Shad Valley

You can check out the official Shad Valley site or some other unofficial sites at UNB, McMaster, Sherbrooke, Carleton, Waterloo. Lots more at the unofficial alumni site.

There are also some personal reports out there by Allen Miu 94C, Xinyang Qiu 92C, James MacAulay 94A. Tons more at the unofficial alumni site.

I was a participant at Shad Valley Waterloo in 1992. I got to give one talk at Waterloo 1995, and helped organize the installation of Alias 3-D software at various campuses that year. My experience at Waterloo inspired me to write a little thing about the magic of Shad.

I was lucky enough to be a Program Assistant at Shad Valley Acadia in 1999. Here's my report (also available in PDF). For 99As, here are some memories from the Millenium Party at Angela's, and here are some pictures from Bobby and Ananda's wedding.

The Future According to Shad

I gave a keynote speech about future technology at the Shad Valley Summit. A digital recording of the talk is now available here! You will need a connection that can sustain 3 kb/s to play it in streaming mode, or you can download the entire file (6.5 Mb). While you're listening to the talk, you'll be asked to refer to a hand-out (this happens just before the 25-minute mark).

The hand-out presented during the talk shows a chart of computing power per unit cost that shows we are likely to have affordable computers with similar computing capacity to the human brain by about 2035. (The data for this chart is mostly taken from Ray Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines, but as the chart in the book is rather hard to read i decided to design a new one.) The other side of the hand-out is a list of references to suggested reading about the singularity, which i strongly recommend you check out.

When you get to the 30-minute mark, i mention a "brain augmentation tool" that helps make me smarter. After you get to 30:30, find out what i'm waving in front of the audience.

At Shad Valley Acadia 1999, i ran a group activity that tried to generate predictions for future events in technology and society. My report contains instructions for running the event if you'd like to run one at your program.

Here are the results from our session displayed on a timeline (PDF, 11kb). How are we doing?

• Indeed, the first nanotechnology start-ups have already been founded. I know of two companies: Zyvex and Covalent. (prediction: 1997)
• Information storage in very small numbers of atoms has experimentally been achieved by scientists working on molecular switches. (prediction: 1999)
• Parents can't yet choose the sex of naturally-born children by direct genetic manipulation, but they can certainly perform sex selection in a number of other ways, especially in the case of in-viro fertilization. (prediction: 2000)
• Canadian research has now made sex selection possible! (prediction: 2000)
• The Human Genome Project is ahead of schedule, and news sources report that the HGP and Celera Genomics will announce completion of a working draft of the entire human genetic sequence in a press conference on Monday 24 June 2000. (prediction: 2003, actual: 2000?)
• We predicted that Microsoft Windows would no longer be the dominant desktop operating system in 2005... could the recent ruling in the Microsoft antitrust case be a step in that direction? A two-to-three year appeals process would take us to about 2003.
• The first residents of the International Space Station moved in on 31 October 2000. They didn't stay permanently, but this may have been the last day that there were no humans in space. We predicted that there would be permanent residents in 2009.
• As of May 2001, we have the first news that genetically altered humans have been born! They were actually born a year ago; today the results of tests on the one-year-old children were announced, and everything looks good. We predicted genetic improvements "in common use" in 2002.

Watch this space for more updates as time passes, and our future becomes our present!