Just FYI. The rare-earth metals needed to produce solar cells and high-efficiency rechargeable batteries are all found in great quantities in....China.

We'd be trading one foreign dependency for another.

I think your definition of singularity is extremely narrow for this discussion. I think an appropriate definition for a singularity is a period of inflection where the dominant structure of human civilization changes in such a way that a person on one side event is unable to succeed in the civilization on the other side without difficult and extensive retraining.

The steam engine didn't revolutionize human civilization by itself, nor did the silicon chip. Any one technology can't bring about a fundamental shift in the structure of human societies. There are four main revolutions in human history, as I see it. Everything else represents side effects or emergent properties of those revolutions. You can think of them as the "four singularities", if that makes any sense at all:

Technology: Technology isn't just the computer you're looking, it's any tool, system, or method that makes your life easier. It's also the study of those things to attempt to make them better. It's the practice of taking a stone hand axe and attaching a handle to it for more leverage. Iterative, constant improvement in tools, systems, and methods is the biggest difference between pre-Stone Age humans and us.

Agriculture: Agricultural civilizations allow for specialization, increased population, selective breeding of helpful organisms. It roots people to a geographic area and swells the number of things the collective can own because they don't need to carry it all. Territory and war become more important. Craft and manufacturing emerge. Philosophy and science become possible.

Writing: Skillwires in the pre-matrix days. Writing evolved in parallel to many other human innovations, and so perhaps doesn't represent a single period or short event, but is transformative enough that it bears mentioning. It represents a way to statically capture complex ideas for posterity. As the ancient axiom goes, we stand "on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance." It is because of writing that civilization doesn't slide backwards too far before catching itself.

Capitalism: Prior to the informal rise of capitalism (it didn't have a name until Marx and his contemporaries coined the term in the late 19th century), much of commerce was dictated by protectionist guilds and corporations. Guilds would maintain strict limits on production, discouraged innovation, and pushed out anyone who wasn't a member. Corporations were state-sanctioned monopolies that operated in a competition-free environment. Capitalism is mitigated competition and acts as a multiplier for technology, agriculture, and writing -- popular and useful ideas, products, and services float to the top. Capitalism is the mother of the industrial revolution and is strongly correlated with populism. Because of capitalism, the poorest 1% on earth lives a longer, freer, wealthier life than the richest 1% 250 years ago.

I think if I were to offer up a fifth, it would be germ theory--understanding that illness is caused by tiny organisms is extremely powerful and informative. It makes antibiotics, surgery, antiseptics, vaccines, and basic medicine possible. A post-germ theory world is fundamentally different than a pre-germ theory world.

Titanium? Ruthenium? Nitrogen?

Ruthenium is fairly expensive, but it is being phased out. The others aren't bad at all.

Was just what I heard, I hadn't had the time or inclination to look it up.

Found in China and Africa and Middle East. The largest portion of those materials is not in China, however China has acquired the rights to most of it.

Also note that it is TODAY's solar cells and batteries (Both of which are not very efficient) that require those minerals. A good research and development effort would bring down the cost to manufacture and raise the efficency. However research in the US has been going into the private sector where there are very hard limits on what researchers can do.

Wait, there is R&D outside the private sector?

Public research spending or state-funded universities.

also, a "recent" development is private sponsoring public with the option to get first pick out of the results for product creation.

Provide a new lab to a university, get the kudos and priority whenever the lab develops or discovers something interesting.

Not quite how it works, but close.

Basically a large chunk of research is done in universities, and is funded by private and/or government sources.

You do also have private companies funding things like the lab, and thus any independent research is likely to belong to the company that funded the lab.

You'd be amazed at how many hoops and such there are for simply doing research.

heh, sometimes i think the only difference between real life and SR is that in SR the corporations are more vulgar about their methods.

Or perhaps we are only on the other side of the media wall...

oddly enough, I ran into this article at the time where I'm thinking of buying a new cellphone. And after reading this article I realize that I am determined to buy the most SR-esque Commlink phone out there. Any suggestions? And if you can please list the price, I'm on a budget. Oh, and my service is Sprint in case that limits my choices for some arbitrary reason.

Define SR-esque.
Internet-capable cameraphones? Omnipresent. Try and find a forward-facing cam to enable videocalls though. For wireless internet with some speed to it, I'd wait 'til systems gets released that meet requirements to officially calls themselves 4g-capable. therwise, it's all improving fast. A lot of functionality is in applications, rather than hardware. In that department, of the bigger brands, an Android based phone will give you more freedom than Apple or Blackberry, as Google allows you to root their phones, thus giving you greater control over the device. It's still pretty much a toss up though.
Do research, see what you can get, for what price, what kind of applications are available for the system, possibilities for improving the hardware (I have mine running its cpu some 400 MHz faster than the factory speed, for example) and decide on your willingness to do so, see what you want and can actually use, then base decisions off that.

I actually just got an iPod Touch the other day, and realized this.

Also picked up a pair of these shoes a while back without realizing it. If I had a Bluetooth headset, I'd have a rudimentary PAN, especially counting a cell phone.

How'd you get yours to 400MHz?

Overclocking applications are available for a lot of popular cellphones. Legality of them, and the procedures required to get them to work varies between models. As I said, Google doesn't object to you altering the OS installed on your phone, although doing so will often void the warranty supplied by your carrier. On an iPhone it would be going directly against EULA, since Apple tends to take a disliking to anyone doing anything with/to their hard/software that they didn't approve of first.
Of course, this is far from the main concern for most people, who just want a phone that functions, does what is promised, and does what they expect. Stuff like this generally doesn't meet that, as it eats battery like there's no tomorrow, failing to meet "I'd really like my battery to last more than 8 hours".

Also, nice stuff on the shoes, reminds me of a set of AR enhanced ski goggles I came across two weeks back.

I have to agree, the commlink was inspired by the cellphone. It's an extension of existing technology, not a postulation of future technology.

The old cyberdecks were postulations of future technology. Nothing about a cyberdeck actually exists. In SR4.5, much of the tech is actually a step backwards from previous: cellphones are obviously the source of commlinks, and can't do a whole lot that a modern smartphone cannot. It's a bit like replacing lightsabers in Star Wars with vibro-swords. We can theoretically *make* a vibrosword.

Always found that funny, as it was supposedly a defining feature of the UMTS system back when it launched (my UMTS dumbphone got one of those cameras even).


Never quite understood why it is the carrier that provides the warranty in USA...

Carriers, by and large, have controlled every aspect of cellphone creation/management/sale in the US for a long time. Apple is the first phone maker in my memory that not only demanded design freedoms, but also got them.

I believe Motorola did the same. Way back, and in the past decade. Also, warranty is just weird like that.

Oddly, almost none of that information is really needed in a heads up display like interface.

Current speed, sure, but altitude? Vertical speed? Max speed? Who the frak cares.

Now, a little "WARNING: TREE" indicator: that'd be useful.