Visualizing the future - and ways you can change it

While attending the Future in Review (FiRe) Conference in Park City Utah, I participated in talks about AI, trends in computing, visualization, entrepreneurship etc.  

Notable was this year’s CTO Challenge about “visualizing visualization,” and presentations about breakthroughs in understanding the retina and neurons, new steps in supercomputing, and risk-management software tools. Nascent companies of significance include a new type of combo solar roof that also condenses water out of the air, purifies other water, uses it to cool solar panels to higher efficiency, and pre-cool the home. (“The 24 hour solar roof Co.") Improved generators & motors, and other cool breakthroughs. Also, thorough discussion of the all-out campaign to steal the fruits of western and American creativity.

Should we fear or embrace the future? The BBC ran an extended interview with various futurist mavens at the recent FiRe, discussing innovation, and cyber-security… and saving the best for last, a bit of blather from yours-truly, about how we may make peace and live with artificial intelligences. And yes, it will be worth the wait.

Artificial Intelligence has replaced both transparency and national security as the #1 topic I am asked to speak and consult about. A fairly vivid tech business site asked me - and 21 other mavens — for predictions on how AI will impact the enterprise workplace.  

Meanwhile, are we self-lobotomizing?  It appears that  half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. 

We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans.  See a review of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter.

  

== Apparently, some folks are listening… ==

I’m #52 in a compilation of “Top 100 digital influencers.” Some of the people below me are brilliant! Indeed I am puzzled both to be there and by a lack of Vint Cerf.  Yes, this is one fellow’s personal list, so fine! 

Here’s video of my talk on the future of A.I. to a packed house at IBM's World of Watson congress in Las Vegas, October 2016. A punchy tour of big perspectives on Intelligence, as well as both artificial and human augmentation.

Meanwhile, wearing my “Mr. Transparency” hat, I just published: “No One Said It Would Be Easy: Copcams, sousveillance and the revolution of rising expectations,” in the first issue of the Journal of Science & Popular Culture - now available online. "Science permeates contemporary culture at multiple levels, from the technology in our daily lives to our dreams of other worlds in fiction."

 The Journal of Science & Popular Culture is a peer-reviewed academic publication that seeks to explore the complex and evolving connections between science and global society."  My article in issue #1, volume 1, is pp. 77–82 , 2017.

== Some are trying to make us smarter ==

The brilliant folks at "X" - the Alphabet (Google) company that takes on grand challenges - used stratospheric balloons to deliver emergency internet services to Puerto Rico. "Working with AT&T, Project Loon is now supporting basic communication and internet activities like sending text messages and accessing information online for some people with LTE enabled phones."

Project Loon is a network of stratospheric balloons designed to deliver internet connectivity to rural and remote areas worldwide. Loon balloons sail on winds in the stratosphere, extending the reach of our telecommunication partner’s networks into areas that are currently unconnected.This is terrific and helps make up for the way the federal government has failed 3 million US citizens down there. But it shows once again how much of our resilience depends on access to communications, a point I have been making in nonfiction, fiction, speeches and consults with agencies. Foremost...

...the chips in our cell phones could already allow peer-to-peer (P2P) text passing from phone to phone in afflicted areas without working cell towers. If this capability were simply turned on, many places would see far better citizen robustness and local problem solving!  See where I go into detail, here. And it is almost criminal that this one small thing, which might double national resilience, has been blocked by very obtuse men.

Oh, but – “Purdue Engineering researchers have developed a system that can show what people are seeing in real-world videos, decoded from their fMRI brain scans — an advanced new form of  “mind-reading” technology that could lead to new insights in brain function and to advanced AI systems.” 

One envisions how it could empower Big Brother so that no resistance will ever be possible. Or else…

…empower us all, if we can apply these tools upon politicians and the mighty, to make sure that Big Brother happens… never.

Heck... while we're peering ahead... If tachyon neutrinos exist, then there are some interesting ramifications: It isn't often that you see the word "gobsmacking" in an abstract ...

== Holiday wishes?  You (yes, you!) can save the world (personally!) ==

It's a good season to re-evaluate... and each of us taking responsibility for the future, as best we can.

For example, as we've seen in a year of weather extremes, hurricanes, fires etc., both natural and man-made disasters are always looming. I've long advocated that all citizens engage in the kind of preparedness that both Boy Scouts and Mormons practice out of habit. I also trained to be a member of our local CERT (Community Emergency Response Team). At least have a look at the program and consider taking the mere 20 hours of training. It’s all that remains of Civil Defense in the U.S. (Find your equivalent, in other nations.)

(In fact, I took it to the next level and trained to join the California Disaster Corps. I have the uniform and prepared my go bag, in case I am ever called.  CERT is to help your own community (and I’ve donned the green gear a few times.) CDC might summon me to wear dark blue anywhere in the state.)

There are other ways to be ready, without going all out to the prepper or survivalist (or even Holnist) extremes. Take this fellow’s cogent compilation of ways that you can help others, even far away, get through emergencies.

Of course we must prevent the preventable, which is why this time of year I urge everyone to read my “proxy activism” posting, that describes what average people can do to save the world — in exactly whatever set of priorities you think best!

I list worthy groups from Doctors Without Borders to Oxfam International  as well as The Planetary Society, Donors Choose (for schools) and Habitat for Humanity.

The method that I offer leaves all decisions and goals up to you, whether you view yourself as an environmentalist or a libertarian or Vegan activist! Moreover it's just right for a lazy person, (like you?) Do what I recommend and you can sit back, at least knowing that you helped others to save the world for you!

(Use each December as your season to reflect, adjust, and renew memberships. Don't worry... I'll remind you.)

One thing we do know: if you aren’t doing this much - this basic minimum - then you are one of those who later generations may curse. And they may have that power. It wouldn’t put anything past ornery humanity!

So do at least the minimum.  And then, when we narrowly save it all, you’ll get to be one of the smug ones who take credit.

The Destruction of BOTH Professionalism and Resilience

As we near a symbolic anniversary, I must say that I have long viewed the events of September 11, 2001 in a unique way - as a moment when the Age of Amateurs briefly came to the fore, showing some of its potential for the 21st Century.

As I have described elsewhere: The Value and Empowerment of Common Citizens in an Age of Danger, The one truly significant and revealing thing that happened that day was not the attack itself, the damage done, or the nation’s official response.

Only the Boston Globe’s Elaine Scarry joined me in pointing out that the attacks triggered a truly staggering display of citizen competence, courage and autonomy, on a day when all of our paid professional protector castes failed.

Since then, these castes have united around a single goal - to distract the people from what really happened on 9/11. Have you noticed that pundits and high muckities of both left and right constantly speak in terms of public “fear and panic” when - in fact - there was very little of either trait in evidence that day... or, indeed, the months that followed? Instead of going with what worked on 9/11 by investing in ground level citizen responsiveness, both the administration and its critics have tended to parse the problem relentlessly in terms that bicker over which branch of the protective caste should be given more power over our lives.

An example: Debates over the PATRIOT Act swirl around a devil's dichotomy, choosing *between* security and freedom. In this debate, the civil libertarians have my loyalty... but ONLY to the extent that I am forced to accept this dismal, narrow, zero-sum game. Being asked to choose between my childrens’ safety and their freedom. (Bah!) While I send them checks I am also resentful that they want to "protect" me... instead of helping me protect myself.

Now we have Katrina, another example of the Protector Caste failing utterly to prepare or prevent or palliate harm... only on a vastly worse scale than 9/11.

After all, on 9/11, their failure came about as an unfortunate confluence of many factors, some of which weren’t anybody’s fault, all uniting to create a sudden and very brief Perfect Storm. Isolated acts of incompetence combined with sheer bad luck - plus enemy innovativeness - to make Professional Anticipation fail at all levels.

This did not mean that our paid protectors were systematically incompetent... they had doubtless been saving us from many other threats all along, quietly and professionally, and have continued doing so, even hampered recently by the Neocons' all out war on neutral professionalism.

What 9/11 did prove was an age-old adage, that even the best anticipators only succeed some of the time. Inevitably, no matter how skilled, anticipation will fail. And when that happens - when surprise comes at us like a ton of bricks - we must fall back on the other thing. Anticipation’s partner, in helping human beings to deal with the shocks of an onrushing future.

Resiliency. The thing our fellow citizens - (mostly Bostonians and New Yorkers) - demonstrated prodigiously on that day. And the one thing that the Protector Caste has been downplaying - (instinctively and surely NOT consciously) - ever since.

Define irony. The Protector caste has been doing this - by reflex - defending their turf from amateurs, at the very same time that skilled professionalism has been under relentless attack by our political leadership. By the appointment of political hacks into management positions for which they were totally unqualified. By stacking the upper echelons of agencies like the CIA with partisan attack dogs. By dismantling independent advisory panels and waging ideological war on science. And - above all - by commencing an unprecedented purge of the United States Officer Corps.

Somehow, we must make it clear to these skilled and dedicated men and women, ranging from FEMA and the CIA to generals and admirals, all the way to local fire marshals, that the uppity citizens who are lifting their heads, increasingly empowered by education and new technologies, are not the enemy. That our rising competence and ability to self-organize in a split second does not threaten their jobs.

We will still need their depth of knowledge and skill for decades to come.

What citizen empowerment will do is provide the backup that enables them to do their jobs at all, in a world that grows increasingly complex with each passing day. Indeed, if they turn to us, we will be their help, their reserves, their bulwark against political meddling and destructive interference.

Oh I could go on... only now there is Katrina.

Here, unlike 9/11, there was plenty of warning. Years in the case of the levees (see my 1990 novel EARTH) and many days in the case of the storm. Failure of anticipation now becomes culpable. Failure to enhance citizen autonomous resiliency can only be seen as criminal.

Online, the mystical-libertarians are going ape, claiming that this all shows the INHERENT incompetence of government. An insipid response that is wholly insupportable. Other emergencies have been handled well, within recent memory. Especially when skilled and vigorous officials swiftly cut red tape and engaged all resources, including private, corporate and individual effort.

Government's failure in this case arose from the War Against Professionalism waged by this administration. (Was this in order to spread a failure of confidence in government? No, too early to get quite so paranoid.)

What is less clear has been the parallel war against citizen empowerment. PEOPLE could have stepped in, taking the place of the missing National Guard, for example. And countless other ways. Instead, every barrier was put in place to prevent individual effort.

Since 9/11, the professionals have been undermined and the people hampered. BOTH anticipation and resiliency have fallen into dark times, exactly when we need both traits to become super-enhanced, to face of a world transforming before our eyes.

And this despite a hundred billion dollars spent on readiness?

When do coincidences add up to deliberate harm?

==See more articles on Disaster Preparedness: Citizen Involvement in Emergency Planning

==MISC Matters==

A preview of a posting I’ll make next week on http://www.davidbrin.com/

"Will the first decade of the 21st Century be known as the time when our Scientific Age came to a whimpering end? The one trait shared by anti-modernists of both left and right appears to be disdain for our ability to learn and do bold new things. My published review of Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science, explores how partisanship can explain much of this collapse of confidence... and why partisan interpretations don't cover everything. http://www.davidbrin.com/gopwar

Two recommended books that tout assertive problem solving are The Past and Future of America's Economy: Long Waves of Innovation that Power Cycles of Growth By Robert D. Atkinson and Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near.

 The first explores assertive measures that would allow us to play our roles better in the world economy. The latter pursue’s Kurzweil’s argument that our scientific competence and technologically empowered creativity will soon skyrocket, propelling humanity into an entirely new age. I don’t entirely agree. But boy, what a ride.