The Singularity
We can understand what Vinge, Ray Kurzweil, and others have hypothesized by examining some underlying premises.
First, several technologies have progressed exponentially for at least hundreds of years (and probably much longer). The cascading S-curves of these technologies suggest they are fundamental aspects of negentropy, the tendency of open-energy systems (like Earth) to increase their complexity in opposition to the second law of thermodynamics.
The sun is the most fundamental source of this energy. Thus we should not expect to encounter a limit to technology's carrying capacity until we've approached some practical limit to the energy we can harvest from the sun, augmented by several other sources. We are nowhere near this limit.
Second, the logarithmic growth curve of these technologies has approached an asymptote. This means the pace of technological change, as well as social and environmental change, during the next century will be many thousands, if not millions, of times more than all technological and social change since the beginning of recorded history.
We might posit that society has a limited capacity for such change, or that such change will necessarily cause a collapse in the ecosphere. In the first case, technological growth would simply stop or slow to a crawl, though the penetration rate of technology has doubled every three years since Ned Ludd first protested the mechanical loom; in the second, we're all doomed. Both positions are logically possible, but neither is probable.
The technologies of greatest interest to us are information technology, which infuses everything, along with biotechnology, energy, nanotechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence. It is not merely that each technology accelerates on its own, but that they are all converging. Biotechnology, for example, is the technology of us, our own flesh and bone, and it is joining the others. To what end?
For the singularity to occur, the argument goes, we must have artificial intelligence that exceeds our own. Only then can the runaway explosion of technology occur, its effects beyond anything we can imagine. Our own intelligence – augmented with IT, nanotechnology, and the rest – is more than capable of exceeding anything we currently know. A.I. is us, and we are the singularity.
From the Blog
Research
My research synthesizes advances in artificial intelligence and other GRIN technologies with transdisciplinary philosophies in humanism, pragmatism, and ethics.
The syntactic approaches of designers like Peter Eisenman, the semantic so-called meaning-based design philosophies of architects like Robert Venturi or Michael Graves, the deconstructivism of Frank Gehry – all of these postmodern or poststructural approaches were intellectual endgames. I'll make, and be happy to defend, the claim that they have nothing much to teach the twenty-first century designer but what not to do.
The transmodern design movement shares one thing in common with the early modernist movement: It wholeheartedly and sincerely strives to make the world a better
place. Unlike modernism, transmodernism is anything but a top-down, centralized approach. Transmodernism has no grand Platonic visions for the future of the world. It's a complex, recursive, integrated approach to design that necessarily involves the natural sciences, the biosciences, psychology, sociology, the humanities, lay knowledge, and philosophy.
Transmodernism is an evolutionary approach. Its goals are better living conditions for all humans, a built environment that is symbiotic with the natural environment, and a sustainable future. It also seeks to solve the complex problems that exist between professions and academic disciplines, to fill in and synthesize the desiderata left by the twentieth century.
Transmodernist strategies must survive rapid feedback, and they are tested for their fitness to frequently changing socioeconomic and ecological demands.
My belief is that human environmental designers, and their designs, are generally ill-equipped for this challenge. To that end, my research explores the ways evolutionary design algorithms can help human designers imagine and build truly different, better, sustainable environments for the future.
Architecture and Design
The built environment sways humanity, and it impacts the entire natural world.
Architecture and Design
Architecture is at the root of my training, and it will forever influence me. By its very nature, architectural thinking is whole-systems, non-linear, synthetic, integrative, and (when it's done right) also interdisciplinary. Unfortunately, most building hasn't been done right. The American Institute of Architects estimates that buildings produce between 25% and 40% of all solid waste. Buildings generate nearly 50% of global CO2 and use more than half our electricity.
My own practice and research focuses on hyper-sustainable design, which recognizes the imperative for buildings and cities that are 100% socially and ecologically sustainable. My interests in the convergence of rapidly progressing technologies – especially those in information technology, biotechnology,
nanotechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence – inform the direction I advocate for architecture. This is an interdisciplinary approach that seeks consilience with the natural sciences, such as biology and chemistry, as well as with the social sciences and humanities. I draw heavily from biomimetic and evolutionary approaches to design, seeking to make our built environment more conducive to life.
Buckminster Fuller wrote, "When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." The environment's phenomenological qualities, its sensory and experiential character, make up one part of this beauty. The second part is its fit with nature, the elegance with which the building embodies
the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and the other disciplines.
Of course, my interests extend into realms not always associated with architecture, and with good reason. Architecture is a cultural system under tremendous pressure to change; buildings are a technology fundamentally unaltered throughout the Industrial Revolution (a little steel here, some insulation there!), now the cause of more harm than good. The building industry, under siege by technologies from every side, is an industry ripe for disruption.
It needs disruption. "We are called to be architects of the future," Fuller said, "not its victims."
The Singularity
In 1983 Vernor Vinge proposed that a technological singularity driven by artificial intelligence would occur during the twenty-first century.
Research
Sustainable materials and design, evolutionary algorithms, biomimicry, and artificial intelligence.
Transhumanism
Transhumanism begins with humanism. According to the International Humanist and Ethical Union, "Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality."
Transhumanism recognizes that "the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities" is expanding exponentially. It finds the augmentation of human abilities with science and technology not only morally defensible, but morally necessary. This augmentation is quite natural, an extension
of what humans have always done to expand our abilities in any environment and in any undertaking. It is morally necessary because, in large part, the challenges and needs of the human race and the biosphere have outstripped our current abilities.
We're learning to be wiser, to plan and work more transdisciplinarily and holistically. Scientists, as well as applied groups dealing with environmental and social issues, are developing effective interdisciplinary practices, using more efficient problem-oriented approaches. This is good.
But we will require extreme levels of consilience and symbiosis with our environment to stabilize it, and to turn our creative attentions toward greater things, to surpass mere survival. Our future, and the
planet's, are uncertain. We need every chance, every tool, to turn things around for the natural environment and to give all humans the greatest possible chance at a long, fruitful, meaningful life.
Transhumanism can do this. It advocates the responsible, holistic use of technology to further humanist ends. It seeks to extend the health, welfare, and safety of all humans, and at least a significant part of the movement holds the preservation and protection of the natural biological environment to be a top-level concern.
I advocate transhumanism. It is rooted in science and well-understood principles of technological advancement. It has human-centered, nature-centered ethics at its heart. It's worth a go.
Curriculum Vitae
Design and technology research, consulting, and higher education.
Curriculum Vitae
More than anything else I'm seeking a bright, brilliant future for everyone. The future excites me. If I can help sustainable businesses get there, I and my collaborators will do it through our consulting. If I can help students get there, I'll do it through my teaching. If I can help science get there, I'll do it through research and scholarship. In these pages learn a bit more about me and what I'm up to.
“So Circê enticed us and won our battle-hardened spirits over. And there we sat at ease, day in, day out, till a year had run its course. Then when the sun had set and night came on I embraced Circê by the knees and the goddess heard my winging supplication:
‘Circe, now make good a promise you gave me once –
it’s time to help me home...’”
(The Odyssey by Homer,
translation adapted from Robert Fagles)
(Painting by John William Waterhouse
Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses, 1891)
I founded Aeaea in 2007 to help businesses manage innovation and to solve problems more creatively. While that core mission is still strong, since then it's grown into something more complex, a vehicle for exploring how technology is changing our culture and environment. Aeaea is part of a movement to make those changes positive.
My roots are in the American Southwest, but I've worked throughout North America, Western Europe, Mexico, and Australia. Beginning as a graphic designer in 1994, my career led me through training as an architect, planner, and process designer before I was drawn to applied sciences and technologies in 2004.
Through 2005 I undertook a postgraduate thesis in urban and cultural studies, focusing on technology as a cultural system. Since then I've lived in Boulder, where I teach sustainable architecture, design, innovation theory, and the cultural systems of creativity and innovation at the University of Colorado and to businesses worldwide.
I earned a bachelors degree in environmental design from the University of Colorado at Boulder, followed by masters degrees in architecture (M Arch) and urban and regional planning (MURP) from the University of Colorado at Denver. My thesis explored the relationships between technology, culture, and the spatial changes of global cities.
In 2004 and 2005, I was a postgraduate international scholar at the FBE, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. I was a member of the Urban and Cultural Studies research group. Through 2006, under the direction of Associate Dean Robert Zehner, my research explored the use of developing technologies to understand urbanism and its related cultural systems.
I've continued to make learning, research, and advanced studies part of Aeaea’s day-to-day operations. Far from the ivory tower, Aeaea learns through reflective practice, engaging businesses and society in real, effective, and measurable change.
From 1994 to 1996, I worked as an independent graphic designer for projects in Colorado, New York, and New Jersey. From 1997 to 2004, I was a designer on multimillion-dollar development projects in Colorado, California, Arizona, Utah, Florida, North Carolina, and New South Wales, Australia. From 2001 to 2004, I studied under and worked with Professor Emeritus John Prosser for a number of development plans for the University of Colorado.
In 2004, I was a public liaison for the Australian Timber Development Association, helping the public understand new sustainable technologies, showcased during the Australian Year of the Built Environment. In 2005, I worked with the New South Wales Department of Infrastructire, Planning, and Natural Resources and with The People for Places and Spaces on Sydney’s 2030 Vision.
Since 2007, I've has worked with and learned from a number of talented designers, process experts, and technologists for manufacturing, transportation, wireless, building materials, and process optimization.
From 2000 to 2004, I taught with the Department of Architecture at the University of Colorado, overseeing both graduate and undergraduate courses in architecture and urban design. In 2004 I joined the Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of New South Wales, where I undertook research in Urban and Cultural Studies. While there, I lectured on urban sociology.
In 2006 I joined the full-time faculty at the Department of Planning and Design at the University of Colorado, where I teach courses in environmental design, technology as a cultural system, and innovation management for business and for designers.
I continue to research cultural and social systems, including the business practices, technologies, and environments that foster innovation and organizational creativity. Most recently, my research has focused on evolutionary algorithms, artificial intelligence, and sustainable design.
Creative problem-solving needs smart people behind it. Interdisciplinary research and practice are critical components of creative problem-solving in the face of today's complex challenges.
Aeaea's immediate associates include professionals in many fields of design, process development, engineering, information technology, business, sociology, and the visual arts, with advanced degrees to match. Our broader affiliations include experts in law, a wide range of disciplines in engineering, finance, the social sciences and human factors, economics, manufacturing, ecology, and in other fields.
The combined professional experience of our associates and affiliates spans many decades, and their insights cover a wide range of needs. Merely thinking about problems in the abstract doesn't much satisfy; problems need solving, and Aeaea is always looking to work with our partners, clients, and the wider community to solve them.
Almost any business can benefit from improved creativity, more effective culture, and better innovation strategies and habits. If you see value in exploring a more creative and innovative approach to business, I’d like to talk with you.
Aeaea's primary areas of focus are:
- Biotechnology
- Nanotechnology
- ICT
- Robotics
- Artificial Intelligence
- Manufacturing
- Business Processes and Culture
If your business touches any of these areas, Aeaea can be especially helpful to you, and every business can be helped by assessing its fundamental processes and culture.
Send me a message. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
Broadly, Aeaea is interested in working with not-for-profits who focus on ecological and social sustainability. We have a particular interest in processes and technologies that:
- Clean the natural environment
- Preserve or restore habitat for wildlife
- Protect and improve the lives of animals
- Create or restore clean water supplies
- Make agriculture safer, more abundant, and more nutritious
- Create opportunities for entrepreneurs in developing countries
- Create safer environments and opportunities for women and children
- Improve opportunities for education
- Fight disease, aging, and death while improving quality of life
If your not-for-profit business or foundation is pursuing any of these efforts, we may be able to provide reduced-fee or pro bono services to you. We believe doing good should be done as creatively, innovatively, and effectively as possible, don’t you?
Achieving ecological sustainability is entirely possible this century. Given the damaging changes humans have made to much of the natural environment, the accelerating rate of energy use and production, and the unstable state of many of our world’s ecosystems, this assertion may seem unlikely.
Yet the rate of change of things that might save the natural world is outpacing the rate of change of things that might destroy it. This is good news, but a bright, clean, biologically diverse future is in no way assured. Between now and then, we must collectively make some very clear decisions.
Aeaea will do its part. We are committed to true sustainability, not mere greenwashing. In all of our projects, and with all of our clients, we seek products, services, and processes that strengthen the global movement toward a sustainable, ecologically sound future.
This image comes from the archives of the Toronto Department of Health in 1914. Immigration, poverty, and social inequality play out in cycles over generations, and while today the slums of Toronto, New York, and other North American cities are highly gentrified, poverty persists.
This is a story played out in nearly every region worldwide. The twenty-first century will see immigration and economic change on scales unimagined in previous eras. As a worldwide community, how will we avoid the pitfalls of past generations? How will we guard against inequality, segregation, racism, persecution, and other forces that threaten stability, peace, and opportunity?
Aeaea is committed to furthering justice and social sustainability through its work. We want a world of opportunity, not prejudice and economic disparity. Decisions that allow everyone on Earth to meaningfully participate in the economy, and in global society, serve our clients and the future best. Don’t you agree?
The Sydney Futures Project, for which I was a lead, was part of Sydney's 2030 Vision. We worked with hundreds of community representatives, who acted on behalf of millions of Sydneysiders from twelve major community centers in the Sydney metropolitan region.
The months-long process revealed deep concerns among Sydney's citizens, including a surprising commitment to developing public transportation and revitalizing village centers. Sydneysiders value access to both local amenities and to their city center. The quality of the natural environment, however, showed as the citizens' top concern.
No matter the scale, we must design such that our structures support larger ecosystems, both in the biological and technological senses meant by McDonough and Braungart. Valuable opportunities exist in urban centers to create distributed infrastructure that cleans water, balances oxygen, supports adaptable space, daylights enclosed spaces, and so forth – the list of positives goes on.
Rather than act as toxic sinkholes, our infrastructure's outputs can realistically be engineered to be adaptive and life-supporting. Buildings can behave as symbiotic members of our community.
I borrow loosely from sci-fi when I call such buildings arcologies, but the attribution fits. Our current standards, such as LEED, are not enough to achieve symbiosis. However, innovations on the research bench today are capable, in concert, of bringing us to such a point. A 100% sustainable building is ultimately the only building worth building.
Good design requires real-world challenges. When done right, design is problem-based, and problem-based research requires we suit science to the problem, not the problem to science. You may have noticed designers are rarely natural scientists, and never scientists in more than one field.
This means that while I am a design expert whose speciality is performative A.I., that's not enough to solve what C. West Churchman called wicked problems. Wicked problems, interesting problems, require teams whose collective expertise can be systematically applied, who cooperate to make their work a Gestalt.
My research focuses on design that is ecologically integrated and socially nurturing. I am always seeking partners who either have their own wicked problems, or who wish to apply their expertise to the wicked problems of our age.
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Consulting
Sustainable design processes, innovation, and technology – the science and art of creating today's successful businesses. I and my associates consult with corporations, small businesses, NGOs, governments, and other institutions in a number of areas. We can help you in several important ways.
Design processes evolve at a breathtaking rate. This is equally true for products, services, and non-industrial processes. We can teach your organization to design better, to apply the latest methods, and to sort fads and nonsense from effective strategies.
Innovation is closely related to design; they are similar processes of discovery. We can teach most organizations to be more innovative, as well as show them systems to make that innovation count.
An innovative, creative organization develops strategies for ideation, intellectual property, and speed to market. This is true for large corporations, and also for small businesses and not-for-profits, though in different ways.
While a few large companies such as IBM still advance basic research in their own laboratories, today's competitive reality has pushed most of the innovation cycle beyond the reach of any one organization. We do work with central R&D labs, but most organizations require a different approach. Open-innovation models, consortia with university labs, feedback systems, spillover and problem-finding strategies – we can help you. Just contact us.
Education
For the past ten years I've taught environmental design at the University of Colorado. During that time I've worked with both graduate and undergraduates, supervising design work and undergraduate research, as well as delivering lectures in technology, design history, and theory.
We can expect that education will be subject to the same disruptive technological and cultural forces as anything else. What will the role of the brick-and-mortar educational institution be during the next twenty or forty years? It would be wishful thinking of today's administrators and educators to believe that the traditional classroom has a primary role to play over the long run. Whatever its role will be, it will be radically different than today.
Education must play a central role in this century. Even as the United States struggles to fund and promote education, the world needs to find a way to educate as many as possible. Access to quality education is a universal right, sadly unrealized, and every child should have a strong basic education in the arts and sciences.
What form will that education take? It will be decentralized, I'm sure, and technology will play a role in its growth. Inexpensive environmentally sustainable laptops or tablets? Massively decentralized wireless networks? Remote lectures? More? Time will tell, but we have a responsibility to work toward the best possible future for children, and indeed for everyone.
Consulting
In the realms of innovation management, design process, technology, and sustainability.
Transhumanism
Ethically transcending human limitations through technology. Transhumanism finds its roots in humanism and the Enlightenment.
Education
Teaching in higher education and in industry.
Contact
Aeaea Corporation
Boulder, Colorado 80304
United States
Feel free to send us a message.
A Bright Future
Some optimistic principles to carry us through this century.
A Bright Future
Principle Number One
Humanity can be enthusiastic about the future because we can make it a wonderful time (and place) in which to do business, to do good, to build relationships, and to enjoy each other and life. Observable trends give us defensible reasons for this bracing sense of optimism.
Principle Number Two
Gordon Moore’s observation of the doubling rate of processing power is not limited to computer processors but extends in differing ratios to all technology. The exponent of this growth is itself exponential, and it is not, contrary to some alarmists, going to end any time soon.
Principle Number Three
The growth rate of positive changes, those things that affirm life, create diversity, generate economic activity, and give us new tools to fight our seemingly overwhelming problems are growing exponentially faster than our problems. Of course, new changes will generate still more challenges we can’t even imagine yet, but that’s life, and we’ll be ready for those challenges too.
Principle Number Four
Technology started around when hominids discovered fire, language, and tools, but it really took of when we began to trade with one another. The surest way for us to screw up our species, others species, and
indeed the entire planet is to stop the best of what we're doing now or, worse, to go backwards. Put another way, the solutions of today are not enough for today’s problems, the solutions of yesteryear nowhere near up to the task, and what we need now are solutions for tomorrow.
Principle Number Five
This is good, because we’re already well on our way to these solutions, and if every business and organization worldwide adopts the best principles for innovation, change management, and creativity, we’ll collectively get there a lot faster. Won't you join the race toward a better, brighter future?
Principle Number Six
We’re on planet Earth together. There are resources for several billion more humans, all the life on Earth, all the ecosystems, all the business, all the families, all the children, all the men and women of every place everywhere. There is simply no excuse for ecological devastation, and even less excuse for extreme poverty, debilitating hunger, water shortages, poor education, and widespread disease.
Aeaea believes in global ecological and social sustainability by 2060. We will work with our clients to get there, and to generate wealth, quality of life, and well-being along the way. This is what we stand for.
Steering Toward a Better Future
Research and consulting for technology, innovation, and sustainable design.
The Name
Why this tongue-tying moniker? It's full of meaning, and in case you didn't know it's pronounced "ee-EE'a".
Odysseus and Aeaea
Odysseus is one of the original innovators (remember that wooden horse?), but before arriving at the island of Aeaea, he is beleaguered, lost, and has no chance of finding the way home after nearly 20 years of war and misfortune. On Aeaea he meets the enigmatic Circê, whose power helps Odysseus understand what he needs to do, and sacrifice, before he can return to Ithaca.
The story of Aeaea comes from Homer’s Odyssey, written almost 3,000 years ago. Its message still resonates with us today. Circê embodies creative forces, while Odysseus personifies inventiveness.
Creative forces can be powerful and unpredictable. Any organization that has tried to spark creativity, manage research and development, or understand the true value of its intellectual property knows this.
Odysseus’s sailors misunderstood the nature of creative power and suffered for it: Circê turned them into swine. But with the right balance of forces, creativity can take you where nothing else will.
Every organization possesses these forces, which can be creative or destructive. Knowing how to use timely, effective innovation can mean the difference between success and failure.
Now when our ship had left the Ocean River rolling in her wake and launched into the open sea with its long swells to reach the island of Aeaea – east where the Dawn forever young has her home and dancing-rings – heading in we beached our craft on the sand, the crews swung out on the low sloping shore and there we fell asleep, awaiting Dawn’s first light.
(Translation by Robert Fagles.)
Contact
How can we help you?