Category: Science seen

I went away and saw a vision of the future (Dubai) and another (Malaysia). Having aggregated and synthesized the data, I'd say the future will look like this:

It will be more humid
It will be quite poorly planned/zoned
The battle against entropy will continue, using both ingenuity and brute force
People will be mostly happy
Demography will do funny things e.g. blow up in our face, undermine our assumptions
Historical grudges will not be solved (that's an easy prediction to make, right?)
There will be more laptops (another easy one), even as phones improve (less easy)
Indian cuisine will prevail over all others
It is not clear which technology will prevail for the opening of soft drink cans

Honestly, do you think any of those predictions will be wrong?

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What's your formula/equation/algorithm? asks Brockman (20-Oct-07)

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge226.html(There's more…)

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Two laptops per child, for two weeks (25-Sep-07)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6994957.stm(There's more…)

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A frontier too far? (21-Sep-07)

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html(There's more…)

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Primeval Soup Selection (09-Jul-07)

http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11919(There's more…)

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Our Biotech Future, apparently (02-Jul-07)

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20370(There's more…)

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The EEA and the mall (29-Jun-07)

Let's tabulate:

Humans in the Pleistocene: Move around in small groups; Bewildered by the surrounding environment but forced to interact with it for survival; Have only a small and stereotypical culture; Subject to capricious changes in circumstances
Humans in the mall: Move around in small groups; Eminently understandable environment with opt-in/opt-out immediately available if gratification delayed even for a moment; Have only a small and stereotypical culture; Ensured of constancy of circumstances

(Mall here is shorthand for allegedly shallow, market-led, TV-and-shopping existence.)

There is a prevailing body of myth that claims humans like to be outdoors, that we prefer lofty goals than just getting by, that we can only achieve totality or satisfy unarticulated spiritual needs by oneness with nature and such. This myth was manufactured in the 60s and honed in the 90s, where most of us caught a bad case of it.

In truth, we like our environments changeless, our horizons proximate, and our superficial needs met in superficial ways. So it sounds to me as though, from caves to malls, we've evolved ourselves into this corner and we're getting what we, at a genetic level, want. Those that truly live the myth i.e. reject the mall are the outliers, the species-fringe -- the denizens of the mall are the norms. Who will outlast the other? Who has the upper hand?

Dawkins says we should beware the tyranny of the selfish replicators. He meant genes but a friend of mine pointed out to me once that it also applies to the social underclass, who tend to replicate a lot and, we must note, shop in malls…

The meek shall inherit the mall. What are you going to do then?

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Carbon footprints have hair (28-May-07)

It's not just the size of your carbon footprint - it's the shape.(There's more…)

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Garlic, cross, stake, Lotka-Volterra equation… (13-Apr-07)

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608059(There's more…)

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Less than human (21-Mar-07)

http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2007/03/19/you_dont_miss_those_8000_genes.php(There's more…)

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Stand on Hawai'i (09-Mar-07)

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa004&articleID=09E07C6F-E7F2-99DF-3AD087F0DA77D94F(There's more…)

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Box clever (08-Mar-07)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html(There's more…)

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Eminent scientists deploy cheesegraters (22-Nov-06)

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/science-forecasts(There's more…)

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Lunatic fringe misidentified (10-Nov-06)

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061106/full/061106-2.html(There's more…)

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Gone and eventually forgotten (14-Oct-06)

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19225731.100(There's more…)

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Planets eight pluto (25-Aug-06)

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060821/full/060821-11.html(There's more…)

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Ug him make pretty fings too (12-Aug-06)

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0605128103(There's more…)

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Man's best immortal friend (10-Aug-06)

http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2006/08/09/an_old_dog_lives_on_inside_new.php(There's more…)

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Careful with that wax, Eugene (09-Aug-06)

http://blog.tenderbutton.com/?p=187(There's more…)

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Wikipedia's 100 Most-Linked-To Pages (09-Aug-06)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Mostlinked&limit=100&offset=0(There's more…)

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Wining about global warming (19-Jul-06)

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0603230103(There's more…)

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The social singularity (12-Jul-06)

The End Times don't come every day. Vernor Vinge could be correct with his technological singularity notion, I guess, and a runaway feed-forward cascade of indistinguishable-from-magic technology bubbling out of existing trends may soon take us to undreamt-of places. Maybe. Alternatively, or alternately, or simultaneously, Arthur C. Clarke, he of the indistinguishable-from-magic insight, might be right: as per Childhoods' End, a geek rapture may uplift or upload us to some higher level of being, hitherto undreamt-of. But--drama aside--perhaps there are mundane, boring, ho-hum, comparatively insignificant little mindblowing revolutions to be had in the interim.

Is One Laptop Per Child one of these?

No really. Okay, there are practicalities and logistics and such, but toss those carelessly aside for a moment and think about it. Exercise some boundless optimism. Hand out a billion laptops, then sit back. You can hold your breath if you want - it won't take long. Pow! Like Childhoods' End, the kids will not wait for the rest of us. Like the technological singularity, a great change will sneak up on us and then, in a rushing moment, blast to shards the story each of us tells herself about What Happens Next, and pelt off into the future in a whirl of dust and disappointment. When one billion kids can mesh a network based on a consensus agreement, one that permits an empowering consensual hallucination, one that bypasses so many of the current channels, gates, controls and oversights - well, let's just say it could get messy. When one billion kids have a chance to see beyond the horizon, beyond their watershed, just plain beyond - what happens then? To them? To us? Everybody without a connection, or without the wherewithall to keep up (meaning, most of us) will suddenly find themselves not only on the outside of something big but with a serious Outside Context Problem.

We borrow the present from our kids; there's a good chance they'll take it back before we're certain we've done with it. Then they'll flee for the future, where singularities may come in multiples.

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