Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Expert systems, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech
This is an old clip, from the TED2006 conference, with Jeff Han making a presentation about his multi-touch sensing interface. I got into a discussion with friends the other night, and had reason to look this up to share it with them, thought I would post it here:
This is pretty much the sort of interface I envisioned for Communion, though done entirely as a ‘virtual’ tech made possible by the AI entities I call ‘experts’, coupled with the integrated cyberware that the characters have. But of course, having it as a physical object first makes sense, and can be considered to be an antecedent to my predictions of how the technology will develop.
Anyway, it’s a long clip, but very intriguing.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Flu, General Musings, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society
We, as a species, have already experienced pandemics countless times. And we have seen pandemics alter or almost wipe out entire advanced civilizations many times in recorded history. There’s the impact of the Black Death in Europe during the 14th century, which killed off about one-third of the population and arguably lead to the destruction of the feudal system. And the collapse of native American culture due to smallpox being introduced to a vulnerable population. And to a greatly lesser extent, but closer to our own society, is the Spanish Flu of 1918, which I used as a starting point for considering the potential of the fire-flu in Communion of Dreams.
Via today’s Rude Pundit, comes word of the advent of our old friend, the plague – this time occuring in squirrels and monkeys in Denver:
The point here is not that the plague is “back” or any such shit. We know that it never goes away in America, especially out on the flea-ridden varmints of the West. But there’s a reason that Spanky’s story is getting more play than the fact that New Mexico had its first plague case this year, a man who got it from, of course, a flea bite. It’s because as long as the plague stays rural, it’s distant, it’s not a cause of concern to the majority of us who stay esconced in our cities. But if Denver’s puss-squirting squirrels are dropping like flies and killing the zoo monkeys, well, shit, all of a sudden the plague is very fuckin’ real. And Colorado’s gotta do something about it before some white child gets it.
I mention this for several reasons. One, I just like the Rude Pundit’s blog. Two, he’s right about the plague never really going away – it is endemic among several animal populations, which function as a disease reservior (and a great place for mutations to occur). Three, he highlights the fundamental problem: we ignore the threat until it suddenly shows up on our doorstep.
And then it is potentially too late. Yeah, modern antibiotics can treat most forms of the plague known. But all it takes is one nasty mutation, and we may well be left defenseless against this old enemy. In fact, I considered using the Bubonic Plague just that way, rather than going with the “fire-flu”. But even in a worst case scenario, plague would still likely respond to broad-spectrum antibiotics. I decided for my book to go with something viral, since modern medicine has many fewer tools to cope with such a threat.
Besides, in the event of a pandemic such as I stipulate for Communion‘s history, we will undoubtably see the re-emergence of many different secondary epidemics, as the infrastructure of our highly interdependent society grinds to a halt. Charming thought, eh?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, BoingBoing, Expert systems, General Musings, Government, Heinlein, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society, tech
The tech of Communion of Dreams is based on a seamless connectivity of almost all electronic components – it is what enables the AI/expert systems such as Seth to move freely through the world on behalf of their clients, augmenting reality in such a way as to allow for much deeper insight and understanding of the world. I don’t say it explicitly in the book, but in part this level of connectivity is what allows for the actual development of true artificial intelligence (an homage to Heinlein’sThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress).
Via BoingBoing comes news that Tim Wu has an excellent piece up about the forthcoming auction of wireless spectrum, and how it presents the opportunity to encourage the kind of innovation necessary for the world of Communion to become possible. Wu, a leader in the promotion of net neutrality and broadband tech, understands that establishing common standards and then allowing inventors to attach their gadgets to wireless networks will be the critical infrastructure of the future. An excerpt:
The right to attach is a simple concept, and it has worked powerfully in other markets. For example, in the wired telephone world Carterfone rules are what made it possible to market answering machines, fax machines and the modems that sparked the Internet revolution.
Attachment rights can break open markets that might otherwise be controlled by dominant gatekeepers. Longshot companies like Ebay or YouTube might never have been born had they first needed the approval of a risk-averse company like AT&T. If you’ve invented a new toaster, you don’t have to get approval from the electric company. Consumers decide how good your product is, not some gatekeeper.
It’s an excellent position paper, all the better for being brief and to the point. Read it, share it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, General Musings, Government, Guns, Iraq, movies, NPR, Predictions, Press, RFID, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff
A story this morning on Weekend Edition – Saturday about the military’s efforts to recover lost or captured soldiers in Iraq brought up the topic of “tagging” our people with some kind of tracking device. Retired Marine Lt. Col. Gary Anderson was somewhat critical of the current Pentagon leadership that such an application of technology hadn’t been put into more widespread use yet.
His reaction is understandable. The idea of tracking devices of one sort or another has been extremely popular in fiction (everything from spy novels to SF) for decades, and we now have a widespread tech which could be fairly easily adapted for such use: Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID for short. Combine this with the already extant use of battlefield electronics, it should be possible to increase the range of such passive devices without sacrificing size and concealability, allowing for hiding such tags in clothing or even within the body of the soldier. Certainly, this would seem to fit with the current mindset of the military, and would fill the gap until current military tech evolves to have an ‘information-integrated force’ such as I stipulate for Communion.
[Mild spoiler alert.]
In Communion, I apply the tech of the period to have the soldiers ‘wired’ with an array of information-sharing devices, analogous to the type of integrated ‘cyberware’ used by the general population. For military applications, though, the tech is more robust, a little more cutting edge, a bit further advanced in application, to the point of even having “smart guns” which would only function for those using the correct encryption key. This does play a minor part in the plot development at several junctures, and assumes that at all times anyone can be tracked fairly easily.
Anyway, the idea of tagging our people in that kind of war environement seems to be a no-brainer to me. Yeah, there are privacy issues to be concerned with for the use of such tagging in civilian life, but that is much less an issue for someone in the military. I expect we’ll see it implemented across the board in the near future…the first step into my predictions about in-body cyberware.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Diane Rehm, Flu, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Pandemic, Predictions, Reproduction, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff
There was a very interesting segment on the Diane Rehm show this morning about how reproductive science has advanced considerably in the last few decades, and the impact that is having on both individuals and society. In the course of the discussion, the participants touched on a number of issues both of interest to me personally, and pertaining to Communion of Dreams.
In this post in March, I discussed the genetic disease which runs in my family, and how that helped inform my decision not to have children. At the time I entered the normal child-rearing years, the appropriate testing wasn’t available. Now it is. And while I could still make the decision to have children, my wife and I are content without those additional responsibilities.
Anyway, in the course of the discussion on Diane Rehm’s show, there was mention of the fact that couples seeking IVF treatment have the option to perform genetic testing on the individual embryos produced by the procedure, and could then select which embryos to have implanted with the hope that they would quicken and grow. Huxley’s Brave New World is potentially here with this level of scrutiny and selection.
So, what about Communion? In it, I stipulate a history of a pandemic influenza, which kills hundreds of millions, and leaves most of the surviving population sterile. But here I left off from my usual attention to scientific detail, in not specifying exactly what the mechanism in effect was. Because, knowing full well the potential that modern medical science has to offer, I thought it might be a simple answer to just have non-sterile couples producing lots of viable embryos using current IVF tech, and then have those embryos implanted in host mothers, thereby circumventing the threat of human extinction. Like the parents who can now pick and choose which embryo has the greatest potential for survival, I made my own selection of what plot mechanisms were most viable. (Please note, I am not trying to equate the two!)
This is something that all writers have to do: make decisions on what to include, what to exclude. Science fiction writers have to do more of it, since in theory you can decided to invent just about any new technology or science to suit your purpose. But for me, I try to establish a given technological level, and see what makes sense within those constraints. According to most who have read the book and responded to me (either in person or in comments here), I did a pretty fair job in resolving most of the issues. But I know that in this particular case, I pulled a little sleight of hand, and my own sense of honesty pushes me to acknowledge it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Expert systems, General Musings, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff
Sheesh.
So, I was reading one of my fav online comics today (Dinosaur Comics), and came across a term I wasn’t familiar with, even through I describe it and use it extensively in Communion of Dreams. The term? Augmented Reality.
I posit that the use of expert systems and the integration of computing applications will become so widespread by the time of the novel (2052) that there will be a fairly seemless overlay of additional information on everyday reality for anyone who wants it. In fact, this plays a rather important role in the plot development, and ties in with my vision of what will necessarily delineate the divergent tracks between human intelligence and true Artificial Intelligence (see yesterday’s post).
But I didn’t know that it had a common term. *sigh* I am so out of it sometimes…
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, Expert systems, Feedback, Predictions, Ray Kurzweil, Science Fiction, Singularity, Singularity Institute, Society, tech, Writing stuff
A good friend of mine, who is a big science fiction fan, read an early version of Communion of Dreams and loved it, providing me some valuable feedback and support. And he was *really* excited when he heard that I was going to write more in the same ‘universe’ as the book, wanting to know what happens after the events portrayed in Communion. When I told him that I would be working on a prequel to the book rather than a sequel, he was disappointed. “But I wanted to know what happens after the Singularity!” he protested.
[Mild Spoiler Alert]
As you are probably aware, the notion of a technological Singularity occuring, when we create the first true artificial intelligence which is superior to human intelligence, has been a popular one in SF for some time, and actually took on the term Singularity following coinage (I think) by Vernor Vinge. In many ways, Communion of Dreams is my take on that moment when humankind crosses this threshhold, embodied in the character of Seth, the expert system who makes this transition.
The folks over at the Singularity Institute are working towards this goal, and wanting to help us prepare for it. Cory Doctorow has a brief blog entry up at BoingBoing this morning about his experience speaking at the Singularity Summit hosted by Ray Kurzweil at Stanford last year, along with links to some vids of that event now hosted at the Institute. It is worth a look.
I am intrigued by the notion of a technological Singularity, but think that it is fundamentally impossible for us to know what happens after such an event has matured. Oh, sure, there’s good reason to speculate, and it is rich and fertile ground for planting ideas as an author, but…
…but I think that in many ways, leaving Communion as the end-point perhaps makes the most sense. It is analogous to ending a book with the death of the character from whom everything is presented as a first-person account. Because just as we do not know what happens after death, we do not know what happens after an event such as a technological Singularity. For, in some very real ways, the same kind of transcendence will take place.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, General Musings, movies, NYT, Philip K. Dick, Predictions, Press, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff
There’s a pretty good article about Philip K. Dick in yesterday’s New York Times. Odd man. Fine author. Source of a lot of my musings on the subjects of society, artificial intelligence, the human condition – not things I would necessarily point to as being inspirational, but definitely a big part of the mix of attitudes I developed from a premature exposure to lots of science fiction as a kid. As an adult, I came to appreciate more his writing for what it was – inspired, drug-fueled, more than a little scary around the edges.
And as a writer I completely understand his desire for more ‘legitimacy’ – something to which many of us who work in the nebulous genre of SF share, I think. From the NYT piece:
So it’s hard to know what Mr. Dick, who died in 1982 at the age of 53, would have made of the fact that this month he has arrived at the pinnacle of literary respectability. Four of his novels from the 1960s — “The Man in the High Castle,” “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,” “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and “Ubik” — are being reissued by the Library of America in that now-classic Hall of Fame format: full cloth binding, tasseled bookmark, acid-free, Bible-thin paper. He might be pleased, or he might demand to know why his 40-odd other books weren’t so honored.
Take a moment, read the article. And if you haven’t had a chance to do so, dive into some of Dick’s work. It may now be gaining some ‘respectability’, but that’s no reason to avoid it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Flu, Government, Health, Pandemic, Predictions, Press, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff
[Mild spoiler alert.]
Pandemic flu is at the heart of my novel Communion of Dreams. It is the ‘history’ of the novel, which has shaped the society of 2052 (the setting of the book). And it turns out to be the threat faced by the characters again in the latter third of the book. I won’t go into further detail, in case you haven’t read the book and would like to see how that all plays out.
When I first started formulating the novel, I immediately turned to the model of the 1918 flu pandemic to give me some idea of how I had to cope with the impacts that a renewed pandemic would have on our society. Since then, there have been additional pandemic scares crop up which have allowed me to see new aspects of this (and which, I am convinced, would make the book potentially a best seller, if it was allowed to escape the ‘sci-fi ghetto’). Why? Because pretty much everyone is slowly becoming convinced that we’re due for another pandemic, perhaps a really bad one.
And that fear has public-health officials nervous. Because they know that managing fear during a pandemic will be difficult. One example of this is the current research into whether conventional face masks would be effective or counter-productive in the event of a flu epidemic, and the recently announced guidelines from the CDC about who should wear masks, when.
While I worked in an abulatory surgical center during grad school, I had to wear a surgical mask at all times. You get used to it. And it does help control certain behaviours which can lead to the spread of disease (sneezing, absent-mindedly touching your nose or mouth, et cetera). But masks are not a panacea, and if used improperly or with a false sense of the protection they provide, could actually make matters worse on a societal scale.
It’ll be interesting, from an intellectual standpoint, to see how this plays out. Because I do expect a pandemic flu ‘event’ to happen within my lifetime. Not that I particularly want to actually have to experience it, mind. Mostly, I just hope that I have my book published before it hits, so people don’t think that I am just playing off of the fear and grief of recent history…
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 