Interesting Reading - Cars, Solar, Spheres

I have been reading a wide variety of items in the last week. Some of the more interesting topics:

• Wired review of Hot, Flat, and Crowded
  
  
• Jay Leno, Car guy, on Advice to Detroit.
  
  
• Carbon Fiber reinforced Plastic (CFP)
  
  
• The Dyson Sphere - popular in Sci-Fi stories
  
  
• Solar Power
  
  
• SEGS - Solar Power Generation in Mojave- Largest solar power installation in the world.
  
  
• Shai Agassi - Sell the electric car like its a cell phone.
  
  

Singularity? Yes or No

For years I have dismissed the idea of the singularity. I am beginning to accept that it is possible.

A recent discussion about good sci-fi books brought me to read the Vernor Vinge page on wikipedia. (I recommend his books.) That in turn led to reading the wiki page on the technical singularity.

Other items that have affected my growing acceptance include:

• Listening to Futures in Biotech podcast, in particular #17.
  
• An old Wired article by Bill Joy.
  
• Listening to Ray Kurzweil on Science Friday.

In terms of "thinking machines" I believe we will have the hardware soon. It is the software side of things where I'm not sure things will advance fast enough to have conscience AI's with in the next generation. (After all I'm still hoping for a patch to keep my Apple TV from rebooting at random, which is a small improvement over the BSOD.)

I would like to have Kurzweil's optimism, but at times I think Joy's fear may be more realistic. (Which makes one wonder if the Terminator show/movies only has the date of Judgement Day off by about 20 years.)