, hance requirement of a new mechanism to play CDs in a discman.

More often than not, it is virtually impossible to write a complex piece of software without making use to already established techniques. Also, there may not be any other way doing things. There may not be any workarounds. Consider, for example, the proof given for finding prime numbers in polynomial time. Assuming an algorithm is developed to generate prime numbers or validate primality of a number in polynomial time and it is patented. Then this effectively thwarts all new developments in the area of number theory and encryption across multitude of avenues. Ironically, the purpose of patents is to “promote the progress of science and the useful arts.”

A patent is an absolute monopoloy. This policy implicitly assumes that inventions are rare and precious, since only in those circumstances is it beneficial. However,software is a field of constant reinvention, and recombination of known techniques to provide a solution. With patents this is disallowed. A classic example is that of quicksort and linked lists. Both quicksort algorithm and concept of linked lists is all too well known. However, there is patent for using linked lists as the data structure for quicksort! Things couldnt get more absurd than this. Here is a list of some more absurd software patents that have been granted over the past years.

Donald Knuth makes a impressive arguments against software patents in his letter to the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, USA. A more detailed description on the dangerous trends in software patents is available here.

In case you believe (like I do) that software patents are causing more harm than good, then sign the Petition Against Software Patents (open only to citizens of USA)

Recommended reading:

FFII: Software Patents in Europe

Software Patents