The Collective Brain

Matt Ridley has recently spoken at TED and at Google on his new book entitled "The Rational Optimist".
In his book, Ridley describes a species named homo economicus.  This species transcends biological evolution with the introduction of exchange.  Exchange (or simply known as trade) is unique to humans and predates farming.  Ridley argues that exchange is to technological progress as sex is to biological evolution.

With the advent of exchange, humans technology for the first time advanced faster than human biological evolution. Ridley uses the example of the Australian hand axe that changed very little over one million years.  The humans who used this tool evolved genetically faster than the design of the tool evolved (over a period of 30,000 human generations).  Ridley argues that neither tool making nor language can explain the remarkable ascent of the human species.   Neanderthal man (H. neanderthalensis) is now believed to have had language and is believed to have had a brain bigger than that of homo sapiens but yet, remained at a subsistence level of existence until it went extinct.

What allowed humans to flourish and rise above mere subsistence survival, in contrast to other species such as H. neanderthalensis, was the advent of trade and exchange.  Obsidian knives dating back 40,000 years are found hundreds of miles from their source in Ethiopia. This is evidence that human populations were employing trade long before developing agriculture.  In the 1800's David Ricardo described the power of trade.  How it multiplies human effort and knowledge.  In 1958, Leonard E. Reed wrote "I Pencil" about how technologies can be created by the "collective brain".  The knowledge behind these technologies is not held by any one person but rather in the collective brain of society.  Ridley says this collective intelligence is the result of "ideas having sex".  Our collective intelligence is now growing expedentially as the internet allows ideas to be shared and combined in new ways as never before.

Ridley borrows heavily from many thinkers in his book.  Adam Smith and David Ricardo on specialization.  Jane Jacobs on the history of trade and rise of cities.  Leonard E. Reed on collective knowledge and Paul Romer on the sharing of ideas.  Ridley readily admits that he borrows liberally from past thinkers but adds that this is the very point of his book... how ideas and knowledge can be shared and exchanged, thus creating new ideas and fostering increasing intelligence and technology.  In this respect, Ridley has succeeded in writing a very convincing and inspiring book.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLHh9E5ilZ4

YouTube - Do My Thoughts Deceive Me? Human Factors and Design

Google Tech Talk
December 16, 2009

ABSTRACT

Presented by Jason H. Wong.

Our brains are not as reliable as we would like to think. Human factors is the science of understanding human cognition and designing systems to work within its limitations. A lot of time and effort has gone into understanding how our brains work (and when they don't). However, we continue to make fundamental design errors that not only go against cognitive science principles but common sense as well. This talk will explore some of the quirkier aspects of our cognition, from visual attention to memory and decision making. There will be copious examples of design gone wrong along with discussions of how to understand how we think and how to avoid making design mistakes in the future.

Dr. Jason H. Wong is a Human Factors Scientist with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC). He received his Ph.D. in 2009 from George Mason University in Human Factors and Applied Cognition, where he conducted research on visual attention and working memory. He was awarded the Department of Defense SMART Scholarship in 2007. This paved the way for his work at NUWC, where Dr. Wong examines the human-computer interaction aspects of complex systems, develops efficient submariner training methodologies, and creates cognitive models to simulate human performance.

YouTube - Do My Thoughts Deceive Me? Human Factors and Design

The Java Memory Model

Covers the Java Thread Specification as revised in JSR-133.   Discusses legal compiler optimizations and transformations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FX4zco0ziY

Meet Google Founder Larry Page

Google Co-Founder Larry Page talks about robotics and artificial intelligence.

Page encourages university computer science professors to tackle hard problems. Page's father worked on AI in the 1970s when work was done on computers with 64K memory. Page believes most AI problems are not that complex and can be successful with proper scale (i.e. large amounts of data and processing power).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUNqsYUVPQY

Expanding the Frontiers of Computer Science

The number of incoming freshman who intend to major in computer science has plumeted in recent years despite an exponential growth in the job market.

Dr. Mehran Sahami talks about how Stanford University is revamping its computer science ciricculum to meet the challenge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOOJzQRJfIw

Daniel Reda - An Introduction to Biotechnology and Bioinformatics

This talk features amazing video showing DNA being replicated in real-time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It83JKAxejM