Filed under: Ad Astra, Astronomy, Connections, Fermi's Paradox, General Musings, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Space, Survival | Tags: astronomy, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Fermi's Paradox, jim downey, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, Wait But Why
Sometime when I’m really bored I may go to the trouble to try and figure out when the first variety of this image was made — I remember it back to my childhood (I think … you know how tricky memories are):
Nice little bit of perspective, eh? Which of course is why it has become such a classic image in one form or another.
And that little bit of perspective gives rise to a very nice explanation and exploration of the Fermi Paradox (which I have written about/mentioned many times) over on Wait But Why. Here’s a bit from the closing paragraphs:
As we continue along with our possibly-futile search for extraterrestrial intelligence, I’m not really sure what I’m rooting for. Frankly, learning either that we’re officially alone in the universe or that we’re officially joined by others would be creepy, which is a theme with all of the surreal storylines listed above—whatever the truth actually is, it’s mindblowing.
Beyond its shocking science fiction component, The Fermi Paradox also leaves me with a deep humbling. Not just the normal “Oh yeah, I’m microscopic and my existence lasts for three seconds” humbling that the universe always triggers. The Fermi Paradox brings out a sharper, more personal humbling, one that can only happen after spending hours of research hearing your species’ most renowned scientists present insane theories, change their minds again and again, and wildly contradict each other—reminding us that future generations will look at us the same way we see the ancient people who were sure that the stars were the underside of the dome of heaven, and they’ll think “Wow they really had no idea what was going on.”
Of course, this whole question is at the very heart of Communion of Dreams. And, in a way, also at the heart of St Cybi’s Well. You’ll see.
But for now, go enjoy that post at Wait But Why. It’s quite good.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Bipolar, Connections, Feedback, General Musings, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: blogging, Call Me Ishmael, Communion of Dreams, feedback, Her Final Year, jim downey, literature, St. Cybi's Well, video, writing, www youtube
Interesting site/idea, though it would be a tough call to pick a book …
I’d be almost nervous to hear what someone might say about one of my books. But in spite of making solid progress with the writing of St Cybi’s Well, I seem to be at low ebb in terms of my self-confidence/bipolar cycle, so it might just be due to that.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, General Musings, NASA, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Space | Tags: Anthropology, Archaeology, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Douglas A. Vakoch, jim downey, NASA, Open Culture, predictions, science, Science Fiction, SETI, space
From Chapter 1 of Communion of Dreams:
“I’ve had my expert do a preliminary search through the old NASA archives. I recalled that they had protocols for dealing with such possible situations, and I doubt that anyone else has really thought much about it since the turn of the century.
“In addition to Don’s field team, the preliminary search suggests that another component should be theoretical, a mix of disciplines so that we can get as broad a spectrum of experience and mind-set as possible. Probably we should have an expert in computer technology. A cultural anthropologist. Someone with a background in game theory and communication strategy. An artist or two. We’ll see if a more thorough survey of the NASA material has any good suggestions beyond that. I’ll get to work identifying appropriate individuals.”
Well, guess what news was announced last week:
During the past few years, NASA has released a series of free ebooks, including NASA Earth As Art and various interactive texts focusing on the Webb and Hubble space telescopes. Last week, they added a new, curious book to the collection, Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication. Edited by Douglas A. Vakoch (the Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute), the text contemplates how we’ll go about “establishing meaningful communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence.” The scholars contributing to the volume “grappl[e] with some of the enormous challenges that will face humanity if an information-rich signal emanating from another world is detected.” And to make sure that we’re “prepared for contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, should that day ever come,” they draw on “issues at the core of contemporary archaeology and anthropology.” Why archaeology and anthropology? Because, says Vackoch, communication with intelligent life probably won’t be through sound, but through images. We will need to read/understand the civilization we encounter based on what we observe.
Heh. I love seeing this stuff happen.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, Connections, General Musings, MetaFilter, University of Missouri | Tags: Anastasia Pottinger, art, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Erik Kwakkel, In Praise of Shadows, jim downey, Medieval Fragments, MetaFilter, photography
If you are at all interested in rare/old books and documents, particularly of the medieval period, you owe it to yourself to check out the Medieval Fragments blog occasionally. In particular, I always enjoy the posts by Erik Kwakkel, such as the recent one titled “The Beauty of the Injured Book“. Here’s a particular image and excerpt:
4. Touched by a human
Books are made for reading and thus for being handled by human hands. The margins facilitate an easy grip of the book without your fingers blocking the view on the text. However, if you hold a book with dirty hands, you may leave your mark behind as a reader. While such stains are often subtle, the person that handled this twelfth-century manuscript had inky fingers: he left a fingerprint behind. Judging from the colour – a shiny, deep kind of black – it concerns printing ink, which puts this manuscript in the hands of a printer. He did not bother to wash his hands. It was, after all, one of those old-fashioned handwritten manuscripts, which had been long overtaken by the modern and spiffy printed book.
As I noted on Facebook this morning when I linked to that blog post, often old books are beautiful entirely because of their age and use. Sometimes clients are surprised when I tell them to just leave the damned thing alone and enjoy it. There’s no need to rob a book of the character which it has developed through centuries of sharing life with humans. I’ve touched on this before:
Much of my life is predicated on this idea. When someone brings me an antique book for conservation work, I don’t see the notes and scrawls, the fingerprints and food stains, as something to be eradicated: they are part and parcel of the history of that book. They are scars, a record, a trace of the hands which have handled it, the lives which have loved it. We all carry our own scars, our own patina, and as long as we respect it, respect ourselves, for the record of our accomplishments, they give our age dignity. And depth.
And then there’s this from the introduction to a wonderful series of images:
This body of work was born out of the opportunity I had to photograph a 101 year old woman who volunteered, on her own accord, to model nude for me. It was merely an exercise in documenting her form in a beautiful way. My only instructions from her were to make sure she was not identifiable in the images. She was willing to do anything I asked of her.
When I later reviewed the images on my computer, I knew I was looking at something very special.
Special, indeed.
Jim Downey
PS. Full disclosure: Kwakkel has featured my work previously, and so I may be biased. Link to Pottinger’s site via MetaFilter.
Filed under: Connections, General Musings, NPR, Science, Science Fiction, Star Trek, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: augmented reality, blogging, Diane Rehm, jim downey, Morning Edition, NPR, predictions, Samsung, science, Science Fiction, smartphone, St. Cybi's Well, Star Trek, technology, tricorder, writing
Seriously. It’s a common thing for me. Usually I shower while listening to Morning Edition or The Diane Rehm show, picking up on the news or some interesting topic of conversation. The combination of engaging my brain while relaxing my body seems to prompt intuitive leaps and interesting insights. And I had an excellent one this morning.
From back in December:
He turned the hand-held on, did a quick check to make sure it had the software and apps he’d asked for. Everything was there. He’d pick up a burner phone later, and swap the SIMM card into the hand-held.
Compare it to this passage:
He turned the hand-held on, did a quick check to make sure it had the software and apps he’d asked for. Everything was there. It was a model with a ‘super stylus’ – one end for working on the screen like any stylus, the other which had an integrated camera and microphone system wirelessly tethered to the phone. With the range of applications available, this damned near made the thing a proto-tricorder. He’d pick up a burner phone later, and swap the SIMM card into the hand-held.
No big deal, right? Just two additional sentences. What constitutes a minor tweak, right?
Actually, it’s the first major revision of St Cybi’s Well. Granted, I’m only about halfway done with the first draft, so calling it a revision might seem to be a bit much. But it’s not.
Consider what you could do with such a change to our current technology. My present smartphone is a Samsung Galaxy Note II. It’s a great phone, with an amazing range of applications available for it. If you added a resident decent camera and mic to the end of the stylus, combined with the right software, this thing really would be almost like a tricorder. Particularly if the quality of the camera were such that it could pick up a wider range of EMR than just normal visible light, and the mic(s) were sensitive to a wider range of sounds. You might need to add in something like an IR or UV “flash/laser” on the phone body, but doing so would allow you to do a wide range of diagnostics well outside the usual range of human vision and hearing. Just off the top of my head it would be capable of:
- Checking surface temperatures.
- Night vision.
- Rangefinder.
- Motion detection.
- Blood oxygenation & glucose monitoring.
- Pulse/heart monitor.
- Echolocation.
- The ability to look around corners or over walls, into small crevices/holes …
- The ability to listen to distant sounds and to estimate location of same.
You get the idea. And pretty much all that should be possible with our present level of technology (both hardware & software), just brought together in some slightly different ways.
So yeah, just two sentences dropped into the “Prelude” to the actual novel, but which sets the stage for me to allow my characters to know and do more throughout the whole book.
Fun stuff.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Arthur C. Clarke, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Emergency, General Musings, Health, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Survival, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: Arthur C. Clarke, augmented reality, blogging, cell phone, energy, fracking, hydraulic fracturing, jim downey, mundane science fiction, oil, predictions, Samuel Tisherman, science, Science Fiction, Star Trek, suspended animation, technology, writing
Suspended animation of one sort or another has been a staple of Science Fiction just about forever. Of course, as such it has often been dismissed as being little more than fantasy — just a magic trick that a lazy author will resort to in order to get around some technological barrier or another. Because, you know, it’s just completely unrealistic …
NEITHER dead or alive, knife-wound or gunshot victims will be cooled down and placed in suspended animation later this month, as a groundbreaking emergency technique is tested out for the first time.
Surgeons are now on call at the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to perform the operation, which will buy doctors time to fix injuries that would otherwise be lethal.
“We are suspending life, but we don’t like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction,” says Samuel Tisherman, a surgeon at the hospital, who is leading the trial. “So we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation.”
Yeah, you certainly wouldn’t want it to sound like Science Fiction. ‘Cause that stuff’s just nuts.
*sigh*
I’ve written previously about ‘mundane science fiction‘, the idea being that we have to stick with what we know to be technologically realistic. The thing is, what we consider to be technologically “realistic” keeps changing, often in surprising ways. I remember the energy crisis of the mid-’70’s, and when US energy independence was considered to be little more than a fantasy talking-point of presidents. Well, the US currently produces more oil than we consume. Sure, it has come with real costs/problems, but it is nonetheless true. (And actually, I think that sort of trade-off makes for a more interesting Science Fiction story overall, exploring both the benefits and problems of new technologies.)
Clarke had it right: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. That doesn’t give a Science Fiction writer complete latitude to just make shit up. But it also cautions against dismissing any technology as “unrealistic” out-of-hand.
Just ask the first person who will be saved due to “emergency preservation and resuscitation.” Chances are, sometime later this year you’ll be able to do so on his/her cell phone.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Augmented Reality, Connections, General Musings, Science, Science Fiction | Tags: art, augmented reality, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Daniel Stoupin, Dragon's Egg, jim downey, photography, Robert L. Forward, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, video, Vimeo
One of the things which has always really interested me is how the perception/experience of time is so very … plastic. Partly that is because of curiosity about the nature of time itself, but partly it is also because the experience of time is so highly variable between species* and even individuals. Personally, I have been through experiences when subjective time dilation completely changed my perception of reality. There are some hints/references about this interest in Communion of Dreams, and there will be others in St Cybi’s Well, but I have yet to really get into dealing with the notion directly.
Anyway, that’s why things like this always fascinate me:
Jim Downey
*I went to college with one of Dr. Forward’s kids, and had the pleasure to hear him give guest lectures/chat with him prior to his first novel being published.
Filed under: Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, General Musings, Health, NPR, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Scott Simon, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: apps, augmented reality, blogging, health, ideas, jim downey, NPR, Rupal Patel, science, Science Fiction, Scott Simon, speech, St. Cybi's Well, technology, VocalID, writing
A somewhat related item on NPR this morning reminded me of an idea I had a while back. The gist of it:
Come up with a simple computer/smartphone app which would contain a few hundred basic words which you just read aloud and record. Save the file, and later it could be used for basic communication should you not have direct use of your voice for whatever reason.
Speech scientists/therapists could compile the standard list of words (for whatever language), perhaps with “expansion packs” of additional words some people might want to also record. When you have a few free minutes, you just run down the list, say a few words and save it. Then later you could use something like a standard text-message app to compose the words into sentences for ease of communication, and the app would just plug your recorded words into place.
It wouldn’t have the normal sort of nuance of inflection that comes with natural speech (though there may be a simple way around that — I’m not knowledgeable enough to know), but at least it would be in your own voice.
Who would use such a thing? Well, all of us face temporary or permanent loss of our voice throughout our lives, for all kinds of reasons. So there’s that. But I could also see uses where the app could be mated with any email or texting use, so that the recipient could directly hear you “talking” to them with it. I would think that it would have all kinds of uses beyond that, as well.
Just a thought. If someone wants to come up with such a thing, cut me in for a percentage, will you?
Jim Downey
PS: Hmm, I may have to incorporate this kind of tech into St Cybi’s Well. I can think of a few ways it could be useful …
PPS: Following posting this, I contacted one of the speech scientists mentioned in the NPR program this morning, Dr. Rupal Patel. And while it isn’t exactly the same sort of thing I envision, she did share with me the effort she is involved with, which has an app currently in beta testing: http://vocalid.org/ Looks like a very worthwhile endeavor, check it out and ‘donate’ your voice.
Communion Of Dreams 