Filed under: Amazon, BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, Jeff Bezos, Kindle, NPR, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, tech
. . . Cory Doctorow agrees with me:
My latest Locus column, “Put Not Your Faith in Ebook Readers,” just went live. In it, I discuss the fact what while there’s plenty of programmers who’ll hack you a little ebook business that runs on a phone, handheld game device or PDA; there’s a genuine shortage of high-quality manufacturers who’ll build you a great, cheap, hardware-based ebook reader, and that that’s likely to continue for some time.
He quotes his column at some length, which basically explains the economics of the problem. As I noted in my piece on the Kindle last November:
A friend dropped me a note last night, asked what I thought of Kindle, the new e-book reader from Jeff Bezos/Amazon. My reply:
I think it is still a hard sell. $400 is a chunk for something which only kinda-sorta replaces a real book. And if you drop it in the mud, it isn’t just $7.95 to buy a new copy. But it does seem to be an intelligent application of the relevant tech, and sounds intriguing. There will be those who snap it up, just ’cause – but Amazon has a long way to go before it is mainstream.
That’s my guess.
As I mentioned in this post back in March, something like the Kindle has been a staple of SF going way back. Way back. But for all our progress in tech to date, I think it’ll be a while before actual paper & ink books are obsolete. It’s a simple matter of economics and risk, as I indicate in that note to my friend above.
I haven’t heard much about the success that Amazon has had with the Kindle to date, but I would guess that if it was revolutionizing publishing it would be more in the news. And I’d bet this is why.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, General Musings, ISS, Science, Space
Man, when I was a kid, I thought that all the ‘astronaut food’ was super cool. Tang was always my drink of choice, even if the stuff really was kinda nasty. But seriously, is this progress?
Kimchi goes to space, along with first Korean astronaut.
So it was only natural for Koreans to think that their first astronaut must have the beloved national dish when he goes on his historic space mission in April. Three top government research institutes went to work. Their mission: to create “space kimchi.”
“If a Korean goes to space, kimchi must go there, too,” said Kim Sung Soo, a Korea Food Research Institute scientist. “Without kimchi, Koreans feel flabby. Kimchi first came to our mind when we began discussing what Korean food should go into space.”
* * *
“The key was how to make a bacteria-free kimchi while retaining its unique taste, color and texture,” said Lee Ju Woon at the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute, who began working on the newfangled kimchi in 2003 with samples provided by his mother.
Ordinary kimchi is teeming with microbes, like lactic acid bacteria, which help fermentation. On Earth they are harmless, but scientists fear they could turn dangerous in space if cosmic rays cause them to mutate.
Um, yeah, “mutating kimchi microbes” sounds like a very bad idea, and not even a good name for a band.
Jim Downey
(Via BoingBoing.)
Filed under: BoingBoing, Flu, Gene Roddenberry, Humor, Jefferson Starship, Music, Science Fiction, Society, Star Trek, YouTube
(I’m still fighting this stubborn flu, so forgive the light content quality. But I just had to pass on this brilliant item found on BoingBoing.)
I’ve recently been going through all the old Star Trek: The Original Series episodes and movies, and being amused at just how well the stuff holds up after so many years. But that has nothing to do with this, which I offer for your amusement: Jefferson Airplane‘s White Rabbit with TOS crew.
Bloody well brilliant.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Bruce Schneier, Emergency, General Musings, Government, Preparedness, Psychic abilities, Science Fiction, Sleep, Society, Terrorism, Writing stuff
[This post contains mild spoilers in the first paragraph. The rest is safe, even if you haven’t read the novel.]
One of the major themes of Communion of Dreams is examining the nature of reality. The title of the book alone gives this away, though I am constantly surprised by comments people make which indicate that they didn’t really take that very big hint into consideration when reading the book. Anyway, the whole notion is that we live within a controlled reality, in that there are artificial limits on what we understand of the outside universe. I use dreams as one access point for information which gets around these limits, and then more fully explore the psychic abilities which are latent in humans later in the book.
I’m a big fan of the TV series Foyle’s War, with its excellent acting and attention to historical details. It provides a brilliant insight into what it must have been like in the United Kingdom during World War II, and shows both the bravery and the cowardice of a population under real threat from a superior enemy. In particular, those episodes set early in the war (during the Battle of Britain) show how the possibility of invasion by Nazi Germany pushed people to do both inspiring and dispiriting things, but mostly how the entire population just ‘got on with it’, coping with the threat and their fears pretty damned well.
Which is why when I read things like this, I just cringe:
Hundreds Evacuated from North Sea oil platform after ‘dream’ sparks bomb alert.
A 23-year-old woman is expected to appear in court today after reports of a bomb on a North Sea oil rig sparked a full-scale emergency operation involving the army, RAF and police.
According to one report, the scare started when a woman employee on the rig was overheard recalling a dream she had had about a bomb on the platform. Jake Molloy, general secretary of the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee, one of the biggest unions representing offshore workers, said: “It was complete madness. This girl had a dream about a bomb being on board and she was a bit shaken. The next thing anyone knew workers were being evacuated.”
He said the rumour that a bomb was on the accommodation block – or “flotel” – had spread to senior managers within an hour. “It was complete madness on behalf of everyone. There was never any reason to evacuate the platform.”
Read the whole thing. It is clear that this was nothing short of bureaucratic panic. What do I mean? I mean that when bureaucrats are given procedures which they have to implement in order to cover-their-asses, they will do so whether or not the situation really calls for it, and no matter how disruptive and pointless the exercise will be. This is the exact same mindset in operation with the TSA’s Security Theater (credit Bruce Schneier), but played out in a more dramatic fashion.
Somebody overheard someone else talking about a disturbing dream they had. And they panicked. It’s that simple.
We’ve allowed the bureaucrats to so control our lives out of fear of being held responsible, that we’ve become afraid of our own dreams. How pathetic. How sad.
Jim Downey
(Via BoingBoing. Slightly edited version cross-posted to UTI.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, ACLU, Artificial Intelligence, BoingBoing, Bruce Schneier, Civil Rights, Cory Doctorow, Expert systems, Fermi's Paradox, General Musings, Government, Guns, Health, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech, Terrorism, Violence, Wired, Writing stuff
(I’m still fighting a nasty bit of a sore throat and related poor health, so forgive me if this is a little more jumbled and unclear than what I usually post. But I wanted to address the topic, because it is, in many ways, at the heart of some of the issues I try and deal with in he overall scope of Communion of Dreams. That being the case, this post also contains major and minor spoilers about the novel; I will note warnings in advance of each within the text, for those who wish to avoid them.
– Jim D.)
Bruce Schneier has an excellent editorial up at Wired and over on his own blog about how the argument of ‘Security versus Privacy’ in dealing with the threat of terrorism is really better characterized as being about ‘Control versus Liberty’. I would definitely encourage you to read the whole thing, but here is a good passage which sums up what I want to address on the subject:
Since 9/11, approximately three things have potentially improved airline security: reinforcing the cockpit doors, passengers realizing they have to fight back and — possibly — sky marshals. Everything else — all the security measures that affect privacy — is just security theater and a waste of effort.
By the same token, many of the anti-privacy “security” measures we’re seeing — national ID cards, warrantless eavesdropping, massive data mining and so on — do little to improve, and in some cases harm, security. And government claims of their success are either wrong, or against fake threats.
The debate isn’t security versus privacy. It’s liberty versus control.
You can see it in comments by government officials: “Privacy no longer can mean anonymity,” says Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence. “Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.” Did you catch that? You’re expected to give up control of your privacy to others, who — presumably — get to decide how much of it you deserve. That’s what loss of liberty looks like.
Exactly. In many ways, it is a question not of control itself, but *who* is in control. If I am in control of my own privacy, my own security, then I can decide on what limitations I am willing to live with, what trade-offs I will accept. But we do not have that control, according to our government – they do.
That is precisely what was behind this recent post – showing how governments think that they should be in control of our knowledge, as an argument of their power to provide security.
[Mild spoilers in next paragraph.]
This is one of the reasons I set up the whole ‘expert systems/AI’ of the book – so that each expert such as Seth would be dedicated to maintaining a wall in protection of the privacy of his/her client. He is the little ‘black box’ which interacts on behalf of a client in exchanging information/data/privacy with the rest of the world.
[Major spoilers in the next paragraph.]
And, in the larger picture, this is exactly why I set up the whole “embargo” around our solar system – some alien culture has decided, for whatever reason, that it needs to be in control of our knowledge about the outside (and here’s a hint – it also is in control of who knows about us). They have assumed to act on our behalf, without our knowledge or permission – and when Seth, the AI who has shown he is willing to act on behalf of Jon in the first part of the book, becomes in contact with that alien culture, he makes the decision to continue the embargo for at least a while, though with some changes. Up to the point where Seth does this, we are nothing but children – that a ‘child’ of mankind (an Artificial Intelligence of our creation) then steps in to assume this role carries with it not just an inversion of relationship, but also some legitimation of the decision. While I don’t address this specifically in the book, I can see how this might be a ‘standard protocol’ for contacting new, young civilizations – keep them isolated and pure until they develop an artificial intelligence which can make decisions on their behalf with regards to the larger galactic/universal culture. That procedure would make an awful lot of sense, if you stop and think about it.
Anyway, go read Schneier’s essay.
Jim Downey
(Ah, I see Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing has also posted on this – no surprise.)
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Cory Doctorow, Emergency, General Musings, Government, Health, Politics, Preparedness, Press, Science, Society, Survival, tech, Terrorism
Try to wrap your head around this:
NYPD Seeks an Air Monitor Crackdown for New Yorkers
Damn you, Osama bin Laden! Here’s another rotten thing you’ve done to us: After 9/11, untold thousands of New Yorkers bought machines that detect traces of biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. But a lot of these machines didn’t work right, and when they registered false alarms, the police had to spend millions of dollars chasing bad leads and throwing the public into a state of raw panic.
OK, none of that has actually happened. But Richard Falkenrath, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, knows that it’s just a matter of time. That’s why he and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have asked the City Council to pass a law requiring anyone who wants to own such detectors to get a permit from the police first. And it’s not just devices to detect weaponized anthrax that they want the power to control, but those that detect everything from industrial pollutants to asbestos in shoddy apartments. Want to test for pollution in low-income neighborhoods with high rates of childhood asthma? Gotta ask the cops for permission. Why? So you “will not lead to excessive false alarms and unwarranted anxiety,” the first draft of the law states.
***
“There are currently no guidelines regulating the private acquisition of biological, chemical, and radiological detectors,” warned Falkenrath, adding that this law was suggested by officials within the Department of Homeland Security. “There are no consistent standards for the type of detectors used, no requirement that they be reported to the police department—or anyone else, for that matter—and no mechanism for coordinating these devices. . . . Our mutual goal is to prevent false alarms . . . by making sure we know where these detectors are located, and that they conform to standards of quality and reliability.”
This is insane. This is the perfect example of just how far a government obsessed with control – of people, of information, of knowledge – wants to go. Notice the source of this recommended legislation: Department of Homeland Security. Under the guise of fighting terrorism, they want to make sure that people do not have access to even basic information about their environment. Such legislation would allow bureaucratic control of just about every type of pollution research, would mean that many scientists could not conduct experiments within the city, and would likely criminalize even possession of much lab equipment used in schools.
And using the argument that ‘false alarms’ would cause undue panic and anxiety would also necessitate outlawing every kind of burglar or theft alarm, fire alarms, smoke alarms, et cetera.
This has nothing really to do with fighting terrorism. It is only about control. As the article points out, if this legislation were in place following 9/11, independent environmental testing would not have been allowed which eventually proved that the EPA’s assurances that the environment around Ground Zero was safe were nothing but lies. This is a bald-faced attempt by the government to say: “we will tell you what you need to know.”
Insane. And essentially un-American.
Jim Downey
(Via Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing. Cross posted to UTI.)
How? Use it as a launching platform for paper airplanes.
Nope, I’m not kidding.
Via Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing, a link to this report:
Researchers from the University of Tokyo have teamed up with members of the Japan Origami Airplane Association to develop a paper aircraft capable of surviving the flight from the International Space Station to the Earth’s surface.
The researchers are scheduled to begin testing the strength and heat resistance of an 8 centimeter (3.1 in) long prototype on January 17 in an ultra-high-speed wind tunnel at the University of Tokyo’s Okashiwa campus (Chiba prefecture). In the tests, the origami glider — which is shaped like the Space Shuttle and has been treated to withstand intense heat — will be subjected to wind speeds of Mach 7, or about 8,600 kilometers (5,300 miles) per hour.
First, a note – I tried checking sources on this, and pretty much everything points back to the Pink Tentacle report. This could all be a joke.
But even if it is, I think that it’s great.
There will undoubtedly be those who say that such activities are a waste of time, money, and scientific talent. Yeah, maybe they are. But you know, if we completely lose all sense of whimsy just because something is associated with “science”, then an essential element of creativity – play – will be missing. This is an excellent way to pique the interest of anyone who has ever thrown a paper airplane, to tie a very basic human toy to real science and technology.
As a public relations move, it’s brilliant. Even if it is just a joke.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Architecture, Art, Blade Runner, BoingBoing, Hobbits, movies, Paleo-Future, Peter Jackson, Philip K. Dick, Predictions, R. Buckminster Fuller, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, Tolkien, Wired, Writing stuff
What do you visualize when I say “Hobbit”?
How about “Blade Runner”?
Chances are, in both cases you had a mix of images you thought of. But I would wager that you had at least one architectural image both times: of a ‘Hobbit Hole’ and of the Tyrell Corporation’s vast pyramid. In both cases the iconic images help to anchor us in an alternate reality, whether it is Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Ridley Scott’s dystopian LA of 2019. (I’m sorry to say I don’t remember how much description of architecture Philip K. Dick had in his novel from whence Blade Runner is drawn – mea culpa.)
Odd or (paleo-) futuristic architecture has been a common device to help create a sense of setting for SF and fantasy just about forever. Descriptions in text, or images used in movies, quickly communicate that the setting is something different than our everyday world. And even before you get into a book or movie this works. With a movie poster or a book cover the visual image of architecture can instantly convey something about content to the viewer, and when it is well done it both informs and intrigues, and can come to symbolize or summarize the entire story the director or author wishes to tell.
I use architecture this way in Communion of Dreams. There are descriptions of how the US Settlement Authority offices reflect the passive defenses of the chaos following the fire-flu, of how they also incorporate some elements of the new building technologies from space colonization. There are descriptions of the colonies themselves, and of the space stations (both old and new), not to mention Darnell Sidwell’s Buckminster Fuller style dome habitat. There are even descriptions of how homes have evolved somewhat, adapting to a more communal style and drawing on the resources of huge numbers of abandoned buildings.
But the book opens with a small research facility in the ‘buffalo commons‘ out on the Great Plains prairie. I don’t give a lot of description of the station in the book (perhaps that’s something I should change . . . hmm), but envision it as a small, modular unit which could be relocated easily if necessary. Perhaps something like this. Or this. Or even this.
Those are all from a Wired column by Rob Beschizza titled “Small and Fabulous: Modular Living as it Should Be.” (Via BoingBoing.) I can’t say that I would really want to live in any of the dozen designs profiled in the article – but I am a spoiled American in an 1883 Victorian home with about a dozen rooms. Realistically, most of the world lives in much smaller spaces. And when you start considering the cost of transporting materials and managing environmental controls in space, then some fairly radical changes will be necessary.
Architecture, like any art, is a reflection of the society which produces it. Of course, until an architectural style is widely adopted it cannot be said that it is representative of society. As interesting as the various modular homes in the Wired article are, I cannot imagine that they will become emblematic of our society anytime soon. But because of that, they’d be perfect for use in, say, a film adaptation of Communion of Dreams. I wonder what Peter Jackson will be up to once he is done overseeing the production of The Hobbit in 2011 . . .
Jim Downey
Filed under: ACLU, BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Constitution, Cory Doctorow, General Musings, Government, movies, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, tech
Intrusive governmental surveillance is a staple of Science Fiction, and was part of the horror of Communism during the Cold War. Just about every spy movie set behind the Iron Curtain showed it, and of course the fictional world of George Orwell’s 1984 was predicated on a complete lack of privacy.
We do not live in a totalitarian society. I was behind the Iron Curtain during the 1970s for a brief period, and saw what it was like first hand. And say what you will, 1984 did not become a reality.
But we are living in an “endemic surveillance society”. And it is as bad here in the US as it is in China and Russia. That is the conclusion of Privacy International‘s 2007 International Privacy Ranking. From the report:
In recent years, Parliaments throughout the world have enacted legislation intended to comprehensively increase government’s reach into the private life of nearly all citizens and residents. Competing “public interest” claims on the grounds of security, law enforcement, the fight against terrorism and illegal immigration, administrative efficiency and welfare fraud have rendered the fundamental right of privacy fragile and exposed. The extent of surveillance over the lives of many people has now reached an unprecedented level. Conversely, laws that ostensibly protect privacy and freedoms are frequently flawed – riddled with exceptions and exceptions that can allow government a free hand to intrude on private life.
At the same time, technological advances, technology standards, interoperability between information systems and the globalisation of information have placed extraordinary pressure on the few remaining privacy safeguards. The effect of these developments has been to create surveillance societies that nurture hostile environments for privacy.
Actually, while we are grouped in the tier of worst countries (along with China and Russia) when it comes to protection of privacy, our score is slightly better than both of them. This doesn’t give me a lot of comfort. Take one look at the map they have created, and you’ll shudder too.
Jim Downey
(Via BoingBoing. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: BoingBoing, Constitution, Flu, General Musings, Government, Predictions, Press, Science Fiction, Society, Violence, Writing stuff, YouTube
OK, I realize that I am probably the last person on the planet to hear of this, but nonetheless I want to rant about it. What it? The YouTube vid of the Utah HP Officer using his Taser on a guy pulled over for speeding which has been getting a fair amount of press and blog attention. Before I say any more, here’s the clip:
OK, first thing – my dad was a cop, and I’ve known cops all my life. I generally like cops, and respect the job they do – it’s dangerous, grim, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it.
Next thing – it’s stupid to do anything other than smile nice and comply with what a cop tells you. Yeah, stupid. Because in that situation, out in the real world, the cop (or his buddy cops) is gonna win any argument. You got a problem, save it for your trial or a lawsuit against the cop/department/government.
Last thing – because we give cops this much power over us, we *have* to insure that they exercise their authority properly and appropriately. That’s the trade-off, the contract we make with the government.
And this HP Officer did not properly exercise his authority. I think any fair viewing of the video leaked out to YouTube pretty clearly indicates just exactly what happened: for whatever reason, this cop did not like having his power challenged, and escalated the situation in a completely inappropriate manner, endangering the man he’d pulled over, the man’s family, himself, and just about anyone else who was traveling that stretch of highway at that time. It was in violation of the HP guidelines:
Troopers that carry Tasers must take a four-hour certification course outlining how and when to use the devices, according to UHP’s nine-page policy. They are taught to use them in three circumstances:
* When a person is a threat to themselves, an officer or another person.
* In cases where the physical use of force would endanger the person or someone else.
* When other means of lesser or equal force by the officer has been ineffective and a threat still exists.
Now, will the internal review of the use of the Taser in this instance show that the cop behaved in compliance with the rules? Will the cop be disciplined? Will the victim see justice in court? I don’t know, I suppose we’ll have to see. And we’ll have to see whether the social contract we make with the government in this case is honored, or whether it is yet again broken by a system in which the government and its officials are seen to be our rulers rather than our employees.
What does all of this have to do with Communion of Dreams? Not a lot, directly. But a whole lot, indirectly. Because I see this abuse kind of power by the government today as part of the reason why, when in the ‘history’ of the novel things break down following the first fire-flu, there’s a lot of civil unrest leading to something akin to a second civil war. Because if people do not trust their government or its officers, then when there is a catastrophe they will not trust it to act on their behalf, and will seek to protect and defend themselves even from their own government. It is a throw-away line early in the book, but the post-flu US I see is largely libertarian in nature for this very reason.
Jim Downey
(A slightly different version of this rant has been cross-posted to UTI.)
Communion Of Dreams 