David Brin has a long, but useful essay on the future of technology and humanity. I may have some thoughts later.

Lawrence Altman describes the tremendous advances in medicine that we’ve made in the last half century:

Few people appreciate that medicine has advanced more since World War II than in all of earlier history. Newer drugs and de-vices and better understanding of disease mechanisms have vastly improved the care of patients. For male babies born in this country in 1960, the life expectancy was 66.6 years; for female babies, it was 73.1 years. In 2004, the figures, respectively, were 75.2 and 80.4. Medical advances account for much, though not all, of the gain.

My father had his first coronary in 1968, at the age of 45. He had a second one a little over ten years later, and died at age 55. I’m now several years past the age at which he had his first, and approaching the point at which I’ll live longer than he did, partly due to massive changes in lifestyle (he smoked and was overweight, and grew up on a typical Jewish diet of that era), but also because we can now monitor such things, and keep control of blood pressure and cholesterol, and if I do have a coronary event, I’ll have a much better chance of rapid and useful care than he did in either case. I continue to hope that I’ll live to see actuarial escape velocity.

Even more interestingly (at least to me), he also writes about the hubris and unjustified arrogance of the medical profession:

During my training, most professors said that all diseases were known. That hubris left doctors unprepared when AIDS came along in 1981 to cause one of history

This is timely. I’ve been planning to do some system upgrades, but haven’t been paying that much attention to the last couple generations of processors. Here’s a nice overview of the situation and a buyers’ guide.

I remember when this issue of Popular Electronics came in the mail. I wanted one, but couldn’t afford it at the time (or at least, I couldn’t justify spending the money on what was essentially a toy). As this article notes, it first became publicly available thirty-two years ago today.

I’m sure that Bush and Rove will get the blame for this any minute now.

For some 20 million years, the baiji, also called the white-flag dolphin, frequented the Yangtze

I haven’t had the time to read through this whole thing (we’re moving foliage into the house and decorating it, to the annual consternation of the cat), but I think it’s worth a read. The Singularity continues to approach, and by definition, we are not prepared.

Phase-change memory:

Scientists from IBM, Macronix and Qimonda said they developed a material that made “phase-change” memory 500 to 1,000 times faster than the commonly-used “flash” memory, while using half as much power.

“You can do a lot of things with this phase-change memory that you can’t do with flash,” IBM senior manager of nanoscale science Spike Narayan told AFP.

“You can replace disks, do instant-on computers, or carry your own fancy computer application in your hand. It would complement smaller technology if manufacturers wanted to conjure things up.”

The day’s not far off that you’ll be able to carry an unimaginable amount of knowledge around in your pocket.

Here’s a piece from yesterday’s Mercury News. He’s not a pure investor. It’s part philanthropy:

I think the probability of humanity living longer is greater if we’re a multi-planet species. I think that’s fairly obvious. But I’m also quite optimistic about Earth. I don’t think Earth is in any danger of imminent demise. I think we will solve the problems that we have before us, and that humanity will probably live for a very long time.

But there’s always a chance that it could end. That’s why people buy life insurance. They don’t expect to drop dead tomorrow. Or car insurance. You don’t expect to T-bone your car into a semi. But you might. That’s why I’m a big believer in space exploration.

For me, space exploration is actually more interesting for positive reasons. I think humanity will be far more interesting and richer and diverse and just the future will be much more exciting and interesting if we are a space-faring civilization that is expanding among the stars than if we’re forever on Earth.

That’s the attitude I’d have if I had his kind of money.

The Economist has an interesting survey on the future of the phone.

I’m not an early adaptor, and unlike the younger generation, I don’t live with my cell phone–it’s not an intimate and essential part of my life. I often forget to take it when I leave the house. Of course, this may be less a generational thing than the fact that I work mostly from home. When I’m traveling, I’m much more careful to keep it handy. But I wonder how many of these new developments won’t be picked up by older generations unused to them?

It’s also going to be a strange world, when most people are walking around seemingly talking to themselves like schizophrenics. We can still tell today because of the earpieces, but once they get smaller, or embedded in the body, it’s going to be a lot harder for shrinks to tell the difference between people with imaginary voices in their head, and real ones.

[Update late morning]

I’m guessing from comments that my humor was a little too subtle today.

I haven’t bothered to download IE7, because I use Firefox 2.0 for the vast majority of my web browsing, and find IE6 acceptable for the rare occasions when a web site insists that I use Internet Explorer. Based on this article, it sounds like that was a good (non)move.