Béla's recent talks: Predicting Technological Progress University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, November 16, 2010. The Past, Present, and Future of Data Conservation Google, Mountain View, CA, September 29, 2010. Universal Laws of Technological Evolution: What do Integrated Circuits, Japanese Beer, and Brazilian Ethanol Have in Common? Intel, Santa Clara, CA, July 19, 2010. More than Moore: Comparing Forecasts of Technological Progress Singularity Summit, New York City, NY, October 4, 2009. Past Forecasts in Hindsight: Is Technological Progress Predictable? Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, September 14, 2009.

Are you looking for the Performance Curve Database? Go to pcdb.santafe.edu.

Are you a Data Hound? Take the challenge.

If not, then what are you interested in?

What kind of person I am? That's easy: someone obsessed with self-improvement and personal growth!  INTJ  uncovered  


Or maybe you'd like to learn about my past, present, or future?

OK, then let's start with a brief walk through my past:

Where did I live before coming to Santa Fe, New Mexico?  Old World  New World  Virtual World

Who have been the most inspirational and influential teachers/mentors in my life?

Which books have had the greatest impact on my thinking?

What's in my CSSS 2008 time capsule?


Unfortunately, my present is not so easy to describe because it is happening right now as you read this and please consider that I'm in a very dynamic intellectual environment here, always finding out about new perspectives, gaining novel, unexpected insights, challenging most assumptions, and as a result I find myself constantly adjusting upward my orders of ignorance...

For example, questions I'm wondering about include:

What is the best way to measure technological trends? For instance, does the growth of computing power follow a smooth exponential curve, or a smooth double exponential, or was there "a major break in the trend around World War II"? (And if we don't know how to measure the speed of change, then how can we know if it is accelerating?)
Is the world fundamentally unpredictable or predictable?
Is the Singularity near or a myth?

Is it possible to meaningfully quantify general intelligence in humans across cultures or generations, or in machines across different architectures?
Could there be a unified theory of evolution, so that the biological, technological, cultural, etc. processes are all just special cases?
Could we model economics better in an evolutionary framework? Or with Maximum Entropy Production?
When will we reach the longevity/actuarial escape velocity? When will this kind of research become sexy? Is there a silver bullet?


As you can see, with so many uncertainties unresolved, my future is somewhat unpredictable, and even if it was known, I'm afraid that it might shock you...
(In fact, I'm afraid that it will shock me, too! :)
Maybe it's a good idea to check out the long and short of Future Shock Levels first...