Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Babylon 5, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Wall Street Journal
A good friend sent me a review in the WSJ about Physics of the Future. Here’s a good excerpt from the review:
That is the core message of Michio Kaku’s “Physics of the Future.” Despite its title, the book is not so much about physics as it is about gadgets and technology, described by Mr. Kaku—professor, blogger and television host—on a wide-ranging tour of what to expect from technological progress over the next century or so.
Much of the terrain Mr. Kaku surveys will be familiar to futurists, but less technically oriented readers are likely to find it fascinating—and related with commendable clarity. The changes that Mr. Kaku expects range from the readily foreseeable to the considerably more esoteric.
Augmented reality—in which useful data overlay what we see with our eyes—already exists in rudimentary form on smartphones, but Mr. Kaku predicts a time, only a decade or two away, when a much denser information stream will be fed directly to our retinas by contact lenses or optical implants. Want to fix a car, perform emergency surgery, or prepare a gourmet meal? The app will tell you what to do—and guide your work. Have trouble learning a foreign language? Expect a useful universal translator to do the work for you. And the ability to connect computers directly to human nervous systems will drastically improve the lives of those who are paralyzed, blind or deaf—as it is already beginning to do. Eventually, we may know the sort of virtual worlds illustrated in science-fiction novels like Greg Egan’s “Permutation City.”
Hmm . . . sound familiar? This is exactly the sort of tech I stipulate as being pretty mature (completely developed and integrated into everyday use) in Communion of Dreams.
Fun. I may have to get a copy of that book.
Jim Downey
(Thanks to ML for the link!)
3.5 million square miles of desert: a meteorite-hunter’s dream. Here’s an excerpt from this fascinating account:
Dar al Gani
Small in size at 80 x 50 km (50 x 30 mi), Dar al Gani is the most important Saharan strewnfield, with nearly a thousand itemized meteorites, Lunar and Martian rocks, various achondrites, etc. At least 150 different falls are represented. When you approach Dar al Gani from the west, the first thing to strike you is its whiteness, as if you were looking out over mountain-tops covered in snow: a mirage in the desert. First comes a succession of terraces which then open on to a smooth, rolling expanse of white, without rocks or vegetation. Meteorites have been falling here for thousands of years, and it goes without saying that strewnfields like this one are of scientific interest. Unlike Antarctica, where ice shifts concentrate meteorites and wind scatters the fragments, things here stay in the same place from one millennium to the next. I often think of Dar al Gani as a photographic plate recording all falls over a significant time-scale of 20,000 years or more. The terrain is gentle and preserving, so that thousands of years worth of data are at present accessible.
The author and his brother make one of the most important finds ever. Very cool, and with some great pictures.
Jim Downey
Interesting news from the Indian Space Research Organization: discovery of a very large lava tube which looks like it’d be very suitable as the basis for a habitat/research facility on the Moon.
From the Calcutta Telegraph:
New Delhi, Feb. 23: A giant volcanic cave beneath the moon’s surface discovered by Indian scientists last year through an analysis of archived images from the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft may be a candidate site for a future human habitat.
Researchers at the Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, analysed 3D images from Chandrayaan-1’s Terrain Mapping Camera to identify the 1.7-kilometre long cave in a region of the moon called Oceanus Procellarum.
The hollow structure created by ancient volcanic lava flows on the Moon may provide lunar explorers a natural shelter from radiation storms and extreme variations between day and night temperatures encountered on the lunar surface, the SAC scientists said.
Glad to see someone is thinking about the future of humans in space.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech
Two more technological news items that bring us closer to the cybertech from Communion of Dreams. The first is a millimeter-scale computer designed for implantation in an eye to monitor for glaucoma:
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A prototype implantable eye pressure monitor for glaucoma patients is believed to contain the first complete millimeter-scale computing system.
The second is a big step forward in brain-activated control of mechanisms thanks to an implanted grid of electrodes:
The method is called electrocorticography, which involves placing a thin plastic pad full of electrodes on the brain’s surface to measure its electrical activity. And it holds promise as being more accurate and telling than other efforts to understand the brain.
* * *
The goal behind decoding the brain’s signals is to allow individuals to control machines with their minds alone. The science holds tremendous potential for people with limb loss, spinal cord injuries and neuromuscular disorders to move and communicate.
As I think I’ve mentioned before, coming up with the tech of 2052 was mostly a challenge because I had to figure out what would slow things down enough that whatever I said sounded plausible.
Jim Downey
(Hat tip to my sis for the second link.)
Just had to share this image, via Phil Plait:
Link to a huge version of the image, along with a nice explanation about the galaxy, in the Bad Astronomy piece.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, NPR, Press, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Society, Writing stuff
I woke this morning, birds singing, the sun shining, and feeling wonderf . . .
No, wait. Scratch that. It’s winter. No birds. Greyness in the dark, as the sun wasn’t up yet. And I had the usual collection of aches and pains common for middle-age .
Still, nothing unexpected hurt, and while I’m not quite to the point where I am pleasantly surprised to wake up at all, I still tend to think that any day above ground beats the alternative.
Then I paid attention to the radio. To this, in particular:
Today AOL announced that it had agreed to acquire the Huffington Post website for $315 million. $300 million of this is in cash, the rest of the purchase in AOL stock. Arianna Huffington, who co-founded the site six years ago, will continue on as President and editor-in-chief.
Gah.
OK, I didn’t read the Huffington Post. No, not because of their slightly-liberal slant – their politics don’t bother me in the slightest. Rather, because I hated their overall design and shallowness. And their willingness to promote anti-science claptrap. And Arianna’s voice makes my teeth hurt, and I can’t read anything the woman writes without hearing her voice.
But still, something about the sale bugged me more than these little things would explain.
It wasn’t until I had some coffee and had a chance to get my brain completely up to operating speed that I figured out why the news rubbed me so much the wrong way: exploitation.
OK, let me explain. I used to own an art gallery. And for 8 years I, my partner, my wife, and my employees busted butt to create a great space to showcase lots of local and regional talent. Over that time we represented hundreds of artists, did well over a hundred featured shows, sent out tens of thousands of full-color postcards, and sold a bunch of artwork. We did everything we could think of to promote our artists, to display the artwork to its best advantage, and to make sure our partnership with our artists was to everyone’s advantage.
And one of the things which used to chap my ass the worst was local bars and restaurants which used to exploit artists by hanging their artwork on the walls and saying it gave the artists “exposure”. I even wrote about this in my newspaper column after I had closed the gallery. The bars and restaurants almost never displayed the work well, seldom had any decent signage about the work/artist, and rarely if ever sold anything. But in exchange for this “exposure” they got to put fresh artwork up regularly to decorate their walls, without having to actually, you know, buy real art from real artists.
And this is why it bugs me so much to hear that the Huffington Post has been sold for $315 million. Because they have a business model which doesn’t pay their writers – they just give them “exposure.” Oh, some celebrities may get paid for contributing. But the average blogger who creates content for the site doesn’t get squat.
Will any of that $300 million in cash from the sale be parceled out to the people who have been writing for the site? Nope.
So, the lesson is clear: there’s gold in them thar artists – so long as you’re the one to be doing the exploiting.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, BoingBoing, Fermi's Paradox, Music, NASA, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech
Lee Billings, a science writer I was not previously aware of, has a really nice little introduction over at BoingBoing on the topic of searching for exoplanets capable of supporting life. Here’s a bit:
I’m admittedly biased (just look at my Twitter feed—it’s clear what my interests are), but my argument rests on facts: The research architectures and observational capabilities required to find Earth-like planets in our region of the galaxy, and determine whether or not some of them harbor life, are already reasonably well-defined. Public interest in (if not knowledge of) the search for alien life is high, and nearly universal. And, in comparison to tasks like finding the Higgs boson, establishing the precise nature of dark energy, or experimentally validating string theory, completing much (though not all!) of this “planetary census” simply isn’t that expensive.
* * *
What if we are cosmically alone, on a planet as anomalously unlikely and fertile as a fruit tree flourishing in an arid wasteland, or a flower blooming in a desert? What if worlds like ours are common as grains of sand? Does the universe hum and throb with life, or does eternal silence and sterility reign outside of our small planet? The truth is, no one really knows. But that will soon change. And when it does, this knowledge can only fill our lives, our world, and our future with more excitement, mystery, and awe.
Interesting metaphor – the flower blooming in a desert. And exactly the same one I use in the beginning of Communion of Dreams for exactly the same reason. Obviously, the man is brilliant.
OK, to be a little more serious here, I just thought people might want to know about this fellow, since he is going to be reporting on the results of the Kepler mission over the next couple of weeks.
Jim Downey
*Gratuitous Pink Floyd reference.
I finished my shower, still thinking intently about the creative breakthrough I had just had. I toweled off, looked at my face in the bathroom mirror. Almost by habit, I reached over with my left hand and flushed the toilet – only noticing as I did so that I had done that previously, and there was nothing in there needing to be flushed away.
“Heh,” I thought. “Perfect.”
* * * * * * *
One of the most difficult questions I ever get about my writing is “What’s it about?” It seems like a simple question, but it isn’t.
Here’s a bit from the current homepage for Communion of Dreams:
At its surface level it is classic science fiction, in that a new discovery leads to a reevaluation of what it means to be human. Beyond that are levels of human psychological development and religious allegory, giving the text a depth which will appeal to a wide range of readers. Or so I hope.
* * * * * * *
An excerpt from an interesting article from the BBC:
“Dr O’Connor said ‘Karen what are you doing? Your hand’s undressing you’. Until he said that I had no idea that my left hand was opening up the buttons of my shirt.
“So I start rebuttoning with the right hand and, as soon as I stopped, the left hand started unbuttoning them. So he put an emergency call through to one of the other doctors and said, ‘Mike you’ve got to get here right away, we’ve got a problem’.”
The story is about a woman suffering from “Alien Hand Syndrome” – a medical condition which can occur from a number of different brain injuries or surgery. She had her corpus callosum severed in order to help cure epileptic seizures, and this worked, but it also resulted in this independent behavior of her left hand – a classic example of how the two hemispheres of the brain can operate separately under certain conditions.
* * * * * * *
There’s still almost nothing in the file I opened last week. But as I noted the other day, the weekend trip to Iowa gave me a chance to sort some things out. Since then, I have been working hard on the conceptual groundwork of the book. Well, a part of me has, anyway.
This is why it is hard to explain “What’s it about?” – only parts of my writing are conscious constructs.
To a certain extent, I play a game of tennis with myself, batting an idea back and forth between conscious thought and unconscious processing. Or between “sides” of my brain, if you will (though the left-right dichotomy of popular culture is not as simple as most people think). Part of the time I am thinking logically, working through problems. But part of the time I am processing emotion and insight below a conscious level. Last weekend I sorted out some ideas. This week I chewed over those ideas further, but in a way which I can’t really explain. And this morning once again they emerged into conscious thought.
It’s a breakthrough, an organizational insight. One of the basic levels of the book has now fallen into place. I’ve gone from the essential metaphor I mentioned previously to an understanding of how that structure plays out. Critical scenes are now starting to write themselves.
This is only another step, and in some ways a small one – I still haven’t written a word of text. But I have a deeper understanding of what I want to accomplish. I understand why my left hand is unbuttoning my shirt, or flushing the toilet, if you will.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 