The Challenge Questions below, color-coded for Science, Technology, Business, and Humanism (personal, social, political) themes in accelerating change, will be placed one per table on the 20 to 30 tables for our Saturday evening Collective Intelligence dinner. They'll be identified by color-coded theme and by number, for those interested in pre-identifying questions they would particularly enjoy discussing. Seating is self-selected.

After dinner, during dessert, we will hear reports from self-selected group leaders from various tables on the result of discussion concerning a range of difficult, interesting questions. We'll cover about eight questions (two per theme) in the main room after dinner, take a brief break, and then those wishing to continue with questions will move to a breakout room, while others will watch an evening video presentation and teleconference with Howard Bloom.

If you expect to discuss or be a group leader in discussing a particular question set below, feel free to do a little advance preparation (always appreciated, never expected). Be aware that none of these questions are easily answered, and we hope you'll enjoy discussing them with other insightful, inquisitive individuals in a give-and-take of idea exchange.

Important note: These question sets are rough guidelines for the discussion. You are not expected to have data or analyses at hand, only to share your intuitions. The most interesting part of the discussion may not be the answers you come up with, but the ideas and opinions you share with your table, and your group leader shares with the audience. Attributions of opinions to particular individuals is encouraged, but entirely optional.

If your table finds your question unclear or unappealing, feel free to pick any from the list below, or to invent your own. You might begin with the question you are given, but feel free to go wherever conversation and group interest takes you. You may end up exploring and reporting on a small portion of the question, a different question, or a question of your own choosing.

Contact us if you have edits or additional questions to propose.

Science Theme

S1. What is the difference between development and evolution? Which parts of the universe, and of our local environment, might be following a developmental plan and which are chaotically or randomly evolving? What parts of a developing biological organism undergo random variation during the unfolding of its developmental plan? What tests might allow us to tell the difference?

S2. In what sense is natural selection an incomplete description of complex systems and of accelerating systems? What are "self-selection," "self-organization," "convergence," and "emergence," and in what way might such processes constrain our current and future evolution?

S3. Is there any scientific evidence for accelerating computation in the history of life on Earth? If so, how do we measure it? Could it be an illusion, an "observer-selection bias"? How do we quantify computation in technological systems? In nontechnological systems? What is the significance of Sagan's "Cosmic Calendar" of accelerating emergences in universal history?

S4. What is the difference between such terms as data, knowledge, information, meaning, and wisdom? Can we expect any near-term improvements to our current theories of information and computation? What new theorems might an "Einstein of Information Theory" help us to understand about the world?

S5. Is accelerating computation happening on Earth in special systems over time? If so, is this likely to be a ubiquitous feature of universal development, or might Earth be unique? If Earth isn't physically unique, does it seem reasonable that the universe is tuned in its initial parameters for many endpoints of high-level universal simulation? Is that somehow valuable to the universe?

S6. Does the historical developmental path of Earth's intelligence suggest we are heading for "inner space" or "outer space"? Will we likely go out to colonize the stars, or in to ever smaller microdomains? Perhaps both? Is the future of human intelligence constrained by either the large-scale structure of spacetime in cosmology, or the small-scale structure of physical reality?

S7. Is accelerating change a fractal (scale-free) process, applicable at all known universal scales? Do accelerating systems always become more localized, miniaturized, and resource efficient over time, or is this just a feature of recent history in digital computers? What physical systems, if any, have seen no accelerating change during their development?

S8. What are possible candidates for emergent properties, constraints, laws, or meta-laws of accelerating change? Are measures of technological autonomy, immunity, and interdependence also accelerating? If so, how long can we expect acceleration to continue? Do any properties operate with increasing power the more computationally complex the system in question?

S9. What are mathematical, cosmological, technological, and computational singularities? Which of these can be studied scientifically? How do the multiplicity of singularity models interrelate? Can we use systems theory or complexity studies to interrelate them? What other exponential and asymptotic domains exist in physical systems?

Technology Theme

T2. Is modern humanity better characterized as selective catalysts or as controllers of technological development? What are the implications of either? What kind of programs and institutions do we need to improve technology innovation, diffusion, assessment, and policy?

T3. Within 20 years we can expect our most complex computers and robotic systems to start exhibiting both intelligence and personalities. How will we know which personalities to trust, and which might become "sociopathic," like HAL in 2001? As today's still-stupid computers and robots steadily increase in sophistication, what are our control options for "safe learning agents"?

T4. What will be the future roles for "bottom up" (evolutionary or developmental) vs. "top down" (rationally designed, human-built) creative strategies in artificial intelligence and nanotechnology in coming decades? Which path to electronic brainmaking is more useful: deliberate design, "reverse engineering," or evolutionary computation? Perhaps a different paradigm?

T5. Human history has had particularly violent and selfish phases in our evolutionary development. Must computers in a bottom-up design paradigm follow a similar course in their developmental psychology? If so, what risks may this pose? If not, why not? What are the safety issues for bottom up vs. top down A.I. design? Is one more dangerous than the other?

T6. The rate of technological change is causing major stress in first world countries, and it's only going to get faster. Some civilizations (Egyptians, Mayans, Romans, etc.) had catastrophic collapses under special stresses. Could that happen today? To all first world societies or just a few? Would collapse of one society stimulate immune responses in the others?

T7. If we hit a Moore's law (price performance doubling every 18-24 months) limit circa 2015 due to miniaturization limits in IC's, or a cost explosion somewhat before or after this same date due to Moore's second law (doubling in cost of chip fabrication plants every four years), what will likely happen next in the technological world? Will new paradigms get us around these limits?

T8. If chips eventually become unshrinkable commodities in coming years, will we finally see the emergence of massively parallel, multi-chip associational architectures (impractical to build today, due to ongoing vertical miniaturization)? Would a new era of "horizontal miniaturization" keep us on Moore's general performance curve? Would it bring more biologically-inspired chip design?

T9. What should be our near-term intelligence amplification (I.A.) and artificial/autonomous intelligence (A.I.) political, social, and personal priorities? What roles will technology innovation, diffusion, assessment, and policy (IDAP) play in the near-term?

Business Theme

B1. What current investment opportunities, sectors, and strategies are most likely to keep us on a curve of accelerating productivity in business and economic indicators for the next five to ten years? How can we buffer the transfer of technological acceleration to market capitalization in our increasingly innovative markets? How do we sort hype in a world of information overload?

B3. Are we now at the beginning of an IT Globalization Revolution (where first world countries will outsource much or most of their IT work to the third world), similar to the Manufacturing Globalization Revolution of the 1980's (where first world countries outsourced much or most of their manufacturing to the third world)? If so, how should we prepare for this new shift?

B4. How do we account for the growing value of intangibles in an increasingly information or knowledge-based Exponential Economy? Are labor productivity and intellectual property value both on double exponential growth curves? Which is growing more quickly? What specific political, economic, cultural, and technological advances are driving productivity increases?

B5. Is technological acceleration increasing turbulence in the economic sector? Is it taking away the momentum of scale, and forcing companies to focus on strategies of resilience, innovation, and continual renewal? What can or should be done to protect the U.S. and other economies from increasing turbulence, recessions, and increasing investment losses in coming years?

B6. How do we maximize the spread of individual and corporate wealth in a sustainable and culturally appropriate manner in our global economy? How do we promote the "triple bottom line" (society, economy, environment) of industrial ecology? How rapidly can we bring competitive markets, democracies, and liberal traditions to cultures with no history in these areas?

B7. To what extent do we need to promote third world development, and to what extent first world development, in coming decades? Which current or horizon technologies are now and might be particularly effective in third world development? How do we mitigate increasing nationalism and tribalism in the face of spreading democracy, liberty, and competitive markets?

B8. How do we increase technology assessment and create better regulated, but still business-friendly technology policy? What regulatory or deregulatory processes, if any, will help us regain productivity? Was the bubble and crash of the new economy a "healthy" process? Will we see more severe versions of this in coming years?

B9. How do we best prevent or adjust for the accelerating dislocation of workers in an environment of accelerating technological change? If we minimize job guarantees, allowing creative destruction in the business sector, what kinds retraining programs and other resources should our social net provide? How do we improve management-labor relations?

Humanist/Transhumanist Theme

H1. What are the critical factors facing humanity in the next generation (25 years)? In the next century? Is science and technology following a different, continually accelerating curve by comparison to change in the environment and in human culture? If not, why not? If so, what does a steeper slope of the sci-tech curve mean for our near and long term future?

H2. What do you expect to be the greatest positive development in the next 25 and 100 years? What do you fear may or will be the greatest negative development in these same time frames? What political, social or personal factors might deeply affect the shape of the long-term future?

H3. What will be the roles of global governance, ethics, and planetary consciousness and sustainability in coming decades? How distributed or centralized will our solutions be? How can we be successful in conflict resolution, closing the rich-poor divide, and accelerating compassion in coming years? What problems should be our immediate vs. intermediate-term priorities?

H4. What should be our ethics, issues, and priorities as we contemplate a future of inexorable accelerating technological change and a present that continues to manifest great social divisions, war and global arms trade, famine, disease, illiteracy, and injustice? How do we best mitigate our remaining global divides, which are closing the fastest, and why?

H5. The potential for technological destruction is steadily rising, from guns, to car bombs, to "dirty nukes," to bioterrorism that might kill tens of thousands, possibly even millions of us. Is there a long-term solution to this problem? Does it require full technological transparency (e.g., David Brin's Transparent Society, 1998) as a solution? If so, what cost to human liberty will be involved?

H6. How can we best use social and technological tools to amplify our biological abilities, so-called "intelligence amplification" (I.A.), versus to create artificial intelligence (A.I.) in the next few decades? What kinds of educational, communication, and other "I.A." approaches will allow us to increase our individual creativity, social stability, and our species' "swarm intelligence"?

H7. To what extent is our emerging internet and communications grid, by increasing the quality and quantity of information flow between individual humans, creating a "planetary consciousness" or "global brain"? To what extent is the Lovelock-Margulis "Gaia" analogy applicable? How will our emerging "global-self" interrelate with our fluid and diversifying individual consciousnesses?

H8. What features of biological systems are still missing from technological systems? What new physical capacities in technological systems are missing from biological systems? Are these two realms converging or remaining separate? Will technological intelligence eventually become a superset of biological experience? What might we expect from an "electronic consciousness?"

H9. Might biological "uploading" into a technological substrate be possible or desirable in the future? Would self-aware computers, symbiotically connected to us want to upload us? Humans and machines are currently becoming increasingly interconnected. Must this trend accelerate if machines develop autonomy? Are machines becoming more autonomous?

H10. Some philosophers propose that humans are creatures with finite computational abilities attempting to understand the infinite, by scientific, ethical, aesthetic, spiritual and other pathways, and that this finite/infinite contrast will endure indefinitely. If conscious computers are also finite state machines, and just as compelled to seek universal understanding, does this mean they will be just as scientific, ethical, artistic, and spiritual as us? Possibly more so?