Was 2012 the "best year in the history of the world"? (Plus puzzlers and potpourri)

Most of you know that I have a reputation for optimism.  I find that irritating since, in fact, I have a rather low opinion of humanity and of our dismal historical record. I know the odds are against us, especially in a galaxy that seems devoid of voices.  Still... I find today's fashion for universal cynicism - spanning from left to right - to be not only tedious and dull, but fantastically unhelpful.  The Enlightenment, the best thing that our species or planet ever did, thrives on a confident, can-do, problem solving spirit. Not the sick drug of pessimistic sanctimony.

I've long pointed to work done by Prof. Steven Pinker and others, showing that inter-human violence has fallen steeply (on average and per capita) every decade since the end of World War II.  Civilization's moral compass has swerved in powerfully positive ways. Although the campaign to rid ourselves of racism, sexism and other sicknesses is far from done, those ancient ills were taken for granted in most cultures but are now driven into ill repute. As the environmentalist author of EARTH, I feel we'll become good planetary managers as much by learning from what we've started doing well, as from self-flagellation.

So I had to pause and wonder why I was irked by an article in The Spectator (UK), blithely declaring that "2012 was the best year ever! Never in the history of the world has there been less hunger, less disease and more prosperity." It's not that any single thing the author wrote was wrong: the campaign to halve world poverty reached its goal seven years early, for example, in 2008, and no one said a thing. The list of good news is long, amazing and encouraging. The author is right to point out that gloom blinds us to hope.

Still, as a "contrarian" I find occasional outbursts of fizzy optimism just as grating as the much more common habit of grotesquely thoughtless grumpiness. The optimists are more-right and more-helpful, by far! Still, do read this article. He's completely right!  Yet the aroma of smug satisfaction is almost as bothersome to me as the overwhelming stench of  me-too cynicism rising from millions.  We have grownup work to do.  Both sides... grow up.

== Interesting Miscellany ==

The rest of this posting sweeps up a wide melange of miscellaneously enticing items: enjoy.

My friend Kevin Kelly offers a fascinating perspective on the meaning of General Transparency in the era of YouTube.  "Cameras are becoming ubiquitous, so as our collective recorded life expands, we'll accumulate thousands of videos showing people being struck by lightning. When we all wear tiny cameras all the time, then the most improbable accident, the most superlative achievement, the most extreme actions of anyone alive will be recorded and shared around the world in real time. Soon only the most extraordinary moments of our 6 billion citizens will fill our streams. So henceforth rather than be surrounded by ordinariness we'll float in extraordinariness."  And "Over time this extremism accumulates. When the improbable dominates the archive to the point that it seems as if the library contains ONLY the impossible, then these improbabilities don't feel as improbable."

See a review of Jared Diamond's new book:  The World Until Yesterday. The span and thrust are pretty clear -- it seems likely to be much less important a contribution than Guns, Germs and Steel or Collapse, at least on the grand level of sweeping ideas.

In portraying the wisdom -- and some systematic errors -- of tribal societies, Diamond comes down as he did in the disappointing final chapters of Collapse, deeply skeptical of modernity and its prospects for achieving respect-worthy civilization. He expresses nostalgia for the primitive that - while sometimes insightful and willing to perceive warts - can also, in some campus communities, turn into a fetish. Indeed, in EXISTENCE I portray him as an archetype for one variety of renunciationism -- a philosophy you'll be hearing more about as we head toward the mid-century crisis of choice -- whether our path will be forward or back.

Still, I always recommend Jared Diamond's works. He is a major thinker and you will be broadened. Though it's rare to come across wisdom as fine as Jonas Salk's succinct: "Be a good ancestor."

=== Fun numeralogy and destiny ==

Interesting facts about 2013:
- first year with four distinct digits since 1987
- first since 1432 with four consecutive digits!

The secret bad day? January 13, 2014 could be viewed as the 13th day of the 13th month of the 13th year.

Oh but the biggest deal?  The Fourteenth Year.  You'll be hearing more about this from me.  The fact that the 20th Century "began" in all its character, in 1914… as the 19th Century began with Napolean's defeat in 1814.  It is a daunting trend to contemplate, if you let it really sink in.

Heck let's spread our sources wider from Jared Diamond and glance at another take that's relevant:  Joseph Tainter's (1990) book: The Collapse of Complex Societies contains Tainter's theory within the title. Tainter appears to take the view that the social complexity of major urban cultures creates the seeds of collapse through an inevitable process. Rising populations, over-used resources, growing stratification of classes, difficulties of allocation and management, all of these problems can be solved by innovation and determination. But unlike Toynbee, who sees ongoing renewal in a culture's "creative minority," Tainter says that this renewal process gets harder and harder to maintain, with ever diminishing rates of return.  In this dour view - somewhat of a cross between Marx and Spengler - Tainter seems to agree with Diamond that our sole hope for long term stability is to rein in ambition, to reduce complexity, even if that requires some degree of suppression...

If you've read my review of Collapse, you know how highly I think of Diamond's scholarly efforts to warn us of problems… and how little I think of his proposed solutions.

Me? When it comes to prescriptions, I'll go with Toynbee.  We need a vigorous society, not a cowardly one.  A culture that invests eagerly in its creative minority.

== Making a new world ==

So, is the "maker movement" going to rescue American manufacturing independence... and civilization in general, as some  tech-utopians not predict? (And as I depict in my graphic novel TINKERERS.)  Have a look at a very thoughtful essay in Technology Review that considers some factors that the tech-transcendentalists - in their zeal to believe - may have missed.

While we're on new worlds:  "Dio" is a new endeavor by Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, to do something I had been aiming at with my Holocene invention, empowering folks and businesses to create their own virtual worlds.  It looks pretty crude so far... and could definitely be vastly improved with my patents... but I'd be interested in what people think, who try it out.

Why Silicon Valley innovation has stalled. A fascinating article that uses a simple metaphor to show what's wrong with the current Startup-VC Mentality. "Unlike medical research, or for that matter microprocessor engineering, the current internet space is largely driven by people trying to make a fast buck as opposed to people working at the edge of the envelope." ... "People aren’t driving new technological innovations so much as they’re creating convenience models.... There’s nothing wrong with entrepreneurs seizing a business opportunity, but what is disconcerting is how this entire segment has convinced themselves that they are on the cutting edge of innovation and have all the answers. Using the medical analogy, the current environment in the internet space essentially tells people that they will make more money as a pre-med dropout opening clinics than as a serious researcher looking for a cure for cancer."

Tell me about it.  I have patented several dozen fundamental interaction modalities that would enhance online communications. But they do not fit the "massage what's familiar" mindset of those who have made billions milking the obvious and plucking the low-hanging fruit.

Ah but want good news? Sales of super-efficient and durable LED light bulbs are skyrocketing as prices fall, posing a new challenge for manufacturers. LED lights offer higher profit margins, but because they can last for decades, people will be buying fewer bulbs — of any sort. The Energy Information Administration estimates that total light bulb sales will fall by almost 40 percent by 2015, to just under a billion from 1.52 billion bulbs, and continue their decline to about 530 million by 2035, with LEDs making up a steadily increasing portion of the market. New versions even accept bluetooth commands to adjust color or output on demand.  (We've spent to LED our highest use areas and will shift each room as prices keep falling.  This is an ingredient in world-saving.

Do you tire of videos everybody says you HAVE to watch?  This kite-flying display -  Romancing the Wind - is spectacular... by a Canadian in his 80s. More sublime than you ever could have expected.

Danger 5 is the most creative comedy I've seen since Coupling. (Sort of WW2 in the 1960's with cheesy special effects).  Then go to hulu.com and watch the 2 episodes they have up. New ones added every Sunday.  "Team, your mission is to stop the flow of weapons into France and above all, Go Kill Hitler!"

Ooooh I am so so tempted by this... Father hires virtual hitman to assassinate deadbeat son in online video game. Get off! Go outside and throw a ball.

== More Marvelous Miscellany ==

A contemplation of Shakespeare and Galileo..both born in 1564 (450 years ago next year).Galileo supposedly the day Michaelangelo died.  And Newton born the year Galileo died.  Ah cue Rod Serling.

Kickstarter projects come in a wide range of ambitions.  Here is one at the high end. Motion capture maven Tracy McSheery is participating in a project to create an animated movie: Tower of the Dragon, with just $50,000 of startup funds. See" Features some cool freebies.

Here's a short film Tom Munnecke did a while back about Jonas Salk's "good ancestor theme."

Speaking of ancestors, the appropriately named CRACKED site has distilled why we do not need social status in society to be something that's inherited (as ruined 99% of human cultures.)  See: The 5 Most Hilariously Insane Rulers of All Time. Though poorly-written and historically flakey in spots, it is still tragically funny. Even if it leaves out the worst loony monarchs, by far. Try Victoria's grandsons "Nicky" and "Willy." Time travelers... skip Hitler and take out those two. If the Kaiser and Czar had had "accidents" in 1913, Adolph would've become a minor animation frame painter in Disney's 1930s Star Wars studio.

This is exactly what the Age of Amateurs should and will be about. A woman who is a professional hairdresser became fascinated with images of Roman and Greek women in complex tresses.  She recreated scores of them for an archaeological journal, proving that they had been real, held by needle and thread, rather than wigs. There was no guild opposition to her contribution, only enthusiastic help... as I have found when I published papers about Neoteny, anthropology, addiction and so on.

== And a final sweep of coolstuff ==

The British Interplanetary Society offers a lovely retrospective on pioneering space artists including the great Chesley Bonestall.

Zoom in and find yourself! A census dotmap of every person counted by the US & Canadian censuses.

Askimo TV is an interesting concept... a collation of pod video interviews with experts on a wide array of curiosity topics. What do you think of it?

ouch... The website "SSRI Stories: Antidepressant Nightmares" offers a sortable database of more than 4,800 newspaper articles, scientific journal reports, and TV news items linking antidepressant use to cases of extreme violence. Not taking sides.  Just so you know.

Petra Haden's amazing a capella renditions of movie scores... scroll down and play the whole thing!

Raspberry Pi is a palm-sized full computer - announced in 2012 (here among other places) selling for under $50 --  for a bare circuit board that runs free linux on a 700Mhz processor using an SD card instead of hard drive, but with two USB and one ethernet ports to let you link in your stuff. According to tech-biz guru Doug Hornig: "Interest ran so high in the first days that it stalled the sites of the shops selling the computers. Moreover, that demand has proven durable. Premier Farnell, one of the two authorized manufacturers of the product (RS Components is the other), announced in January that it has sold more than a half-million units. RS Components, which took 100,000 pre-orders on day one, is apparently selling them equally briskly, so it's likely that there are now a million of the devices out there."

A whole amateur maker trend is finding uses for the things and they have abounded with an app store and "Raspberry Jams" - meetups of enthusiasts.  Google is giving 15,000 to schools in the UK.  Competitors in the under $100 space to lookup: Mini X, Oval Elephant, Cubieboard, and Olimex.  Hornig adds: "It just might be that manufacturers of these microdevices are sowing the seeds for the next crop of young hackers (who will increasingly come from the developing world, as all of its nascent talents are released)."

My friend and Colleague Matt Pallamary has written some wonderful things.  Now it seems that this year’s production from Austin based aerialist group Sky Candy is based on Matt's novel Land Without Evil, which tells the tale of the physical and spiritual journey a Guarani Indian man undertakes in order to lead his people to a mythical place of peace.  Austin Public television also offers a cool peek at the performance.

Want to see the effects of Twitter on the dumbing down of people?  Go to Google and type in "How can u" and see their suggested continuations.  Then type in "How can an individual"  'nuff said.

Do the U.S. 2012 elections reflect the Fermi Paradox? The empty Galaxy?

The Fermi Paradox is the question of why we seem to be alone in our neck of the universe. Why don't we observe any blatant signs of intelligent life in the cosmos, including the great works that our own descendants may begin to build, if we give them a good start in the right direction?

When I first started writing about this 30 years ago, I called it the Mystery of the Great Silence -- a quandary that we've covered here and elsewhere, in articles that list over 100 hypotheses for why we appear to be alone.  A topic that is also woven into the weft and flow of my new novel, Existence.

Almost everyone who dives into this subject swiftly chooses a favorite theory.  Perhaps life erupts rarely, or intelligence, or most life worlds are more oceanic so that few create hands-and-fire users, or maybe life gets pounded in most places by comets or supernovae.  I've had the role of cataloguing these theories, refusing to tout just one! But I do have a personal Top Ten list. And two of these most-plausible explanations for the Great Silence are of significance to us today.

That's because two of them relate to political choices we'll make next week, in the United States of America. These two scenarios, which may seriously winnow down the number of visible galactic civilizations -- and might soon do the same to us -- are:

1. Bad governance leads to Big Mistakes (e.g. nuclear war, eco-collapse etc.) that kill off or render impotent many or most technological species. Note that this is a whole class of potential failure modes, a minefield of errors that young, technological races might commit, veering past one doom and escaping the next before tumbling into a third... or fourth... or...

2. Most tech species slump into the same social attractor state that snared 99% of human cultures. That pattern, repeated from Egypt and Meso-America to Babylon, China and Rome -- from Tokugawa Japan to Bourbon France to Hanoverian England -- was family-based oligarchy. The standard, pyramid-shaped social order wherein conservative elites (king, lords, priests, wizards) squelch rapid scientific advancement and middle class innovation as a threat to their carefully maintained inherited privilege.

This system - (envision all the endless variants on feudalism) - was dominant in nearly all past human societies because, for one thing, it is reproductively self- reinforcing! Indeed, you see the same drive at work in the hierarchy-seeking or harem-keeping behaviors of males in countless other species on Earth. It's a powerful and deeply natural attractor state and there's no reason it won't be likewise compelling in other realms across the cosmos.

At a glance, it is obvious how both #1 and #2 are "Fermi-relevant" failure modes that could stymie many -- perhaps most -- intelligent-technological species from communicating or spreading among the stars. Other factors may also come into play.  But these two are persuasive top candidates.

== Does oligarchy limit the potential for collapse? ==

Contemplating these two potential explanations for the Great Silence raises a question: do these two winnowing factors work together?  Or against each other?

After all, one of the top rationalizations that oligarchies have given, when they suppress science and markets, competitive invention and enterprise, is that the priests and lords are acting for the good of all.  Preventing instability and disruption. Indeed, this is a chief point raised by Jared Diamond in his great, highly-recommended, but disturbingly off-target book COLLAPSE.

In other words, a lot of species might find serenity through #2 -- while most of the rest are swept away by #1.  Together the pair may help to explain the interstellar quiet.  And naturally, the genteel stagnation represented by #2 seems preferable to the effective extinction of #1. Assuming these two choices represent our only alternatives -- and some of the characters in my new novel EXISTENCE argue that point -- then we have a pretty good idea why the stars appear so lifeless and empty of voices.

But as we'll see, that may be a false way of looking at things.  Rather, I will contend that the oligarchy process guarantees falling into fatal pitfalls, rather than avoiding them.

== The Fermi Paradox and U.S. Politics ==

These two paths and types of failure modes seem especially relevant to the present US elections. COMPETENCE and RENUNCIATION are the distill-words.  Even if you favor oligarchic conservatism as a model for our future, over the fevered drive of Periclean-egalitarian positive sum games... you are still behooved to consider the competence issue. But hold that thought. We'll get back to competence and option #1 in a minute.

First, how does Fermi Choice #2 -- oligarchy-pushed renunciation -- bear upon the 2012 campaign?  It's relevant!

Consider: in the recent debates one candidate spoke about "science" fourteen times , whereas the other has has barely mentioned it during the campaign trail.

American scientists have voted with their feet, with only 6% now calling themselves Republican. (It used to be about 50%). Indeed, the head of the GOP controlled House of Representatives Science Committee recently and repeatedly declared the Earth to be 9000 years old.  Yes, the head of the Science Committee. Of the House of Representatives. Of the United States of America.

In every conceivable way, from science to education... all the way to the rebuilding of a vastly powerful American Oligarchy, the GOP is your party if you feel that renunciation and a return to traditional patterns of aristocratic rule is preferable to Periclean instability. It is the Olde Way, pushed hardest via a media empire owned by multiple foreign billionaires, including the Saudi Royal Family.

Moreover, it may be that millions of other species faced similar choices and all picked this route! The decision may be inevitable. The star lanes may appear empty because a myriad other races made the same, Darwin-driven choice -- settling into genteel, aristocracy-tended conservatism. Which I'll admit beats extinction.

Still, in weighing this choice, I know what decision I will argue for. I vote to keep faith with Pericles and Adam Smith and Washington and Franklin and Lincoln and Frederick Douglas and Jonas Salk and Warren Buffett and the Silicon Valley geeks. 

Yes, the Periclean Western Enlightenment, with its egalitarianism, transparency, competitive markets, democracy and flat, anti-oligarchic social order does charge ahead into the future.  And yes, the faster we charge ahead, the more we'll need transparency and freedom, to probe ahead of us, finding mine fields, quicksand pools and other pitfall-dangers ahead. And yes, the nostalgia junkies and oligarchy-lovers have a point when they cry out "slow down!"

But think.  The fundamental fact of the Fermi Paradox is that we see no signs of advanced civilization "boldly going" about, out there.  So, if oligarchic pyramids are the main attractor state, among the stars, isn't that an argument that we should try something else? Perhaps something unusual? Something like this enlightenment?

Think about that a while.  Chew on it. Put it all together. If 99% of human cultures did the natural thing, and most other sapients do, as well, and we see empty star lanes... then maybe, just maybe, we should do something different. I say we ought to stick with Pericles.

Ah, but that only addresses failure mode #2. Then there is Fermi failure mode #1 and that matter of competence! 

== Stand on your record of governance ==

Whether you support the Periclean Experiment (in this election that makes you Blue... or largely a democrat... or maybe libertarian), or else you happen to favor a return to the oligarchic pattern of 6000 years (in other words, a follower of Fox-owners Rupert Murdoch and Prince bin Walied)... there remains the other Fermi Factor listed above.

Factor #1.  Is your side any good at governing?

You might yearn for a king, but if the one available is horridly stupid and BAD at statecraft, maybe you should side with the Pericleans for a while and wait for a better king.

Please.  Put aside preconceptions.  Use curiosity to overcome the all-too human tendency -- to funnel disliked information through the emotional amygdala.  If presented with clear and systematic proof that your side is incompetent, will you at least have a look? Instead of skimming.

Cutting through all the polemic, attack ads and sketchy evasiveness, this 2012 U.S. election ought to boil down to which party tends to govern better. On that, the historical record is clear. For those who can still be swayed by factual comparisons - and if you care about the role America might play in taking civilization to the stars - have a look at these stark contrasts and share them with others:

"How Democrats and Republicans differ at defense and waging war,"

This one has gone viral, drawing a lot of hits from regions where soldiers and sailors live.  If we must endure dangerous times, shouldn't we compare who does defense well? The blatant facts may shock you.

"The Eight Top Causes of the Deficit "Fiscal Cliff,"

In tallying reasons for the deficit, we see one party vastly more at fault than the other, and yet that culprit is the noisiest in denouncing the debt it created!  Supporting evidence comes from Forbes, the business magazine, which tallied the rate of increase of government spending under the last five presidents, including Reagan.  The rate of increase was lowest under Clinton and Obama. Please. Click to scan the Eight Reasons for the Deficit and judge for yourself.

"Which party stands up for science?"

This one is just awful.  You cannot name a clade of intellect and knowledge in American life that is not under attack by Fox.  But science bears the brunt.  That that is an absolute proof which side you must be on, in this trumped up phase of the American Civil War.

These are not convenient, cherry-picked anecdotes or assertions, but complete lists for clear comparison, backed up by economists, generals, admirals and the 95% of U.S. scientists who voted with their feet, abandoning a party that plunged America into anti-science hysteria.

Finally, do we really want our geopolitics run by someone who thinks that Syria is Iran's route to the sea?

== Might we be the exceptions? ==

Getting back to Fermi... one question stands foremost: who will govern better?  Those who are willing to negotiate openly, fight carefully, manage cautiously and consult science as we charge into an uncertain future?  Or dogmatists who erased every scientific panel that used to advise Congress from 1940 till 1996?  Because those panels offered inconvenient and impudent things called facts.

The great historian Arnold Toynbee studied every known Earthly civilization and concluded that societies either thrive or fail in direct proportion to how much trust and initiative they willingly invest in their "creative minorities."  The far-lookers and problem solvers.

We are plunging ahead into a mine-field, one that may have killed every other sapient race in our galaxy!  Can we be the first to pick a safe path across?

Not if we wallow in nostalgia and tell the smartest people in our society to go to hell.

There is Madness on the Other Side Too: The Left's War on Optimism

Is the bold future of our youth being killed by gloomy science fiction?  Or has Sci Fi grown more dour as a reflection of our mood?  Glenn Reynolds interviews authors Neal Stephenson and Vernor Vinge in a thought-provoking inquiry: Why We Need Big, Bold Science Fiction: "While books about space exploration and robots once inspired young people to become scientists and engineers—and inspired grownup engineers and scientists to do big things—in recent decades the field has become dominated by escapist fantasies and depressing dystopias."

(Hey... I'm TRYING, dammit!)

Almost as if deliberately proving the point, TED speaker Paul Gilster rails against techno-optimism in a desperately wrongheaded essay that really should be read in order to understand the problem with today's well-meaning left.  Paul does us all a disservice by conflating a multidimensional landscape with a digital, either-or choice - confusing "optimism" with complacency.

Yes, we all know the types he refers to as techno-optimists - fools who shrug off looming water shortages, energy deficits and climate degradation, blithely assuring us that "humanity and/or science and/or markets and/or God will find a way."  Such people are dolts, often driven by a political wing that has done horrific damage both to the U.S. and the world.

Nevertheless, in taking the reflexive opposite point of view, many folks on the left wind up being very little better.  Their sense of urgency to save the world is laudable.  But it gets wrongheaded when the message becomes "Let's do something!  And by the way, nothing ever works!" 

That was the calamitously awful, guilt-tripping meme conveyed in James Cameron's otherwise worthy film - Avatar.  The notion that our society is not only dismally greedy and stupid, but the very worst culture ever.  The worst civilization conceivable.

This despite being the very same civilization that paid James Cameron billions to help enthusiastic audiences want to be better. Ah well. Ironies are lost on those steeped in finger-wagging lecture mode.  We have experienced waves of such finger-wagging since the sixties, all of it lusciously indignant and satisfying to the finger waggers.  But helpful?

Sure, in the beginning, films like Soylent Green used the raw-guilt-trip approach effectively to shake people into awareness.  I call such tales - along with Silent Running and Silent Spring - "self-preventing prophecies" in that they roused millions not only to look up (and ahead) but to become actively involved in working against disaster.

Which is, in fact, the point! Doomy-gloomy guilt trips have served their purpose!  Everyone who can be recruited into environmentalism (for example) by guilt-tripping already has been!  Everybody else is simply repelled by the message.  Forced - by either-or logic - into the other camp. At this point, overbearing chiding is completely counterproductive.

 Today, we need more sophisticated legends, that show us not only possible failure modes, but humanity buckling down to get things right.  Overcoming errors and dastardly-plots? Sure! But balanced by other trends, like a civilization filled with citizens eager to do better. And that - the stunning power of enlightened citizenship - appears to be almost completely absent from Hollywood, these days.

== The New Puritans ==

Solutions are possible.  They will require investment, thought, negotiation and endless hard work, just to squeak by.  But that's exactly what we can do.  A trait that our parents burst with. Can-do.  A can-do spirit that (alas!) dismal reflexes on the left associate only with complacency.

Take Jared Diamond's fascinating and important book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. By all means get and read it.  Diamond overstates (by far) the case that all past civilizations declined for reasons of environmental neglect. But his examples edify and warn, about where we'll wind up, if we don't pay heed!

On the other hand, his prescription - renunciatory ecological fascism - is yet another example of the primly dour puritanism of Paul Ehrlich and so many others - the truest heirs of Cotton Mather. Indignation junkies who finger-wag dire proclamations that salvation can only come from retreating to "ancient wisdom" and shivering in the dark.

Never, ever, is it avowed that we might get past this dangerous era (as I suggest in Earth and Existence) by moving forward.

== Anyone for Plan C? ==

Are these our only choices?  Between chiding, prune-faced, lefty-puritans and giddy rightists who proclaim that either God or some vague corporatist market-innovators will save us out of the blue?  Will anybody note that both groups are vociferously, fanatically anti-future?

Is it any wonder that can-do science fiction - suggesting that hard work and goodwill and ingenuity and negotiation might achieve wonders - has fallen on hard times?

Our root problem today is not obdurate denialism coming from the right.  That insanity is part of Culture War and can only be treated as a mental illness. Blue America must do what it did in every previous phase of the U.S. Civil War.  Simply win. Answer the Tea Party's tricorner hat nonsense with the Union volunteer's kepi.  We will stop resurgent feudalism and know-nothingism. Tell the troglodytes and oligarchs they cannot have our renaissance.  Our enlightenment.  Our proudly scientific civilization.

No. What I find far more worrisome is the left's mania to confuse ALL optimism with complacency, proclaiming any zealous, can-do enthusiasm to be part and parcel of the right's madness.

It is a baseless and dismal reflex, inherently illogical, anti-technological, demoralizing, and - above all - truly destructive of hope, undermining our ability to actively and vigorously save ourselves and the world.

Contemplating Civilization: its rise, fall, rebuilding... and future

Go read one of the most important books in the past twenty years, Robert Wright’s Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny: "...you can capture history's basic trajectory by reference to a core pattern: New technologies arise that permit or encourage new, richer forms of non-zero-sum interactions" and "social structures evolve that realize this rich potential -- that convert non-zero-sum situations into positive sums. Thus does social complexity grow in scope and depth."

 Our entire Enlightenment Experiment has been about positive sum games. Open-competitive Economic Markets, Science, Democracy… these are all examples of systems set up to harness competition and produce positive sum results for all.

See my article, The Unlikeliness of a Zero Sum Society.

Alas, there are forces in human nature that always trend toward ruination of such systems. Winners tend not to want to compete as hard, next time, so they use their wealth and power to cheat! It is called oligarchy; the very thing that wrecked markets and democracy and science in all past cultures. Every single last one of them.

Except ours... but not without a struggle in every generation. Today, capitalism isn’t the enemy; it is the #1 victim of an ongoing attempted coup by oligarchs - who are only doing what humans are programmed to do, when tempted by feudal privilege.

 If liberals would only read the "First Liberal" -- Adam Smith -- and realize this, they might drop both the left and right and stand up for the balanced market that emphasizes small business, startups and brash-competitive creativity, instead of monopoly, corporatism, state-paternalism and aristocracy.

Heck, if our ancestors could stand up and save the Enlightenment during their crises… so can we.

Then take a look at Niall Ferguson's new book Civilization: The West and the Rest.  Ferguson appraises some of the reasons that civilizations fail, a topic that Jared Diamond surveyed (with a bit too obsessive a focus only on environmental causes) in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed... and that I take a Big Perspective on, in my next novel, Existence.

In his article, Western Civilization:Decline or Fall?, Ferguson describes how he sees our way out of a "decline of the west:"

"What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anti-competitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent—to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic."

In other words, break free of the hobbling/crippling, oversimplifying metaphors like "left-vs-right" - a curse bequeathed on all thinking, by the French Revolution - and get back to acting like intrepid grownups again.

==Rebuilding Civilization==

Open Source Ecology: Following the DIY "maker" trend, one ad-hoc group is producing open source modular plans to the 50 different industrial machines necessary to build a civilization -- or at least provide a self-sustaining village with basic comforts. The basic fifty include: backhoe, bulldozer, baler, wind turbine, cement mixer, electric motor, steam engine, dairy milker, baker oven, aluminum extractor from clay, and bioplastic extruder, among others. The more complicated ones build upon the simpler ones. In northern Missouri, they have used their compressed brick press and tractor to build a manufacturing facility to construct more models.

The founder, Marchin Jabukowski (TED Senior Fellow) is a Physics Ph.D., who dropped out to work on this project. His orientation is post-scarcity society rather than disaster, but if one were wanting to create a generalized resiliency rather than prepare for specific movie scenario plots, it would be a good place to start. See his TED talk: Open Sourced Blueprints for Civilization.

See the WaterWheel, a stunningly simple innovation that could improve lives in the developing world --  particularly for rural women who may spend hours trekking and carrying water in jugs back to their villages. This is an invention that deserves funding to spread. See the website, Wello.

And now, Open Source Ecology is teaming with WikiSpeed to build an open source, modular, configurable electric car with high fuel efficiency that meets U.S. safety standards.

==Rebuild Everything==

Seems related to a TV series I was pitching for some years, to start with contestants wearing loin cloths in the desert, challenge them to make stone tools, then leather, and eventually smelt metal, etc.  The show?  REBUILD EVERYTHING!  Picture "Survivor" meets "The 1900 House" meets "Junkyard Wars"... then throw in lots of fascinating Discovery Channel riffs... along with a dash of "The Flintstones". Include some tasty inter-tribal rivalry, and add a sensation that viewers are actually learning something of value, becoming a little more capable and knowing about their own culture.

In the ultimate challenge, competitive teams race each other, starting from scratch to rebuild civilization! Instead of just surviving, they must chip flint, make spears and arrows and traps, stitch clothing from hides (no animals will be killed directly by the show). Once the Stone Age has been conquered, contestants move on to re-invent pottery, weaving and agriculture -- then mining and smithing copper ore, then bronze, iron and so on. Each next step must be taken by using technologies achieved at the previous level.

Once they succeed at a task, it is assumed that their “civilization” (their team) has that technology from then on. They will be provided any tools they require from that level, in order to attempt the next.

Envision season four ending with them chugging up-river on a built-from scratch steamboat, prospecting for ores to make the first TV....

==Threats to Civilization==

In EXISTENCE I portray the rich buying up small island nations that are doomed by rising tides, then building stilt cities on those nations, who already have legal international sovereignty.  Now see the beginnings: leaders of the Pacific archipelago Kiribati are considering moving the entire population to Fiji, as their islands are threatened by rising ocean levels. When you see stilts rising over there, know that I told you first.

We have overseen the largest wealth re-allocation in history: The US has transferred 7 TRILLION dollars to Middle Eastern nations in exchange for oil.  Ponder that. And the bosom pals of middle-eastern potentates who ran the US for many years, undermining all efforts to get off of the oil teat.

Now T. Boone Pickens is back touting natural gas... of which North America apparently has a vast supply... as a way to break that habit.  Sure it is still fossil/carbon fuel (though better and cleaner than oil).  But it might serve as our “bridge” in order to both do better and keep some of our money, to invest in the true solution technologies of the future.  Pickens will stand to make big bucks if we go along with his plan.

But at least we’d know what we are buying - a deal that makes sense, unlike the total sellout of our children that happened in the first decade of this century.

==See more articles on Enlightenment Civilization: Looking Forward not Back

An addendum on "The Fall of Civilizations"

The previous posting is still the "main" one that I'd like to be sure people see... I certainly worked hard enough on it. Still, over the next few days I have a few final addenda to add....

We appear to be at a cusp point, where the Western World chooses between two paths.

One is the trail of stupidity, leading to a cliff.  Almost 100 years ago, in The Decline of the West, Ozwald Spengler transfixed the public with his certain-sounding explanations for why Europo-American society would soon dissolve into pain and despair, decadence and dust.

Pain came... dealt by people who believed as Spengler did. A cult of cynicism despised the Enlightenment. Monsters of both left and right saw as degenerate self-indulgences such shiny modern things as democracy, science, markets and the empowerment of individual minds. Horrors like Hitler and Stalin strove to prove it so.

But they failed and enlightenment optimists prevailed, through courage,  innovation and will. George Marshall showed the way into a better era, filled with challenges but also progress.  Today, most babies that are born actually live good lives. We have been to the Moon. Race and gender and class are less deterministic of your fate, and you are sharing thoughts with me across a worldwide brain that we forged with our own ingenuity and hands.

Cynicism isn't dead.  It never went away, nor is it only a thing of the right. (Though that is its present core.)  Dire eco-warnings, like Jared Diamond's COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (see my review) and James Cameron's AVATAR may have been meant to serve partly as dire warnings, to help us see the dangers, but also deliver doses of poison, by railing that we westerners are all hopeless fools bereft of decent institutions or problem-solving skills. Or even hope.

In fact, the clear-eyed view is neither gloomy nor starry-confident. It was the great historian, Arnold Toynbee, who I believe got it right.  After studying dozens of past cycles, he declared that civilizations thrive when they invest faith and hope in their creative minorities. When they see the future as a destination and willingly adapt new ways to reach it.

Toynbee -- after surveying many tales of rise and fall -- concluded that cultures start to decline when those creative minorities become distrusted, or are starved of capital, or left out in the cold. Or when they are shunned by those in power.

I mention this, because the clear and distinct pattern the we see in the latest phase of the American Civil War... similar to what occcured in  earlier phases... has been an underlying theme of populist hatred for society's brightest and most skilled.

This motif pervades everything we see from the "movement" nowadays.  In distrust of the Civil Service and the US Officer Corps.  In the relentless War on Science.  In boos that surge, at sneering mention of the word "Harvard."  The use of anti-intellectualism to divert attention from a far more worrisome elite -- a rising aristocracy of monopolies and almost-feudal wealth.

Let's be clear. I am not saying that intellectuals are always right.  I know plenty who are foolish. Nor is wealth inherently evil... I aspire to acquire more, through delivery of excellent goods and services, and I know some damn-fine billionaires.  Nor is there anything wrong with salt-of-the-earth fellows like those Redneck Comedy Tour guys, whose self-effacing charm could win over even alien invaders.  (Even if they don't read sci-fi.)

Still, if anybody ever had a clue about what makes civilizations rise and fall, Arnold Toynbee knew what he was talking about.

Moreover, the propaganda campaign against our creative people is so intense, so pure, and so relentlessly across-the-board, that it simply cannot be an accident.  The correlation is just too perfect.

Somebody wants us to fail.

Looking Toward Tomorrow: Best Future-Oriented Books and Blogs

I have been asked by an international newsletter to cite books and blogs I liked in the last year. It's a good tradition so I'll post a draft list below. Comments are welcome, plus your own suggestions. Some are very relevant to our task here. Some of these recommend nonfiction books are featured in reviews I've re-posted on my website.

==Future-Oriented Books==

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.

Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science, explores (a bit one-sidedly) how partisanship can explain much of this collapse of confidence. See also my review of The Republican War on Science.

When it comes to Earth's future, we tend to be offered two simplistic choices, either guilt-ridden pessimism or a pollyanna faith in market forces. Too much planning or too little. Jared Diamond's new book, COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, makes one thing clear. No society ever succeeded using the prescriptions we hear touted from today's Left OR Right. But history does offer some alternatives.  See my review of Collapse on my website.

Two 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: When Humans Transcend Biology.

The first, by Atkinson, explores measures that could allow us to play our roles better in the world economy, taking advantage of technological innovation to accelerate economic growth.

The latter pursues the bold concept of the Singularity, and Ray 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 vivid ride!

Taking up where Kurzweil leaves off... Joel Garreau's Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing our Minds, our 
Bodies -- and what it means to be Human sheds light on the notion that most scares the nostalgists and romantics... that we may soon pick up creation's tools and start altering, even enhancing, our bodies and our minds.

 This is the stuff that Francis Fukayama writes about with dread in Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution.

(Both concepts fed archetypes into my alternate history graphic novel The Life Eaters.)

Still highly relevant is The Progress Paradox: How Things Get Better While People Feel Worse. Gregg Easterbrook suggests we may be better than we think... and we really need to realize it. Those who spread either complacency or gloom aren't helping. What we need is confidence and a sense that our efforts can matter. See my review of The Progress Paradox on my website.

Like so many authors with an axe to grind, Kevin Philips makes a wonderfully erudite case in Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, that civilizations are always endangered when elites reach heights of unaccountability. We who grew up under the threat of communism tend to forget that 99% of past cultures saw their freedoms cauterized by cabals of church and aristocracy, historically far worse enemies of markets that socialism ever has been. And yet, read Philips with a healthy "Yes, but..." He neglects to mention the marvel of 1950s and 1960s America, when wealth burgeoned while wealth disparities plummeted. If we could do it then...

Nobel Laureate Douglass North, in his recent book Understanding the Process of Economic Change, acknowledges that we just don’t know understand the process of economic change. But we have learned that important "institutions" are not just formal ones such as banking laws and tariffs, but also "social norms and cognitive styles". North argues that economic change depends largely on "adaptive efficiency," a society's effectiveness in creating institutions that are productive, stable, fair, and broadly accepted--and, importantly, flexible enough to be changed or replaced in response to political and economic feedback. Thus the sort of property rights reforms proposed by Hernando de-Soto in The Mystery of Capital may not work until systems of accountability are in place first, backed by a sober populace insistent upon enforcing them.

In The Coming Democracy: New Rules for Running a New World, Ann Florini dares to raise a long-neglected question -- how will Planet Earth be governed during the next century and beyond? Some say this is just the latest in a series of imperial ages -- Pax Americana. Even if itis the 'best' pax, should we count on its beneficial hegemony lasting forever? Or might it be wise to start using that great influence while it lasts, to lead in designing Whatever Comes Next (WCN)? Florini's discussion is narrow and Sometimes flawed, but at least it starts the conversation.

For forward-looking fiction, see my list of Favorite Science Fiction and Fantasy novels.

==Best Future-oriented Blogs==

--Ray Kurzweil's Accelerating Intelligence blog tracks the latest news on future technologies...and our progress toward the Singularity.

--The IEET: Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies tracks which technological developments are likely to have the greatest impact on human societies in the 21st century.

--Futurity.org provides news updates on recent developments in science and technology that affect our near future.


--WorldChanging  edited by Jamais Cascio and Alex Steffen is so good, so extensive and far-reaching, that it is departing the blogosphere and becoming a highly influential Netzine. One of the most interesting places on the Web. See also their insightful book WorldChanging: A User's Guide to the 21st Century.

--The Futurist, from the World Future Society, explores how social, economic and technologic developments are shaping the world...and the future.

--George Dvorsky's Sentient Developments comments on the impacts of cutting edge science and technology.

--The Foresight Institute provides information on recent developments in nanotechnology.

--Paleofuture, by Matt Novak, takes a look at the future that never was...

--Open the Future: Jamais Cascio explores futurism, foresight, big ideas and transformative technologies.

--Institute for the Future Blog comments on future-oriented books, as well as citizen involvement, policies and politics that impact our future.

--Next Big Future explores potentially disruptive science and technology advances.

--Innovation Watch looks at trends in innovation, and how disruptive change will affect industry.

--Considerably more radical, but entertaining, is Armageddon Buffet: An online journal of end-of-the-world fiction and commentary.

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I will shortly begin a new series... a draft of my 11,000 word article for a new book on GLOBAL CATASTROPHIC RISK, edited by Nick Bostrom. This piece should be a bit more apolitical than some recent posts.

Rob Perkins has been kind enough to set up a mirror site for http://www.davidbrin.com/ so that people in Asia and Australia can get easier access. (Rob, does it refresh automatically? I don't want this to be a chore.) It is http://brinmirror.parasiticmeme.com If you feel like it, check it out. I am concerned that the "Guestbook" and "email brin" feature may not work, so if your last name starts with S-Z feel free to experiment with those features. If I DON'T reply, please email me separately at davidbrin@sbcglobal.net and let me know it failed.

Gary Nunn has kindly taken this to the next level, setting up http://www.davidbrin.net which should call up http://brinmirror.parasiticmeme.com automatically. Unfortunately, nothing I can do will get this to happen on my Mac (OS 9.2) Any suggestions? I especially hope that the ID description up top will say "mirror for http://www.davidbrin.com/ "