Technology

Morgan Webb brings an overview of three very interesting TED talks, about aging prevention or life extension, technological transformation of humanity (Kurzweil's singularity) and regrowing of body parts. She also links to the full talks at TED.com.

An excellent article about the power of internet as means of attaining more liberty. It helped end the Soviet Union and continues to help liberate people from oppression of big governments, while being far more efficient than government's methods of controlling it.

An Open Source unconference that aims at creating a platform for discussing FOSS and Mobile Technologies in India. The unconference isbeing organised as a part of the International Conference on Communication, Convergence and Broadband Networking.
Come and Join us on 19th July 2008 and be a part of a phenomenon that is changing FOSS and India at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.

Visit: OSSCamp Bengaluru Mobile! 2008

It's important that we remember what makes the Internet so interesting and unique. There are two crucial characteristics:

1. It's fundamentally decentralized, meaning you can cut out any part without affecting the rest,
2. It allows freedom of access, meaning you have the same ability to access and write it as anyone else.

Because they permit extraordinary flexibility and rapid growth, both of these characteristics have brought the Internet way beyond any other network. Today, they are endangered. How come, and what can we do about it?

As Apple's Steve Jobs is announcing that they suddenly "want native third-party applications on the iPhone", something its users have been yearning to have ever since they started buying these phones (even if it meant hacking them), Steve justifies their prior resistance to this kind of openness by security threats. As he says, they are "trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once — provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc."