Are You Ready To Hack Consciousness?
PC Magazine|December 2016

For many years, the concept of “consciousness research” was avoided in academic circles, as freshly minted neuroscience PhD's competed for grant money that was mostly tied to products that could be monetized in the future.

Sophia Stuart
Are You Ready To Hack Consciousness?

Then artificial intelligence studies changed tack, people started to wonder how to make machines sentient, and bio-mimicry entered the fray.

Of course, everyone hit on the same thorny problem: How do we first define human consciousness? Surely we need to understand that before we build machines that think. So—in that vein—do you fancy participating in the largest experiment to date of detecting human consciousness, its origins, and effects?

If you’re up for it, apply for the closed beta test of Entangled, an app designed to capture, analyze, and share human consciousness research.

To help explain what that actually means, we met up with Entangled creator Adam M. Curry, who discussed life, the universe, and why Random Number Generators might be the key connecting humans and computers in new ways. Here’s a portion of our conversation.

PCMag: I think you're the first person I've met who has an asteroid named after them. How did that come about? 

Adam M. Curry: When I was 17, I won a science competition for an invention that converted electro gravitational phenomena into signals [that can help forecast seismic events, like earthquakes]. MIT’s CERES program provided that asteroid prize. (Laughs) Let’s just hope the ‘Adam Curry Asteroid’ isn’t one involved in a near-Earth collision in the future.

Your advisors on Entangled include Princeton's Dean Emeritus Dr. Robert Jahn, whom you met while interning at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program (PEAR), and Pixar co-founder Loren Carpenter. I guess I'm trying to portray you as someone on the serious peer-reviewed side of science as opposed to, well, you know. 

I appreciate it; thanks for that.

This story is from the December 2016 edition of PC Magazine.

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This story is from the December 2016 edition of PC Magazine.

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