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Moogfest Martine Rothblatt

DURHAM, N CAROLINA — Dr. Martine Rothblatt has a message for would-be creative types and entrepreneurs akin: Don't surrender. Specifically, don't let anyone get in the mode of your thought. And you can bet that lots of people volition endeavor.

"When I started SiriusXM, virtually everybody said it was a fool's errand," Rothblatt said in her keynote spoken communication at Moogfest 2022 on the hereafter of inventiveness. During her talk, she delved into topics as diverse as transhumanism, the controversial HB2 police, and 3D press organs.

Brand no error: Rothblatt has an incredibly impressive runway record. She started both Sirius Radio and GeoStar satellite navigation, and then founded biotech behemoth United Therapeutics in 1996, which has offices both in Argent Springs, Maryland and Research Triangle Park here in Durham.

SiriusXM and chasing your dreams

Rothblatt drew her sharpest inspiration and commentary from her experiences in founding satellite radio.

"All of the wireless engineers who were in charge of the radio frequencies said I would never find whatever empty frequencies, particularly in this particular section of the band, where they go through the atmosphere every bit would be necessary for a satellite advice system," Rothblatt said. "[I was told] they've all been gobbled up in the 1930s and 40s. A lawyer said I would never get approval from the FCC, because at that place would be vitriolic opposition from the National Association of Broadcasters, which includes CBS, NBC, and ABC. They accept a gigantic building in the heart of Washington DC and vino and dine all of the officials.

"[But] most disheartening for me was that other technologists said it was impossible to receive a high-quality satellite betoken from a flat dish embedded in a machine roof," Rothblatt continued. "All of the receiving dishes at the fourth dimension were actually actually large. Even satellite television dishes were as big as the largest pizza pans. How would that fifty-fifty work with a moving object like a car? Finally, because I had to get people to invest in this concept, businesspeople, including the current chairman, said there was absolutely no market for people to pay to mind to radio."

As nosotros all know, she pulled through and started Sirius Radio (now SiriusXM) anyhow, and the residue is history. Today, SiriusXM has 30 meg subscribers.

Martine Rothblatt

Dr. Martine Rothblatt.

"When you recall about the time to come of creativity, unfortunately these are the kind of realities you stop up running into," she said. "Merely it'due south amazing to run into how apace things can modify. Don't let lawyers tell you it tin can't happen, don't allow businesspeople tell y'all it tin't happen, and don't permit technologists tell you it can't happen, because information technology can."

Rothblatt said there were two essential ingredients for SiriusXM that could apply to any revolution in technology, and that both of them accept the same acronym: DSP. The commencement is dogged, single-minded persistence: "Go yourself into a nonviolent state of war, but nevertheless state of war, with everyone that wants to postage out your ideas and tell yous you're stupid… Ultimately, [success] means you want to win fifty-fifty more you lot want to live."

And so in that location's the DSP many ExtremeTech readers are already familiar with: digital bespeak processing. Rothblatt implied that it's non so much the technology itself, as the idea that you have i to begin with. "Information technology's the secret weapon: the technology, the innovation, that you've come up up with and no one believes in it, but you know it'southward real," Rothblatt said. "You've run the simulations, y'all know the physics, and yous've done the dorsum-of-the-envelope calculations."

Rothblatt rattled off incisive turning points in technological history: Alan Turning's plan that could decrypt Nazi Enigma transmissions. The invention of radar. "For me, information technology was software codes that could catechumen bandwidth-hogging analog signals into very slim and slender and audibly equivalent digital data streams," she said. "The secret weapon of DSP that was able to get the powerflex density down low plenty that our satellite signals could be received on the apartment surface of a driving machine with a palm-sized antenna.

"It's some technology you've developed, coupled with dogged, unmarried-minded persistence, that won the state of war for SiriusXM. [And] it could win the war for whatever you're working on."

The persistence of retentivity

Rothblatt reserved her deepest insights, and peradventure near controversial, for the possibility of immortality — mayhap not in our lifetimes. But at some point, Rothblatt said she believes it could be possible to transfer the sum total of our memories and knowledge to an inhuman figurer format that could effectively let "us" alive forever. And that in a way, if it were ever possible, it would still be "us," even without our physical man form.

This is the idea of transhumanism, which this editor doesn't believe in equally a practical possibility, only that excites a lot of readers (maybe yourself included!). At the very least, information technology'due south a fun idea experiment.

"There'due south no boxing between heed and machines, bytes and brains," Rothblatt said. "Every figurer ever fabricated is but an extension of our cognition and consciousness. A human mind running on mindware is still a man listen."

Rothblatt too talked most what would happen as we gained a billion-fold increment in processing ability — not a crazy thought, given what'south on the horizon now with quantum computing. She likened the alter from processing signals into music, to processing signals into minds. "Instead of each song volition be bachelor everywhere, each mind volition be available everywhere," she said.

"Since mastering fire, technology has liberated u.s.a. from being fixed in space and time. Fire was one of the very first technologies." Rothblatt cautioned confronting knee-jerk opposition to new technologies. She said that while people may take burned to death in huts for eons, nosotros wouldn't be as advanced as we are without the invention of fire. "It's not but that [new] technology can be used for something bad."

Reimagining organ transplants

On a slightly more practical note, Rothblatt then talked more than about what she'due south doing at United Therapeutics — specifically, what could exist possible in medicine in 10 years. And it'due south pretty amazing, if it tin exist pulled off.

"Millions of people die every year considering of failure of some part of their anatomy: hearts, kidneys… These are incredibly complex machines honed by mother nature and natural selections over hundreds of millions of years, and at the cellular level, over billions of years. Would it exist possible to manufacture replacements? It would non be possible with 20th century technology. As Dr. McCoy said in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, 'Skillful grief. We can't exit this patient to the mercy of 20th century medicine!'"

Instead, her visitor is envisioning something better, and that could exist possible within as little every bit 10 years: 3D printing an unlimited supply of transplantable organs using a sample of the patient's DNA, and then delivering them to doctors and hospitals as needed with autonomous drones. (Embedded beneath is a video on the specific drone she would use.)

And then she played a video from Morgan Freeman'due south new series that features Dr. Martine Rothblatt, her spouse, and a cloned robotic version of her spouse. "The afterlife has something that has fascinated the states since the dawn of religion," Freeman says in the video. "In that location'due south still no way to escape physical death. Simply scientists may soon still achieve internal life by other means. What if y'all could shop your memory in a automobile."

"The future of creativity is using the power of digital signal culture to spread our consciousness everywhere," Rothblatt concluded. Any your feelings are on transhumanism and chasing immortality, nosotros go the singled-out feeling she's not done redefining what we know about applied science and what'south possible. Her latest book, Virtually Homo, is available at present on Amazon.com.

Top image credit: Jamie Lendino