Announcements

Boring administrative announcement: In a move long overdue for me, access to this blog and my other large sites will now be exclusively through "https" (ie. encrypted web.)

I set up this, of course, using the great tool Let's Encrypt which was created with support from the EFF. This project and the tools around it take a big step towards making the internet encrypted by default. Let me know if you experience any problems. But then I guess you aren't reading this if you are. Oh well!

The highlight and founding program of Singularity University, where I am chair of computing, is our summer program, now known as the Global Solutions Program. 80 students come from all over the world (only a tiny minority will be from the USA) to learn about the hottest rapidly changing technologies, and then join together with others to kickstart projects that have the potential to use those technologies to solve the world's biggest problems.

After a hard 10 weeks, our Singularity University Graduate class for 2015 will have its closing ceremony this Thursday night. If you are in the Bay Area, consider coming down to join luminaries of the SFBA accelerating technology community at San Jose's California theater and see presentations from the 5 top student teams as well as tables and posters from all 24 of them. With 80 students from 40 countries it's an eclectic and amazing group.

You can get Event info and tickets here.

At Singularity University, our students have been forming interesting ventures after the class for the past 6 years. This fall, we'll also be starting an SU Startup Accelerator for nascent startups working on exponential technology to solve the world's biggest problems. We will be accelerating both for-profit ventures (for the world's greatest problems can also be the greatest opportunities) and $50K grants for non-profit efforts.

As some of you may know, I have been working as chair of computing and networking at Singularity University. The most rewarding part of that job is our ten week summer Graduate Studies Program. GSP15 will be our 7th year of it.

The Robocars world tour continues. Monday I will speak on robocars at the UAE Government conference in Dubai, where I just landed. Then it's off to talk about them at a private event in Singapore, but I'll also visit teams there. If I have time, I will check out Masdar -- what was originally going to be the first all-robocar city -- while in the UAE.

I'll be back and forth to Europe in the next month giving a number of talks, mostly about robocars. Catch me at the following events:

I always feel strange when I see blog and social network posts about the death of a pet or even a relative. I know the author but didn't know anything about the pet other than that the author cared.

I will be a guest on Monday the 13th (correction -- I originaly said the 14th) on a the "City Visions" program, produced by one of San Francisco's NPR affiliates, KALW. The show runs at 7pm, and you can listen live and phone in (415-841-4134), or listen to the podcast later. Details are on the page about the show.

Other guests include Bryant Walker Smith of Stanford, Martin Sierhuis of the Nissan robocar lab and Bernard Soriano from the California DMV. Should be a good panel.

Two upcoming talks:

Tomorrow (April 4) I will give a very short talk at the meeting of the personal clouds interest group. As far as I know, I was among the first to propose the concept of the personal cloud in my essages on the Data Deposit Box back in 2007, and while my essays are not the reason for it, the idea is gaining some traction now as more and more people think about the consequences of moving everything into the corporate clouds.

I'm on the board of the Foresight Institute, which at over 25 years old has been promoting nanotech since long before people knew the word. This January, we will be holding our technical conference on nanotechnology and related fields. Foresight's focus is on the potential for molecular manufacturing -- doing things at the atomic level -- and not simply on fine structure materials.

I haven't bothered quickly reporting on the robocar story every other media outlet covered, the signing by Jerry Brown of California's law to enable robocars. For those with the keenest interest, the video of the signing ceremony has a short talk by Sergey Brin on some of his visions for the car where he declares that the tech will be available for ordinary people within 5 years.

I'm doing a former-cold-war tour this month and talking about robocars.

This Friday, May 11, I will be giving the 2301st lecture for the Philosophical Society of Washington with my new, Prezi-enabled robocars talk. This takes place around 8pm at the John Wesley Powell Auditorium. This lecture is free.

A week later it's off to Moscow to enjoy the wonders of Russia.

There will be a short talk locally in between at a private charity event on May 14.

It's St. Paddy's day but I can celebrate a little harder this time. Two days ago, I got my notice of entry into Ireland's Foreign Birth Registry, declaring me an Irish citizen. I'm able to do that because I have 3 Irish grandparents (2 born in Ireland.) Irish law declares that anybody born to somebody born in Ireland is automatically Irish. That made my father, whose parents were both born there, an Irish citizen even though he never got a passport. Because my father was an Irish citizen (not born on the Island) that also gives me the right to claim it, though I had to do the paperwork, it is not automatic. If I had children after this, they could also claim it, but if I had any before this registration, they would not.

I decided to do this for a few reasons. First, it will allow me to live, work and travel freely in Ireland or anywhere else in the E.U. The passport control lines for Canadians are not usually that long, but it's nicer to not be quizzed. But in the last few years, I have encountered several situations where it would have been very useful to have a 2nd passport:

• On a trip to Russia, I discovered there was a visa war between Canada and Russia, and Russia was making Canadians wait 21 days for a Visa while the rest of the world waited 6 or less. I had to change a flight over that and barely made my conference. It would have been handy to use an Irish passport then. (Update: Possibly not. Russia and others require you to use the passport which allows residence, and you must apply where you live. So my Irish documents are no good at the San Francisco consulate as I don't live there using the Irish passport.)
• Getting stamps in your passport for Israel or its border stations means some other countries won't let you in. Israelis will stamp a piece of paper for you but resent it, and you can lose it. A 2nd passport is a nice solution. (For frequent visitors, I believe Canada and the USA both offer a 2nd passport valid only for travel to Israel.)
• Described earlier, last year I lost my passport in Berlin. While I got tremendous service in passport replacement, this was only because my mother was in hospital. Otherwise I would have been stuck, unable to travel. With 2 passports, you can keep them in two places, carry one and leave one in the hotel safe etc. While Canada does have an emergency temporary passport, some countries only offer you a travel document to get you home, and you must cancel any other travel on your trip.
• On entry to Zimbabwe, I found they charged Canadians $75 per entry, while most other nations paid $30 for 1 and $45 for two. Canada is charging Zimbabweans $75 so they reciprocate. Stupid External Affairs, I bet far more Canadians go to Zimbabwe than the other way around
• On entry to Zambia, it was $50 to transit for most countries but free/no-visa for the Irish. I got my passport 1 week after this, sigh. Ireland has a visa abolition deal.
• Argentina charges a $150 "reciprocity fee" to US and Canadian passports, good for 10 years. Free for Irish, though. Yay!

All great reasons to have two passports. I don't have that yet, though. (Update: I got it in June) Even though I presume that the vast majority of those who do the Irish foreign birth registry immediately want a passport, it doesn't work that way. After a 21 month wait, I have my FBR certificate, which I now must mail back to the same consulate that sent it, along with several of the same documents I used in getting the FBR like my original birth certificate. While it makes huge sense to do them together, it doesn't work that way.

As readers of this blog surely know, for several years I have been designing, writing and forecasting about the technology of self-driving "robocars" in the coming years. I'm pleased to announce that I have recently become a consultant to the robot car team working at Google.

Of course all that work will be done under NDA, and so until such time as Google makes more public announcements, I won't be writing about what they or I are doing. I am very impressed by the team and their accomplishments, and to learn more I will point you to my blog post about their announcement and the article I added to my web site shortly after that announcement. It also means I probably won't blog in any detail about certain areas of technology, in some cases not commenting on the work of other teams because of conflict of interest. However, as much as I enjoy writing and reporting on this technology, I would rather be building it.

My philosophical message about Robocars I have been saying for years, but it should be clear that I am simply consulting on the project, not setting its policies or acting as a spokesman.

My primary interest at Google is robocars, but many of you also know my long history in online civil rights and privacy, an area in which Google is often involved in both positive and negative ways. Indeed, while I was chairman of the EFF I felt there could be a conflict in working for a company which the EFF frequently has to either praise or criticise. I will be recusing myself from any EFF board decisions about Google, naturally.

Just a note that I'll be in Boston this weekend attending the 2nd day of ROFLCon, a convention devoted to internet memes and legends. They're having a panel on USENET on Saturday and have invited me to participate. Alas, registration is closed, but there are some parties and events on the schedule that I suspect people can go to. See you there.

Tomorrow, I will be speaking on pre-Robocar technology at BIL an unconference that parallels the famous and expensive TED conference. This is in Long Beach, CA. Unconferences are fun, cheap and often as good as expensive conferences. I will also be attending a reception at TED tonight for Singularity University, which I lecture at, so I may see you if you're at TED as well.

Last night's EFF bash was a great success. Thanks to Adam Savage and all the others who made it go so well.

In early 2000, after a tumultuous period in the EFF's history, and the staff down to just a handful, I was elected chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I had been on the board for just a few years, but had been close to the organization since it was founded, including participating with it as a plaintiff in the landmark supreme court case which struck down the Communications Decency Act in 1996.

This weekend is the Foresight Institute conference on molecular nanotechnology and AI. I am on the board of Foresight Institute and will be speaking on the latest developments in robocars at the conference, along with a raft of great speakers. If you are interested in futurist issues around AI, nanotech and other accelerating technologies, this is the longest running conference in the field and the place to be.

I've been feeling we in the secular, atheist world should still have an official event at the end of the year, since with the Christians and the Jews making merry, it's a good time to do it. We have New Year's Eve of course, but so does everybody.

This new holiday, to mark the changing of the Seasons might be called "Seasons." Of course that is in part so that all the people saying "Seasons Greetings" (without the apostrophe, oddly enough) will now be making our greeting. Another name for it could be "Holidays" but that does have religious roots.