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The Dark Knight Rises will complete Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale's Batman trilogy, and Bane actor Tom Hardy explains why his character is the most brutal and violent foe Batman has ever faced. Bane is all about results... horrible, horrible results. More »
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Roland Emmerich has pushed bad science to its limit before, most notably with the amazing 2012. But for his upcoming movie Singularity, he's actually enlisting the help of Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity is Near, to help him revise the script. On the one hand, this means the movie will accurately reflect Kurzweil's theories about a magical transformation in which everything becomes awesome thanks to A.I. and other breakthroughs. On the other hand... will the result actually be more unrealistic than 2012? More »
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We're hip-deep in pictures, videos, and reports from the set of The Dark Knight Returns. Plus the Akira casting rumors continue. And on Fringe, things might get a little rocky for Olivia. More »
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James McAvoy explains the challenge of doing an X-Men: First Class sequel. Brian Grazer says the budget cuts have made The Dark Tower even better. Gale Anne Hurd discusses The Walking Dead's future... and inadvertently suggests an awesome possible guest star! More »
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We've been wondering about the story behind Roland Emmerich's Singularity for a while now — and it sounds like it really is about the Raymond Kurzweil-style technological Singularity, with just a hint of robot uprising thrown in. More »
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If you've ever wanted a world-class introduction to the basics of artificial intelligence, here's your chance. Every fall, engineering students at Stanford University can enroll in a class titled "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence." And now you can, too. More »
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While the comparison between the computer and the human brain is one that has been made for over half a century, the way each one processes information could not be more different. Now, IBM researchers have designed a revolutionary chip that, for the first time, actually mimics the functioning of a human brain. More »
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What's this? There's a new Roland Emmerich science fiction film on the horizon! Let's just hope this new movie, titled Singularity, manages to be a worthy successor to 2012 and other recent Emmerich spectacles. More »
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Scientists have come up with a new theory about how ultra-light black holes could be formed, and it's an entirely new way of looking at the phenomenon. Some black holes might be formed from the outside in, not the inside out. More »
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Black holes have a well-deserved reputation for being cosmic destroyers, ripping apart anything that comes into contact with their intense gravitational forces. But a radical new theory says advanced intelligent life could live on planets inside black holes. More »
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Engineers have used human blood to make a 'memristor,' a component that remembers its last use and adapts to it. More »
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We assumed that in the future humans, or other biological entities, would receive mechanical or electronic 'upgrades'. It looks like it could be the other way around. Machines might be getting biological upgrades. More »
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If you read any science fiction or futurism, you've probably heard people using the term "singularity" to describe the world of tomorrow. But what exactly does it mean, and where does the idea come from? We answer in today's io9 flashback. More »
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Getting ready to upload your consciousness into a brain-emulating computer in a decade or two? You'll be waiting a lot longer than that. Princeton computer science researcher Timothy B. Lee doesn't think we'll ever upload our brains. Here's why. More »
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The head of Marvel Studios reveals their next four movies, which characters he wants to see get movies, and little things to look out for in The Avengers and Thor. A veteran of ER is joining the Torchwood cast. Spoilers! More »
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Kimiko Ross, star of Dresden Codak hangs out with probably nuclear-powered individual and Tiny Carl Jung, builds supervillainous memory-stealing devices, and waits for the Singularity with almost evangelical devotion. In the meantime, she traverses some funny and fantastical landscapes. More »
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I don't believe in the Singularity for the same reason I don't believe in Heaven. More »
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Though science fiction often mangles scientific truths, it is nevertheless a genre that is highly influenced by the latest trends in scientific thought and research. Here are some of the scientific (and semi-scientific) ideas that have influenced SF the most. More »
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Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross have just signed with Tor Books to co-author a fix-up novel based on a series of short stories called Rapture of the Nerds. The authors and their editor told us what to expect. More »
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If you read any science fiction or futurism, you've probably heard people using the term "singularity" to describe the world of tomorrow. But what exactly does it mean, and where does the idea come from? We answer in today's backgrounder. More »
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Evolution stops for no one, including Homo sapiens. Depending on how much we mess around with our genomes, and modify our bodies, and brains, this could be the last human century. This week, we blast ahead into the posthuman era. More »
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We can't wait until our brains are hardwired into cybernests, so we can fully appreciate the hilariousness of SpaceCollective's guide to skepticism about the Singularity. My fave part: This illustration, explaining how "extreme shit going down" leads to The Future. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5440709&view=rss&microfeed=true Over at the H+ blog, RU Sirius sums up an argument between some of web's futurist muckymucks, arguing over whether PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a big contributor to singularity-related causes, was right to post a rant which included these choice ideas: More »
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The future is over! It's no longer possible to write about the future, because the Singularity will definitely happen in twenty years. We'll have artificial intelligence, and the meaning of humanity will be transformed. Is this idea hindering science fiction? More »
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Are you sick of the shiny, high-tech future where humans evolve into superbeings? Join the club. The latest trend is for anti-singularity futures, where tomorrow looks like yesterday. More »
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Moore's Law, which predicts a doubling of transistor density every 18 months, won't give us superhuman intelligence in a reasonable timeframe by itself, says author Vernor Vinge in this new video from the Ideas Project. More »
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A plane crashes on a mysterious island, where the past and present collide. No, it's not Lost, it's Singularity, an upcoming game. Watch the trailer, plus Metal Gear Solid and Lost Planet 2 trailers, below. More »
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People are still trying to wrap their minds around the idea of the singularity, as a rather random article in the New York Times yesterday made clear. Meanwhile, Tor's Jo Walton and Rudy "Post-Singular" Rucker have moved way beyond the singularity onto the next big idea. Walton wrote about how she was sick of SF writers feeling constrained by the idea that the future will contain a "singularity" where sci/tech becomes so advanced that nothing in the world would make sense to us present-day types anymore. Rucker responded by offering nine ideas for scifi creators that have nothing to do with the singularity. More »
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The latest issue of IEEE Spectrum, a journal for speculative engineering geeks, is devoted to "the singularity," that moment when our society changes so dramatically that it becomes incomprehensible to people who lived in the past. The issue is packed with free online essays by singularity thinkers like science fiction author Vernor "Rainbows End" Vinge, Rodney Brooks of MIT's AI Lab, and Ray "Singularity is Near" Kurzweil. The whole issue is well worth a serious read. But my favorite part by far is an essay by Vinge, an SF author and computer scientist whose singularity scenarios in his novels are both compelling and realistic. He breaks down singularity scenarios into the five most-likely possibilities, any of which he thinks could happen by 2030. More »
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The most sophisticated artificial intelligence in the world is as smart as your average puppy. The A.I., which can control a robot arm, has the level of cognition and learning of a two- or three-year-old child, say its creators, who are with the E.U.-funded COSPAL project. But we probably won't get an A.I. to match an adult human in our lifetimes, COSPAL cautions. The real news here? Apparently puppies and three-year-old humans have the same level of intelligence, according to A.I. geeks. [A.I. Panic] More »
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Robo-teen Summer Glau tries to bond with some real girls and comfort a hazing victim, only to get called "bitch-whore," in a scene from last night's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. (She decides "bitch-whore" is her new nickname, which should totally be a running subplot.) Someone's harassing the girls of Terminator High with giant stencils and bras, and Summer is out of her depth. We also had a lot of way-subtle girl-grooming=violence moments, a Kill Bill-Robert Oppenheimer mash-up, and the world's craziest explanation of the Singularity. Click through for spoilers. More »
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Scientists have created a new material that absorbs more light than any other substance on Earth, giving it a reflectivity value of 0.045 percent. It's also 30 times darker than the standard we currently use to measure what counts as "black." It's practically like having a black hole in a fabric, which should lead to some extremely cool t-shirts. [Reuters] More »
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Downloading your brain into virtual reality is so 1982. Soul Code, the new movie from Tron writer/director Steve Lisberger, will be about backing up your memories instead. And unlike Tron's bouncy cyber-liberation theme, the collaboration with IGN diva Jessica Chobot will be a "cautionary tale" about technology, Lisberger says in a rambling new interview. Why has the creator of Tron gotten so pessimistic? More »
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Catherine Valente, author of adventure tale The Cities of Coin and Spice, says the singularity isn't about artificial intelligence or nanobots. Instead, that scifi moment at which everything "now" becomes "the future" is personal, too: Valente compares the big Singularity to personal singularities like living as a divorced person when you thought you'd be married forever. She also lays down a much-needed challenge to all those wankers who think the singularity can only come about via specific technologies like artificial intelligence. More »
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Computers will become self-aware and smarter than humans. And Baby Boomers will live forever. That's the basis of the Singularity, which predicts that technology will accelerate so rapidly that we'll be like gods in twenty years. Rudy Rucker's new novel deals with a world where the Singularity has already happened, called Postsingular. He used to mock the Singularity, but now he's become a believer because it opens up so many awesome story ideas. Just look at Postsingular. More »
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