The Boulder Future Salon is a group dedicated to studying the future -- will Moore's Law, the doubling of computing power, continue for another 50 years? If it does what will be the consequences to world politics, to society, and to our professional and personal lives, in a world of ever-accelerating scientific and technological change? Will advances in neuroscience and computing lead to true artificial intelligence -- AI as intelligent as human beings, able to talk in English (or any other language), able to feel emotions, able to set its own goals, find its own meaning in life, not to mention do any human job, like work in a factory or drive a truck? Will nanotechnology produce computers with hundreds of times the power of the human brain? Will nuclear fusion produce unlimited energy? Will medical advances, from stem cell research, extend our lifetimes? Will there ever be a possibility of immortality? If it does will it be only for the ultra-wealthy, or for everybody?

Are you ready?

The Boulder Future Salon group is modeled on the Bay Area Future Salon started in Silicon Valley in 2001. In this group we try to take a "big picture" look at society and technology. We are not about any one technology -- semiconductors, or software, or neuroscience, or nuclear technology. We are about all of them -- because we want to know how their combined evolution will impact our lives in the future.

The Boulder Future Salon is affiliated with the ASF, the Acceleration Studies Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by John Smart in 2001 for study of this amazing phenomena -- the accelerating pace of technological change. Why does technological change accelerate, rather than continue at an even, linear pace? Will this acceleration continue? What does it all mean? We don't know -- that's why ASF was founded, to find out, and to find out how we can direct the process towards positive outcomes. More at http://www.accelerating.org