Last-minute breakthroughs and remembrances, before the "end of the world"

I'll try to post while traveling, on our way to stand upon a Mayan Temple during the solstice and defy the World's End on your behalf!  Meanwhile, let me drop in a few late developments... plus a potpourri of wondrous science.

 == NOTES FROM THE NEWS ==

My neighbor Ravi Shankar passed away.  I can't say I knew him, but attended some concerts over the years. The neighborhood already seems less vivid, somehow. Though that may just be the blustery chill of winter... Ah well. He was brilliant.

As for the recent launch of a satellite by North Korea, upon a rocket with clear intercontinental potential, I can only repeat my earlier recommendation to the U.S. Administration.  One important part of the solution to the "North Korea problem" would arise by announcing that the Hermit Kingdom's actions will all be attributed and accounted to the legal responsibility of its biggest supporter, enabler and protector.  That includes nuclear missile launches, of course, but especially civil tort damages. Moreover, starting now we advise that supporter-neighbor to begin setting aside funds to deal with future lawsuits for personal civil damages borne by the North Korean people themselves.

I do not say this in a spirit of hostility but rather as friendly caution from a futurist! You want to prepare in case historical momentum continues. Those northern Koreans - when inevitably they become free - will look for the deepest pockets among those who, through action or inaction, fostered the harm done to them, or enabled the harm-doers. And in tomorrow's primly law-woven world, they and their lawyers will not have far to look. That's not ideology or hostility; it is simple cause-and-effect. And stone-walling to prevent that day will only make it much worse. Make that point and the pragmatic men-next-door may decide to limit the exposure of their bad investment, by cutting a deal.

And now... science...

== Can we predict the future? ==

First, the National Intelligence Council has issued its quadrennial 160 page Global Trends report, this time peering ahead toward the year 2030.  My favorite territory. This set of world forecasts and scenarios appears, at last, ready to break from the transfixing obsessions of the past -- vast blocs of supranational ideology or else ideology-driven terrorists.

Instead, the NIC examines deeper drivers that might affect whether Earth Civilization prospers or not, and what role the United States and the West will continue to play, as Pax Americana gradually eases out of its historic mission. Indeed, it looks as if some folks who have attended my Washington talks about the future may have heeded or cribbed-from my report from almost a decade ago, to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency DTRA, about non-state and non-terror threats.

Compare the NIC Global Trends document to those earlier slides attempting to get folks to think more broadly about the future.

Meanwhile, the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk is being co-launched by astronomer royal Lord Rees, one of the world’s leading cosmologists. It will probe the “four greatest threats” to the human species, given as: artificial intelligence, climate change, nuclear war and rogue biotechnology. Lord Rees, who has warned that humanity could wipe itself out by 2100, is launching the centre alongside Cambridge philosophy professor Huw Price, and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn.

Interesting that the four threats they chose happen to be chief topics featured in Existence.
Also of interest: a rebuttal on the Da Vinci Institute site takes on Nassim Taleb, author of the bestseller The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, who ridicules the idea of predicting the future. Instead, he argues that the world is dominated by the impact of rare, unforeseen, random, highly improbable and yet influential events. "These Black Swans, he says, happen abruptly, coming from outside the range of our vision."

I found the rebuttal interesting- at times on target - yet in the end just as quasi mystical as Taleb's book.  Because neither of them offer challenging ways to assess and appraise and improve (pragmatically) the process of prediction.

At risk of (typical) self-promotion, I do believe there's an approach that -- if even marginally funded -- could help move the whole field forward via means of predictions registries and fora. How I am tempted, after all these years, to try to fund it myself... if college bills weren't such a big deal .

More efforts at prediction can be found in the annual forecast list of the World Future Society.  The plausible ones seem rather likely... new dust bowls, a rapid rise in commercial space tourism, eyesight-restoration, teaching based in games, deep-geothermal power,   Others, like garbage purifying robot earthworms and lunar colonies, fall more into the sci fi zone and are not as near future as they seem to think. Have a look and join the WFS.  Though... alas... I'd still expect just a few "futurists" to survive long under scrutiny of a registry. Whereupn, the best would learn and adapt!

== Genetic "variability" and our future evolution ==

Recent studies indicate that humanity is now very, very rich in genetic variability, the grist of future evolution. (Exactly opposite to the problem faced by inbred cheetahs, for example.) “Humans today carry a much larger load of deleterious variants than our species carried just prior to its massive expansion just a couple hundred generations ago,” said population geneticist Alon Keinan of Cornell University, whose own work helped link rare variation patterns to the population boom.

From the article: The inverse is also true. Present-day humanity also carries a much larger load of potentially positive variation, not to mention variation with no appreciable consequences at all. These variations, known to scientists as “cryptic,” that might actually be evolution’s hidden fuel. Indeed, the genetic seeds of exceptional traits, such as endurance or strength or innate intelligence, may now be circulating in humanity. “The genetic potential of our population is vastly different than what it was 10,000 years ago,” Akey said. How will humanity evolve in the next few thousand years? It’s impossible to predict but fun to speculate, said Akey.

 A potentially interesting wrinkle to the human story is that, while bottlenecks reduce selection pressure, evolutionary models show that large populations actually increase selection’s effects. 

My own comment: In nature, evolution is based not only upon genetic variability (in which this research suggests we are rich) but also on death, culling some and allowing others to breed.  A crude, brutal method that is inherently un-interested in "fairness" ... but time tested by nature. This will change though. We will choose instead to steer the process via culture and technology while continuing to develop our capacity to collaboratively evade death - the old engine of evolution. What replaces death? The article's authors suggest that widespread use of reproductive technologies like fetal genome sequencing might ease selection pressures, or even make them more intense.  But in his novel Beyond This Horizon, Robert Heinlein showed us how to grab ahold of our variability and use it in a campaign of self-improvement that has none of the creepy aspects of direct genomic meddling.

Ponder that finding... that humans have max'd-out genetic diversity... and nowhere more so than in my California... almost as if we were a flower, getting ready to cast forth seeds...

Meanwhile, there's an interesting article with huge implications for the future of anthropology. In an essay by George Dvorsky: Over at the Edge there's a fascinating article by Thomas W. Malone about the work he and others are doing to understand the rise of collective human intelligence — an emergent phenomenon that's being primarily driven by our information technologies.  Malone, who is the Director at MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence, studies the way people and computers can be connected so that — collectively — they can act more intelligently than any single person, group, or computer. Good stuff, but I'd have liked more attention to the older methods that have leveraged individual intelligence into group intelligence. The positive-sum enlightenment methods of markets, science, democracy etc.

== Wondrous and Puzzling Science ==

NASA's Cassini orbiter spots river system on Titan ... but filled with liquid ethane and methane instead of water. The Titanic Nile shows up on a black-and-white picture from Cassini's radar imager, which can look through Titan's thick, smoggy atmosphere to map the surface features beneath.

A U.S. start-up has turned to nature to help bring water to arid areas by drawing moisture from the air.

Ah, progress. Soon anyone with a good home-maker unit will be able to print the parts to make their own firearms. Reminds me of Van Vogt's The Weapon Shops.  I guess we'll find out if John W. Campbell was right that "an armed society is a polite society."  I imagine we'll all get more polite... after twenty generations of culling.

Speaking of which, a use of such devices that will be both more useful and creepier, illustrated cartoon style! 
Frankentissue: How to print an organ on your inkjet.

Weird...time reversal research: When a signal travels through the air, its waveforms scatter before an antenna picks it up. Recording the received signal and transmitting it backwards reverses the scatter and sends it back as a focused beam in space and time.

Exactly fifty years ago... Mariner 2 was the first human-made object to transmit back from another planet. And at 12 I mourned the Venus of vast oceans and jungles and beauteous princesses. Sigh. Science can be rough. I went into it, anyway.

Bothered by negative thoughts? Throw them away.

Large scale melting of Permafrost may be underway.

Some recent studies indicate glucosamine (used by millions for slight joint pain reduction)  was associated with a significant decreased risk of death from cancer and with a large risk reduction for death from respiratory disease.

Late last year, a Russian team drilled through to Lake Vostok, an even larger lake covered by some 4km of ice. But preliminary analyses of lake water that froze on to the drill bit showed scant evidence for the presence of living organisms. Now researchers at the shallower McMurdo lakes have found a diverse community of bugs living in the lake's dark environment, at temperatures of -13C. Some think this a possible analog for ice-roofed water moons like Europa.

Ten things that will disappear in thirty years.

== Space!!! ==

Know the difference between radioisotope nuclear power for spacecraft and nuclear reactors for spaceflight? The distinction is fascinating. Have a look at DUFF, a new reactor for space travel.

Some parodies are better than the originals! A takeoff of "Dumb Ways to Die" ... starring NASA's Curiosity rover..."Cool Things to Find." --

Water ice discovered on Mercury. NASA's Messenger spacecraft has spotted vast deposits of water ice around the shade-protected poles on the planet closest to the sun. Not unexpected, since radar beams from Arecibo in the 1990s had suggested this, confirming a hypothesis made by my doctoral advisor, Dr. James Arnold, that comets would have delivered volatiles to safe dark areas at the poles of both Mercury and our Moon.  Still, Messenger's neutron spectrometer spotted hydrogen, which is a large component of water ice. But the temperature profile unexpectedly showed that dark, volatile materials – consistent with climes in which organics survive – are mixing in with the ice. And waiting for us?

NASA seeks concepts for two Hubble-sized telescopes. Last year, two big space telescopes, equivalent to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in aperture, but designed to have a much wider field of view, were transferred from one of America's super secret spy agencies to NASA. "Because there are two telescopes, there is room for projects that span the gamut of the imagination," and indeed, NASA is now seeking suggestions what to do with these gifts. (Viewed from another angle, one has to realize and ask: was the Hubble itself primarily a way to provide cover for a program to develop spy devices?  I'm not complaining... or even asking! I wouldn't be told, despite my clearance.  Still, one wonders. If these are now cast-offs... what do they have now?)

How NASA might build its first warp drive.

== And finally ... ==

Late puzzler!  The earliest large life forms (ediacaran) may have appeared on land long before the oceans filled with creatures that swam and crawled and burrowed in the mud.

Finally... followup in the spirit of giving: My friend Lenore Ealey --  a sage in the field of philanthropy theory - kindly wrote about my "proxy power" proposal -- that middle class folks can maximize their future impact on the world by joining perhaps a dozen groups/organizations that pool dues and numbers to pursue specific positive goals.  Lenore's appraisal compares my approach to those of Boulding and Cornuelle with some Baconian philosophical perspective thrown in! Also, she adds a list of favorite NGOs of her own for consideration.  Go Proxy Power. 

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Late addendum: The Friday 13th tragedy in Connecticut has us all horrified.  If only we could mature enough to have a society that foremost looks to help the troubled to get the help they need. Alas, this will become another frenzy over "gun control" that sheds no light, only heat. I once attempted to offer a non-partisan, off-angle compromise that would satisfy both those wanting sanity and those seeking to preserve a fundamental American right. It is as cogent as ever. See "The Jefferson Rifle." 

But at this point, there is something even simpler.  A matter of cause and effect.  Not one mass shooter was ever brought down by an armed bystander, but most were tackled by heroic citizens who were UNARMED, who waited till the SOB had to change clips or magazines, then bravely tackled the guy. That is the window of heroism! Hence, there is no excuse for legally allowing the sale of giant ammo clips. You do not need em for hunting or self-defense. There is no slippery slope, so please check your reflex. See the reason in this.  Join us and don't make that a fight.  Just give it to us, this one small but crucially pragmatic reform. Now, show us this much flexibility.  For the victims.  Please, just be reasonable this once.

Considering Copyright

"Current copyright law does not merely distort some markets -- rather it destroys entire markets." 

--So reads the final line of a report released by the Republican Study Committee of the House of Representatives that is highly critical of current copyright law.

Are Patents and copyrights Inherently Evil?

The report points accurately to many of the flaws that have crept into modern copyright.  Including the absolutely false notion that Intellectual Property is -- or ever  was -- about what the content creators “deserve” or are “entitled to” by virtue of their creation. Or that the purpose of copyright is to benefit the creator. Rather, the purpose of copyright is to benefit the public: to  “promote the progress of science and useful arts.”

Ars Technica heaps further praise: "The memo, titled 'Three Myths about Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix it,' is a direct assault on the relentlessly pro-copyright worldview dominating Washington for decades." 

It is certainly worthwhile to go visit these two linked articles and see what the fuss is about...

... before pausing, taking a step back, and lamenting that even the Good Guys in this controversy proudly display shallow thinking while smugly proclaiming themselves to be wise.

To be clear, I pay college bills for my kids out of my copyrights and patents.  Nevertheless, I am philosophically willing to posit that people should not and cannot inherently "own" ideas or knowledge in any fundamental way, even if they created it in the first place. They have interests, some rights. But those are more constrained.

Moreover, let me further avow that IP law has become a warped thing, twisted by lobbyists to serve the interests of mighty corporations and not the public or progress. All of the complaints cited in the articles have valid points that should be addressed. And yes, the chief villains are those who would use "ownership" to make "intellectual property" serve lawyers and oligarchs, rather than creative people.

Still, I am unsympathetic to those who righteously demand the very opposite, tearing down all copyrights and patents, under the proclaimed theory that we would then automatically enter some sort of Open Source Nirvana.  An Age of Aquarius and infinite sharing and endless voluntary creativity.

Yipe!  I lived through that sort of talk in the 1960s.  And what species do these fellows think they are part of? Elsewhere I have repeatedly proved that I am a friend to the Maker and Open Source movements! But please, don't make it religious dogma. We are practical men and women, with practical problems to solve.

I come close to despair over how proudly ignorant all the righteous people are (right or left, techie or troglodyte) about actual human history. For example, have you ever heard of the Antikythera Device?  The Baghdad Battery?  The fabulous piston steam engines of Hero of Alexandria?  Our ancestors were creative people! Yet, all of those technological advances and a myriad others were lost!  Why?

Until you can answer that question clearly, you will never grasp why patents and copyrights were invented in the first place.  And you should always understand the thing that you want to replace.

Put yourself into the shoes of an inventor or innovator in 99% of human cultures. Unless you found a patron in the king, you had only one way to benefit from your innovation -- by keeping it secret! By scribbling your designs in cryptic verse and murky code, in just one carefully guarded grimoire, in a hidden attic.  Under a floorboard. Only then could you keep customers flocking to you... till the clever blacksmith in the next town reverse engineered your improvement and started competing with you.

Self-interested secrecy was the failure mode that ruined human progress for at least ten thousand years, keeping the process clogged and slow.

And when you and your son died in a plague or fire? Or when the town was pillaged... what happened then to your invention? Do you get the picture?  Secrecy slows things down, and very often means that advances are simply lost. And yes, this resonates with The Transparent Society - should you be surprised?  

A way had to be found that would lure inventors out into the open, eager to announce, avow and declare their innovations!  While pondering how to fix the flaws in Intellectual Property, we are fools if we don't consider how much better things got, when it was invented.

Go.  Read history. Hold conversations with Ben Franklin in your mind. Maybe even read The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?. Understand the actual problem. Then, instead of railing at us quasi-religious incantations like "information wants to be free" come up with another way to keep creative people shouting "look what I just came up with!"  Instead of slumping back into the old ways that stifled innovation for 10,000 years.

Then we can talk about a replacement solution, admitting that it is time for patents and copyrights to give way, gradually, to another innovation. 

Another invention.

See also: People Who Don't 'Get' Transparency and Zero Sum Games

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LATE ADDENDUM: Were you surprised the sensible call for copyright reform cam from the GOP's Congressional staff?  Well relax.  You haven't plopped into a parallel universe where the Republican Party is run by adults.  You are still at home in this cosmos. 

"The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of Republicans in the House of Representatives, has told staffer Derek Khanna that he will be out of a job when Congress re-convenes in January. The incoming chairman of the RSC, Steve Scalise (R-LA) was approached by several Republican members of Congress who were upset about a memo Khanna wrote advocating reform of copyright law."  Ah, the world is as it was.

========================================

* After-note for authors! If you sold rights to your copyrighted works after 1978, you should be aware that based on Section 203 of the 1978 Copyright Act,  authors may cut away any contract after 35 years. It happens that my own very first book contract (Sundiver) was signed in the year... 1978... and is coming due for such a release or renewal right about... now.) It is still a world where you're well-advised to keep informed. Now go and be creative.

A Threat to the Internet as We Know It

A United Nations summit has adopted confidential recommendations proposed by China that will help network providers target BitTorrent uploaders, detect trading of copyrighted MP3 files, and, critics say, accelerate Internet censorship in repressive nations. Approval by the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union came despite objections from Germany, which warned the organization must "not standardize any technical means that would increase the exercise of control over telecommunications content, could be used to empower any censorship of content, or could impede the free flow of information and ideas."

Internet activists are warning that this month’s meeting of the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations body charged with overseeing global communications, may have significant and potentially disastrous consequences for everyday Internet users. Some of the proposals for the closed door (though leaky) meeting could allow governments more power to clamp down on Internet access or tax international traffic, either of which are anathema to the idea of a free, open and international Internet. Other proposals would move some responsibility for Internet governance to the United Nations.  Things could get scary. Rule changes are supposed to pass by consensus, but majorities matter and can you imagine the internet run by majority rule in the UN?  Not by the world's people, but by the elite rulers of a majority of bordered nations?

To be plain, I consider one of the watershed moments of human history to be a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s when powerful men in the United States of America chose a course of action that, in retrospect, seems completely uncharacteristic of powerful men... letting go of power.  I know some of those -- for example Mike Nelson, now with Bloomberg Government -- who served on staff of the committee under then Senator Al Gore, drafting what became the greatest act of deregulation in history: essentially handing an expensively developed new invention and technology, the Internet, to the world.  Saying: "Here you all go. Unfettered and with only the slenderest of remaining tethers to the government that made it. Now make of it what you will."

And oh, what we've made of it! You, me, us... a billion other "usses" around the world. Mind you, there are many ways that I think the design can and must be improved, e.g. in order to enhance the effectiveness of argument.  Still the Internet has become a spectacular thing -- the nexus of our rising human intelligence. What could have been a system wrought for the purposes of control (and there were plans afoot to do exactly that) was instead unleashed to become the chaotic and problematic but utterly beautiful thing that empowered private individuals across the globe.  Gore and Nelson and the other visionaries (assisted in the House  by then-Congressmen Newt Gingrich and George Brown, in bipartisan-futurist consensus) proved to have been right. And, by the way, elsewhere I discuss how -- in the struggle between underlying planetary memes - this was also the savvy thing to do.

Yet, it seems that now we're at a turning point. The world's powers, especially  kleptocratic elites in developing nations where middle class expectations are rising fast enough to threaten pinnacle styles of power, have seen what the Internet can do to all illusions of fierce, top-down control, fostering one "spring" after another.  Responding to reflexes inherited from 10,000 years of oligarchy they seize excuses to clamp down and protect national "sovereignty."

I am reminded of how the film and music and software industries, dismayed by the ease with which people could copy magnetic media, sought desperately for ways to regain control.  As you will see (in my next posting) I am not completely without sympathy for copyright holders! But those industries went beyond just chasing down the worst thieves, or fostering a switch away from magnetic media. They forced hardware makers to deliberately make our DVD players and computers cranky, fussy, often unusable, even when we weren't copying a darned thing!  Capitalism failed and consumers were robbed of choice, leaving us with products that were in many ways worse than before.

And yes, that is what will happen to the Internet. Not just a betrayal of freedom and creativity, but a loss of so many aspects that we now rely upon as cool, as useful and flexible. As our inherent right.

Nor is the threat only from one direction.  As Mike Nelson just commented: "while everyone is fixated on the UN meeting in Dubai, nations are taking independent actions that could have chilling effects.  It is not just the Great Firewall of China and Iran setting up its own easy-to-censor Iranian intranet.  It includes Australian efforts to block certain types of content, the French three-strikes-and-you're-out law, Korea's effort to prohibit anonymity online, and Russia's new Internet law." Worth noting, as an aside; some of these endeavors are being propelled not by brutal dictatorships, but by political correctness on the left. The all-too human impulse for control is ecumenical.

Few know the story of the way the Internet was set free... as, by a miracle, it was indeed freed, for a while. (In my latest novel we ponder: might this have been the fluke opening the way for us - and possibly only us - to take to the stars?)

But no generation can be forgiven for relying excessively on the miracles wrought by the previous one. It is our job to keep the Enlightenment filled with light... by crafting miracles of our own.

Read more at  the Internet Society Web site about the UN conference that is deliberating on these issues, as we speak. Urge the U.S. and its allies to - ironically - exert enough control to keep the Internet uncontrolled. And develop a taste for that thing.  Irony.

* Next time, a related matter. Is intellectual property (patents and copyrights) evil?

Another look at EARTH: 22 years later. Plus a Reader's Guide!

"Self-awareness is probably over-rated. A complex self-regulating system probably doesn't need it in order to be successful or even smart." --Earth

People who read Existence often compare it to my other big canvas near future novel, Earth -- published over twenty years ago (and recently re-released in the U.K.). Both books try to capture and portray a world that most of you just might come to live in. A world that has transformed in ways that are startlingly both good and bad... and yet has remained stubbornly the same in ways you'll find surprising, as well.

Such a mixture of amazement and frustration about progress is what many of us feel about this very time! I try to convey that inevitable near-future blend... but with a little extra science and science-based danger spiced in, both for thought and a lively plot.

Earth was written at the end of the 1980s. Some 'predictions' that got  attention were my portrayal of a vivid, dynamic World Wide Web, wearable computing, Tru-Vu sousveillance goggles, as well as large-scale changes such as sea level rise and global warming. In fact, predictions registries have been set up at Technovelgy.com and Issuepedia to track hits and misses from Earth, such as bee zappers, reading plaques, filtered reality, and subvocal computer interfaces.

Earth takes a long-range view of Earth's past, as shown in this videotaped reading from the novel:

 A Tale of the new-born Earth:

What follows is a new Reading Group discussion guide -- for the classroom or for groups seeking some fun questions to ponder. A downloadable PDF of this guide can also be found on my website.

== Reader's Guide Discussion Questions About EARTH ==

--Do you consider Earth a realistic vision of our near future? Did you find it believable? What struck you in Earth about the way people speak, dress, travel and communicate?

--Is the author trying to predict the way things truly will be … or to warn about things we should avoid? The term ‘gedankenexperiment’ refers to a thought experiment that explores possible consequences of our actions. Does that term fit Earth?

--Does Earth depict a utopic future, a dystopic warning…or a mix? Which of those three is most like real life?

--Think of other novels or movies, such as Dr. Strangelove, On the Beach, or Twelve Monkeys that warned about dire future scenarios. How does Earth compare to these stories?

--What cataclysms (man-made or natural) may have the capacity to change our planet’s future? What cataclysms in earth’s past had profound, extinction-level consequences?

--Is the planet itself a character in the book? If so, have you seen this done anywhere else?

• How does the author present the vast span of earth’s history? Scientifically? Artistically?

--The black hole in the earth might be viewed as the ultimate form of pollution from human arrogance. Is this the way the reader keeps viewing it as the plot develops?

--In New Zealand, Alex contemplates, “We all create monsters in our minds. The only important difference may be which of us let our monsters become real.” What do you think?

--Who are the real villains in the novel? What do they want? What empowers them?

--“Light is the scourge of evil.” What was the significance of the Helvetian War to end the “evils of secrecy”? How do Brin’s concepts of transparency and accountability echo in news today, particularly in the banking world? See also Brin's nonfiction, The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to choose between Privacy and Freedom?

--How have concepts of privacy changed under the “all intrusive eye of the Net?” In Earth, has technology (such as True-Vu goggles) empowered posses of elderly vigilantes – and oppressed the young? Did you find this surprising ordisturbing?

--How does Earth portray climate changes affecting earth’s ecosystems?

• What is the significance of the Life preservation Arks?
• What types of large-scale geo-engineering projects are being tried in Earth to modify earth’s climate? Might we try some of these in the future?

--Is some of the plot driven by good people who disagree?

--Two women strive to represent the planet. How do Jen and Daisy differ? Where do they overlap?

--What is the significance of that first biblical commandment, to Name the Beasts, to “observe God’s works, and glorify Him by giving names to all things”? How does this relate to science and the joy of discovery?  What was the importance of the Voyager spacecraft?

--Earth has been credited with accurately predicting some elements, such as wearable computing, Virtual Reality glasses, blogs, reading plaques (tablets), an early version of web pages, sea level rise, as well as global warming. Does that fact lend it credibility in your eyes?

• Which other predictions do you think may come to pass?
• In what areas has technology veered in an unexpected direction? Which predictions are off-mark?

--“A hallmark of sanity is the courage to face even unpleasant points of view.”

• Brin presents a definition of sanity that involves flexibility, satiability, empathy and the ability to realistically estimate the consequences of one’s actions.
• How do you define sanity?

--Jen comments, “Each of us is many. Within every human, a cacophony of voices rages.” Neuroscientists speak of the “multimind” theory – that the human mind is composed of many small minds. Have you ever felt your brain function this way?

--U.S. coins read “E pluribus unum” -- From many, one. An “emergent” trait a complex system that is more than the sum of its parts. How does this relate to Jen’s ideas of consciousness?

--What is the role of intelligence on planet earth? Can the earth be likened to a living organism? Look up the Gaia Hypothesis. Why do some biologists take this notion seriously?

• What is the difference between the “strong” and “weak” Gaia hypotheses?
• In Earth, is there a transformation between the strong and weak Gaia hypotheses?

--The author notes, “Earth suggests that it is too late to choose a simple pastoral lifestyle for humanity…. that we must take up the challenge of being scientific and ethical managers of a vast planetary ecosystem.” Do you agree or disagree?

--Recall Jen’s conversation with Nelson. Are cooperation and competition really two sides of the same coin? How do these forces operate in both the natural and manmade world?

--Seek the common thread among the various definitions of a “singularity”:

1) a gravitational singularity, or black hole;

2) a mathematical singularity, or a sudden discontinuity in a function;

3) a technological singularity, or the emergence of true artificial intelligence; and

4) a cultural singularity, or a rapid acceleration of super-human intelligence that profoundly changes our civilization.

--“Change can’t be prevented, only guided.” How do the characters in Earth seek to guide change? How do leaders around the world today seek to do so?

--What do you foresee as the great innovation that will save mankind – or improve our future on planet earth?

--Did this novel affect how you view the literary genre called "science fiction"?

--Some fictional explorations take our own world and tweak just one thing to see what happens; as in all Michael Crichton tales. Others take you to a distant future, constrained only by physical law, when society may be transformed and we meet strange minds. Earth lies in the near-intermediate territory, showing a mostly familiar world undergoing a broad wavefront of changes. Which kind of idea exploration interests you more.

--Do you plan to read more of this kind of speculation about our near-intermediate future?

See the new page for Earth on my website.

Science -- nostalgia and foresight

First some nostalgia for the future!  Need that gift for your nerdy sci fi friend? Underbrain offers T-shirts, mugs and caps with all sorts of logos from David Brin's Uplift Universe - symbols of the Five Galaxies, dolphins & chimps posing for the Uplift Center, and the Terragens Marines patch! And the Eye-Q symbol for the Quantum Eye oracle computer in Existence. Got civilization? This will ensure that you do!

Ah, but the future used to be so cool! Some of us old timers recall the Sunday newspaper comic "Our New Age", a shining example of techno-utopian idealism written by Dr. Athelstan Spilhaus between 1958  and 1975. Spilhaus, a distinguished academic whom JFK appointed to help run Worlds' Fairs, responded to questions about his wide range of activities with the following quotation that I find especially apropos and inspiring:

“I don’t do ‘so many things.’ I do one. I think about the future.” -- Athelstan Spilhaus, creator of the Our New Age series of science comic strips in the 1950s. Some of the strip's predictions - e.g. consulting books electronically at vast distances - were on target.  Less so this one suggesting intelligent trained kangaroos as waiters and butlers by 2056!

== Distributed Science? ==

A sky-monitoring project, called SpaceView, is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program that enrolls the talents of amateur astronomers to help protect American space assets from orbital trash. DARPA has been becoming way, way cool in the last 4 years, sponsoring the Maker Movement and dozens of citizen-empowerment or distributed inventiveness endeavors. This has long been a focus of mine. I quoted DARPA's  director discussing this, in my graphic novel about citizen-level manufacturing, TINKERERS.

A field that should be especially ripe for this? Distributed SETI! See how the SETI League's Project Argus would (with help from some millionaire) get 5000 amateur radio telescopes set up around the world, watching the whole sky, instead of a tiny patch at a time.  Nothing could ever sneak up on us!  Take that you nasty UFOs.

And if we ever find nasty science-villains?  Well then. Get yer Heroes of Science action figures! Max Planck! J. Robert Oppenheimer!  Marie Curie! Alas, they're Photoshopped, and not actual plastic ... but perhaps with a Kickstarter campaign they might attain reality? We need double as many, just for starters.  Galileo and Newton and Jonas Salk and Craig Venter and Kip Thorne and Louis Pasteur.... But... but what about sci fi authors? What about scientist sci fi authors?

Take this hero, for example! In Slate: Kim Stanley Robinson shows us the path of reasonableness on geoengineering, or  "terraforming" the Earth.  It should not substitue or reduce a scintilla our determination to do better at not polluting out nest.  But KSR also wisely suggests we should explore one or two ways to have a "Plan B."

== New Minds on the Horizon ==

The Navy is pondering retiring its program enlisting dolphins and sea lions to do sophisticated security work, finding mines, recovering objects and guarding against sneak attacks. The program is very successful and adaptable and I've met some of the animals who are kept healthy by a very extensive -- and expensive -- infrastructure of support staff. Only now the Navy is building an inventory of underwater robots that can do many of the same things at lower cost.  And yet...some very important studies  and insights have come out of the marine mammal programs. All the dolphins were born there and always come back of their own free will. There's no program like it. And there may be long range outcomes...

Speaking of which. Ray Kurzweil's new book, How to Create a Mind: The Science of Human Thought Revealed presents a discussion of artificial intelligence, exploring how the brain works...and how we can reverse engineer the human brain to produce a non-biological brain.

Along those lines...IBM recently announced a simulation of 530 billion neurons, 100 trillion synapses on supercomputer. Of course, all of this assumes that synapses are the only features that must be emulated in the "connectome" to simulate human consciousness. Therer are hints of intra-cellular computing within neurons and astrocytes... but let's not spoil the celebration.

And the world's new fastest computer, Titan, housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, owes its rapid computing power to graphics processing units (GPUs) -- developed for video games.

== Your Potpourri of Cool Advances ==

Only now, extrapolating... a little Uplift anyone? A newly discovered gene appears to have played a crucial role in human brain development and may shed light on how we learned to use tools and language. Apparently, the gene emerged fully functional out of non-coding genetic material, previously termed “junk DNA”, in a startlingly brief interval of evolutionary time. Until now, it has been remarkably difficult to see this process in action. This new molecule sprang from nowhere (or was "donated?) at a time when our species was undergoing dramatic changes: living longer, walking upright, learning how to use tools and how to communicate.

The key thing about disasters is to learn from them and plan to do better next time.  And perhaps the next time a super-storm hits Manhattan -- and other urban areas -- super-sized balloons will be on-hand to inflate and prevent flooding of transportation tunnels.

New battery-capacitor technology based on graphene: SMCs gets their amazing performance by using a cathode and anode that contain very large graphene surfaces. When fabricating the cell, the researchers put lithium metal (in the form of particles or foil) at the anode. Now, we can expect a lot of news items like this one and the odds are that a majority will be false leads or busts or disappointments.  But the curves are already fantastic.  Next year's Tesla cars will have vastly improved range and the next year's will have reduced battery weight. And within five years no one will be wanting internal combustion cars for their commute or drive-around-town car.  Get used to the idea!

Electrochromic windows promise to cut energy costs and respond to inhabitants' needs with the speed of electric current. A thin layer of tungsten oxide sandwiched between two glass panes can make it shine as-u-like.

New artificial muscles made from nanotech yarns and infused with paraffin wax can lift more than 100,000 times their own weight and generate 85 times more mechanical power than the same size natural muscle.

Hydrogen is an attractive fuel source because it can easily be converted into electric energy and gives off no greenhouse emissions. New results now increase the output and lower cost of current light-driven hydrogen-production systems. The chemists say their work advances what is sometimes considered the "holy grail" of energy science—efficiently using sunlight to provide clean, carbon-free energy for vehicles and anything that requires electricity. Still a long way to go.

Companies that have built multimillion-dollar factories say they are very close to beginning large-scale, commercial production of these so-called cellulosic biofuels, and others are predicting success in the months to come.

Although the overall size and asymmetrical shape of Einstein's brain were normal, the prefrontal, somatosensory, primary motor, parietal, temporal and occipital cortices were extraordinary. These may have provided the neurological underpinnings for some of his visuospatial and mathematical abilities... and his penchant for "thought experiments" projecting himself into hypothetical realms.

Recall the "OttoDogs" in EXISTENCE? Now comes a detector that uses microfluidic nanotechnology to mimic the biological mechanism behind canine scent receptors. The device is both highly sensitive to trace amounts of certain vapor molecules, and able to tell a specific substance apart from similar molecules.

Three innovative new energy technologies are explored in the current issue of Technology and Innovation — Proceedings of the National Academy of Inventors:

• Tidal currents and ocean waves that can be recovered using ocean thermal conversion technology.
• Infrared thermal radiation (more than half of the power provided by the Sun).
• A new nanophosphor-based electroluminesence lighting device that caters to the exact wavelengths of light required for photosynthesis in indoor, hydroponic agriculture.

== And finally: Science weeps =

Tea Party senatorial candidates (and troglodytes) Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock were not anomalies, alas. It seems that every anti-science cultist in the U.S. House of Representatives GOP Caucus is eager to join the House Science Committee, packing it not only with Climate Change denialists, but men (entirely) who proclaim the Earth to be six or nine thousand years old, who repeat bizarre theories about rape, who decry vaccination, who rail against genetic research and who denounce sciences as diverse as geology, ecology and meteorology. Do not blame the people. The total number of national votes for the two major parties' congressional  candidates was not won by the GOP.  Blame Gerrymandering.

As I've long emphasized, things weren't always this uniform on the right.  Sure, there were witch hunts against scientists in the 1950s... balanced by the fact that Jonas Salk was the most popular man in America and soon so would be the NASA techies.  And a bipartisan consensus in Congress supported Adm Hyman Rickover's upheaval of the US Navy to go nuclear. For every idiot decying the inherent inequality of minorities, there was a William F. Buckley inviting great minds on his show.  And not all Republicans helped Big Tobacco and Big Smog do their multli-decade obstruction campaigns. (So similar to climate denialism, today, using some of the same tactics and firms.)

This past diversity among Republicans is illustrated in a fascinating piece in The Chronicle: Why Conservatives turned against science: early environmental issues were bipartisan, by Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes.

Summary: "Climate scientists came under attack not just because their research threatened the oil industry (although it certainly did that), but also because they had exposed significant market failures. Pollution is a market failure because, in general, polluters do not pay a price for environmental damage (and this includes not just polluting industries, like electrical utilities, but also anyone who uses a product—like gasoline—that takes up a portion of the planetary sink without paying for it). Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist at the World Bank, has declared climate change "the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen."

And this: "Accepting the need to correct market failures required one to concede the need to reform capitalism—in short, to concede the reality of market failure and limits. This became increasingly difficult for Republicans during the 1990s and 2000s. Party leadership began supporting primary challenges against party members deemed insufficiently conservative, driving many moderates into retirement, and some out of the party entirely. Some Republicans who had acknowledged the reality of global warming lost their seats; others—including Mitt Romney—began to deny the problem, knowing that if they didn't they would not be electable as Republicans...."

Ah, but there is movement elsewhere.  That core institution of international capitalism, the World Bank, has issued a major report examining the likely economic outcomes  (mostly disastrous) expected from Global Climate Change.

Remember, the recent election was not the core event, but a sideshow to the main battle. A "culture war" that was not chosen or started by those who side with science and reason and evidenc-based thinking But it has becomes clear, that kind of thinking -- and a civilization that supports it -- is fighting for its life. And as the great historian Arnold Toynbee said.  When a society turns its back on its "creative minority"... that is when most kingdoms, nations, empires and commonwealths fail.