Filed under: Art, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, CNET, Expert systems, Heinlein, Kromofons, Predictions, Psychic abilities, Science Fiction, Society, Synesthesia, tech, Writing stuff
A friend sent me a link to a CNET news item from last week about how a new ‘color alphabet’ was going to revolutionize communications. From the article:
Lee Freedman has waited a long time, but he thinks the moment is finally right to spring on the world the color alphabet he invented as a 19-year-old at Mardi Gras in 1972.
For 35 years, between stints as a doctor, a real estate agent and a pizza maker at the Woodstock concert in 1994, Freedman has been working on Kromofons–an innovative alphabet in which the 26 English letters are represented solely by individual colors–waiting for technology to catch up with him.
And now, thanks to the Internet, the ubiquity of color monitors, Microsoft Word plug-ins and his being able to launch a Kromofons-based e-mail system, Freedman thinks he is finally ready.
Well, maybe.
Science fiction authors have used various tricks at evolving language and written communications, one of the most memorable for me being Heinlein’s Speedtalk from the novella Gulf. And working in other senses is a common tactic, up to and including extra-sensory perception (such as telepathy). This is part of the way I use synesthesia in Communion of Dreams: as a method by which the human brain can layer meaning and information in new ways, expanding the potential for understanding the world. It is noteworthy that many synesthetes will associate colors with a given word or even letter – it may be possible that Lee Freedman drew upon such an experience to create his color alphabet.
(An aside – I have experienced mild episodes of synesthesia upon several occasions. Sometimes these episodes have been induced by drugs, sometimes by intense concentration, sometimes of their own accord. I think that this is a latent ability everyone has, but not something which we usually access, because it is poorly understood by the general populace.)
Anyway, while Kromofons or something similar is certainly possible in the context of computer display (of almost any variety, including nano-tech paint) , there are some real limitations that I can see. First off, you wouldn’t want to have to have a full set of color pencils/markers and keep changing them in order to just write something down in the ‘real world’. Printed material of whatever variety would also be subject to degradation from light-fading: some pigments fade more quickly than others, some inks are more frail than others, some colors react to different lighting conditions in different ways. (Those are all problems I’ve experienced as a book & document conservator, as well as owning a gallery of art.) Even in the world of computer display, variations in lighting and equipment could render some colors ‘untrue’. Not to mention problems experienced by people as they age and color perception skews, or from the small but real percentage of the population which suffers from one type or another of color blindness. Sure, a good AI or expert system would be able to ‘translate’ for people who had such limitations, in the context of augmented reality, but that tech isn’t currently available except in its very infancy.
So, while I enjoy a slightly-nutty idea as much as the next person, and can see some ways that Kromofons could be used for fun, I don’t really see the idea going too far.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Climate Change, General Musings, Global Warming, Government, Health, Iraq, Politics, Press, Society
There’s a very good column by Eugene Robinson in Friday’s Washington Post, about the need for someone with some smarts in the Oval office. From the piece:
One thing that should be clear to anyone who’s been paying attention these past few years is that we need to go out and get ourselves the smartest president we can find. We need a brainiac president, a regular Mister or Miss Smarty-Pants. We need to elect the kid you hated in high school, the teacher’s pet with perfect grades.
When I look at what the next president will have to deal with, I don’t see much that can be solved with just a winning smile, a firm handshake and a ton of resolve. I see conundrums, dilemmas, quandaries, impasses, gnarly thickets of fateful possibility with no obvious way out. Iraq is the obvious place he or she will have to start; I want a president smart enough to figure out how to minimize the damage.
And even better:
Actually, I want a president smart enough to know a good deal about science. He or she doesn’t have to be able to do the math, but I want a president who knows that the great theories underpinning our understanding of the universe — general relativity and quantum mechanics — have stood for nearly a century and proved stunningly accurate, even though they describe a world that is more shimmer than substance. I want him or her to know that there’s a lot we still don’t know.
I want the next president to be intellectually curious — and also intellectually honest. I want him or her to understand the details, not just the big picture. I won’t complain if the next president occasionally uses a word I have to look up.
I wasn’t the smartest kid in my high school. But I was pretty damn close. I certainly wasn’t the smartest kid at my college – Grinnell was full of people as smart or smarter than me. But I have never, ever understood the instinct that some people have that their president should be someone “they’d want to have a beer with”. I don’t want to have a beer with them. I want them to bust their ass working to fix the myriad problems we face, or at least to mitigate the impact of those problems while we work to solve them over the long term. Not just Iraq, or terrorism, but Peak Oil, global warming, health care, the threat of a pandemic, rebuilding New Orleans, rebuilding the National Guard, et cetera, et cetera. I want someone who is at least as smart as I am, who is at least as well educated, who has some real life experience beyond just getting elected to office, and who has shown that they are actually competent in managing something more important than some bloody sports team. After six years of the Worst. President. Evah. you’d think that this would be obvious, but it is telling that it takes a columnist for one of the largest and most important papers in the country to come right out and say it.
Sheesh.
Jim Downey
(Tip of the hat to Hank Fox for the link.)
Filed under: Carl Sagan, Climate Change, Global Warming, Government, James Burke, NASA, NPR, Predictions, Press, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin was interviewed yesterday morning by Steve Inskeep on NPR’s Morning Edition. During that interview the following exchange took place, on the topic of global warming:
(Inskeep): Do you have any doubt that this is a problem that mankind has to wrestle with?
(Griffin): I have no doubt that … a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change. First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.
This morning’s program had a follow-up segment about how this conflicts with the general consensus in the scientific community, and other reports in the media point out that it is at odds with NASA’s own scientists. Even President Bush just came out with a plan to address climate change concerns in advance of a big global warming symposium being held in Germany next week.
The callousness of Griffin’s remarks is what has most people upset, I think. Because under most scenarios studied, significant global warming is going to lead to the death of millions of people. James Burke did a good series on how this will likely play out called After the Warming, and then of course there’s Al Gore’s book and movie An Inconvenient Truth. To have the NASA chief say that it would be arrogant of us to presume that this is “the best climate for all other human beings” seems assinine, at best.
I believe in global warming. I believe that it is likely a huge problem facing us. For the world of Communion of Dreams, set about 50 years hence, I had to deal with what I expect will be the reality of global warming. Since I wanted to deal with other issues, I decided that I needed a way to explain why the effects of global warming hadn’t yet created additional huge problems for humankind. My initial choice was to have an asteroid impact kick up a lot of dust into the stratosphere, and thereby slightly alter the albedo of Earth. When that additional disaster seemed to be too much for my initial readers, I changed it to having a man-made source: limited nuclear exchanges in Asia, creating a mild “nuclear winter” effect. Given that this term was partly a product of Carl Sagan’s scientific research, it seemed a fitting solution. (As I’ve mentioned previously, Sagan was part of my inspiration for Communion.)
Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see whether Griffin survives this little climate change in his job situation, created by his own hot air.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Flu, General Musings, Government, Health, Pandemic, Plague, Science Fiction, Society, Wired, Writing stuff
In this post from last week, I talked about the relevant issues confronting us with pandemic threats such as the bubonic plague. Well, as you may have heard over the last day or so, public health authorities have acted to impose quarantine restrictions on a man with a drug-resistant form of TB. He’s now being treated with antibiotics as the authorities try and back-track his recent trip to Europe and see who he may have exposed to this particularly nasty strain of the disease.
In my early thinking about the ‘fire-flu’ which forms the back-story of Communion, I was intending on it being a strain of influenza which had developed resistance to early anti-viral treatments. I thought I’d have a series of serious but not pandemic flu strains weaken the global economy, and then have a really nasty one hit that was drug resistant. But so few people understand about the problems presented by widespread and inappropriate antibiotic use, that I gave on on that mechanism, figuring that it would just take too much explanation. Going with the ‘weaponized’ form of flu gave me some additional plot devices to work with, as becomes clear when you read the book.
But that doesn’t mean that the threat isn’t real. In fact, the reaction of the public health authorities is telling, I think. They know that having a nasty, drug-resistant form of TB widely spread by someone this way is a very serious threat, and could easily present a huge problem, and turn back the public-health clock 100 years.
Charming.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, Depression, Feedback, General Musings, Society
When I was still new to being in business as a bookbinder, I had someone call me one morning about doing some conservation work to a musical instrument. After I carefully explained that I was a book conservator, not an artifact conservator, they said that what they needed was the replacement of a small piece of leather which had been pared down to suitable thickness and then mounted, and that there wasn’t anyone in 100 miles who could do this for him. The guy practically begged me to help him out. Finally, I relented, and told him to bring the instrument in so that I could see what exactly he was talking about, but I made no promise that I would do the work.
He was in that afternoon. Opened up his case, took out his instrument. It was an accordian, about a century old. Needed a small piece of leather to function as part of the bellows assembly, if I remember correctly. Wasn’t very big, just a few inches across and about the same wide, and would need to be mounted under a strip of metal on each side. But the leather would have to be pared down very thin – a simple, but time-consuming task. I told him that it would take altogether about an hour and a half of my time, and with materials would run about $50.00 (my rates were only $25.00 an hour then).
He looked at me like I was nuts. “But it’s only a little piece of leather!”
“Well, yeah, but it’s going to take me 90 minutes to prep the piece, remove the old piece, mount the new one, and get everything secure.”
“But this thing is only worth about that much,” he protested. “I won’t make any money on it if I pay you that much to fix it. How about $10.00?”
I sent him on his way. And learned that it was pointless for me to try and help people who don’t really need it or want it. Unless someone values my services, and wants them applied in a suitable fashion, it doesn’t make any sense for me to try and convince them otherwise.
Which brings me back to this post, which generated some good feedback here and at UTI, and in private correspondence. I’ve thought a lot about this matter over the last several days, and thanks to the discussions I’ve had I’ve come to understand that this, like the above episode, is a matter of principle for me. And the principle is that I cannot force these people to do the right thing – I can only offer my services in a suitable manner, at a fair price, and then let them decide for themselves what the best course of action is for them. It’s not my job to save the world, or even to save the books in this collection from the people who now own them. It is simply my job to do good work when contracted by those who want my services. The rest is on their shoulders.
Jim Downey
…why anyone would even bother wanting to have a book printed any more these days.
Tom Wayne has amassed thousands of books in a warehouse during the 10 years he has run his used book store, Prospero’s Books.
His collection ranges from best sellers, such as Tom Clancy’s “The Hunt for Red October” and Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities,” to obscure titles, like a bound report from the Fourth Pan-American Conference held in Buenos Aires in 1910. But when he wanted to thin out the collection, he found he couldn’t even give away books to libraries or thrift shops; they said they were full.
So on Sunday, Wayne began burning his books in protest of what he sees as society’s diminishing support for the printed word.
“This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today,” Wayne told spectators outside his bookstore as he lit the first batch of books.
From this story. And it’s depressing enough that I don’t think I have anything else to add, except to note that it has now been three full months since I sent off my batch of queries, and have yet to hear back from 5 of the 7 agents I contacted. All of whom stated that they would respond within a month…
Jim Downey
This week I had cause to travel to a nearby city for business, responding to a query I’d received about my conservation services. A small private educational institution had recently acquired a large collection of books of historical interest, and they wanted me to take a look at the collection and give them some kind of estimate on what the costs might involve. This is a fairly typical request, and I’m used to discussing these matters with the appropriate staff and administrators.
However, when I got to the appointed meeting, it quickly became clear that in the mind of the administrators, “conservation care” meant exactly one thing: rebinding all the books to look new. To make the collection all nice and pretty, like one of those fake bookshelf sets in some office or as a movie prop.
Huh? Why on earth would someone want to take books ranging back to about 1500, and turn them into this kind of visual wallpaper? I mean, this sort of thing was done by rich collectors who just wanted to show off their impressive personal libraries in the 17th and 18th centuries, without care for what the books really contained. Why would a learning institution want to do such a thing?
Because, as the Vice President for Institutional Development told me, it’d be easier to get big-money donors to contribute to something that would have a strong visual impact like that. The protection and care – even the USE – of the books themselves was entirely a secondary consideration. In fact, the sort of rebinding they were wanting, if done poorly or with machine efficiency, would damage the bindings of the books and make them less usable. But that wasn’t what was important. The image of all those books in fancy cases was what was important. This, at an accredited school offering advanced graduate degrees.
They hadn’t considered – weren’t even aware that it was an option – the proper care of the books with an eye towards preserving their unique historical value as artifacts reflecting the time they were written and published, or the way those artifacts carried with them a record of their use and care over the centuries. They simply knew that the books were old, and could be just rebound to make them look “more impressive”, and to use that to leverage money out of donors. This is all about image in their minds…the image presented to get donors. Since most people don’t really give a shit about books (sad, but true), how they look on a bookshelf is more important than either functionality or even content.
So I talked with them for some length, opened up the whole new realm for them of actual conservation care. I have three bindings to work on to show them what I mean, and how it would save the historical character of the books. The chief librarian was all for my approach (no surprise there) and was relieved that it was the position I took. And I can get a couple of authorities on curatorial care of Special Collections to back me up, plus plenty of online sources. But I am somewhat skeptical that the necessary comprehension will sink in.
Still, I’ll make a good faith effort to convince them, and save their collection from the horrors of just being turned into a photo prop. We’ll see. I hate to see a real collection of books ruined.
And I hate to think what this says about the larger values of our society.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to Daily Kos.)
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
Communion Of Dreams 