I’m currently in Harvard listening to some pretty awesome talks at the H+ Summit. I always really enjoying attending these events, the atmosphere is truly awesome. So far we have had talks about brain preservation, diy genomics, neural networks, robots on stage, AI, consciousness, synthetic biology, crowdsourcing scientific discovery, and lots lots more.
The talks are all being livestreamed, which is pretty cool too. I can’t really describe the conference in words, so here are some pictures from the conference so far:
Audience pic:
General overview:
Here is a picture of Geordie’s talk about D-Wave, quantum computing and Intelligence:
Here is a picture of me next to the Aiken-IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator Mark I. This thing is truly amazing, a real piece of computing history.
The MIT museum was also really cool 🙂 More news soon!
Physics and cake 
Looks like an interesting event. Have fun!
Thanks for the post and pics. I’m watching the conference via livestream. It’s nice to see photos of the audience and room.
Interested in reading more of your thoughts about attending the conference and actually getting to interact with the presenters.
Watching on livestream for free is nice. But it’s not the same as being there.
-John
ps. How’s the cake in Cambridge?
I’ll see if I can get round to writing some more thoughts soon. Lots to catch up on at the moment (the post-conference work pile needs to be attacked).
I didn’t find any cake in Cambridge!!! But I had a bagel…
What presentation did you enjoy the most?
There was this one talk by some dude about quantum computing and artificial intelligence and stuff, I thought that one was really good.
The Dwave guy?… I’m not sure about them there was lots of talk about the authenticity of there work.
Really? Who said that?
If you’re up for a breathy rendition of our future that never really panned out, then you’ll probably enjoy “The Fifth Generation” by Ed Feigenbaum and Pamela McCorduck. The giggle factor is a bit high here, because when the book was penned back in 1983, people actually accepted the premsie that AI would deliver on all of the wonders attributed to it (and naturally, that delivery date was right around the corner–maybe 5-10 years distant, at most). And here we are, 27 years later, still worried about colored rectangle management (now with compositing!). Sigh.
The book’s cover:
Here’s a link to more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer
Cheers,
M.
Thanks Mike, I’ll take a look!
Sorry it took so long, got sidetracked with my own musings…
Well after doing some googling on Dwave again I remember the reasons for my cast of doubts with them..
Several years ago when then demoed the “world’s first quantum computer” there where many doubts as to whether they actually achieved true quantum computing..Stories like the own below in the NYT and others quickly spread doubts on their claims… Since then I have not been following their research close enough but things may have changed, they may be able to prove their claims now, although Im still jaded by their initial press approach.
“What was more frustrating, D-Wave provided no evidence to back up its claims: it has released only the sketchiest details about the inner workings of Orion. Something solved the problems at the demonstration, but it might not have been a quantum computer.”
LINkS: