Can we agree by national consensus about just one thing?  That we must follow this up with something even better and more grand?  Say to yourself… aloud… the following words.

“I am a member of a civilization that does stuff like that.”

If that is not a tonic against cynicism, I cannot imagine there being any hope for you, alas.

Take just one glimpse of what Kepler did for us… planets called Kepler-62e and -62f,  are by far the best candidates for habitability of any found so far, and because of their sizes and orbits, the newfound planets are likely either rocky—like Earth—or watery, NASA scientists said. Also see Kepler’s Greatest Hits: Water Worlds, Tatooines and Earth Twins.

== The Barnstorming Era in Space Begins ==

In another posting — and in a fascinating panel discussion for the Reinventors Network with Chris McKay, Geoffrey Landis and others — I  have described how our entry into a new “barnstorming era” will feature an exceptional number of bold private or semi-private ventures in space.  I’ve lately posted and spoken about the Mars proposals… and next week the topic will be starships!

But let’s turn back to the “middle horizon” of the moon — not (I’ll admit) may favorite destination, scientifically or economically.  But still transfixing. Golden Spike is a moon-aimed venture that stands in that intermediate territory, between the hugely ambitious (and iffy) Mars One and Inspiration Mars missions and the far more near-term and already commercially viable SpaceX and Virgin Galactic concepts.  (My favorite, Planetary Resources, also fits in the intermediate zone, aiming for a destination that might make us all rich.)

Golden Spike hopes to create the infrastructure for manned, round-trip jaunts to the Moon’s surface, for less than a billion dollars each. Tallyho you rich dudes.  I totally approve. Amateur space flight is one excellent recycling system for excess-toxic accumulations of lucre, in ways that will eventually lower the costs for everyone else.  (Also illustrated in some vivid scenes from Existence. )

Now: James Fallows at The Atlantic interviewed Eric C. Anderson, a co-founder and chairman of Space Adventures, a company focused on sending people to space. Mining asteroids is seen as a key component to making such travel possible.

Why go?  Well, famed physicist Stephen Hawking says: Mankind must colonize space to survive.

== NASA Corner ==

From my recent service as a member of the Advisory Board for NIAC (NASA Innovative and Advanced Concepts) group: A supersonic, bidirectional flying wing idea comes from a team headed by GeCheng Zha, an aerospace engineer at Florida State University. In this revolutionary (and kind of unnerving) concept, a midair transformation allows the aircraft to fly in its most fuel-efficient modes at both subsonic and supersonic speeds. Jet engines atop the aircraft would stay aimed in the travel direction. But after takeoff and subsonic cruise, the aircraft would then rotate under the engines to present its narrow cross section forward, allowing rapid and smooth acceleration to supersonic flight. A real brain twister, but intriguing!

NIAC liked the idea enough to give Zha and his colleagues a $100,000 grant (and I offered some friendly advice.) But the U.S. space agency does not expect such funded concepts to test fly for at least another 20 years or so.

Here’s another. See this NASA Animation: Asteroid Retrieval & Utilization Mission aims to robotically capture a small near-Earth asteroid and direct it into a stable lunar orbit where astronauts can explore it.  An excellent concept with just the right combination of plausibility and ambitious reach, that’s also very compatible with the notions of Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries.  An excellent mid-future goal, with some potential for unleashing a cornucopia.

Alternatively, will we mine the moon?

Meanwhile, NASA’s still in the game of developing great big boosters. The agency’s new Space Launch System is on track for a 2017 launch of a Mars bound rocket.

More than skin deep….NASA’s Mars Icebreaker Mission would drill about a meter below the icy surface of the northern plains of Mars, looking for organic biomarkers as evidence of life on the red planet. The mission would likely launch in 2018.

Some news for you open source nerds! NASA has switched to using Debian 6 Linux for the 80 working laptops and LAN network aboad the International Space Station (ISS.)

The guts of NASA’s newest cubesat test satellite?  A Nexus Android phone. Phone-sat will see how little more is needed to operate in space, take Earth pix and self-diagnose before burning up. Get familiar with Cube-Sats. They are how “barnstorming” can happen at the low-cheap end, where universities, small companies and even passionate clubs may get to try something out. If combined with cheap, easily deployed solar sails (coming at last) we could see much of the solar system opened up for the Age of Amateurs.

Aw heck, you’ve already seen Space Oddity, but in case you’ve been hiding in a closet, here’s the viral video from Commander Chris Hadfield recorded aboard the ISS — this singing astronaut gives a terrific weightless version of David Bowie. Zowee!

==  More Space Miscellany ==

The age determination of a deep-drill core from the Pacific Ocean showed that the supernova explosion must have occurred about 2.2 million years ago, roughly around the time when the modern human developed. Isotopic inspection of bacterial fossils containing tiny crystals of magnetite (Fe3O4) show some iron isotopes that would have decayed by now if not caused by a very recent supernova. We know lots more about the (pre-Noah) past than some folks allow into their philosophy, alas.  In this case, it makes you envision our australopithecine forebears staring up, in wonder.  And changing.

Cool..Dramatic look at earth’s past! Bolides — An interactive animation showing every eye-witnessed meteorite impact thru Earth’s history — 1,107 eye-witnessed meteorites as of 2013.

Are we at a turning point in space exploration? See Neil deGrasse Tyson’s latest book: Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. No one can say it better than Tyson — who argues that we must regain our curiosity and enthusiasm for what lies beyond.

And now, from the sublime to the ridiculous? Alien? Subhuman primate? Deformed child? Mummified fetus? The Internet is buzzing over the nature of “Ata,” a bizarre 6-inch-long skeleton featured in a new documentary on UFOs. “A Stanford University scientist who boldly entered the fray has now put to rest doubts about what species Ata belongs to.”  The “news” is that Ata’s DNA is human.  Okay, no aliens.  Phew. But why no provenance, peer-reviewed articles, outside validations or systematic investigations? I have to tell you, something smells fishy.  I keep a “sci fi corner” of my mind ready, always, for something fantastic to come into our world.  But 99% of the time, I am rewarded by my scientific side riding herd on wild enthusiasms.

There is a reason that science mostly works.  It incorporates skepticism… or it ain’t science. Fiction is great. It’s important.  But it is fiction.

I’ll be on the show “STAR TREK: SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE” on Wednesday at 10pm PT on the History Channel.  A fun romp through the range of speculative sci & tech that help propel the fabulous Trek franchise to realms of vast imagining and hopeful possibility.

Then — May 21 and 22 — the “Starship Century Symposium” at the new Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UCSD will be devoted to an ongoing exploration of the development of a real starship in the next 100 years. You can watch live streaming of the event – speakers include Freeman Dyson, Paul Davies, Robert Zubrin, Neal Stephenson, Joe Haldeman, Larry Niven, Gregory Benford and David Brin.

And rounding out a busy month:  Where are we heading next in space? Register to attend the Global Collaboration in 21st century Space Conference — or International Space Development Conference — May 23 to 27 in San Diego. Speakers include: Buzz Aldrin, Mae Jemison, Robert Zubrin, Vernor Vinge, David Brin, Chris Lewicki, Natasha Vita-More….   Just after UCSD’s Starship Century Symposium earlier in the week.

== Existence is on the ballot ==

Existence is on the short list for the John W. Campbell Award for best science fiction novel of 2012.  Have a look at the competition!

It was – in fact – an exceptionally fine year, with excellent works by Iain Banks, Kim Stanley Robinson, Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross, M. John Harrison, Ken MacLeod, China Miéville, Hannu Rajaniemi, G. Willow Wilson, Terry Bisson, Alastair Reynolds, Adam Roberts and John Varley.  Wow. The field is alive… alive!

== Is there hope for the future? ==

I’ve reported before about the group in Oxford studying Existential Risk of human extinction… cheery blokes.  Here is another interesting article about them.  Of course the Lifeboat Foundation (I am a fellow) discusses many of the same things… a myriad potential threats to our… existence. Alas, for too many citizens and authors, doom scenarios are not interesting topics for exploration and prevention, but rather opportunities for endless, voluptuous relish and hand-rubbing over our inevitable human failure.

There is push back!  Neal Stephenson has joined Kim Stanley Robinson, Greg Bear, Vernor Vinge, Catherine Asaro and me — along with several others — in urging the renewal of a science fiction that talks about hope. (While of course(!) delivering great action, peril and adventure.) Read about Neal’s positive-thinking and uplifting Project Hieroglyph …

…and my own reasons why readers and viewers should turn away the sheer laziness of those who cannot think of any way to propel a lively plot, except by calling humanity and civilization worthless.

Some people are active trying to chart a path forward.  The best thought experiments are (of course) in top science fiction!  But occasional nonfiction has a stab at it.  Arising out of our discussions at the Lifeboat Foundation, there is a new book about the future that may be worth discussion.  The Human Race to the Future: What Could Happen – and What to Do, by Daniel Berleant. Who doesn’t wonder about the future… what things will be like some day, how long it might take, and what we can do about it?  I’d welcome comments and reviews from some of you, and do comment also on Amazon.

== Our SFnal World! ==

Our sci fi future may be visible in Korea, where all of the Miss Korea finalists appear to be converging on the same face… almost literally.

Dark Eden, the story of an alien planet where the incestuous offspring of two stranded astronauts struggle to survive, has won the UK’s top science fiction prize, the Arthur C Clarke award. Author Chris Beckett, a part-time lecturer in social work, beat some of science fiction’s best-known writers, including Kim Stanley Robinson and Ken MacLeod, to take the prize.

Why would aliens come all this way just to invade earth? Charlie Jane Anders explores some of the parameters on ion (io9).

Cracked.com links you to  “5 Badass New (mini) Sci-Fi Movies You Can Watch on Your Lunch Break.” The tech is moving along and there are fine artistic sensibilities in this vividly visual small flicks.  Alas, there are so many stories that could be told with these methods.  Cool and ORIGINAL short stories instead of old, old, old tropes, but these fellows apparently consider that to be their very last priority.  Still. They are visually stunning and worth a watch.

While we’re exploring sci-fi ish shorts… This is an amazing music video! A live-action film of a first person shooter game. Nicole says: “Actually, this is just a regular day in Bad-Ass Russia!”

As if the homogenization of Hollywood scripts hasn’t already gone too far, now there are services that computer-scan scripts to make them conform to what has statistically made money from audiences in the past. Well, it is a useful service, one supposes. Moreover, there’s my charismatic and talented niece, right there in the cover photo.

== Brin in media ==

Two panels from the latest LosCon that I participated in have been uploaded. One with David Gerrold and others, on “A Quiet Place to Write,” plus one with Vernor Vinge, Phil Osborn and Mitch Wagner on “The Technological Singularity.”

Tam Hunt did a well-organized and cogently-done interview with me in The Santa Barbara Independent.

James Moushon interviewed me about how a novelist uses social media, book trailers, etc and how I allocate time, in a well-put-together profile and interview : HBS Author’s Spotlight.

==  More Space and Sci Fi -related news ==

Europa Report.  A sci fi film for grownups? Is this for real?

Old Spock vs new Spock in a cute commercial.

Amazing elevators from around the world.

A terrific (if incomplete) flowchart of time travel in movies.

== A sub-continent awakens to SF ==

India will be important to the world and Science Fiction will be important to any forward looking civilization, especially in fast-rising India.  Here are some links provided by the fine SF writer Professor Vandana Singh that may enlighten folks about that rise… And news of a new Indian SF magazine, recently launched.

== More serious ==

Proposed legislation for compulsory science fiction in West Virginia schools?

Republican state delegate Ray Canterbury says this move would inspire pupils to use practical knowledge and imagination in the real world.  An article in the Guardian probed this possible education reform, spiced with commentary by legendary sci fi author and educator James Gunn… and by yours truly.  A fascinating move that could help reverse our current slide toward timid thinking.

“As long ago as Future Shock, author and visionary Alvin Toffler called for exposing young people to science fiction as ‘a sovereign prophylactic’ against ‘the premature arrival of the future’. Today in an even more rapidly changing world, it is even more important for Toffler’s purpose but also for “making the kinds of informed decisions about present issues that will lead to better futures,” said Gunn, who is founder of the Centre for the Study of Science Fiction at Kansas University.

Contrast this with recent proposals and measures in the outrageously and dogmatically anti-science House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology.  This truly is a war — though not between all democrats and all republicans (note that W. VA delegate Canterbury is Republican).  Rather, it is a battle for survival between future-oriented and curiosity-drive progress…and a bitter habit of hateful nostalgia. A vile habit that certainly does fester on the far leftQ Almost as destructively as it spews damage from Fox-central.

Heck, while we’re being serious, here are some unique takes on the philosophical aspects of my novel Existence, from the Center for Human Consciousness.

Oh but let’s end with a swing toward joy.  Jerry Goldsmith’s Sci Fi and Horror Music.  Need I say more?

Newer X Prizes – stimulated especially by Peter Diamandis of the X Prize Foundation – include Qualcomm’s contest to develop a medical tricorder and Google’s prize for the first private group to land an autonomous mobile probe on the moon, as well as Nokia’s Medical Sensing prize.

One major advantage of the prize approach is that the funder does not have to pay anything till the mission is accomplished. The allure of a possible prize… plus potential renown, of course… is often enough to make private groups, companies, teams or individuals willing to take passionate risks, investing their own time and money — a style of bold endeavor that did very well by our ancestors, during the Age of Exploration and the later barnstorming era of air flight development.  Many fail, some spectacularly… a few succeed. And we all move forward.

So let’s crowd-source this. Do any of you have ideas for endeavors or goals that would be perfect for an X Prize? It should require modest to intermediate cost, with substantial potential rewards… but with risky odds of success that are not quite good enough to draw in the normal market forces of rational investment. And cool!  It should be cool enough to attract some millionaire/billionaire — and/or NASA or the White House (I know a guy) — to propose it as a Grand Challenge.  Or else, speak up with challenges that you’ve seen and found impressive.

== Mars One: why did I volunteer? ==

I  believe that a one way Mars mission is a viable-enough idea for some people to consider it, even knowing, as I do, that “one-way” has several possible connotations.

On the surface, the claim is that eliminating the huge cost of the return flight will allow instead the establishment of full, self-regenerating and sustainable life-support systems on the Martian surface, allowing the new “colonists” to live out a normal span in some comfort. You’ll strive hard upon arriving, unfold and deploy solar powered units that can produce food and other necessities, and voila, become the first human citizen of the Red Planet.  ”One way” then means you’re happy to spend the rest of a reasonable lifespan exploring, maintaining the colony, and then greeting the next wave. There is a basic reality to this, knowing that all that time at low gravity has probably left you unfit for life on high-g Earth, in any event.

But, of course, this mission would have very low margins for error or the unexpected. Even if the sustainability modules work perfectly, the odds are still strong that “one-way” will also mean “short duration.” In which case your hard work won’t be wasted. It will have set the stage for followup missions which will use your base, build on and improve it… after they bury you. And future generations will erect a monument on that spot.

You’ll want very qualified people, who can have a decent stab at setting up the life support technologies and perhaps (despite long odds) surviving to greet the second wave. But the first wave volunteers must be realistic about those odds, and willing to go, anyway.

And many call that very idea insane. I admit that may be somewhat true… so? People who cannot imagine any reasonable person making that choice simply aren’t envisioning the wide range of human diversity. Nor do they comprehend the vast drama of the human past, during which history often pivoted around risk-takers.

Consider what I told my family. By the very earliest date that Mars One might launch, I expect to be a spry 75 year old, whose kids are already successfully launched, and who might yet spend a few years doing something truly remarkable.  I think you’ll find tens of thousands of people who – under those circumstances – will at least ponder it seriously.

Though I still cannot guarantee I would decide to actually go.  I’d need to see competence.  Lots of it.  And I still prefer Dennis Tito’s Mars Inspiration mission!

Oh, neither one is likely to fly. We’ll go, however, sooner or later.

And this conversation is well worth having.

== Science Potpourri == 

A TV network has posted an edited snippet I gave them. Getting a bit lyrical and big-picture, I describe how we are in a race to cross a dangerous zone…into the future.

The world’s smallest flying robot has fly-like agility – stunning size and flexibility breakthrough in use of piezo-electric materials.  So far, it draws its power and computation down hairlike cable.  But we will live in the world described in The Transparent Society  (1997) – one in which “insects” will fly into any building capable of spying.  What is to be done?If we’re going to be watched, then let’s watch the watchers.  We may not be able to stop elites from looking at us.  But at least, that way, we can have a say in what they do TO us.

NASA is raising awareness for its upcoming launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft with its Going to Mars Project. The MAVEN spacecraft is scheduled for launch this November, to study the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere; and mission managers have invited the public to submit literary messages.  Haiku to Mars! 

NASA’s Landsat imagery goes back to the 1970s. A partnership with Google has merged this  time-lapse data into Earth Engine, a cloud-based system that makes all of these images available and comparable. A spectacular tool now available to private groups and individuals, or anyone wanting a direct view of changes over time that we have wrought upon our planet.

Read a very thoughtful essay by the Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, about our human destiny in space, colonizing the solar system and exploring the stars.

Asterank has collected, computed, or inferred important data such as asteroid mass and composition from multiple scientific sources. With this information, they can estimate the costs and rewards of mining asteroids. Vivid and colorful (try the 3D version), it offers details on orbits and basic physical parameters are mostly sourced from JPL data.

Check out StarHopper, an intuitive app, similar to PlanetHopper that allows you to visually explore our universe. Soar through the star-filled void towards stars, asteroids, planets and all that our galaxy has to offer.

What does SETI stand for? What is its mission? A video I made for AskimoTV.

A quantum internet capable of sending perfectly secure messages has been running at Los Alamos National Labs for the last two and a half years.  The attraction? Any attempt to eavesdrop on a quantum message cannot fail to leave telltale signs of snooping.  Quantum-secure encryption has been around a while but only point-to-point.  A distributed system is more difficult.

In a major medical breakthrough, researchers have developed particles that can be injected into a bloodstream to keep it oxygenated even when the lungs are not functioning at all and there is no access to a heart-lung machine. The micro-particles used are composed of oxygen gas pocketed in a layer of lipids, around two to four micrometers in length and carry about three to four times the oxygen content of our own red blood cells. Beyond medical uses, imagine spies or seal who can “stay underwater for over 20 minutes? If a boat was to begin to sink, you could shoot yourself as the boat is going down to ensure you aren’t drowned in the under current of the sinking vessel.”

What do the “H” and “N” labels mean, in the designation of a flu virus? They stand for various versions of the coating molecules that the virus uses to latch onto and invade cells.  There are 144 possible combinations of coats, and this article explains that well.  What it doesn’t make clear is that there are other surface molecules that our bodies must also recognize, in order for immunity (or vaccination) to work.  Moreover, that says nothing about the core genetics of the virus, allowing it to hijack a cell once it is inside. This constitutes a whole other range of genealogies and one version of H1N1 may have a very different background than another.  Here’s to the professionals, at the front lines of this fight.

==Science and the Enlightenment==

This nostrum is circulating, of unknown provenance but based upon an earlier snark by H. L. Mencken

      Philosophy is like looking for a black cat in a dark room.

     Metaphysics is like looking in a dark room  for a black cat that isn’t there.

     Theology is looking in a dark room for a black cat that isn’t there – and proclaiming, “I found it!”

     Science is like looking for a black cat in a dark room…with a flashlight. 

Is that why so many hate science? Is the amorphous movement called “the Enlightenment” in its final days?  Assailed by forces of far left and right, by impulsiveness and and romanticism and egotism and also by portions of religion, by all of those who demand that their subjective obsessions take primacy over objective reality? Here is an interesting article, The Trouble with the Enlightenment about the philosophical history – and future prospects – of “enlightenment” terminology and the ambitiously modernist project that it represents.

Alas, the author neglects one of the crucial aspects: that the continental branch of enlightenment philosophers got drawn into styles of Reason that began replicating the mistakes of Plato. Only the pragmatic/empirical/ progressive offshoot – across the water – developed new tools to overcome our human propensity for delusion and self-persuasion.  Tools that are – in themselves – the targets of attack by those who want the Enlightenment to end.  Worth a look.

== And then More science ==

Energy efficiency is often a hard sell in the US. Energy efficient devices can require a bit more money up front, which is then paid back gradually often over the course of several years. But a new study in the latest edition of PNAS suggests that the problem isn’t only a matter of economics—instead, like so much else, energy efficiency has become politicized. Because they so strongly object to the thought of climate change, many conservatives won’t spend more for energy-efficient light bulbs if their packaging contains a message about cutting carbon emissions.  ”Conservatism” has so drifted from its roots in “waste-not” attitudes of the Puritans or the money-saving notions of Barry Goldwater, that (the study shows) the very words “efficiency” and energy independence and even saving money on energy rouse active hostility in those on today’s American right. Alas.

And while I’m offending 1/4 of my readers… why are so many climate change deniers also into conspiracy theories  and laissez faire (not AdamSmithian) economics?

== Final Notes ==

Security expert Bruce Schneier appears to be coming around to recognizing what matters most. Transparency and Accountability Don’t Hurt Security—They’re Crucial to It.

I am glad to see Bruce zeroing in on the key terms “transparency” and “accountability.”  These are the core goals that coalesce in “sousveillance” or looking back at authority from below.  We just won a major victory, when both the courts and Obama Administration ruled that citizens have a powerful right to record our encounters with police in public places.

I’m glad Bruce has come to see that assertive application of reciprocal accountability needs to be our main focus.

A bipartisan bill would create a new scientific figurehead: the Science Laureate of the United States. It sounds nice, innocuous, harmless. But let’s not fool ourselves into imagining this portends a shift away from the War on Science… and against all of the “smartypants” castes, from teachers and scientists to medical doctors, economists, journalists, professors, civil servants, law professionals. Don’t count Rupert Murdoch out, yet. He seems awfully determined. (And there is a smaller but just as vehemently anti-science crowd among nostalgia junkies of the far left, as well.)

Face it, folks. This is not about that stupid, lobotomizing “left versus right” metaphor. It is folks who are rational and contingently reasonable versus outright crazy. It is future versus past.

Hm, well, that’s right in the general gist, though wrong in the specifics. What Scott is fumbling around — and that I made explicit in The Transparent Society (1997) — is that universal and pervasive surveillance can take us in either of two directions.  One is toward Big Brother, if elites monopolize the omniscience and can surveil in secret, without accountability or supervision.  In that case, you get what Vernor Vinge called “ubiquitous law enforcement.” And if the cops can’t arrest everyone?  Then they’ll cherry-pick and arrest those whom they don’t like.  In the specifics, Adams is dead wrong.

But Adams is floundering in the right direction when he holds “that a lack of privacy would lead to fewer activities being against the law. The only reason law enforcement can afford to act against drug users, or prostitution, or gambling, for example, is because only 1% of those crimes are detectable. If police could magically know every time someone violated a drug or prostitution law, the volume would be so high they would end up ignoring the entire class of crimes for purely practical reasons. And that’s where we’re heading.”

Still wrong! But almost there. What is missing from his vision is… citizenship. Let us assume that we remain sovereign voters and citizens, not just legally but empowered by omniscience of our own. By “sousveillance” — the ability and fierce determination to look BACK at the mighty – of government, oligarchy, corporatcy, criminality – in effect, watching the watchmen. (I portray this in my novels, EARTH and  EXISTENCE and it is very likely. ) Suppose we get used to applying reciprocal accountability and even inserting cameras of our own – or at least trusted witnesses – even in the authorities’ surveillance chambers and control rooms. In that case:

1) Cherry-picking and other abuses will be caught and deterred.

2) We will argue, debate, deliberate and change some of the laws ourselves.  Some will be abandoned, as Scott Adams describes, only by our choice, not because of some cop-laziness.

For example, if you are caught every single time you break the speed limit, and if the fine every time is $400, then you will join millions of your neighbors demanding that the system of fines be changed!  You currently pay $400 because the law assumes it is missing 99% of the speeders.  If it catches 100% of them, then rational people will negotiate a shift to a tariff system, where you pay by the mile… and by the mph… each time you hurry above the limit, but are not putting folks at risk. Deterrence that’s reasonable and flexible. Um…. duh?

Here is what I find depressing. People just don’t get this! Not even smart, out-of-the-box thinkers like Scott Adams. They seldom look at the society of citizens around them and see it! We never notice that 99% of the stuff… even the rules… around us is working! (Just stand at a 4-way stop sign intersection and watch a miracle at work.) Sure, complain about the wretched 1% that isn’t!  I got a list of complaints that rolls out the door. But this tendency to only notice what’s wrong seriously undermines our belief that we can fix things.

No wonder negotiation has broken down, in this era of dismal culture war.  We all assume the worst. We never ponder… is there a solution that we could negotiate, among ourselves, so that these trends won’t rob our freedom, but enhance it?

== The matter at mean ==

The best and smartest of the topical web comics is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC), by Zach Weiner. A recent strip illustrates the psychological state that drives elites — even well-meaning ones — to proclaim a need for asymmetric information flows… to know everything about us while letting us know very little about what they are doing.  In fairness, such asymmetries can be necessary at a tactical level. But you can count on the rationalizations always getting pushed beyond sense, extending secrecy as a convenience, as job security, and an expression of self-importance — a tendency that winds up endangering citizenship and freedom.

(Another dollop of transparency wisdom from SMBC.)

We shouldn’t get angry about this fundamental trait of human nature — it is likely what you or I would do, to some degree, if we found ourselves in a position of power. But human nature is a challenge, a foundation we had no part in shaping, a hand we are dealt that can and must be improved. When it comes to surveillance by those with power we simply have to keep up a steady counter pressure, to find innovative methods for applying transparency upward (sousveillance). Watching the watchers, in ways that do not prevent them from doing their legitimate jobs.  It turns out there are such methods, just waiting for a concerted effort on our parts. Here is one example: Free the Inspectors General.

Oh, lest this focus solely on government, note that the same psychological drive affects elites of all kinds, from finance to business to social or international or criminal. Only (a slim majority of) scientists regularly practice transparency as a schooled habit. We are all human. But we must stop this old habit from destroying us. We can’t afford to indulge it anymore.

== Skynet now has lasers ==

Our friends the HST (High Speed Trading) or HFT (High Frequency Trading) algorithms are at it again. A single hacked/prank tweet on the Associated Press (AP) account, declaring that the White House had been bombed and Obama injured, sent the market into an instant freefall for three minutes, far too quickly for human traders to have been involved. “That goes to show you how algorithms read headlines and create these automatic orders – you don’t even have time to react as a human being.” See also: Skynet and the Flash Computer Trading Monster.

As if we didn’t already have enough reasons to dread this particular path to artificial intelligence (AI) now they are planning to equip Skynet… I mean Goldman Sachs HST systems… with lasers! Laser beam technology originally developed for the military is being rolled out to shave time off trades. It will compete with new microwave networks that are increasingly being used by traders. Ah, humans.  Marx was right about capitalists, they will sell the new overlords the rope used to hang us all.

== Transparency-related Miscellany ==

I consulted with Qualcomm about this, amid my decades long campaign to change the design of our cell phone system, so that it will continue to be useful when we’ll need it most, when some disaster (local or national or global) brings down the cell towers!  Implementing one of these resilience concepts, Qualcomm hopes to boost mobile coverage with a cell phone service that uses small cellular base stations installed in homes to serve passing smartphone users.

And along similar lines, adding to our potential resilience… Ushahidi aims to build the world’s most simple, reliable, and rugged Internet connection device, but with sophisticated cloud-based features. Its BRCK hub is rugged and can connect 20 devices  with any network in the world, providing eight hours of wireless connectivity battery life

- Smart dust computers, no bigger than a snowflake, will scavenge power from their surroundings, and monitor your world. Clearly a huge predictive hit for my friend Vernor Vinge in his novel — A Deepness in the Sky — which explores the possibilities.  Big potential upsides await… or else downsides far worse than Orwell. Raging against such things won’t stop them from being abused.  Embracing them just might.

- Hitachi Develops World’s Smallest RFID Chip.  Nicknamed “Powder” or “Dust”, the surface area of the new chip is a quarter of the original 0.3 x 0.3 mm, 60µm-thick chip developed by Hitachi in 2003. And this RFID chip is only one-eighth the width of the previous model.  Already the hand-wringing has begun… while clueless over  how to deal with such a world.  Clue: moaning about this won’t stop it.  Elites will have it. We have one option.  Give it to us all and ensure the elites are watched with this stuff.

- How easy is it to scam the Internet with a fake persona? “Santiago Swallow” skyrocketed from a nonexistent made-up name to a Kred social influence score of 754 out of 1000, within days of being “born” online… midwifed by British technology expert Kevin Ashton (who coined the term “Internet of Things.”)  For example: It didn’t take long for Mr Ashton to purchase Swallow some 90,000 followers, all for the price of $50. An automated tweeting service was used to broadcast his thoughts to the world. Image manipulation software created Swallow’s look and Mr Ashton finished his experiment by writing a fake Wikipedia entry and setting up Swallow’s own website through WordPress.

In fact, there are business opportunities for a pseudonymity-reputation conveyance service that would be an instant hit, allowing tools to overcome scams like this. Alas, the general response is hand-wringing and “what’cha gonna do?”

== Past, present and future shock ==

In his book “Present Shock: When Everything Happens NOW,” Douglass Rushkoff contends we must get used to the the world arising out of Alvin Toffler’s prophetically accurate “Future Shock“… a coming era when everything is happening all at once and the present becomes a cacophony of unbearable complexity. One in which the nostalgic reactions of left and right differ — the Occupy Movement seeks an endless present of confrontation while the right wallows in apocalyptic dreams of an ending that would relieve one of having to think about complexity. And yet, both of these bickering twins express a common, underlying personality trait: anomie toward the future.

Borrowing from some of the best web-philosophers, Rushkoff calls digiphrenia – digitally provoked mental chaos.  One of many overlaps in his book with near-future problems that I portray in Existence. Such as how corporate investing in new goods or services has been replaced by relentless — and ultimately futile — efforts to game the markets in real time, betraying the confident foresight that is supposed to lie at the root of capitalism. The motivator (in that case) appears to be less greed than a pervasive unwillingness to grapple with the gyrations of a rapidly shifting target called the near future.

Rushkoff is a savvy writer and perceptive in his attempt at a big picture.  Alas, temporal chauvinism happens to the best of us and the tendency in “Present Shock” is to fall for the very thing he describes happening to others.  Assuming that the present is the only topic here – the only subject worthy of myopic focus.  In fact, history teaches a sobering lesson – that every major new communication medium triggered disruption alienation and pain, before eventually becoming a net force for good.

Movable type, glass lenses, radio, loudspeakers, mass media. Each time this happened, some — like the Luddites of 18th Century Britain — would cry fore-tellings of gloom: that commonfolk would be overloaded, their ability to process overwhelmed, or that people would drift aimlessly without the anchor of tradition. Meanwhile others — from Giordano Bruno to Benjamin Franklin to Teilhard de Chardin — proclaimed ecstatic joy over the prospect of expanding human powers, predicting that the process might culminate in almost godlike omniscience. Every time, the grouches proved right in the short term and wrong over the long run.

Today’s Internet and media-blasted world shows every sign of passing through a similar era of confusion. A confusion well-documented in Present Shock – though alas, without as big or deep or wide or as calming a perspective as Douglas Rushkoff claims that he is offering. That is no indictment. It is all right to be a meta-example of the very thing that you are describing. And he describes it all very well.

== More Transparency Miscellany ==

- A cool and informative Scientific American article about Google Glass… and my sci fi augmented reality “specs” in Existence… and other takes on how we’ll move through a world of many layers and textures.

- An almost completely plastic pistol, made in a 3D printer. It’s heeeeere.  What a world.

- Fortunately, personal firearms will be nowhere near as important in the future as universal access to vision and knowledge. Citizen victories in the Age of Cameras can be among the most important in our time. Recent court decisions in the U.S. have supported a citizen’s right to film and record police activity in public places and the Obama Administration has declared this right to be “settled law.”  No matter could be more important than preserving the one recourse any person must retain, when dealing with authority… our ability to appeal to the truth.

- Now see how the same fight is being waged in Britain by a brave young woman — Gemma Atkinson — whose animated story is brilliant and informative.  Again, most of the time, most police are our good and faithful servants.  But the only conceivable way to keep them that way, is by getting them used to being supervised by their employers.  By us.

- Supreme Court says states may bar Freedom of Information requests from non-residents. Resist.

- An interesting rumination on Yelp! and other crowd-sourced “critic and review” systems… the advantages… and many many disadvantages that must be overcome, before this promising method can truly displace the appraisal of professionals and experts.

== Saving provocative politics for last ==

So you think I am always coming down on conservatism?  (That is, the current-loony Fox-led version; I admired  the intellectual honesty of Barry Goldwater and I tell everyone – left or right – to read Adam Smith;  but neither Goldwater nor Smith nor William F. Buckley would recognize today’s mutant right.)

Well surprise-surprise… I am fully aware of sins of the left, as well!   And I will now  swivel to aim in that direction.

First, bear in mind that moderate liberals are a much larger population than actual leftists, and that liberals do not partake in many of the traits of their more dogmatic allies, nor do they believe almost anything that Sean Hannity claims that they do.  Nevertheless, there truly is a fringe and there are ways in which the far left wing behaves much like fanatics of the far right.

For example, both extremes demand tests of purity and the recitation of rigid, in-group defining doctrines. Neither wing is even remotely interested in applying the genius of pragmatic compromise. At times, the left’s political correctness can seem as brutally intolerant as the know-nothing religiosity we see gushing from the opposite extreme.

One very smart social psychologist who lays out the case in ways that should make left-of-center intellectuals squirm is Jonathan Haidt. If you are one of those intellectuals, and are honest, you’ll give him a look and listen: The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology. (Or see his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are divided by Politics and Religion). And perhaps even adapt. Please. We can only afford one half of the American polity going psycho at a time.

And continuing my swivel to cast a wary eye in all directions: a war on whistle blowers? It is much more complicated than this, and there have been other measures that enhanced whistle blowing incentives, of late. Still we need to keep paying attention.

And… the U.S. gives big push to internet surveillance: Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws.  I see such things as inevitable.  What I demand (and you should) is that we get something in return.  Ever increasing powers of supervision.

There. See?  I am wary in every direction. Remain suspicious! Especially if you have a “side” that you feel is better than its opposition.  It may only be better in 90% of the ways…

…and that 10% could become lethal. Unless we make sure that even our “friendly” elites know.  That we are watching them.

For more on Transparency and our future…

The “High Quality Research Act,” sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), would strip the peer-review requirement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant process, inserting a new set of funding criteria that is significantly less transparent. Smith, sponsor of the highly controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that would expand U.S. oversight over copyrighted intellectual property on the internet, published an editorial in Roll Call describing how his vision of science funding is based not upon the impacts new research may have on the scientific community, but whether that research will “create jobs.” He went on to boast about how much of the House science committee’s $39 billion in agency budgets gets dumped onto nuclear, fracking and “clean coal” projects. Smith has no background in science.  But then, neither do any of the members of the majority party on the House Science Committee.

Deepak Chopra weighs in upon the firestorm over whether TED, the organization that stages wildly popular international Chautauqua lectures, was right to ban from its site talks by psudo-science promoters and “alternative medicine” hucksters.  From my language, you can tell that my sentiment runs against the tide — the tsunami — of howls crying out “repression of free enquiry!”  A storm that Dr. Chopra joins.

But no, I won’t.  As author of The Transparent Society, I am hugely in favor of openness, transparency and reciprocal accountability.  But the aim of having a wide-open civilization is not – as some would have you believe – that all opinions are equal.  It is that true Reciprocal Accountability is the way that pearls rise out of manure piles.  It is how we figure out which revolutionary or impudent ideas merit further attention and which sink into the simmer of crap, of which Ted Sturgeon called “90% of everything.”TED has proved itself to be a marvelous center of entertainment, ideas and discussion.  It should be wide open to concepts that have at least some, tentative balance of evidence in their favor and demonstrably repeatable phenomena to convey.  But we do our fellow citizens, many of whom have proved stupendously gullible (e.g. vaccination panic and climate denialism) no favors when we have ZERO pre-vetting according to the scientific standards that have served our civilization so well.

1) Sensible Tax Reform?

It appears that Republicans in the U.S. Congress are veering away from the (politically) dangerous ground of entitlement reform, even though President Obama has put on the table an offer to let them have something they long demanded — a reduction in the inflation adjustment for Social Security and Medicare, plus possible even the Bowles-Simpson age-adjustments.  It seems that (as happened with Obama Care) the GOP finds nothing more loathsome than when the opposition says, “Okay, we’ll do it your way. So let’s make a deal.”

Instead, reports suggest that the GOP leadership in the House is leaning toward attempting Tax Reform, with the aim of eliminating almost all deductions, in exchange for a dramatic lowering of tax rates.  Read up on this, because it will raise a firestorm!  And the attempt will run into the same forces that stymied tax simplification for 60 years… a coalition of powerful interests who — though hating each other — will join forces to protect their sacred cows.

As it turns out, I have long suggested an extremely simple approach that would avoid this pitfall, by simplifying first and then  dealing with political matters second.  It sounds impossible, but it is actually rather straightforward, if only we tried the method called “No Losers Simplification.“

Easy, logical and blatantly sensible… and do-able because it has a trick to keep everyone calm from the git-go. So, what d’you think are the chances?

Oh, a final note on U.S. taxes. How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing. Intuit has spent millions lobbying to keep tax season miserable.

See: Part of the “Fiscal Cliff” Solution: The Best Tax Simplification Proposal.

2) Are things getting better?

Optimism is so out of fashion these days, on both the left and the right, that  – ironically -  a guarded optimism has become the natural state for any genuine contrarian. I could try to ignore that reflex and stay true to my natural dour cynicism.  But facts are lining up with those who see light at the end of the tunnel. For example, I often cite Professor Steven Pinker’s proof (The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined) that on average, per capita levels of violence have declined steeply (if unevenly) around the world every decade since 1945.

Now Oxford University has released  a study that breaks down human well-being into a ten-factor “Multidimensional Poverty Index” that encompasses nutrition, school attendance, access to clean water and electricity and so on. While there are many laggard zones of misery (e.g. Ethiopia and Malawi), there are also zones where recent good news has been  very strong. For example, if the study’s ‘star’ countries, Nepal, Rwanda, and Bangladesh, continue to reduce poverty at the current rate, they will halve MPI in less than 10 years and eradicate it in 20. These leaders are followed by Ghana, Tanzania, Cambodia and Bolivia.

In truth, I have my doubts in some ways.  There is a certain level of “take-off” development that is fairly easy to get rolling when dynamic people are allowed to strive effectively for their families under honest government that  blends top-down investment, infrastructure and care with a looseness that encourages enterprise, under predictable and reliable law. Hernando de Soto’s reforms in Peru showed that a mix of liberal and libertarian measures can have stunning positive effects that neither could achieve alone.  (Defying simplistic fools who demand we choose only one wing of the lobotomizing “left-right axis.”)

Still, there are many pitfalls, like endemic corruption, plus the fact that every phase presents new problems, as China is finding out. As we found out.

But that’s just me, trying hard to remain cynical… and yet forced — as I was while writing Existence — to conclude that we are a bright species.  And our natural condition is a brilliant insanity called hope.

3) The New Great Divide

Oh, but then I turn and see trends that threaten to wreck it all!  Like the ongoing train-wreck demolition of the egalitarian “American Dream.”

Wealth disparity in the US hit its lowest levels during the generation after Franklin Roosevelt, with the booming of a healthy middle class and the flattest society ever seen (when it came to matters like social class)… all of it during the healthiest market entrepreneurial economy in history, amid unmatched economic growth that lifted nearly all boats and enabled us to finance bold new projects like space, science and civil rights.

Alas, since 1980 we have seen a trend back toward the steeply pyramidal social structure that dominated in 99% of societies that had agriculture and metals. Now the trend is accelerating. It took off since 2001 and continued in the first two years of recovery.

From Pew Research: A Rise in Wealth for the Wealthy, Declines for the Lowest 93%:

“From 2009 to 2011, the mean wealth of the 8 million households in the more affluent group rose to an estimated $3,173,895 from an estimated $2,476,244, while the mean wealth of the 111 million households in the less affluent group fell to an estimated $133,817 from an estimated $139,896.

“The upper 7% of households saw their aggregate share of the nation’s overall household wealth pie rise to 63% in 2011, up from 56% in 2009. On an individual household basis, the mean wealth of households in this more affluent group was almost 24 times that of those in the less affluent group in 2011. At the start of the recovery in 2009, that ratio had been less than 18-to-1.”

Which raises a pertinent question to ask our conservative friends. Is there ANY wealth disparity that would cause some of you to admit that “Class Warfare” has historically been waged top-down, and that pattern always tries to return? Our parents’ generation knew the answer. President Obama spoke of his love for his Kansas grandparents who both served in World War II and who pretty much raised him.  The “Greatest Generation” that defeated Hitler and overcame the Great Depression — they adored FDR and re-elected him by huge margins. Not in order to destroy capitalism, but to save it. From the enemy that always, reliably ruined free and fair competitive enterprise — and freedom — in 99% of all human societies.

Those who today have one supreme goal… to portray FDR as satan … they stand with the oldest and most pervasive enemy of freedom and yes, the foe of market capitalism that Adam Smith denounced and against whom the American Founders rebelled.  Is there some point when you would recognize that old foe?

Hint: it is not a dogma or doctrine, or any particular group of people.  It is a drive that fizzes out of most of us, when we find ourselves atop a pyramid. A drive to thereupon grab the power to stay up there. By cheating.

But it gets worse when 40% of the world’s wealth is controlled by less than 150 people. How does competition happen when our lords own a higher percentage of the wealth than the French aristocracy did, in 1789?

4) Interesting political miscellany

Have any doubts about my comparison with the French Revolution? Read about the most expensive real estate on Earth – One Hyde Park, in London - where apartments sell for almost a quarter of a Billion dollars, to secret shell corporations that disguise the owners from the nosy masses. That’s a “B” in “billion.”

Plus…..

And shifting over to provocative potpourri… The most religious states show highest rates of anti-depressant use.

Does this really surprise you?  The origins of the Tea Party – and climate denialism – in the  tobacco industry. (See also Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway, as well as my article: Distinguishing Climate “Deniers” from “Skeptics.”)

Lipstick on a pig? Reince Priebus gives GOP prescription for the future.  Sorry. I miss Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, true conservative intellects who enjoyed high-level argument and science, who reacted to bad outcomes by changing their minds, and who above all believed in negotiation.  Even, occasionally compromise. If Mr. Priebus and his colleagues ever decide to get serious, the great result will be to stop Barry Goldwater spinning in his grave.

Oh, but then – when you least expect it - sanity appears to be flowering in one area, at least, and some Republicans are leading the way!  California GOP Representative Dana Rohrabacher’s Respect State Marijuana Laws Act (H.R. 1253) is far from the only bill in Congress that would wind down the federal war on weed.  But unlike the efforts of liberal Democrats who want to remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, this bill or something like it may have a decent shot at passing in the not-too-distant future.  I can’t believe it.  This madness seems finally to be ebbing. And if that insanity can ebb, let’s work on others?

5) And finally, regarding gun control.

Did you notice that for a decade liberals were quiet about this issue?  And even now,  spurred by stunning tragedies, all most of them are asking for is background checks and a restored limit on assault weapons.  Why so little?  Simple.  Under Bush, many liberals started quietly arming themselves. Despite noise from some irredentist lefties, many liberals (a totally different species) are fine with responsible and accountable weapon ownership. Like their own.

If we are going to debate an issue, let’s start with clean facts.  Yes, Mother Jones has a left-ish perspective.  But this set of graphics (Challenging the Myth that Guns Stop Crime) is effective when they take on some of the fibs being told by the NRA.

Again, I claim the middle ground. Frankly, I am more sympathetic with moderate gun owners than Mother Jones is. In fact, many liberals and moderates understand the undercurrent motive that makes the gun folk dig in their heels… a fear of eventual confiscation of all personal weapons.

A fear that I go into, with some evenhandedness and detail, in my article, The Jefferson Rifle: Guns and the Insurrection Myth.

I’ve said it before.  Simply screaming aloud the second half of the Second Amendment will not make the first half go away.  And that first half (twelve words) will serve as a loophole wide enough to drive a bulldozer through, if some future panicking public and a new Court decide to “well-regulate” the “militia.” You guys need another, better amendment. And I am offering one that liberals would help you to pass.

Again, most Americans don’t wish to eliminate personal gun ownership, and would join in rising up, if it were ever tried. They simply want more responsibility and accountability, the very thing that we achieved with motor vehicles….

But the Slippery Slope Syndrome poisons so many issues on the national agenda. Look at it.  Face it.  Then do the unexpected.  Negotiate.

And while we’re on the Bard… Ah, consistency. Here is a hilarious moment of aha! realization… something we always knew, but without ever putting the pieces together. You will slap your forehead and cry “d’oh!”

== Inspirational ==

John Cleese has a very large brain! This speech about “how creativity works” is incisive and brilliant!

Watch Richard Turure on TED: An inspiring young fellow.

One public servant I very much admire… retired Defense Secretary Robert Gates… talking about another who I deemed (elsewhere) to have been the “Man of the 20th Century,” George C Marshall. There are grownups in this world. Amid all the preening and posturing, take solace in that fact.

Okay, name for me another species that can do this sort of stuff.  All right, I can’t do any of it either… still…

British humor site The Poke presents an optimistic vision of the future in which humankind has managed (by 2068) to break free from the shackles of YouTube, Flash plug-in crashes, and even, somehow,  cat videos.

Best rope-jumper in the world!

== And disturbing ==

Great big conspiracy flow chart.  It covers almost 15% of the crazy space!

Fascinating how gender imbalance and the one-child policy are affecting weddings and the “bride price” in China.

== And scientific ==

An auspicious anniversary? On 25 April, 1953, Nature published “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid” by J.D.Watson and F.H.C.Crick, setting out the double helix structure of the molecule of heredity. This year is DNA@60.   Now watch the estimable Roger Bingham interview James Watson in an enlightening Science Channel Show.

Here’s an excerpt. Or read Watson’s The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA.

As the world’s first building powered by algae, the 15-unit Bio Intelligent Quotient (BIQ) House generates biomass and heat with the assistance of 129 integrated glass bioreactor panels (read: micro-algae harvesters). The algae flourish and multiply in a regular cycle until they can be harvested. They are then separated from the rest of the algae and transferred as a thick pulp to the technical room of the BIQ. The little plants are then fermented in an external biogas plant, so that they can be used again to generate biogas.

A stunt, you say?  I know the folks at Heliae, who have announced the launch of their patent pending microalgae production platform, using sunlight and waste carbon to produce high-value products from algae.

The “Grasshopper” reusable rocket prototype shattered its own record, reaching a height of 820 feet. That’s more than triple its previous record.  Oh, and ain’t this the way a rocket ship s’pzed ta be?

== Sci fi items ==

Daniel H. Wilson, the young scientist author of novels like Amped and Robopocalypse gives a talk at Carnegie-Mellon about robotics in science fiction and how it relates to both real technology and our visions of the future.  Bright and funny.  Also,  he reminds me SO much of myself at that hot new author phase… including the hat!

Star Wars on Trial is available on Kindle, and only 99 cents!

…and miscellaneous…

Seven billion people on one browser page (one mile long). Don’t send this to your printer…

View inside a Redbox Kiosk.

And finally, compiled by Cracked.com: Five excellent Sci Fi short films worth watching.

I’ll give this to SyFy. They produce a lot of schlock but they also have guts! One result is a ratio of good (and sometimes great) stuff compared to fails that is way above Sturgeon’s law.

But our field has also suffered blows, of late. Awful news: the plight and fight of my colleague, the brilliant science fiction author Iain Banks against cancer.  This, piled onto the similar battle of Jay Lake, reminds me of how I felt when we lost — so prematurely — Charles Sheffield… and Octavia Butler and Robert Forward and others who have passed beyond our view in this strange, transitional age, when possibilities can seem so bright but the grinding fate of our cave ancestors still rules our path.

== Sci fi miscellany ==

Book People – Austin’s best book store - tallied their top ten list for this year’s Hugos. Ah well. Late, but flattering. Thanks!  “In his usual fashion David Brin has written an understated masterpiece that is a truly amazing complex piece of literature.  Brin …has gone back to the well and delivered an absolute gem…”  Ah well, it is a year crowded with wonders!  Nominees for the 2013 Hugo Award for best in science fiction include novels by John Scalzi, Kim Stanley Robinson, Mira Grant, Lois McMaster Bujold and Saladin Ahmed — to be awarded at the World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio in August.

Back to indie media… “New” looks like it could be a terrific short sci fi film with tons of heart. Indie screenwriter and producer John Harden is trying to finance it kickstarter style and has created a really sweet intro-preview-pitch you may enjoy.  This is the path that may take us to a realm of bold new (even sometimes optimistic) stories that aren’t tired rehashes.

A terrific retrospective review of John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1969) re-introduces that epochal and stunning science fiction novel to new clades of younger sf readers.  Without question, it is one of the great literary achievements of our field and possibly of any and all genres.  I deliberately modeled both EARTH and EXISTENCE after Brunner’s masterpiece, emulating his vividly broad-canvas approach and his ethos, while avoiding a few small mistakes… (and inventing my own, I am sure.) Lately, similar credit was acknowledged by Kim Stanley Robinson. If you haven’t read Stand on Zanzibar, do so.  Put aside any other recreational reading.  You will thank me.

The conspiracy theory behind the destruction of the Death Star. Was it an inside job? Watch a hilarious (and incredibly on-target) satire of conspiracy theory videos in general… that also skewers the childish illogic of the Lucas universe, with its chain of self-indulgent coincidences.  Of course, every point in the video is lifted from one of my riffs in STAR WARS ON TRIAL. (Which is even more on-target and funny, Brin assures you, with a perfectly straight face.)

Confused by the state of publishing, with the last major national bookstore chain in decline and e-books rapidly taking over?  Have a look at a fascinating article about our new world by the bright young SF author (and my sometime collaborator) Jeff Carlson.  Insights galore.

Another bright young SF writer, Adrian Tchaikovsky has a series of quasi-fantasy novels set in a world containing a huge diversity of  societies, both insect and human. His essay about this diversity of social experiments (on the Tor site) is fascinating.  He also addresses the perennial question: why do so many fantasy tales obsess on inherited oligarchy and kingdoms as a model of governance, which history shows to have been an extremely dumb and unsuccessful pattern, ruining freedom and hopes for most of our ancestors, most of the time. Till we wised up. Very interesting.  Give Adrian a try!  

Then ponder news about Chinese Science Fiction: The Political Schism between Chinese Science Fiction and Fantasy. It’s important, get used to it.  Especially, get ready for the debut, next year, of “The Three Body Problem,” a huge science fiction hit in China, by the towering new talent over there, Liu Cixin. I am reading the English translation by our own Ken Liu and enjoying it immensely. No… I mean seriously-immensely. I consider Liu Cixin to be much more than the top science fiction author in China.  When you read him, you’ll agree he’s one of the best in the world.

Meanwhile, is SF finally getting respect in its heartland?  Astonishing. this is the second time in a year that Atlantic has published an essay that is at  least somewhat favorably inclined toward science fiction.  For decades they ran a vendetta against SF, commissioning execrable hit pieces like clockwork.  But this article about the great stylist Cordwainer Smith — one of my favorite short story writers — is insightful and should lead many curious minds to our field.  An added note: Smith (aka Paul Linebarger) was among those who – along with Pierre Boulle and H.G. Wells) pioneered tales about what I have called the “uplift” of higher animals, bestowing upon them the mixed-promethean-mephistofelian gifts of speech and logical thought. My main innovation was not to portray humanity doing this stupidly and cruelly. But I stand on giant shoulders.

== And more sci fi miscellany ==

Language derivation, the tracing of linguistic roots, has finally entered the 21st Century. Computer program finds root words of modern languages.

According to newflashes popping up around the web, the Washington Academy of Sciences has created a seal of approval for the scientific accuracy of novels. Alas, as my colleague – the sharp Nancy Fulda – points out, there is less here than meets the eye.Kinda disappointing execution of what I (naturally) took to be a very good idea.

Despite being harried by fans of the Most Interesting Man in the World – (Hey guys, I am the BALD interesting guy) — I really love that ad campaign.  Now it turns out that the actor who plays the MIMITW – Jonathan Goldsmith – played a red shirt in the original Star Trek series… and lived!  You can imagine the lines.  Or read them on iO9.  My favorite? The Borg want to be assimilated by HIM.

The 1950s radio dramatization of BRAVE NEW WORLD, introduced by Aldous Huxley, is available online.

The High Frontier, Human Colonies in Space, by Gerald K. O’Neill, now free on Kindle.

Choose your next author based on the genre and how he or she looks?  I wish they chose a better picture of me!  The URL seems to say Find…MEAN… author!

How to porpoise like a dolphin…  Water-jet booties that solve all the jet-pack problems. What a great idea… and like the best – obvious in retrospect.

Eric S. Raymond is a personality of some note in the hacker community. His essay on the political movements in science fiction — while incomplete and two-dimensional – nevertheless is well-balanced and thoughtful.  I went “huh!” a couple of times.

Finally, Bruce Sterling talks a lot about how new media and methods kill older ones: e.g. the death of both bookstores and the personal computer, and he makes some interesting metaphor-parallels with the cliff dwellers in the eleventh century American southwest.  He does this sort of thing very well and I’m glad he is in the world.  I agree with most of it and find the rest interesting, and can shrug aside the preening.  In the end, however, after a very long Chautauqua meal, I think back upon what I had read and ask: what do I know now that I did not know before reading Bruce’s speech? That Sergey Brin is brilliant and useful?

I knew that already.

==Looking to the Future==

Want to spent a few days contemplating the our future in space? Attend the StarShip Century Symposium May 21 and 22 at UCSD. Speakers include Gregory Benford, Neal Stephenson, Freeman Dyson, Vernor Vinge, David Brin, Geoffrey Landis, Allen Steele, Paul Davies, John Cramer, Jill Tarter, Robert Zubrin, Joe Haldeman, and others, as part of the opening ceremonies for the new Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. Be sure to register to attend.

The ideas of a 100 year program to create a starship will be explored – from the development of an interplanetary economic infrastructure, to the structural requirements, the human factors and speculations on what we might find.

Come, contribute…and find inspiration!

This nature show is a game-changer. Watch it and make everyone you know watch it.  I saw an early version and it left everyone speechless in awe. Chasing Ice will next air on the National Geographic Channel,  Friday, April 26, 4 PM ET (check local listings or find it on Amazon).  And yes, your  denialist uncle will find any excuse to avoid watching, because he will know in advance where this goes, where it has to go, where undeniable, bald-faced video footage takes anyone who has the basic curiosity and honesty to watch.

Oh… you have never seen anything till you’ve watched a chunk of glacier the SIZE OF MANHATTAN break off of Greenland and go belly up in a spectacular roar. Watch it 95% just to know there are still adventurers in the world who can bring home to us tales of wonder, worthy of Amundsen.  

== Tracing back the clock of life… TEN billion years? ==

Has the complexity of life been increasing along a path similar to Moore’s Law?  If you trace-back the doublings of integrated circuit complexity, halving the number of transistors per chip every 18 months (Moore’s Law) you get to zero around 1970… pretty much when it all started.  A similar back extrapolation was done with Hubble’s Law, way back in the 1930s when the expansion of the universe was discovered, giving an early estimate for the Big Bang that was correct within an order of magnitude.  Now scientists have done the same thing with the expansion of the genome. And although this is only one possible measure of life-complexity, this particular trace-back yields shocking results. See: Moore’s Law and the Complexity of Life in Technology Review.

If you discount the vast tracts of “redundant” DNA in mammalian chromosomes, then the log curve plots straight back in time, past eukaryotes and prokaryotes, to suggest that life had its origins… almost ten billion years ago.  Since the Earth itself is less than five billion years old, this suggests that either:

(1) life began de novo on Earth (the standard model) and then had a phase of exceptionally rapid genome growth (akin to the inflationary phase of expansion that some say followed the Big Bang), or

(2)  life began elsewhere and was seeded on the early Earth, in accordance with the Panspermia Theory of Arrhenius, and later Hoyle and Wickramasinghe. (As well as Heart of the Comet.)

An altogether fascinating prospect, either way.

== Science and the Spirit of Innovation ==

See 27 sci fi things that are coming true.  Such as a robot that can navigate an obstacle course, spray on skin, invisibility cloaks, 3-D printing of houses, chimera monkeys made from several embryos, artificial leaves, new, cheaper solar cells, and  exoskeletons!

Yet, are any of these advances as epochal as breakthroughs of the past? Has the engine of our innovation broken down? The incredible stodginess of Hollywood, these days, with remakes of remakes, is only matched by the stunning “me-too” notions seen in most net-web startups.  I run into it all the time.

Every decade since 1940 has seen the United states and its economy swayed by two major forces – a vast trade deficit that wound up being the great driver of world development, raising billions out of poverty around the world… and a wave of made-in-america innovative products and services that generated enough wealth to pay for it all.  From jet planes to rockets and satellites; from telecom and pharmaceuticals and fiber optics to xerography, CCDs and the internet, these breakthroughs came in rapid succession and enabled us to buy trillions of dollars worth of crap we never needed, thus uplifting the world.

That is, till the first decade of the 21st Century, when much of this engine stalled.  Is it simplistic to blame it on social matters like the culture war against science, waged especially hard during the Bush Administration? Of course that was a factor, at a time when extremes of both right and left preach cynical disbelief in the possibility of technology serving us in its traditional, problem-solving role.

That attitude is opposed by (among others) President Obama, who mentions sci-tech more often in speeches than any two other presidents, combined.  But there has to be more to it than that. A component that drives deeper than politics.

This article in the Economist, Has the ideas machine broken down? tries for perspective… and at least succeeds in offering background.

One thing you can do: Sign a petition to increase NASA’s budget – and support cutting edge developments in space and technology.  But above all, think about it!  Talk to others about re-igniting the can-do spirit.

==Bio-Science Miscellany==

A thoughtful, brief article  about the prospect of uplifting animal intelligence appeared recently in the Boston Globe, By Emily Anthes.

An absolute must-read about  the importance of the next frontier in biology and medicine, the Micro-Biome  ecosystem of bacteria and microbes who inhabit the human gut, skin, mouth etc.  Aldous Huxley wrote about this in a great novel 80 years ago. Today, both doctors and quacks are touting both real and fantasy cures that might arise from tailoring or re-building these symbiotic networks that are often wiped out or thrown into imbalance by excessive use of antibiotics.  Reinforcing the old saw that one generation’s brilliant “solution” winds up creating new problems that the next generation must deal with.  So it goes.  (Get your own personal microbiome analyzed at uBiome.com).

Brain Scan Predicts Whether Convicts Will Re-Offend: Welcome To The Sci-Fi Future.  Activity in one very particular part of the brain shows a high correlation with recidivism. Men in the bottom half of anterior cingulate cortex activity were 2.6 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes and 4.3 times more likely to be arrested for nonviolent crimes. Should this become a factor in parole hearings?  The future is arriving.

Graphic shows how vaccines have changed our world.  And now yet more studies provide overwhelming refutation of the loony notion that vaccines cause autism. An area where the “left” is bona fide easily as cloud cuckoo as the right.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a way to make genetic parts that can perform logic calculations.

Laser light to the prelimbic region of the prefrontal cortex apparently zaps away cocaine addiction – or conversely turned non-addicted rats into compulsive cocaine seekers. The effects were seen in rats gene-spliced to have light-sensitive neurons that can be turned on-ff by laser, hence, a different approach must be used for human therapies. Still, knowing which neurons are active in inhibition/addiction control could be of great value and there are other (e.g. magnetic) ways to have similar effects.

==Science and Society==

One of the latest TED talk sensations is Allan Savory, who has spent his life combatting desertification, and who now believes we’ve had it all wrong for two generations.  He claims that deserts are prevented, rather than created, by large herds of grazing animals.  His presentation is worth watching and the re-evaluation that he triggers is delicious to my contrarian mind!  On the other hand, it isn’t hard for me to do a second, ornery veer and say “yes… but!”

Oh so many buts.  Like the fact that vast deserts clearly grew as human pastoralists were able to protect their herds from predators. Overgrazing is just as much a threat as undergrazing and Savory’s technique requires the transient passage of large/dense herds of grazers, who stomp and fertilize an area without denuding it. A cavil that will require either intense supervision and daily management… or a return to predator-dense situations that keep the herds packed and moving.  Moreover the grasslands that he has restored are anything but “healthy” ecosystems in their own right.  Improved, but still denuded of trees by the very herbivore herds that Savory extolls. For true health you need at least partial coverage by trees, and that takes active management too, in order to protect them from the herbivores, like cattle, elephants and giraffes.

Finally, Savory’s method emphasizes vast herds of cattle that are burdensome in their own right.  One of the hopeful prospects on our horizon will be vat grown meat.  If it can satisfy our appetites at three pounds of grain per pound of meat, then there will be more food and hope in the world, at far lower Karmic cost.   I will not let go of that hope… though I appreciate Savory’s input of an eye-opening realization.  One that will do good!  Just let’s not get carried away.

==Miscellaneous==

Read about one man’s lifelong wrestling match with his atheism against religious heritage in the context of a scientific world. Sample an excerpt from The God Problem, by Howard Bloom, in Utne Reader.

Ever read a blog on chemistry that was hilarious? See this one about di-oxygen di-flouride… or FOOF.  Yes, it is as horrible a substance as it sounds!  And the blog is gut-busting… if your funny bone is tickled by something that makes water ice explode at minus two hundred celsius.

io9 offers you one of their great lists:  “Want to get smarter during your commute? There are a lot of fantastic podcasts that will teach you new things in a thoroughly entertaining way. Here are 13 podcasts that will expand your brain with cutting-edge science and cultural analysis.”

== Smart Mobs and the Boston Bombings ==

Just one quick comment amid the mid-April terror crisis that has become all-too familiar in recent years. Evidently the FBI gets it and has called out a “smart mob”… or at least asked for public help identifying potential culprits in the Boston bombing from street video footage.  All may change, by the time this blog is posted, so I am putting off making my own appraisal.  But this could be a seminal moment, when all of society came to realize… we’ll be better off when all citizens share in the power to see.

For starters, see a chart detailing ongoing investigations worldwide. Scan a wide range of reactions, from Russian officials, Europeans and others: 

–Tax Haven Data Leak Reverberates around the Globe

–Tax Havens Cause Poverty

–Release of Off-Shore Records draws Worldwide Response

FORECAST: This movement may be propelled – soon – by one or more radicalized nations in the developing world. Not radicalized by socialism or religion or dogmatic frenzy, but by the appearance of a new class of honest, grownup leaders at their helms. Imagine the fury that those leaders and their people will feel, when they suddenly realize just how much of their national wealth wealth was siphoned away by their own former kleptocrat lords. 

Vast amounts that those thieves took with them into exile.  Example: The Philippine Presidential Commission on Good Government probe into the disclosure that Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, the eldest daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was a beneficiary of a secret offshore trust of prodigious proportions, in the British Virgin Islands… 

Now extrapolate this and you start to understand why the Swiss and other haven bankers have recently seemed willing – even eager – to strike semi-transparency deals with tax authorities in Europe and North America.  (1) Because those big countries have dangerous klout that must be placated by tossing overboard some merely-rich, sub-billionaire clients. But far more likely – (2) because the real business of lucrative banking secrecy lies in that mountain of klepto-hoards looted from much poorer nations. By striking deals with the IRS and EU tax boards, they hope to prevent alliances between developed and developing nations, in a grand consortium for transparency. 

Only it won’t work. Eventually, some nation like the Phillipines, or Indonesia or the former Zaire will be led by people graced with honesty, imagination and courage. Leaders who figured out, in advance, the pitfall traps such as blackmail. 

There are things that such nations and peoples can do — exceptional, dramatic and boldly effective things — that could transform the world. There are ways. And when it happens, remember where you first heard this.*

==  Pay attention… this is important == 

But even as “settled law” it will be very very hard.  Note these cases:  

The NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg oppose surveillance of police.  See? Even “openness” democrats can’t be trusted in this issue. 

Then it all moves to a new front. “The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act,” prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to “defame the facility or its owner.” Violators would be placed on a “terrorist registry.”  Terrorism?  This was prompted by animal rights groups video-recording scenes of horrific sadism and cruelty on farms and in slaughterhouses… going far beyond the normal bloody business necessitated by the carnivorality industry. This was exactly the sort of transparency that the industry ought to want, in order to rid themselves of vicious monsters, the way pedophiles are kept out of schools. When they get used to this and embrace it, the owners will have a cleaner and more efficient – and less Karma-burdened – business. 

And related news —  A judge has blocked Iowa State University from releasing documents about food safety research conducted for the beef-processing company that makes the product dubbed “pink slime” by critics. At the level of details, there are actually reasons for compromise in this case.  At the level of principle, none at all.  

This is not as crucial a situation as the taping of citizen contacts with police.  But it matters and light must be allowed to shine. 

Oh, but sinking lower than slaughterhouses… on a secretly-recorded tape, GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and his advisors are heard laughing and joking about opposition research they had on actress Ashley Judd, who had been considering running against McConnell next year. Many Democratic groups blasted McConnell for the remarks, disgusted by the fact McConnell would potentially use Judd’s suicidal thoughts as a child against her. In reactionn came a firestorm or protest against eavesdropping by “leftist agitators.”  Um, get used to it. Stop being led by crude people. Go back to choosing grownups. It really is that simple. 

Interesting times indeed.

==  Augmented reality… and catching liars == 

Compare these two images of Rome during the election of the last pope in 2005 and more recently in 2013.  Then contrast the images to my descriptions of “tru-vu goggles” in EARTH (1989) and the gel-lens stalks people wear in 2048, portrayed in EXISTENCE. How quickly are we moving toward the world of Augmented Reality (AR)?

Indeed, after reading that article, ponder my 1980 novel Sundiver in which vision-based lie-detectors (inescapable, wherever there is light) utterly transform politics. 

I predict that by 2016 there will be lurid claims from “experts” on all sides, claiming to catch fibs by opponents talking in public or on TV… experts who are then “shown” to be lyingI It will be chaos, at first.  Then this stuff will become an App. And by 2020 or 2024? A useful tool> Possibly a sieve for psychopaths and monsters? Can you see yet why – for so many reasons – the clade of already-powerful psychopaths is growing desperate?

== And more transparency crux-points ==

Perching: Video, released by the Air Vehicle Directorate, shows a pigeon-like drone that can draw power from an electrical wire while its camera watches a target. These and other new-style drones are part of a fascinating and problematic future. Stay alert. 

In a fascinating article, Technology Review explains how a huge black market has developed for “zero-day” systemic flaws in programs and operating systems, especially in mobile devices.  These can be exploited by governments or corporations of criminal gangs, especially in mobiles, that get infrequent security updates.  A cottage industry of hackers now swops in to find flaws and back doors and chinks in security and then sells them at high prices.  The article raises this as a scary scenario… but in fact I am not so sure.  Isn’t this how an immune system functions? T Cells that discover an invader and ways to neutralize it are rewarded within your own body; they are given resources to reproduce.  Is that any different from a government agency saying: “Come to us with your clever discovery of a flaw.  We’ll pay better than the criminals do… and you won’t risk jail.”  See: the Malware industrial complex and the trade in zero-day vulnerabilities.

A multinational security firm has secretly developed software called RIOT capable of tracking people’s movements and predicting future behavior by mining data from social networking websites. Riot can display on a spider diagram the associations and relationships between individuals online by looking at who they have communicated with over Twitter. It can also mine data from Facebook and sift GPS location information from Foursquare, a mobile phone app used by more than 25 million people to alert friends of their whereabouts. The Foursquare data can be used to display, in graph form, the top 10 places visited by tracked individuals and the times at which they visited them.  

Curious whether a prescription or medical device your doctor is recommending comes from a manufacturer who has been paying your doctor? Good news, then: The federal government has finally developed a plan for how the Physician Payments Sunshine Act will work. The Sunshine Act, made federal law as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, was designed to allow anyone — patients, doctors, journal editors — to look up which doctors are getting how much from which companies.   

== And yet MORE transparency news… == 

See the stunningly huge number of new top level domains that are under consideration by ICANN.  

These guys consulted me. Koozoo envisions a world where a network of smartphone cameras will anticipate your needs and offer streaming video that fills them. But that’s future talk. For now, it will just put up cameras anywhere it can. 

In the wake of the famous WikiLeaks events, a large number of emulation sites popped up around the world, aiming to blow the whistle on corruption from Bulgaria to India to Nicaragua. Most of these clones never got very far and appear to have all but shut down. Balkanleaks seems to be just one of a handful still actively receiving and publishing new documents. (Note, I long supported Witness since 1990 or so, a more robust model that does not rely on inherently fragile encryption methods.) As I described in The Transparent Society, maintaining methods of aggressive accountability, threatening the dark secrets of powerful men, is a dangerous game and secret codes are only the tip of what’s required. 

The thing we need is not to try to blind elites… that has never ever worked. (Show me one historical example. One.)  What we must pursue is sousveillance, our ability to look back at power. to see with our own drones etc.  And, above all, to make fresh, agile deals every time an issue like this comes up.  

“You say that you, our protectors, need more vision to better protect the public?  Fine.  But in return you must undergo more supervision.  Citizens in the control rooms.  Citizens on the panels that issue licenses. Webcams in boardrooms.  You may see better, in order to serve us better.  But you are a watchdog, not a wolf! And here is your choke chain. Accept it – and your role as a public servant – or else we will hire others.”

== And more! ==

Brad Foster puts into perspective the ever-rising tsunami of information and how crushing is the hypersonic waves of… bullshit. Just a few small examples:  Netflix consumes a THIRD of all internet traffic. Four billion shares on Facebook every day.  Eric Schmidt of Google says 5 exabytes of information were created by humanity till 1980.  We now create that much every two days.  Frost goes a bit over the top in his denunciations and diagnoses, but he concludes there has never been a better time for people to find ways around the BS and slim down, in order to be creative, or useful, or focus on what you can do that does (or is) some good.  

Political note: The FCC and Obama Department of Justice appear to be leaning toward favoring smaller mobile phone companies in releasing more cell tower spectrum, in order to encourage more competition with Verizon and AT&T. This may be a crucial sign of sentiment as the FCC also decides whether to release spectrum for major citizen-access use of WiFi type systems anywhere in the continent. 

== Brin on Beck? Via Penn Jillette? The strange world of Transparency ==

A final set of sad notes. I have spoken elsewhere of the terrible news that both Jay Lake and Iain Banks are in desperate fights against cancer. I will speak more of that later. (They are great writers and let’s all send our best vibes.) Now comes news that the son of eminent science fiction author Dave Wolverton – AKA David Farland – suffered a terrible accident recently. Past fans of Dave’s work – or folks interested in trying something new – might have a look at his novel Nightingale… or else, if you are a would be writer, consider Million Dollar Outlines, in which Dave offers would-be best-sellers advice how to analyze an audience and outline a novel so that it can appeal to a wide readership. 

————

* Oh, but by then I may have been bribed into denying it all! No serious offers so far.  You – the smart public – should feel insulted by that! Think about it.