Regular readers of Futurismic will know the name of Jason Stoddard as one of our more popular fiction writers. He recently had a story called ‘Fermi Packet’ published in Talebones Magazine, about an alien invasion of a post-singularity human civilisation, and featuring a digital composite of Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds as its main character. “That’s a great story,” I told him, “you should release it as a free download to the blogosphere at large.” And what do you know, that’s exactly what he did. So go download and read ‘Fermi Packet’, some top-grade geek science fiction.

Well, according to most scientists, at least – and the ones that disagree say time travel is ‘impractical’, which when you look at their calculations may be somewhat of an understatement. But hey, we can still do time travel in fiction, which has got to be the most comfortable method. [Tobias Buckell]

There’s no aspect of life that electronics manufacturers think isn’t worth selling us enhancements for – witness a patent for using wireless devices to set personal goals for exercise, or to add some wager spice to one-on-one competition. Whatever happened to ‘last one to the bar buys the beers’?

Life gets more and more like a cyberpunk novel every week. The latest evidence for this trend comes in the form of a court decision that an expert system that gives advice on bankruptcy procedures is too complex to be considered a clerical tool, and must instead be assumed to be an artificial intelligence practicing law without a licence.

There are few better-known names in artificial intelligence research than Marvin Minsky. There’s a three-part podcast interview with Minsky over at Information Week, where you can hear the man himself discussing AI’s past failures and future developments. [SlashDot]