strangerAttractor

2005-11-22T22:16:00.000-08:00

What Is Human?

2005-05-27T21:35:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the ultimate future of humanity as a species, as in: in a few decades, centuries, or millenia how many humans will there be? Hundreds of trillions, at the one extreme? Or none? For a look at what the former might look like, see Orion's Arm, an open source sci-fi world-building project that gives a comprehensive tour of the world of 12,000 AD (the species has built machines that have transcended human conscious six time in living memory ('living memory' being measured by millenia, for many), and populates an empire stretching across billions of stars.) For the latter, see Evolution, by Stephen Baxter, a sort of natural history of the species reaching back into the Triassic and then a further five hundred million years from now, with the assumption that humanity goes extinct (little hint: without humans, ultimately, life is basically fucked.)

A lot of people are talking about the immediate liklihood of humanity soiling and depleting the planet so horribly that we all end up dying of famine, plague, and war. Call this the bioapocalyptic side, in the question of whether or not humanity survives the coming century or so.

Many others have pointed out the possibility that the planet gets whacked by a big rock, or the Sun decides to do something unexpected, or a random burst of gamma rays from ten million light years away just happens to intersect our planet and boil off the oceans. Or, really, any of a hundred other natural catastrophes that could wipe out the species in a geological eyeblink. There's not much to be done about it: no matter how advanced the species (or what descends from it) becomes, there will always be natural disasters sufficiently bad to wipe it out. I will, however, point out the 65 million year extinction cycle, stretching back hundreds of millions of years and due, oh, any time now. Lets call this scenario the cosmocalypse, because in the end it includes the possibility that the universe itself simply ceases to be.

Then there are those who have been discussing the imminent possibility that mankind might begin drastically accelerating its evolution. So drastically that in a few hundred years, while intelligent activity is unquestionably far more abundant than it is even now, there won't be much that we today would recognize to be human, exactly. Most of those who talk about this (I'm guilty of being one of them myself, occasionally) call themselves transhumanists, but over on the extreme you can find, as always, the most entetainingly loony, at the technocalypse Yahoo! group. It's not even necessary to read the posts: just look at the collection of memes gathered under their keywords. At any rate, because we're talking about the possibility of humanity becoming extinct here, I'm going to go ahead and label this the technocalyptic side of the argument.

So, assuming we avoid a bioapocalypse and a cosmocalypse, we're left with a best-case scenario of a technocalypse. To a certain extent the latter of course comes down to a question of what is human. Is it Homo sapiens sapiens, and nothing else? Or, going backwards, would we include Neandertal man? What about Homo erectus, which innovated the use of both watercraft and fire, used tools throughout its history, and almost certainly possessed a rudimentary language of some sort? I myself would draw the line when the Australopithecines were the only hominids around. Any further back and you're in ape country.

What if we apply the same principle looking forward? What are the traits that define 'human'? Despite the fact that H. sapiens and H. erectus are morphologically almost identical, the human is unlikely to be purely taxonomic. Ask yourself if a person who just happened to have four arms, while being utterly normal otherwise, would be considered human. Most would say yes. Then start adding extra body-parts, sensory capabilities, and anything else you can think of. At what point does the creature stop being human? Or does it, so long as it also continues to talk and use tools? Morphology, in and of itself, could be completely beside the point when it comes to what matters about humanity.

My anthropology prof maintained that the single thing that separates humans from animals is fire. Or, more properly, the harnessing of energy outside the body in order to process matter, also outside the body (using this definition we can throw nuclear reactors into the same pile as camp-fires.) Everything else - language, tool use - is a matter of degree rather than kind. Her argument was that fire was unique, and extremely powerful as an adaptation. It is also, crucially, cultural rather than biological.

What if purely memetic criteria were to be used? Take the wholly cultural man, one who consists only of tools: an upload, utterly faithful to the mind of the original but in fact software running on manufactured circuitry. Is that entity human? Would a society composed solely of them be a human civilization? There are those who would answer it would be, so long as the entities inhabiting the computers (and probably robots) thought of themselves human, and expect to survive for millenia in just such a state. But what about when you start tinkering with the entity's thought processes? Increasing memory, speed, intelligence, and connectivity with others? Does a point come at which the structure of its mind is so different that, although the principle things defining our species (fire, and to a lesser degree language and tool use) are more abundant than ever before, there's nothing remotely human left? There's a compelling argument that there is, and to those who expect to achieve immortality through uploading I have this to say: how long do you think you'd remain you, living life inside an environment you control utterly, your mind running at such speeds that a year can last a subjective millenia ... or a subjective million years.

Of course it's also possible that not everyone will choose to transcend their humanity through technology. In the Orions arm scenario, humanity swarms by the trillions, like bacteria in an ecology of intelligence.

So in the end, there's no way of really knowing how long, or whether, the species will survive, and maybe it's best to act as we've always acted, as though ours (or our kids', or our grandkids') is the last generation that will ever be. But it sure is fun to think about, eh?

Cydcor

2005-05-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

Props to Decadent Leftist, who proves he isn't completely useless by doing some research for me and finding out this interesting information: the Bond Marketing Group is apparently a subsidiary of Cydcor aka DSMax. I'm almost ashamed that I got taken in by this, but after reading some of the other reports on Cydcor at the Bad Business Bureau I'm just glad I was only there a week, and not months or even years like some of these poor bastards.

A Week With the Bond Marketing Group: Day 2

2005-05-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

I show up at 11, as agreed, and get to stare at the wall and occasionally talk to the sort-of-cute receptionist (we'll call her Sorry, as when she wasn't juggling phone calls she was apologizing for juggling phone calls) for the next half hour; during this period, two more guys show up for their own days of observation, both of whom I avoid talking to thanks to the masterpiece of social insulation known as the iPod. Eventually Buzz comes out and says "Hi, Scott, how's it going? Good to see you!"

"It's Matt," I remind him, but he's already back in the office.

For some reason, I'm 'Scott' to him for the rest of the week. I give up correcting him after the second or third time. This is kind of weird, as my older brother's name is Scott and my dad occasionally makes the same mistake.

He comes out moments later with a middle aged brown guy in tow. "Hi Scott, this is Allen. He'll be taking you out into the field today." We shake, exchange pleasantries, and I trail along behind him towards the parking lot.

Allen is a middle-aged Trinidadian Mormon of East Indian extraction (I swear to God I'm not making that up) and he, almost alone amongst the money-goblins at the BMG, turns out to be actually a pretty decent guy. He'd been a Master's student in kinesiology or something at U of T before starting his career in door to door sales, and had designed his own line of basketball sportswear which, apparently, is still available on the website. On the drive out to the field (which turns out to be Burlington) he breaks down how the business works for me, and I do my best to ask questions and appear somewhat interested in their management opportunities. During the ride I manage to turn the conversation around to his own background, and we discuss the perils of academia, the sciences, and such other actuall engaging topics. Allen turns out to Know His Shit, so in addition to being a nice guy I have to give him props for being one smart fortune cookie.

There are three others in the car, all white kids about my age. The driver is a hulking, stoop-shouldered college student I'll just call Asshole. The second, Cryptopsy Choirboy, is a long-haired pretty-boy with supernaturally good bone structure, full of charm that's not yet completely artificial; he comes by his name by virtue of his second life, moonlighting as the lead singer of a local death metal band that shall remain anonymous. The third was so completely anonymous that I'm not even going to bother giving him a name; he's a scruffy looking high school student who, up until two days before, had worn his hair down past his shoulders (and, yes, he'd shaved it for the job, in a futile attempt to look presentable. Dumbass.)

By the time we're in Burlington I'm starting to really want a smoke, but so far as I know no one around me smokes and I don't want to look bad so I just ignore the cravings. We drop off Cryptopsy Choirboy and Dumbass at their territory (or 'T' as the BMG tribe refers to it) and then drive to our own. Asshole is still new at the job (it's his second day, and he'll only come back for one more) so Allen gets to drag both of us around until lunch.

So begins the arudous work of trudging from house to house, ringing doorbells and talking to suburbanite pricks in an attempt to sell them coupons.

Yes, coupons. That's why this counts as 'marketing', not 'sales'. In case the BMG or one of its many sibling companies has never darkened your doorway, here's how it works: they go to a local business and talk them into taking their advertising budget and spending the money on 'free' stuff for the customers. Then the Bondies take around these coupon sheets, and sell them at prices in the $30 range. The distributor (ie door to door salesman) gets 40% of that, the remainder being divvied up between the boss at the office and his boss at the parent company down in Salt Lake City or something.

We do this for two and a half hours, and I watch as Allen (Asshole is hopeless) manages to talk two or three reluctant homeowners into buying coupons for 'free' golf ('free' because it's actually buy-one-get-one, so you only recoup your investment if you spend more money at the golf course.) Then we break for lunch, heading back to Asshole's beat-up SUV, picking up Cryptopsy Choirboy and Dumbass, and going to a strip mall to eat at the first random sub shop we find. I'm broke, though, so I packed my own lunch; while they're ordering, I sit down, take out my sandwich and start to eat; the manager, an immigrant who obviously does not understand the cardinal rule of North American capitalism (that Thou Shalt Not Piss Off Your Customers) shouts at me, and while I'm prepared to just sit on the sidewalk my erstwhile colleagues are all "Fuck you, buddy!" and we end up going to Subway instead. When we get there Allen buys me a drink (see what I said about him being a decent guy?)

Over lunch, I take a cursory look at an info-sheet on the BMG's Ponzi scheme management training program, pretend to be interested and, as soon as I'm done wolfing down my sandwich and granola bars, run outside for a desperately needed infusion of nicotine. Dumbass comes out shortly after, closely followed by Cryptopsy Choirboy (who, I am somewhat horrified to see, is smoking a menthol bitch-stick. I see several others at the end of the day smoking the same cigarettes, and for a couple of days am half-convinced that this is yet another aspect of Bondie weirdness. Turns out CC just ran out of smokes on his way out the door, and had to grab some from his girlfriend.)

After lunch, it's back out to our 'T's. This time Asshole goes out on his own, and proves, in true asshole fashion, unable to follow the simple directions on a map, which results in Allen getting told off by a few homeowners who have already been bothered and, regardless of how polite they were the first time around, are in no mood for continued harassment. I trudge along after Allen, moving from door to door, smiling and saying hi to people when they answer the door, and watching Allen deliver his pitch, which is of course basically invariant from person to person. Every once in a while someone will try to throw him with a "What are you selling?" but, like a pro, he dodges that bullet and plows right on (somewhat pointlessly, as the odds of anyone who says that actually buying what you're selling are basically nil.)

We have fifteen minutes to go before the end of our time in the field, and Allen's still sitting on only three or four pieces (which comes out to like $50, which is pretty shit for a 12 hour work day.) I'm ready to just go home, but he pushes on and manages to sell four more pieces in the next twenty five minutes to two different people; for ten of those minutes, Asshole is sitting outside in his ugly white SUV, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and waiting for us to get out so he can go the fuck home. Cryptopsy Choirboy and Dumbass have been kept waiting a full half hour, and are mildly pissed as, had they known, "We could have sold more pieces, man!"

Of course, there's no smoking in the car, and I haven't had one since lunch, so by the time we get back to the office (which is like 9:00) I'm basically chewing off my arm. I smoke a cigarette in about a minute on the walk from the car to the office, go in, and fill out a bullshit questionaire that Allen hands me. I'm supposed to ask questions, so I think for a bit and write down 'foreign management opportunities?' Allen (who's trying to build up his own team so he can climb the BMG's ad hoc corporate ladder) reviews it for me and makes some suggestions, and then takes it in. I wait for about five minutes, and then get called into Buzz's office.

Buzz is bouncing up and down in his chair like a schoolboy with his first erection, and if I didn't know he was a Mormon I'd swear to god he'd just done like six lines of coke. He rehashes the day with me, goes over the questionairre, then asks, "So, you're interested in starting a franchise overseas?" and I can see the glint in his eyes as he imagines a faithful, ambitious young vassal carrying the franchise over to some benighted backwater.

"Uh, yeah. Definately."

"Yeah? So where?" He's entirely too excited about this. Shit. I think for a second, casting about for something to say.

"Chile," I say, which is obviously complete bullshit. Nothing against Chile, I'd love to visit, but live there? Please.

"Chile? That's great! We had a guy go down to Mexico, totally virgin territory, just a few years back. He made a fortune!" Riiight. I have this picture in my head of barefoot teenagers running around in Mexico City's slums, trying to extract devalued peso's from unemployed piece workers so they can get discounts at Pablo's Taco Stand. Mexico. Yup. That's where the money is all right. Must explain why the Mexicans are leaving in droves.

Buzz offers me a job, we shake, and I go back out into the front office. Allen is talking to the only other girl in the office besides Sorry, a 19-year-old blonde I'll call Anoxia; she's cruising on the high of just having rung her first bell (ie, she made $100 in one day) and she's running around giving everyone high fives and going "Yes!!!" at the top of her lungs. I extract myself as soon as is polite, and go home to gorge, get high, and pass out.

A Week With The Bond Marketing Group: Day 1

2005-05-05T21:27:00.000-07:00

Monday, April 26 2005

1 a.m. I am sitting in my bathrobe searching through Monster. Amongst the many (well, not so many) jobs that I found and applied to was this: Entry Level With A Twist!!!! This sets off alarm bells deep in the most primal levels of my amygdala, but I'm uncomfortably low on cash so I suck it in and punch the number into my cell. I get ahold of a perky and, I later learn, actually sort-of-cute receptionist who promptly offers me an interview later that same day. The alarm bells are getting pretty loud at this point, but what the hell, I'm desperate so I accept.

3 a.m. Dressed professionally in my best suit (thanks, grandpa!) I show up at the jurry-rigged office of the Bond Marketing Group. I sit in the room for a bit, flirt a little with the receptionist (a very little: she's juggling phone calls three at a time for most of it.) Finally I get in to see the chieftain of this odd tribe, a large and suspiciously energetic Mormon whom I will refer to as Buzz. Buzz talks a bit about my resume, obviously-isn't-really-listening as I give my responses to his stock questions, very carefully does not call what his company does door-to-door sales (it's 'marketing'.) At the end, he offers me a 'Day of Observation' (abbreviated to 'Day of O') in the field with one of his leaders.

I've done this sort of thing before, so I'm thinking how bad can it be? "Sure," I say, "I'll show up tomorrow at 11."

"Good to hear, buddy!" Enthuses Buzz, sticking out his meaty hand. I shake.

Thus ends my first day's involvement with the Bond Marketing Group. Swing by tomorrow to find out how day 2 went.

Weapons of Mass Misinformation

2005-05-02T21:34:00.000-07:00

In his latest telegraph column, Steyn points to Hollywood's pathological avoidance of any referrence to the GWoT, and pronounces it a symptom of a loss of civilizational confidence. He had me right up until the end, when he asks (comparing present day soldiers to their forebears 60 years ago) "Where's their soundtrack?" Go read the column first. It's better written than anything here.

There. Done? Okay, lets continue.

It turns out the troops in Iraq are composing their own soundtrack, mostly in the key of hip-hop. Sixty years from now, when the veterans from Iraq get together, they'll be listening to their own music.

That got me to thinking, though: how important is it, really, that so much of the media (and the film industry, and music industry, etc) is completely against the war? A lot of conservatives make a big deal about it, and worry, as Steyn does, that the total unwillingness of media elites to get behind their country shows a sort of rot at the moral core of Western culture. Islamists, they say, are successfully exploiting that weakness, and if they can't win on the battlefield, they'll win by dragging things out so long that we just collapse.

And maybe they're right. Certainly, media elites are hostile to the war; and, also certainly, the Islamists are exploiting - or at least attempting to exploit - that hostility.

But Western culture is a complex beast, and all is not necessarily as it appears. What if the media's hostility serves as a kind of civilization-level fake out? I'm not talking conspiracy, here; just a sort of epihenomenon. Convince the enemy that we really don't want to fight, that we're softer than we really are, and thus more easily goad them into doing something rash which gives us all the excuse we need to eat their culture. Such a tactic could never have worked fifty or sixty years ago: people basically believed what the broadcasts and broadsheets said, and the enemy had access to that same information. Thanks to the internet, though, news can flow in far more complex ways, and the 'traditional' sources (ie, newspapers and network TV) can be given a hefty dose of misleading spin without seriously impeding the flow of information to those citizens who actually matter (one way or another, they'll find out what they want to know.) Odds are the enemy will look at the traditional sources first, and place the most trust in them as national barometers. Again, I emphasize that I'm not talking conspiracy here (though it's not impossible to believe that the Bush administration might, perhaps sensing this very principle, subtly encourage such behaviour); I am sure the newsmen who daily distort the picture out of Iraq believe sincerely in what they are doing and saying.

So, which is it? Is the media's odd behaviour a symptom of imminent collapse? Or just the re-purposing of an obsolete communications tool from intelligence dissemination to Weapon of Mass Misinformation?

Hillary and Victoria

2005-05-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, necessary caveat here: I've never even heard of NewsMax before, and I have no idea where exactly they get their news. However, they have a story posted a week ago which shows that the Clinton and Bush families are, er, getting long ... and that this may be, at least in part, a calculated effort to re-habilitate Hillary's image in order to soften up the 44th presidency for her.

In a way, this makes sense. With their super-majority, the GOP is likely to succumb to the same arrogance that any party too long in power is prone to. They are already showing signs, as Bush is likely only too aware (and need only look north of the Border to see an extreme example of this principle at work.) The odds of the next president being a Republican are slim. Unfortunately, the front runner for the Democrats is Hillary Clinton, a woman who inspires the same irrational hatred amongst the GOP core that Bush does. That irrational hatred has done wonders to marginalize the Democrats, so it makes sense that Bush would want to keep the same from happening the the Republicans.

This also means that Hillary is all but a shoe-in. One can only speculate what the effect of the first female president will be ... and since we're speculating here I'm going to go ahead and do just that.

Generally, politics is a man's game. This isn't some development of the patriarchy; it's just the way things are. Democracy, dictatorship, monarchy, or village counsel, it is almost invariably men who play at politics. This doesn't mean that women never play; however, it does mean that the women who do tend to be very, very good at it. Think of Queen Elizabeth (I, not II.) Or Queen Victoria. Or Boudicaea, or Cleopatra (okay, okay, so the last two weren't exactly successful in the long run. But you have to admit, they both gave the Romans a run for their money, not something many were able to do during their expansionary phase.) As a general rule, women who get to be head of state are a group of really mean, dangerous bitches.

My guess is that Hillary will prove to be the American Victoria. Think the U.S. empire has been expanding too far, too fast? You haven't seen anything yet.

A lot of people think the U.S. may be on the point of collapse, that the evil American Empire has reached the limits of its power, and that it's all downhill from here. Now, I fully expect this to happen at some point, and probably within my lifetime. But not right away. The U.S. still has too many advantages: demographically, it's far younger than most potential rivals (ie, Europe and China.) It has more experience at the bleeding edge of technological development than all but a handful of small countries, all of which are close U.S. allies. Both of these advantages are far more important than the fleeting powers of economic or military supremacy. The U.S. does have liabilities, namely its dependence on foreign oil (which, we are told is Peaking), and it's massive foreign debt. Neither of these are likely to seriously impede any U.S. expansion. The latter could do nothing, or it could create the sort of short-term economic crisis that is recovered from after a year or two. The former, on the other hand, is unlikely to create serious stress for at least another decade, enough time for technological fixes (hydrogen economy) and social adaptations (keeping to high-density urban living, in order to lower the use of oil) to be made.

So, that clears up the question of the U.S.'s fundamental fitness for continued hegemony.

The situation today reminds me most of two previous times in history. The first, during the second century B.C., when Rome sacked Carthage - it's only major rival - and proceeded to carve out an empire for itself that covered the entire known world and lasted for centuries. And the second, two centuries ago when the British took Paris, removed Napolean, and proceeded to enjoy the nineteenth century as the proud owners of the largest empire the world had ever seen. The parallels with the U.S. and the Soviet Union are almost too obvious to point out.

The British got about a third of the planet, and they didn't even want that much. But things were slower back then: they had sailing ships, not jetplanes and satellites. Historically, each empire has been successively longer, and successively shorter lived: the speed with which information, people, and material can be moved limits both size and lifespan. So now that the U.S. is free to expand, just how far will it expand? Could this be the Big One? The uber-Empire that swallows the entire world?

All that out of one little piece of political reporting. Isn't speculation fun?

The Scandals Just Keep Piling On!

2005-04-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

Just when I was starting to wonder whether we're really gonna have an election, I come across this: credible accusations that Maurice Strong and, far more to the point, Paul Martin are implicated in the oil for fraud scandle. Be interesting to see what Harpel et al. have to say about that when Parliament reconvenes....

Publication Ban? What Publication Ban?

2005-04-02T19:22:00.000-08:00

I wasn't really intending to blog about the sponsorship scandal, as it doesn't really affect me. The Liberal Party has struck me as corrupt ever since I started voting, so when I bother to vote at all I vote Conservative anyways (except for that one time I voted Marxist-Leninist, because all the mainstream parties disgusted me at the time and I figured I might as well just amuse myself. I was 25% of their electorate in my riding! Yay me!) Actually, this isn't about the scandal per se; it's about the publication ban.

Don't you love the internet? A judge establishes a publication ban, but there's no way to ban reading, so people in other countries (like, say, the U.S.) can ignore the ban with impunity, publish what they learn on the web, and the information gets out regardless. The mullahs in Iran can't keep their people from knowing what the score is. What makes Canada's judicial system think they can do any better, when our country is way more open?

So I says to the Liberal Party: go ahead, have your snap election. Try to skulk back into power before the Gomery inquiry blows open your whole sordid system. It won't work; we'll learn the truth anyways, and in plenty of time to do to send Canada's Natural Governing Party the way of the Whigs.

Sin City Criminals

2005-04-01T06:59:00.000-08:00

Last night I got to see Sin City, a day before the general population does, for free (my friends rock.) As a fan of the comic, and Frank Miller's work in general, I can only say it blew me away. Go see it. You won't be disappointed.

But I'm not here to sing the praises of Sin City. I'm hear to bitch about the way the audience was treated: as a crowd of potential criminals.

The line-up was long, and slow. It took literally 20 mins to get to the front. Why? Because a group of security guards were patting down everyone to ensure no one got to take their electronics into the theatre. No digitial video cameras. No digitial cameras. And, for some godforsaken reason, no phonecams. Good god, someone might take a low resolution screen-shot! It's obvious, after all, that no one will go see the movie if they've already seen a crappy still.

Oh wait. I'd already seen lots of crappy stills. And trailers. And, um, I went anyways. Go figure.

To cap off the inconvencience was this nice little piece of humiliation: everyone giving up their phonecams had to sign a waiver, stating that in the event of loss, theft, or breakage neither the security company nor the theatre would be held liable. As I walked in, I could just see one (or all) of the uniformed, nine-dollar-an-hour thugs saying to himself, "Gee, that's a nice phone. Can't afford one that nice myself. Think I'll take it."

I can understand being worried about piracy. I disagree with studios' position, but I can understand it. Seriously though, what are we going to do with our phonecams? Or, for that matter, with camcorders? It's been years since I've downloaded a movie that was bootlegged in a theatre somewhere. Especially with digital movies, it's easy for someone involved in the production process to let a copy leak onto a P2P network. Until the DVD comes out several months later, that's where most of the illegal downloads come from, not from customers in the theatre.

There's a lot of similarity, there, to the situation in airports, where even on intra-national flights every traveller is treated by the ill-mannered, poorly trained louts laughingly called 'security', as though they were potential terrorists. With, of course, all of the delay, inefficiency, and humiliation the process involves. Just as the anti-piracy measures at the theatre are highly unlikely to prevent any actual piracy, so is airport 'security' pretty much useless at providing actual security. In both cases, the aim is not the prevention of crime. It is control, through fear and intimidation, of the general population.

I'd ask, "Why do you sheeple put up with this nonsense!?" except that, of course, I put up with it myself. Which, sadly, makes me sheeple.

Sometimes, I despair for the future of our species.

Kyrgyzstan Kung Fu

2005-03-30T10:16:00.000-08:00

If wealthy playboy Bayaman Erkinbayev is to be believed, the recent revolution in Kyrgyzstan owes quite a bit to the prowess of his pupils, trained in the local martial art of Alysh. Looks like successful revolutions depend on more than protest babes (not that I have anything against protest babes.)

Book Review: Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson

2005-03-24T12:32:00.000-08:00

I read this book in two days. There are very few books that I can say that about. Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson, is one of those rare science fiction novels that is simultaneously a book about Big Ideas and a compelling character study.

The premise is relatively straightforward, and one that fans of Greg Egan's work (specifically Quarantine) will be familiar with. Humanity is suddenly enclosed in a membrane that isolates it from the universe at large. In Quarantine, the membrane encompasses the entire solar system, and is impermeable; it's properties resemble those of a black hole turned inside out. In Spin, the membrane surrounds only the earth, and does not actually prevent anything from leaving. Instead, time inside the volume enclosed by the membrane is drastically slowed down: for every year that passes on the Earth, a hundred million years pass in the universe at large.

The central characters of Spin are as compelling as the innovative plot device. The story is narrated by Tyler Dupree, an everyman physician who, due to his connection with a pair of extraordinary twins, ends up caught in the midst of cultural upheavel caused by the membrane's appearance. One of twins, Jason Lawton, is the scion of wealthy industrialist E.D. (his company manufactures high-altitude balloons; his fortune is truly made when, with the onset of the Spin, the earth's network of communications satellites falls from the sky.) Jason grows up to run Perihelion, the organization charged with understanding the Spin and, if possible, enabling humanities survival beyond it. Jason's twin sister, Diane, reacts to the Spin in a completely different way. Convinced that hers is the last generation of humanity - that she will live to see the Sun swallow the Earth whole - she throws herself into a life religious hedonism that, with time, degenerates into a life of religious fanaticism (the cover blurb says she marries a "sinister cult leader who's forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses", which isn't quite accurate: her husband Simon is basically a good-natured, though slightly dull man of faith who sincerely believes the End of Days has arrived. He is a cult-member, not a cult leader ... I mention this because one of the few disappointments of the book was waiting for that particular sub-plot to pony up with the implied drama, which never came.)

Tyler is child-hood friends with the Lawton twins (his mother was a sort of live-in maid for the Lawton family.) Inevitably, he falls for the beautiful and lively Diane; just as inevitably, he is forced to keep his feelings to himself. Their paths in life diverge, and while Tyler's feelings for Diane are submerged, they never die; they remain in contact throughout. Meanwhile, Jason brings Tyler to work at Perihelion as the staff physician, giving Tyler a privelaged view of humanity's efforts to beat the mysterious Hypotheticals before it's too late.

The first plan is to use the rapid passage of time to the species' advantage. As the sun warms, so does Mars; microbes are sent to the Red Planet, followed by simple plants, followed eventually by colonization effort. A hundred million years pass on Mars before the colonists' arrival, plenty of time for microbes to fix soil nitrogen, and for plants to oxygenate the atmosphere. Thousands of years pass for the Martians - enough time for them to develop a highly advanced bionanotechnology - before, inevitably, the Hypotheticals notice and cover Mars in a similar membrane. The second plan is to use von Neumann probes to explore the galaxy. Once again, a process that would take tens of millions of years is accomplished in what, for earth, amounts to a matter of months.

These two plans illustrate the great strength of Wilson's work: to take the modern, everyday world, give it a tweak in an unexpected direction, and then follow through the logical consequences and implications as far his imagination can take him. Which, I hardly have to add, is quite far. His previous books - namely Darwinia and Chronoliths - seem to use a similar device. It's an honoured science fiction tradition to structure stories this way, especially amongst British authors: virtually everything written by H. G. Wells and John Whyndham used this device.

If you're already a fan of Wilson's work, I probably don't have to tell you to buy this book. If you've never read him before - I hadn't - I suggest you start. The characters are as empathetic as anything in mainstream literature, and the ideas will blow your mind.

DIY Cyborg

2005-03-24T11:23:00.000-08:00

An enterprising individual has implanted himself (okay, he got a doctor to do it for him) with an RFID chip.

Dieback Insurance

2005-03-24T09:02:00.000-08:00

What if the human race were to experience a massive dieback due to ecological collapse? The scenarios are endless: nuclear war, the explosion of a supervolcano, the impact of a comet or an asteroid, plague.... the list goes on. The majority of modern humans would have their fitness dramatically reduced without the support structure of civilization, and it is, indeed, entirely possible that under these circumstances the human species could go extinct. Stephen Baxter explores this rather grim scenario in Evolution, a compelling novel that portrays humanity as a fleeting epiphenomenon, ultimately driven to extinction by its own actions.

The risk of a global civilizational collapse and massive dieback is, in my estimation, rather low. I think it far more likely that humanity (or our posthuman descendants) will end up colonizing the stars. However, the consequences of such a collapse are so great that the risk, however small, should not be ignored. Not all existential risks can be mitigated (for instance, the vacuum energy could spontaneously tunnel into a new ground state, wiping out the entire universe at the speed of light.) Many, however, are amenable to an insurance policy: namely, the preservation of neolithic technologies and social structures.

Stone age societies are remarkably resilient, absent competition by civilized humans. Small, voluntary 'tribes' of enthusiasts could be maintained in the larger national parks, where they would live as hunter gatherers, making their own tools from what they find and honing the skills needed to survive without technology. Contact with the outside world would be largely prohibited and, when it did occur, strictly controlled so as to guard against the threat of contagion if it's plague that finally does the species in. An enthusaist tiring of the neolithic lifestyle would, of course, be permitted to leave, to be replaced by new entrants selected from a pool of trained applicants.

Note that neolithic doesn't mean that they'd be limited to making and using tools existing thousands (or even hundreds) of years ago. Remarkably sophisticated tools can be made, using raw materials naturally available in the environment. Nor would the tribes be limited to neolithic knowledge; there's no reason not to give them access, through clearly marked but protected archives, to the full spectrum of modern science and engineering.

If the next-to-worst case scenario happens (ie, global dieback and total collapse of civilization, accompanied by mass extinctions in the biosphere) these tribes would be there to pick up the pieces. Even if only a single tribe survives to see the other side of the crisis, they'll be enough to rebuild civilization, this time with a clear guide on how to get from the neolithic to the information age in a fraction of the time it originally took and, hopefully, without making the mistakes that led to the dieback in the first place. If, on the other hand, civilization never collapses, then society has invested only the time of a few thousand individuals around the world. The total economic cost is negligible, as any good insurance policy should be.

Shari'a in School (And No, I'm Not Talking About Madrassas)

2005-03-22T13:32:00.000-08:00

It's always nice to know that Stalin's useful idiots are still around, even if they have found a new (though as yet unacknowledged) ideological ally. The left has always been willing to serve as a fifth column in the U.S. (and, really, just about everywhere else.) Exhibit A: marketing shari'a to American youth, using PBS, pre-made lesson plans, and textbooks extolling the virtues of Islam. Like Bruce Sterling said, if you own the youth, you own the future. And it looks like a lot of American high schools are selling their youth to CAIR at cut-rate prices.

You have to admit that it would be ironic if, fifty or sixty years after soundly trouncing Islamofascism on the battlefield and forcibly democratizing the Arab world, a large minority of Americans (probably blue staters, who tend not to raise their kids to be explicitly Christian) start converting to Islam. At which point, those evil redneck conservatives from the red states would start to look pretty darn liberal in comparison. I can see it now, a bunch of grey haired Vermonters scratching their heads at the burqas and the modques that have sprouted like mushrooms in their secular hippie paradise, wondering, how the hell did this happen? To which the answer is, you let your kids be indoctrinated in public school into thinking Islam is innocuous ... and then their children started converting, just to piss off their parents, started converting.....

It's the sort of grand historical joke the Great Pumpkin seems to enjoy playing on imperial powers (think of the Romans, who spent decades pummeling the Jews, only to end up worshipping one.)

IP Judo

2005-03-22T08:09:00.000-08:00

Normally, I agree with most of what's written in TechCentralStation, but this article, urging the Bush administration to get tough on IP, strikes me as getting it completely wrong. The author, Duane Freese, takes aim at both online music 'theft' and foreign piracy of pharmaceuticals and software. Early in the article, Mr. Freese notes that IP constitues $600 billion of the U.S. economy; later, he rages against losses due to piracy of $13.4 billion, worldwide. The latter figure omits the supposed losses of the pharmaceutical industry, so lets double the figure. That's still only $26.8 billion ... considerable, to be sure, but negligible compared to the size of the industry as a whole.

Lets start with filesharing. Mr. Freese argues, correctly, that it's pointless trying to take out individual file-sharers. Instead, he recommends focusing on commerical networks (one would assume he means Sharman Networks' Kaazaa.) Great idea ... sue the companies that actually make revenue through advertising, with the result that freeware such as Ares and Gnutella will step in to fill the niche. The recording industry could probably get money out of Sharman, but there's no money at all in the other software. Filesharing, frankly, is here to stay. No one's going to buy an iPod with 40 gigs of storage, and then shell out $10,000 to fill it ... and storage is only getting cheaper. Musicians would do well to look upon filesharing as free marketing, and make their money at live shows (which is where most of their money is made, anyways.) A similar argument applies to movies: sure, people might download them, but actually going to the theatre with friends is a social experience, difficult to replicate in front of the warm glow of your computer monitor.

So we can dispense with the argument that filesharing constitutes theft. What about the foreign piracy of pharmaceuticals and software?

This is trickier. Mr. Freese argues, essentially, for trade sanctions against countries that refuse to respect IP. "You don't want to pay full price for PhotoShop? Fine, we're not going to buy your bananas." This strikes me as, frankly, silly: American consumers will get to pay more for bananas, while Brazilian software companies will carry right on pirating PhotoShop (especially now that the banana growers aren't making as much money.) Even assuming the government caves to U.S. pressure, many of them (particularly Brazil) are likely to encourage the development of open source software, for the simple reason that they cannot afford to pay American prices for commercial software. As for pharmaceuticals, well, that's what black markets are for. If a fly-by-night company will sell you AIDS pills for $10 a bottle, and GlaxoSmithKline wants $500, a poverty-stricken third worlder is going to go with the fly-by-night, issues of quality control be damned.

Trade wars aren't the answer, here. The answer, I would argue, is more free trade. Get involved in a trade war, and those very foreign markets the IP companies want opened will just close down, exactly what the pirates want. Push for free trade, and the locals will, gradually, get richer. They'll be more willing to spend money to get brand-name drugs with guaranteed high quality, more willing to shell out for a legitimate, high-quality DVD in place of a pirated copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy with scratchy sound and a grainy picture.

CEOs love to moan about how their corporations are getting screwed over by those who refuse to respect intellectual property. In truth, many of them are weeping all the way to the bank: piracy isn't bankrupting corporations everywhere you look, it's just shaving a little off of their profit margins. The recording industry, for instance, is not in the red; it's profits just aren't quite as high as they were a few years ago. It's not possible to give a meaningul estimate of how much they're actually losing, as there's no 1:1 correspondance between, say, a song downloaded and a song bought. If I download a song, does that mean I would have bought it if the downloading option hadn't been available? Maybe. But nine times out of ten, I wouldn't have. Similarly, if an African villager whose wordly possessions consist of one scrawny goat and a patch of hardscrabble land hadn't been able to buy his three-month supply of AIDS meds for $10, it doesn't mean that he would have shrugged his shoulders and paid $500 instead. More likely, he just would have died.

If corporations are having a hard time selling their IP products, they might want to consider that, just maybe, they're charging too much. They also might want to reconsider just what it is, exactly, that they're selling: it's not, as so many of them think, the information. Rather, it's the quality of that information, whether in terms of clarity (high quality DVD vs. shitty pirated DVD), experience (going to a concert with friends vs. listening to the artist on your iPod), convenience (having a song download quickly, with a minimum of time spent trying to find it, and the confidence that it will actually be the whole song vs. the user-beware P2P environment) or quality (a bottle of AIDS meds guaranteed to do what the bottle says vs. a bottle that might do nothing or even make you sicker.) Users will pay a premium for all these services. Not all users, maybe, but some and, I think, enough that the corporations - and the artists, scientists, engineers, and computer programmers they represent - will be able to turn a profit and maybe even make a living from what it is they do.

Interview with Adrian Bowyer

2005-03-21T07:58:00.000-08:00

Adrian Bowyer (that would be the University of Bath researcher working on making a self-replicating fab out of a rapid-prototype device) has an interview over at Non-Tech City.

Army Tries to Raise Morale, Airforce Captain Outraged

2005-03-20T20:39:00.000-08:00

So the Purrfect Angelz are sent on a USO tour to boost the morale of the boys in Iraq, and a female Air Force captain feels compelled to speak out against the show. Speaking, not in her official capacity but as an 'outraged woman', Sharon Kibiloski is outraged that the army would allow such a debauched show to take place. This raises the question of what Capt. Kibiloski 's doing speaking in anything but an official capacity. I can't remember ever having heard a soldier say, "Speaking, not in my official capacity, but as an outraged man...." Guess the rules are different when you get to use the clean bathroom.

The problem? Apparently, she's offended that the military is trying to appeal to the 18-25 male demographic in its ranks - you know, as in the vast majority of enlisted soldiers - with a quartet of scantily clad on-stage temptresses. She's offended that the show doesn't appeal to everyone, especially women (solution: don't go see it.) She's worried that soldiers will leave the show so horny they can't control themselves, and might sexually harass their female comrades (solution: charge the idiots that do. Especially if they're dumb enough to make a pass at you: you're a freaking Captain.)

Sheesh, lady, lighten up. You join an organization composed primarily of males - an organization that, until recently, was composed exclusively of males, and has a corresponding set of traditions and habits - and you pretty much have to learn to be one of the guys. That includes taking off-color jokes in stride, and it includes letting the boys in uniform be reminded, every once in a while, of just what it is they're fighting for. I mean, they're in a war zone. Every day could be their last. And you're worried they might get turned on by a little USO T&A? Get your priorities straight. I'd think you'd have more pressing concerns, such as the possibility that - on the off chance USO takes you seriously, and bans future shows - you'll be fingered as the culprit by a country full of horny, homesick troops. And, you know, that could make for some really uncomfortable conversation in the Officer's Mess.

Latest From the Honourable Members

2005-03-18T12:41:00.000-08:00

The deficit this year was supposed to be $2.2 billion. Instead, it's $6 billion. Apparently $3.8 billion is an 'accounting difference'.

Another Reason Note to Worry About Peak Oil

2005-03-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

Even if my prior musings regarding the abiotic theory of the origins of oil are completely off base, this new development may well render the depletion of oil a moot point. If you're too lazy to read the whole thing, the essence is this: researchers at Sandia have developed a photocatalytic device (ie, powered by the sun) to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The planet's not likely to run out of water any time soon.

No Sushi For You!

2005-03-18T08:21:00.000-08:00

I realize this is old news, but I just encountered it recently so I'm blogging it anyways.

Apparently, the McGuinty Liberals just backed down from a proposed regulation that would outlaw fresh sushi. Now, don't get me wrong. I like seeing governments back down. It teaches them humility, which is good for their blackened souls. However, the story absolutely begs the question, Why the hell would they try to pass such a law in the first place? Hmm, lets see ... on the one hand, you have a lot of Torontonians who love sushi. On the other hand, you have a lot of Torontonians who vote Liberal. The Liberals had already managed to piss off the entire province with their Health Care 'Premium' (which isn't a tax!) Basically the only people in the whole damn province who might vote Liberal in the next provincial election live in the 416 and the 905. And then the government turns around and tries to regulate real sushi out of existence.

You know, for the first few months of this administration, I used to actually get mad about their ham-handed stunts. Now I just think it's funny. If they keep this up, it'll be a decade or more before the Liberals have a snowballs' chance in Texas of getting back in to office.

Book Review: Fab, by Neil Gershenfeld

2005-03-17T11:47:00.000-08:00

After reading the first chapter of this book, it was late and time to go to bed. Reluctantly, I put the book away, turned off the light, and spent the next three hours unable to sleep because of the storm of thoughts it had set off in my brain.

Fab is about how to build things. More than that, though: it's about how - sooner than most of us who think of such things expect - anyone will be able to manufacture almost anything in their garage. The centrepiece of Fab is what Gershenfeld calls the 'fab lab', or fabrication laboratory. It's a combination of computer, 3D printers, laser cutters, and assorted other machine tools for working with almost any material, ranging from wood to plastic to metal. Load in the right software, and a fab lab can build, well, pretty well anything you want it to build; even if it can't build it all in one piece, it can build the components, which can then be assembled.

The interesting thing is that a fab lab can - at least theoretically - build another fab lab. This has, to put it mildly, big implications.

The bulk of the book is divided between introductory pieces on the working elements of a fab lab - subtractive and additive manufacturing, sensors, interfaces, engineering software - and case studies of what actual people have done with the prototype fab labs that Gershenfeld's Centre for Bits and Atoms has set up around the world. One such concerned an art student who made herself a 'screaming bag'; another, a Norwegian herdsman who designed and deployed a wireless network for monitoring sheep and reindeer; yet another an Indian village that built measurement devices to test the quality of milk. Note that none of these people were professional engineers, nor did they have any sort of formal technical education. Not only can fab labs manufacture damn near anything, but ordinary people can use them to do so.

What really grabbed me about this book was how soon this technology is likely to be out there. People like K. Eric Drexler have been talking about self-reproducing, molecular manufacturing machines for twenty years now. The technology has become a science fiction staple, as ubiquotous in any serious treatment of the future as computers and space ships. The assumption, however, has always been that we'll need reasonably mature nanotech in order to make these things; Fab shows that, on the contrary, we can make them right now, using existing technology. They won't build spaceships out of pure diamond, but they'll build damn near anything else, including (as noted above) other fabs. And if a fab can reproduce itself, it can also repair itself, and - logically - incrementally upgrade itself.

Eventually, then, fabs will be nanotech-enabled (and able to make those super-cool diamond spaceships); in the meantime, however, we'll have a good twenty or thirty years to learn how to use these things. This is probably a good thing, because the proliferation of fabs - odds are they'll be everywhere within a decade or so - is going to cause one hell of a shock to the economy. The sheer range of what it's possible to make with a fab, and the fact that once you have one all you need are raw materials (dirt cheap) and blueprints (P2P, anyone?), and you can see how large sectors of the manufacturing industry are going to go tits up.

Fab wasn't perfect, the my problems with it were quite minor. Like most engineers, Gershenfeld spends a lot of time explaining the nitty-gritty, and not a lot speculating about the large-scale implications of the technology. Which is fine, really; the point of the book is to show us all what can be done right now, not to engage in hand-waving pronouncements. Still, in the chapter titled 'Future', he spends half of it discussing von Neumann and the machines named for him. The material is relevent, of course, but it really does belong in a different, earlier chapter. The other - minor - problem I had was with some of the case studies, some of which didn't directly concern use of a fab lab, but rather the use of CAD tools in general in contexts they weren't intended for. But then, fab labs are new, and there probably aren't that many examples to draw on as of yet.

In the end, this was an informative and occasionally even entertaining read, an eye-opening guide to a world-changing technology that most of the species hasn't even heard of yet.

As an interesting addendum, I found a post on EurekAlert! today, concerning researchers at the University of Bath who are looking into getting working, refrigerator-sized household fabricators onto the market within four years. It's spreading.

Madness, Genius, & Chemistry

2005-03-16T12:28:00.000-08:00

An interesting essay over at kiro5hin, concerning the effects on society - specifically the effects on its creative potential - of medicating psychological illness out of existence. The thesis is that when the threshold of mental illness is defined downwards, and the new crazy (those with depression, dysthemia, ADD/ADHD, etc) are put on drugs, we run the risk of squashing creative genius. There's something to this, I think: I have a schizophrenic friend who's always finding excuses to go off his meds, as he says it feels like his brain's made of porridge when he's on them.

On the other hand, however, the vast majority of people - and that includes the mentally ill - are not, and will never be, creative geniuses. They're just normal people, with jobs, friends, families. The benefits these people might get from being psychologically abnormal are somewhat dubious, measured next to the detrimental effects upon their careers and the pain their illnesses can cause not just them, but their loved ones. That said, I've always thought putting kids on speed so they won't get bored when the teacher's droning on about fractions is an idea that comes somewhere between misguided and criminal. Still, putting an adult on SSRIs when they're consistently, needlessly miserable is very much a good thing, if it improves their lives.

However, the point about creative squashing chemistry stands. There's something about the image of a happy, wholly sane and stable artist that just strikes me as deeply, horribly wrong.

But no one is ever forced to take their meds. Even people with disorders far more serious than dysthemia (like my aforementioned friend) can choose not to. I think, however, that it's a salient point that the choice exists at all. In the past, if you were crazy, then that was it. You were crazy, end of story. Either you died young, or became an artist of some sort, or (often) both. Happiness wasn't an option that was presented to you. These days, however, the young artist is offered a choice by society, one similar to the choice offered Achilles: a life of mundane, medicated contentment that will never amount to anything particularly memorable, or a life wracked by mental pain and occasional derangement that gives a shot at greatness.

No doubt many will choose the former. Others, however, will choose to suffer for their art, and their art may be the better for it, as they will have chosen that state instead of having it forced upon them by the great genetic crapshoot.

Hitler Was a Great Man!

2005-03-14T13:11:00.000-08:00

Udo Voigt, leader of the National Party of Germany:

“If you can call Churchill a great Briton, if you can make a hero out of Alexander the Great, then you have to give that status to Hitler, too,” Udo Voigt, the leader of the far-right National Party of Germany (NPD), said. “My lawyer has told me to say no more than that.”

Except that, you know, Hitler lost....

Microwave Foundries

2005-03-11T18:16:00.000-08:00

This seems like a valuable addition to any personal fabrication system.