No Limits to our Social Pace

A paper titled "No Apparent Limits: Addressing Common Arguments Against Continuous Computational Acceleration states, "The closer we look, the more we discover the astonishing, surprising, and (for some at least) alarming irrelevancy of all currently proposed limits to
the ongoing acceleration of local computation....Ours is the generation that will no longer be able to ignore the phenomenon of continuing technological acceleration."

"We, and more particularly, our technological creations, are on a wild ride to an interesting destination-the technological singularity-a local rate of computational change so fast and powerful that it must have a profound and as-yet-unclarified universal effect."

"As a side effect of this hypergrowth, biological human beings will not be able to meaningfully understand the computer-driven world of the near future unless they are able to make some kind of transition to 'transhumanity,' an environment with greater-than-human computational capacity, and a new, as yet undetermined human-machine symbiosis. How this transition will and should occur, and how it is presently occurring, is a subject of spirited and insightful debate."

The upshot for each of us? Don't expect the pace of society to slow down in your lifetime, and employing Breathing Space techniques is more important than ever.

Breathing Space for Patent Office

The National Research Council issued a new report on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which is beset with funding shortages and outdated policies. The report shows that vigorous competition among businesses “to file and enforce patents” is a major reason why the Patent Office currently is swamped and faces a backlog of 500,000 patent applications, added to approximately 350,000 new applications a year.