"Computer Game's High Score Could Earn The Nobel Prize In Medicine"

"A new game, named Foldit, turns protein folding into a competitive sport. Introductory levels teach the rules, which are the same laws of physics by which protein strands curl and twist into three-dimensional shapes — key for biological mysteries ranging from Alzheimer's to vaccines.

After about 20 minutes of training, people feel like they're playing a video game but are actually mouse-clicking in the name of medical science. The free program is at http://fold.it/.

'We're hopefully going to change the way science is done, and who it's done by,' said Popovic, who presented the project today at the Games for Health meeting in Baltimore. 'Our ultimate goal is to have ordinary people play the game and eventually be candidates for winning the Nobel Prize.'

Proteins, of which there are more than 100,000 different kinds in the human body, form every cell, make up the immune system and set the speed of chemical reactions. We know many proteins' genetic sequence, but don't know how they fold up into complex shapes whose nooks and crannies play crucial biological roles.

Computer simulators calculate all possible protein shapes, but this is a mathematical problem so huge that all the computers in the world would take centuries to solve it. In 2005, Baker developed a project named Rosetta@home that taps into volunteers' computer time all around the world. But even 200,000 volunteers aren't enough.

'Long-term, I'm hoping that we can get a significant fraction of the world's population engaged in solving critical problems in world health, and doing it collaboratively and successfully through the game,' David Baker, a UW professor of biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, said. 'We're trying to use the brain power of people all around the world to advance biomedical research.'

Foldit includes elements of multiplayer games in which people can team up, chat with other players and create online profiles. Over time the researchers will analyze people's moves to see how the top players solve puzzles. This information will be fed back into the game's design so the game's tools and format can evolve."

See the original article here.
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I think what I appreciate most about this revolutionary project is that it is a microcosm of the potentially unfathomable power a humanity connected and singularly-focused can harness.

It brings to mind the Pangea Day event which occurred this past Saturday, where 24 short films made by anyone and everyone around the world were watched on “millions of screens and shared at more than 1,000 events and parties.” The concept was to fuse the differentiating consciousnesses of as many individuals as possible into a collective human experience through personal and potent films to promote world peace.

It seems to me both of these projects are original and substantive attempts at employing modern tools to amalgamate the masses on a level never before reached to thrust the progress of the species forward. It'll be interesting to track the concentric circling of Foldit and Pangea Day and see what fruit they do or do not bear. For I think either way, there is a lot to be learned from their successes as well as their failures.

I'd also be curious to know what potential the Collective thinks such endeavors really have, what parallel projects I may have missed, and any ideas one may have for new projects dedicated to funneling vast pools of brainpower into solving a weighty human problem?

You can see the Pangea Day films here.

Tue, May 13, 2008  Permanent link

A time and place where we redefine the very fundamentals

I think this event will be instructive and illuminating on how human communication on one of the most massive scales ever achieved can be used to push forth the Hyper-Evolution of Self-Evolution and perhaps lead to a both wider and deeper unified human experience than has ever been known - and therefore, may also be a partial realization of the potential the SpaceCollective community is dedicated to exploring - a time and place where we redefine the very fundamentals of what definition is – what experience is - what knowledge is - what an individual is - what humanity is - what existence is – and become, for all intensive purposes, another species entirely.


I'll be watching…

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The Pangea Day Mission & Purpose

Pangea Day is a global event bringing the world together through film.

Why? In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that – to help people see themselves in others – through the power of film.

The Pangea Day Event

Starting at 18:00 GMT on May 10, 2008, locations in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro will be linked for a live program of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers. The entire program will be broadcast – in seven languages – to millions of people worldwide through the internet, television, and mobile phones.

The 24 short films to be featured have been selected from an international competition that generated more than 2,500 submissions from over one hundred countries. The films were chosen based on their ability to inspire, transform, and allow us see the world through another person's eyes. Details on the Pangea Day films can be viewed here.

The program will also include a number of exceptional speakers and musical performers. Queen Noor of Jordan, CNN's Christiane Amanpour, musician/activist Bob Geldof, and Iranian rock phenom Hypernova are among those taking part.

What Will Happen After Pangea Day

People inspired by Pangea Day will have the opportunity to participate in community-building activities around the world. Through the live program, the Pangea Day web site, and self-organized local events, everyday people will be connected with extraordinary activists and organizations.

Many of the films and performances seen on Pangea Day will be made available on the Web and via mobile phone, alongside open forums for discussion and ideas for how to take social action.

A Pangea Day documentary will be created to catalyze future activities, and dozens of talented filmmakers will make strides in their careers.

History

In 2006, filmmaker Jehane Noujaim won the TED Prize, an annual award granted at the TED Conference. She was granted $100,000, and more important, a wish to change the world. Her wish was to create a day in which the world came together through film. Pangea Day grew out of that wish. Watch Jehane Noujaim’s 2006 acceptance speech now.

The Trailer



The specific information on Pangea Day (below the double dash) was taken from: http://www.pangeaday.org/index.php

(artwork by Alex Grey entitled Oversoul)

Fri, May 9, 2008  Permanent link

The Hyper-Evolution of Self-Evolution

The Hyper-Evolution of Self-Evolution has already begun to shatter the bones and frames of everyone and everything humans know and think humans know...but let me start from the beginning.

The following is an excerpt from a post by rene entitled,
"SpaceCollective’s Grand Narrative."

"According to Kahle [Brewster Kahle runs the Internet Archive], there are roughly 26 million books in the library of congress, the largest print library in the world. This may seem like a lot of books, but in the digital age it doesn’t represent that many data. On the web, for example, an equivalent amount of information as is printed in the total number of books is posted online every two months.

When you consider that at the moment it takes one person a year to scan 3000 books, it means that all 26 million titles can be scanned by the population of Detroit in the course of one long weekend. In terms of computer storage the entire content of a book on average takes up only one megabyte. Twenty six million megabytes translates into 26 terabytes, which can easily be stored in a box that comfortably fits on one small shelf."

The Hyper-Evolution of Knowledge

Rene's posting makes it abundantly clear that the amount of information at the fingertips of anyone with internet access, far surpasses the capacity of even the most exhaustive house of knowledge planted in physical-reality.

In fact, the ever-growing power of cyber-reality has thrust mankind into a kind of epistemological overdrive, into The Hyper-Evolution of Knowledge.

For there is now a very real possibility for anyone at any time and in almost any place, to know virtually anything he or she so desires. And as access and usage spread, more and more people are fulfilling this Grand Potential.

This is a quantum leap in human evolution.


(Image by unknown)

The Hyper-Evolution of Self-Evolution

Such premises entail the only limitations remaining between human beings and mass superintelligence are the circumscriptions of their imaginations.

Giving credence to the idea that the human imagination appears unbounded, it seems fair to say human creatures are in a period deserving of the label, The Hyper-Evolution of Self-Evolution.

Questions of Consequence

The Hyper-Evolution of Self-Evolution has already begun to shatter the bones and frames of everyone and everything humans know and think humans know.

This is good because to exceed one's own expectations of themselves as well as the human race, to propel each other to even greater glories, past perceptions/inclinations/realities must be dispelled.

Old and decrepit branches of the Tree of Man must break off for the trunk to support the crown as it extends into the heavens.

But, will we become mired in billions of terabytes of data, losing sight of the blade of grass amidst the vastness of the prairie?

Will each piece of information become less important as the pool of knowledge floods the human psychic world?

Or, will the average person become capable of understanding more about that blade of grass in a matter of minutes, than even the great Walt Whitman himself was able to comprise in an entire lifetime of brilliance (see Leaves of Grass)?

Will the human mind and the human race adapt to perhaps the most abrupt evolutionary development in its history, becoming at some levels a collection of Übermenschen?

The Question Answering Itself?

Interestingly, as man's greatest tool, the Internet is increasingly amassing data which addresses this very phase in human evolution.

And so, the understanding required for humankind to maximize the potential of their evolutionary ripening is likely to come from that which triggered the evolutionary ripening.

In a sense, the Internet may provide both the question and the answer - both the challenge and the resolution.

Self-Evolving

In conclusion, as we hyperspeed into a world where human advancement (along with human imperilment) burgeons at an ever-increasing pace and by almost unfathomable leaps and bounds, transforming everything known and unknown - we remain as we have - self-evolving creatures limited only by our minds.

Wed, Apr 2, 2008  Permanent link