Science that threatens… and promises wonders

George Dvorsky has a piece on iO9, How Artificial Intelligence Will Give Birth to Itself,  summarizing many of the worrisome aspects of a possible runaway effect, when self-improving artificial intelligences (AI) get faster and faster at designing new and better versions of themselves. A thoughtful reflection on how the Singularity might (or might not) go out of control.

Alas, George left out a process issue that makes all the difference. That issue is Secrecy, which lies at the root of every Michael Crichton science-goes-wrong scenario. (Not one of Michael's plot drivers would have taken place, if the "arrogant scientists" had done their innovating in the open - as most scientists have been trained to prefer - exposing their new robots/dinosaurs and so on to truly public, error-correcting criticism.)

Efforts to develop AI that are subject to the enlightenment process of reciprocal scrutiny might see their failure modes revealed and corrected in time. Those that take place in secret are almost one hundred percent guaranteed to produced unexpected outcomes. And most likely dangerous ones.

The worst example of AI research that is secret and extremely well-funded, while creating AI systems that are inherently amoral, predatory and insatiable? It's a danger that I explore here: Why a Transaction Fee Matters to You. Automated investment programs... of which High Frequency Trading is only one example... represent probably the most dangerous AI research on our planet today.

== But who needs AI, with brainy-folks like this? ==

Robert Kuhn’s television series Closer To Truth “gives you access to the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover the fundamental issues of existence. Enjoy new ways of thinking. Appreciate diverse views. Witness intense debates. Express your own opinions. Seek your own answers. Get smarter.”

Wow… that’s a pretty hefty promise! So why not check out this fabulous series, now available online? Full disclosure: I contributed a few bits to the program, on topics ranging from cosmology and SETI to religion and ESP.

But scan the impressive lists of other folks, some of them - heck, most of them - way smarter than me! Such as David Deutsch, Freeman Dyson and Francisco Ayala. Mind-blowing stuff.

== We can do that! Should we? ==

You’ve got to wonder why this politically self-destructive course has been chosen.   Perhaps something isn’t being told. China building Dubai-style fake islands in the South China Sea. All in service of asserting extremely aggressive territorial claims.

Also. Dubai is planning the largest indoor theme park in the world, which will be covered by a glass dome that will be open during the winter months. The project will also house the plant's largest shopping mall with an area of 8 million sq. ft., which will take the form of an extended retail street network. Oil is creating whole climate controlled cities in the middle east, prototypes for space colonies?

Meanwhile, America declines into superstition. Nation apparently believed in Science...at some point. (I guess the Greatest Generation truly was better than us boomers.)

Stirling cycle engines have long been considered an under-developed opportunity in power generation. Using a closed gas cycle to tap energy from any substantial heat difference, these external combustion devices have been used in spacecraft. They can - at very low maintenance - draw power from burning just about anything.   Now… Segway inventor Dean Kamen thinks his new Stirling Engine will get you off the grid for  under $10,000.

== Physics and astronomy ==

A massive solar storm -- or Coronal Mass Ejection -- barely missed the Earth in 2012. “If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces,” physicist Daniel Baker, about the biggest storm in at least 120 years. Looking around and taking prudent precautions in a dangerous universe is what both science fiction and sanity are for. Ostriches who stick their heads in the ground will lose everything.

Long predicted — the Age of Amateurs in astronomy! Astronomers have long known that combining the data from several astrophotographs can reveal dramatically more detail about astrophysical objects. So what will they discover by combining all the astrophotographs on the Web? They’ve developed a system that automatically combines images from the same part of the sky to increase the effective exposure time of the resulting picture. And they say the combined images can rival those from much professional telescopes.

Cool. The Curiosity lander on Mars happened to be perfectly situated to catch images of the tiny (14 miles) moon Phobos eclipsing the Sun. Wow.

Oh!  Hot off the presses... (when will that phrase lose all relation to its origins?)...  NASA has revealed the suite of instruments that will likely fly on the next (2020) Mars roving laboratory, or “son-of-Curiosity.”  A way cool set of new scientific methods… though again nothing to explicitly check for life itself.  Meanwhile, NASA's Opportunity Rover sets an off-world driving record: 25 miles covered!

Astronomers announced the discovery of the fifth known triple supermassive black hole system in the universe. Some galaxies have more than one central black hole — each orbiting the other in relatively close proximity — and scientists say this is probably the result of two or more smaller galaxies merging. The two closest black holes are separated by a distance of 140 parsces (one parsec equals about 3 light years). The third supermassive black hole is much farther away.

A very interesting and challenging and smart series of cartoons explaining tough fields of physics, like magnetohydrodynamics. Also black holes and weird geometries. I do sniff a little crack-pottery, around the edges, so be aware some of it is… non-paradigm. Still, very good tours of difficult topics!

Savoir Sans Frontieres: Scientific Comic Books

The Silence Barrier: The Adventures of Archibald Higgins

The Black Hole: The Adventures of Archibald Higgins

A Caltech prof’s new theory suggests a highly unusual class of stars -- 1 in 10,000 -- may be made entirely of metal. Wow. I wonder how long they last.

Microscopically structuring steel like bamboo makes it stronger yet more flexible.

Finally, I have been putting in queries to Kip Thorne and other General Relativity experts about Hawking Radiation at the fringes of a gravity well... do any of you out there know such an expert with an open mind? I really do have a physics PhD!  So a little professional courtesy? ;-)

FLASH BOYS versus SKYNET – How Wall Street may be even more dangerous than Michael Lewis thinks

Michael Lewis's new book, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, has certainly gathered tons of well-deserved attention. He was on the Daily Show and his interview on NPR is an absolute must-listen podcast in which you'll painlessly (except for an angry gut reaction) learn an awful lot about how Wall Street is (surprise) cheating the rest of us.

Lewis focuses especially on an area about which I've inveighed heavily for two years… the perils of High Frequency Trading.

You don't have time for books or podcasts? Then if you read or even skim any in-depth article this month, make it this one… an excerpt from FLASH BOYS about how the world of fast-pitched Wall Street trading has become rife with computerized cheating, so pervasive that any justification is impossible through the usual rationalizations of "market forces" and "correct price equilibration." No little guy can win the full value of his trades. No retirement fund manager can use keen insights to maximally benefit her clients without paying a large "tax" or overhead in stolen value.

Lewis's article appears to have a relatively happy ending, with the creation of a new trading center that corrects some of the grotesque advantages of behemoth banks and super-empowered Hugh Frequency Trading (HFT) operations. And I hope the sunny optimism of the final paragraphs comes true! (Failure to correct the cheating will lead us to French Revolution levels of anger, with tumbrel-riding lords losing much more than their "genius" predatory gains.)

What is more likely is a moderate series of reforms that -- like those our ancestors performed under Teddy Roosevelt -- restore just enough fairness and flatness and wary trust to keep it all in motion for another generation… and maybe restoring a bit of strength to the beleaguered middle class.

Indeed, the hoo-row over this one book appears to be affecting markets! It has prompted a few traders to bet against shares of the Nasdaq OMX Group, the parent of the NASDAQ exchange. One analyst estimates that about 25% of Nasdaq's revenue, and about 33% of earnings, are attributable to high-frequency trading. The Wall Street Journal offers: The Responsible Way to Rein in Super-Fast Trading. 

If HFT is reined in - maybe with timing measures but far better with a tiny Tobin Tax -- then this one particular cheating mode will be controlled.

== Would that solve it? ==

But the danger remains… that we might return to the normal patter of 99% of human cultures across 6000 years. And that is the lesson of this book. Those who manipulate and distract us from getting mad and reforming capitalism are not only our enemies… but they are the enemies of the very same flat-fair open capitalism that they claim to admire.

Rationalization and excuse-making for the predatory depredations of a monopolistic cartel of financial "wizard" parasites.

Alas, the relatively optimistic tone of FLASH BOYS must be viewed with caution. The "solution" of a new, neutral exchange can easily be perverted by the next round of cheating -- both Adam Smith and Karl Marx called cheating the ultimate enemy of fair and flat and free competitive and creative markets.

Indeed, so long at the stock exchanges are controlled by closed cartels of conniving "seated members" there will be an inherent incentive for them to trade with each other, commission-free, which is the essential unfairness of HFT… and not the timing factor that Lewis dwells upon.

I have also offered another, more science fictional but chillingly plausible reason to fear the many billions of dollars that major trading firms are pouring into the HFT versions of artificial intelligence (AI). It is a failure mode that grown more credible by the day. It could wind up wreaking devastating harm.

And you can find it here: A Transaction Fee Might Save Capital Markets…and Protect us from the Terminator!

See also: The Contradiction of Capital Markets.

The Contradiction of Capital Markets

I will have some unusual and skew-perspective takes on all the transparency-related news, from Google Glasses to the NSA revelations.  In fact, an article of mine should appear in the July 16 issue of Variety: Google Glass: In the Long Run, the Benefits Outweigh the Risks. And another one in a major newspaper.  Till then, and while I am traveling to Chicago and Ft. Worth, here is a riff that I've stored too long.  Something that needs saying.

== Can companies really gain investment capital via the stock market? ==

Elsewhere I have commented on how easily capitalist/entrepreneurial markets can and do get warped by cheating and parasitism.  Some of it is inherent, as Adam Smith described way back in 1776. What could be  more natural for human beings to do – for example – than insider trading? Even primly honest folks will do it, inadvertently, We set up rules, and then lay patches on cracks that inevitably open in the rules, then bandaids on the patches….

Across 6000 years, no civilization ever tried so hard to create fair and open arenas within which humans can engage in creatively cooperative and creatively competitive positive-sum games.  Those who claim that markets are “natural” are romantics who know no human history and who have never even cracked open Smith's classic, Wealth of Nations. 

Markets are far from natural!  They are marvelous, wealth generating machines. Human inventions that need constant tuning, tweaking and re-adjusting.  Especially since cheaters (in other words humans) are all over the place, looking for ways to exploit those cracks. If they must, they will use camouflage and call themselves socialists… or oligarchs… or champions of enterprise, -- whatever garb will let them blend into the favored sanctimony of their environs.  But pay less attention to surfaces and polemics than to outcomes.

Witness how the emphasis in the U.S. economy has shifted, since the 1940s, away from goods and services to finance. Companies once founded by innovators start to fail when taken over by “business majors.” The clade of parasitical meddlers has an endless supply of rationalizations, such as those concocted by the HFT or High Frequency Trading industry, claiming that – by leaping to suck away the intermediate value between buyers and sellers – they are somehow doing both parties a service, by helping markets to settle on the "proper (intermediate) market price."  This catechism-incantation allows them to shrug aside the blatant fact that they benefit while producing nothing, even as the buyers and sellers and producers of goods and services starve for capital, languish and fade.

(Aside: one reflex will be to to accuse me at this point of "socialism" - even though every word of mine so far has been in praise of honest trade and competitive market forces, in a capitalism free of what biologists and disease experts call "parasitic-burden.")

(Another aside: some have written in to suggest that I should distinguish between new shares issued as dilution (described above) and those issued in an initial stock offering or IPO.  The latter events are often filthy affairs, rife with cronyism, insider trading, corrupt under-the-table dealings and grotesque market distortions in which the little guy seldom has a chance.  Almost anyone could design a system that would "bleed" into the market enough option-warrants in an open fashion, that would serve to help set an actual price for the IPO, instead of the bizarre and self-serving activities we see performed by most IPO underwriters. It is one more way in which we are not served by the cartel of "seated exchange members." Still do note. Much of the IPO cash does go to the company. Purchasers should always know how much.)

== The "mutant" CEO ==

Elsewhere I have also discussed the flawed reasoning that defends today’s outrageous compensation packages for CEOs and other managers who create no product or service whatsoever. Think about it. Market forces are supposed to correct imbalances!  Hence, by the very logic of capitalism, high CEO salaries should attract new talent to the field of corporate management until the supply of brilliant corporate managers outstrips demand and the prices -- or compensation for such managers -- finally fall. That is capitalism!

It is the absolute core catechism of their faith… completely ignored when convenient. Members of the collusive CEO caste never ever, ever mention this -- that the system they claim to admire should result in a smooth and natural limitation on these French Royalty level compensations. And the failure of a correction to appear - after decades of incessant pay raises to stratospheric levels - is essential proof of a collusive market distortion.

The one excuse I've heard is that the very best managers are mutant-level good. They are like tall, fast NBA players, nonlinear and by far worth any price! But there's a rub.  NBA mutants can prove they are worth it by clear statistical performance measures and ticket sales! In contrast, there is famously almost no correlation between CEO compensation and company health.  Rather, studies have shown a near-perfect correlation with how many members of a very small clade of 5,000 or so lordlings you play golf with. Stuff each others' corporate boards with pals and what else do you need?  Can anyone out there point to a "market force" that would prevent this?

== The myth that equity markets efficiently raise capital ==

But let's go back to the stock markets. You can step back and question the fundamental rationale for equities trading, altogether! Oh, sure, people should be able to sell their shares to others who deem the company has better prospects. But for the most part its sense of importance masks a gambling den. It is justified by the claim that companies use the NYSE and NASDAQ and other exchanges as “capital markets,” to fund their RandD plus the building of productive plants and equipment. (Ironically, much of their catechism on this goes back to Karl Marx!)

The whole notion that a company benefits very much, when its stock price rises, is absurd. It is a Big Lie on the scale of an Emperor who people suddenly realize has no clothes.  Companies can draw new investment funds from the stock market only when the price rises AND the company's board issues new shares to sell at that higher price. 

That will, indeed raise capital! Current stockholder value is diluted, but presumably it rises back up as a result of  new activities and products that the fresh capital allows. To do this requires sober calculation and convincing existing stockholders that the dilution will prove beneficial.  And it just doesn't happen that much.  Nowhere near enough to justify the 99% of trading that is pure speculation, gambling and manipulation.

Let me reiterate; I am not calling for an end to equities markets! Current stock-owners should be able to trade, fine, but let's stop pretending that companies benefit from any but the tiniest fraction of NYSE or NASDAQ activity. To the contrary, managers are terrorized by stock value fluctuations into making rapid, near-term decisions that can prove short-sighted, even catastrophic.  (Secondary note: none of this applies to commodities markets, though those have their own problems.)

In any event, that cycle of ownership dilution and re-investment via new share issuance is the activity that should be tax favored, and NOT the passive clipping of gambling profits from the trading of old shares to "greater fools." Re-stating that again… the issuance of new shares - the proceeds of which go to new products, capital equipment and so on - should be tax-favored, and not (gambling) dividends and capital gains that benefit competitive capitalism not... one... iota.

Aside #1- The favored flows would go directly to the company's investment in productive capacity and competitive activities.

Aside #2- Assuming we also constrain cheat-methods like proliferating a zoo of share types with sneaky-variable voting rights, the result of new issuance would be a steady decline in the power of large bloc stockholders as dilution spreads ownership ever-wider.  In order to hold onto control, large-bloc owners would have to keep plowing dividends back into buying new shares.  So, either the ownership becomes more broadly spread (resembling democracy), or else the "kings" are forced to be hands-on, involved and committed to the firm.  Either way, vigorously competitive investment in new goods and services would be the favored outcome.

Indeed, although it is a separate matter, I believe that these "radical" measures to save capitalism from cheaters should include a limit to shell holding companies.  No share of voting stock in any company should be more than two layers from a living, breathing human being. (Or charitable foundation or pension plan.)

React viscerally.  Call this "socialism."  In fact, there is not one molecule of socialism in this proposal.  Just anti-parasitism, plus a will and eagerness to see so-called "capital markets" actually function as advertised, for a healthy version of capitalism.

Let me swivel now and point my finger in the opposite direction: left-wingers who blame "capitalism" for our recent messes should replace the word with "cheaters."  I consider healthy "Smithian" capitalism to be one of the top five victims of the malignantly incompetent rule of the recent U.S. GOP.  There are no outcome metrics of national health under which the Republican Party's tenure in command did not wreak harm upon the people of the United States, on human civilization, and upon healthy capitalism… and upon the spinning ghosts of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley.

Okay.  It's been said. When was the last time you saw such a fiercely radical "j'accuse" denunciation, issued in defense of our present economic system, against the enemies of enterprise, who claim to be its great defenders?  Well well.  This is Contrary Brin!

More… anon… Meanwhile… and just to clear the decks… here are some political miscellany.

== Who won the Iraq War? ==

“We lost out,” said Michael Makovsky, a former Defense Department official in the Bush administration who worked on Iraq oil policy. “The Chinese had nothing to do with the war, but from an economic standpoint they are benefiting from it, and our Fifth Fleet and air forces are helping to assure their supply.”

Not to mention that Iraq is now largely a satrapy of Iran.  What a great idea that pair of trillion dollars was.  And you would even consider trusting those goofballs with a burnt match, let alone any role in political life?  

(And while this proves the American right to have been completely loony, the far-left is little better, if they continue to nurse the insane delusion that these wars ever, ever, ever had anything at all to do with "grabbing oil." Um... show me the oil? Moderates rise up! The left-and-right wings are out of their freaking minds.)

== Political-News ==

An infographic rates countries based on the state of freedom of the press. Many criteria are used, including violence against journalists to legislative measures to curb press freedoms.

An interesting look at how unusual it is to see the Republican Party without a clear next front-runner.  "For decades, the party has drawn from a small pool. There was a Bush or a Dole on every national ticket from 1976 through 2004. For 20 years before that, Richard Nixon was on the ballot in every election but one."

Tracking progress toward US energy independence: a handy chart, from Popular Science.

A provocative essay, Radical Centrism and the Return of Ricardo, reminds us that Adam Smith was not the only founder of enlightenment economics. Ricardo also played a major role. I cite both of them in that they knew what most "free market" economists have forgotten, that economic distortions will always be generated by toxically massive accumulations of wealth. A healthy market system - like an ecosystem - needs recycling, not just for "liberal" reasons of justice and equity and outcomes, but for the very health of the system itself, so that competition remains a real, vibrantly creative force, with a maximum number of empowered participants on a relatively flat playing field.  This proposal for a radically altered tax and property system has no chance of ever being implemented outside of a sci fi novel. And I only agree with half of the aspects.  Still it shows real thought.

See statistical proof that obstruction of appointments has skyrocketed under the Tea Party House of Representatives.

How 1% of 1% dominate U.S. elections.  Yes it is Mother Jones and I don't always agree with their polemics.  But unlike Fox, they use actual facts. And they show where all of this will head, so long as the agenda of The Insatiables is the re-establishment of feudalism.

It would be one thing if -- as I portray in Existence -- the re-emerging oligarchy took seriously their need to be intelligent rulers. It is another thing to blithely assume they are smart while undermining every institution and enlightenment system that brought them all they own. Do they actually plan to ignore where history says that this will lead?

Finally, a science-fictional side: Here's hoping that Hugo voters will consider that Stanley Schmidt has just retired after his long and brilliant tenure as editor at ANALOG Magazine.  It is his last year of eligibility and it might be nice to honor him, at long last.

Dilbert, Skynet and the latest from the transparency front

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) and I have both agreed and disagreed about transparency, for years. In his posting, Crime and Privacy, he has opined, for example, that "Ironically, the more the government clamps down on individual privacy, the more freedom the residents will have. When the government can detect every sort of crime, it will be forced by public opinion and by resource constraints to legalize anything it can detect but can't stop." 

Hm, well, that's right in the general gist, though wrong in the specifics. What Scott is fumbling around -- and that I made explicit in The Transparent Society (1997) -- is that universal and pervasive surveillance can take us in either of two directions.  One is toward Big Brother, if elites monopolize the omniscience and can surveil in secret, without accountability or supervision.  In that case, you get what Vernor Vinge called "ubiquitous law enforcement." And if the cops can't arrest everyone?  Then they'll cherry-pick and arrest those whom they don't like.  In the specifics, Adams is dead wrong.

But Adams is floundering in the right direction when he holds "that a lack of privacy would lead to fewer activities being against the law. The only reason law enforcement can afford to act against drug users, or prostitution, or gambling, for example, is because only 1% of those crimes are detectable. If police could magically know every time someone violated a drug or prostitution law, the volume would be so high they would end up ignoring the entire class of crimes for purely practical reasons. And that's where we're heading."

Still wrong! But almost there. What is missing from his vision is… citizenship. Let us assume that we remain sovereign voters and citizens, not just legally but empowered by omniscience of our own. By "sousveillance" -- the ability and fierce determination to look BACK at the mighty - of government, oligarchy, corporatcy, criminality - in effect, watching the watchmen. (I portray this in my novels, EARTH and  EXISTENCE and it is very likely. ) Suppose we get used to applying reciprocal accountability and even inserting cameras of our own - or at least trusted witnesses - even in the authorities' surveillance chambers and control rooms. In that case:

1) Cherry-picking and other abuses will be caught and deterred.

2) We will argue, debate, deliberate and change some of the laws ourselves.  Some will be abandoned, as Scott Adams describes, only by our choice, not because of some cop-laziness.

For example, if you are caught every single time you break the speed limit, and if the fine every time is $400, then you will join millions of your neighbors demanding that the system of fines be changed!  You currently pay $400 because the law assumes it is missing 99% of the speeders.  If it catches 100% of them, then rational people will negotiate a shift to a tariff system, where you pay by the mile… and by the mph… each time you hurry above the limit, but are not putting folks at risk. Deterrence that's reasonable and flexible. Um…. duh?

Here is what I find depressing. People just don't get this! Not even smart, out-of-the-box thinkers like Scott Adams. They seldom look at the society of citizens around them and see it! We never notice that 99% of the stuff… even the rules… around us is working! (Just stand at a 4-way stop sign intersection and watch a miracle at work.) Sure, complain about the wretched 1% that isn't!  I got a list of complaints that rolls out the door. But this tendency to only notice what's wrong seriously undermines our belief that we can fix things.

No wonder negotiation has broken down, in this era of dismal culture war.  We all assume the worst. We never ponder… is there a solution that we could negotiate, among ourselves, so that these trends won't rob our freedom, but enhance it?

== The matter at mean ==

The best and smartest of the topical web comics is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC), by Zach Weiner. A recent strip illustrates the psychological state that drives elites -- even well-meaning ones -- to proclaim a need for asymmetric information flows… to know everything about us while letting us know very little about what they are doing.  In fairness, such asymmetries can be necessary at a tactical level. But you can count on the rationalizations always getting pushed beyond sense, extending secrecy as a convenience, as job security, and an expression of self-importance -- a tendency that winds up endangering citizenship and freedom.

See also...How Internet fighting works: Another dollop of transparency wisdom from SMBC.

We shouldn't get angry about this fundamental trait of human nature -- it is likely what you or I would do, to some degree, if we found ourselves in a position of power. But human nature is a challenge, a foundation we had no part in shaping, a hand we are dealt that can and must be improved. When it comes to surveillance by those with power we simply have to keep up a steady counter pressure, to find innovative methods for applying transparency upward (sousveillance). Watching the watchers, in ways that do not prevent them from doing their legitimate jobs.  It turns out there are such methods, just waiting for a concerted effort on our parts. Here is one example: Free the Inspectors General.

Oh, lest this focus solely on government, note that the same psychological drive affects elites of all kinds, from finance to business to social or international or criminal. Only (a slim majority of) scientists regularly practice transparency as a schooled habit. We are all human. But we must stop this old habit from destroying us. We can't afford to indulge it anymore.

== Skynet now has lasers ==

Our friends the HST (High Speed Trading) or HFT (High Frequency Trading) algorithms are at it again. A single hacked/prank tweet on the Associated Press (AP) account, declaring that the White House had been bombed and Obama injured, sent the market into an instant freefall for three minutes, far too quickly for human traders to have been involved. "That goes to show you how algorithms read headlines and create these automatic orders – you don't even have time to react as a human being." See also: Skynet and the Flash Computer Trading Monster.

As if we didn't already have enough reasons to dread this particular path to artificial intelligence (AI) now they are planning to equip Skynet… I mean Goldman Sachs HST systems… with lasers! Laser beam technology originally developed for the military is being rolled out to shave time off trades. It will compete with new microwave networks that are increasingly being used by traders. Ah, humans.  Marx was right about capitalists, they will sell the new overlords the rope used to hang us all.

== Transparency-related Miscellany ==

I consulted with Qualcomm about this, amid my decades long campaign to change the design of our cell phone system, so that it will continue to be useful when we'll need it most, when some disaster (local or national or global) brings down the cell towers!  Implementing one of these resilience concepts, Qualcomm hopes to boost mobile coverage with a cell phone service that uses small cellular base stations installed in homes to serve passing smartphone users.

And along similar lines, adding to our potential resilience... Ushahidi aims to build the world’s most simple, reliable, and rugged Internet connection device, but with sophisticated cloud-based features. Its BRCK hub is rugged and can connect 20 devices  with any network in the world, providing eight hours of wireless connectivity battery life

- Smart dust computers, no bigger than a snowflake, will scavenge power from their surroundings, and monitor your world. Clearly a huge predictive hit for my friend Vernor Vinge in his novel -- A Deepness in the Sky -- which explores the possibilities.  Big potential upsides await… or else downsides far worse than Orwell. Raging against such things won't stop them from being abused.  Embracing them just might.

- Hitachi Develops World's Smallest RFID Chip.  Nicknamed "Powder" or "Dust", the surface area of the new chip is a quarter of the original 0.3 x 0.3 mm, 60µm-thick chip developed by Hitachi in 2003. And this RFID chip is only one-eighth the width of the previous model.  Already the hand-wringing has begun… while clueless over  how to deal with such a world.  Clue: moaning about this won't stop it.  Elites will have it. We have one option.  Give it to us all and ensure the elites are watched with this stuff.

- How easy is it to scam the Internet with a fake persona? "Santiago Swallow" skyrocketed from a nonexistent made-up name to a Kred social influence score of 754 out of 1000, within days of being "born" online… midwifed by British technology expert Kevin Ashton (who coined the term "Internet of Things.")  For example: It didn’t take long for Mr Ashton to purchase Swallow some 90,000 followers, all for the price of $50. An automated tweeting service was used to broadcast his thoughts to the world. Image manipulation software created Swallow’s look and Mr Ashton finished his experiment by writing a fake Wikipedia entry and setting up Swallow’s own website through WordPress.

In fact, there are business opportunities for a pseudonymity-reputation conveyance service that would be an instant hit, allowing tools to overcome scams like this. Alas, the general response is hand-wringing and "what'cha gonna do?"

== Past, present and future shock ==

In his book "Present Shock: When Everything Happens NOW," Douglass Rushkoff contends we must get used to the world arising out of Alvin Toffler's prophetically accurate "Future Shock"… a coming era when everything is happening all at once and the present becomes a cacophony of unbearable complexity. One in which the nostalgic reactions of left and right differ -- the Occupy Movement seeks an endless present of confrontation while the right wallows in apocalyptic dreams of an ending that would relieve one of having to think about complexity. And yet, both of these bickering twins express a common, underlying personality trait: anomie toward the future.

Borrowing from some of the best web-philosophers, Rushkoff calls digiphrenia - digitally provoked mental chaos.  One of many overlaps in his book with near-future problems that I portray in Existence. Such as how corporate investing in new goods or services has been replaced by relentless -- and ultimately futile -- efforts to game the markets in real time, betraying the confident foresight that is supposed to lie at the root of capitalism. The motivator (in that case) appears to be less greed than a pervasive unwillingness to grapple with the gyrations of a rapidly shifting target called the near future.

Rushkoff is a savvy writer and perceptive in his attempt at a big picture.  Alas, temporal chauvinism happens to the best of us and the tendency in "Present Shock" is to fall for the very thing he describes happening to others.  Assuming that the present is the only topic here - the only subject worthy of myopic focus.  In fact, history teaches a sobering lesson - that every major new communication medium triggered disruption alienation and pain, before eventually becoming a net force for good.

Movable type, glass lenses, radio, loudspeakers, mass media. Each time this happened, some -- like the Luddites of 18th Century Britain -- would cry fore-tellings of gloom: that commonfolk would be overloaded, their ability to process overwhelmed, or that people would drift aimlessly without the anchor of tradition. Meanwhile others -- from Giordano Bruno to Benjamin Franklin to Teilhard de Chardin -- proclaimed ecstatic joy over the prospect of expanding human powers, predicting that the process might culminate in almost godlike omniscience. Every time, the grouches proved right in the short term and wrong over the long run.

Today’s Internet and media-blasted world shows every sign of passing through a similar era of confusion. A confusion well-documented in Present Shock -- though alas, without as big or deep or wide or as calming a perspective as Douglas Rushkoff claims that he is offering. That is no indictment. It is all right to be a meta-example of the very thing that you are describing. And he describes it all very well.

== More Transparency Miscellany ==

- A cool and informative Scientific American article about Google Glass... and my sci fi augmented reality "specs" in Existence... and other takes on how we'll move through a world of many layers and textures.

- An almost completely plastic pistol, made in a 3D printer. It's heeeeere.  What a world.

- Fortunately, personal firearms will be nowhere near as important in the future as universal access to vision and knowledge. Citizen victories in the Age of Cameras can be among the most important in our time. Recent court decisions in the U.S. have supported a citizen's right to film and record police activity in public places and the Obama Administration has declared this right to be "settled law."  No matter could be more important than preserving the one recourse any person must retain, when dealing with authority… our ability to appeal to the truth.

- Now see how the same fight is being waged in Britain by a brave young woman -- Gemma Atkinson -- whose animated story is brilliant and informative.  Again, most of the time, most police are our good and faithful servants.  But the only conceivable way to keep them that way, is by getting them used to being supervised by their employers.  By us.

- Supreme Court says states may bar Freedom of Information requests from non-residents. Resist.

- An interesting rumination on Yelp! and other crowd-sourced "critic and review" systems… the advantages… and many many disadvantages that must be overcome, before this promising method can truly displace the appraisal of professionals and experts.

== Saving provocative politics for last ==

So you think I am always coming down on conservatism?  (That is, the current-loony Fox-led version; I admired  the intellectual honesty of Barry Goldwater and I tell everyone - left or right - to read Adam Smith;  but neither Goldwater nor Smith nor William F. Buckley would recognize today's mutant right.)

Well surprise-surprise… I am fully aware of sins of the left, as well!   And I will now  swivel to aim in that direction.

First, bear in mind that moderate liberals are a much larger population than actual leftists, and that liberals do not partake in many of the traits of their more dogmatic allies, nor do they believe almost anything that Sean Hannity claims that they do.  Nevertheless, there truly is a fringe and there are ways in which the far left wing behaves much like fanatics of the far right.

For example, both extremes demand tests of purity and the recitation of rigid, in-group defining doctrines. Neither wing is even remotely interested in applying the genius of pragmatic compromise. At times, the left's political correctness can seem as brutally intolerant as the know-nothing religiosity we see gushing from the opposite extreme.

One very smart social psychologist who lays out the case in ways that should make left-of-center intellectuals squirm is Jonathan Haidt. If you are one of those intellectuals, and are honest, you'll give him a look and listen: Tribalism and the Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology. (Or see his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are divided by Politics and Religion). And perhaps even adapt. Please. We can only afford one half of the American polity going psycho at a time.

And continuing my swivel to cast a wary eye in all directions: a war on whistle blowers? It is much more complicated than this, and there have been other measures that enhanced whistle blowing incentives, of late. Still we need to keep paying attention.

And… the U.S. gives big push to internet surveillance: Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws.  I see such things as inevitable.  What I demand (and you should) is that we get something in return.  Ever increasing powers of supervision.

There. See?  I am wary in every direction. Remain suspicious! Especially if you have a "side" that you feel is better than its opposition.  It may only be better in 90% of the ways…

…and that 10% could become lethal. Unless we make sure that even our "friendly" elites know.  That we are watching them.