Looking backward — and then toward the future

Before looking onward to the future, let’s take a brief look back: “In any case, the 21st century is undeniably the century (that) science fiction built — if not in utter hands-on reality (though even that proposition is debatable, given the inspiration the genre has provided for influential scientists and geeks), then in the public imagination. Since the birth of genre SF in 1926, and for almost the next 75 years, simply to set a story in the third millennium AD was to signify extravagant extrapolation and a futuristic, far-off milieu when flying cars and food pills would reign — or dystopia would prevail. The year 2010 is automatically one of yesterday’s tomorrows.”writes Paul Di Fillippo, in “Is Science Fiction Dying?”

Aw heck, let’s add one more preening! I’m quoted in this BBC article: Futurology: The tricky art of knowing what will happen next: “In more recent times, author David Brin, in the 1989 novel Earth and in his other works, predicted citizen reporters, personalised web interfaces, and the decline of privacy. “The top method is simply to stay keenly attuned to trends in the laboratories and research centres around the world, taking note of even things that seem impractical or useless,” says Brin. “You then ask yourself: ‘What if they found a way to do that thing ten thousand times as quickly/powerfully/well? What if someone weaponised it? Monopolised it? Or commercialised it, enabling millions of people to do this new thing, routinely? What would society look like, if everybody took this new thing for granted?'”

How do we project ourselves into the future? No matter how hard futurists try, their visions never quite match up to reality. In H+ Magazine, Valkyrie Ice points out the Top Five Errors in Predicting the Future
1. Tunnel Vision: extrapolating future changes, by giving too much weight to one line of technological innovation
2. Ideological slanting: imprinting today’s ethical or moralistic biases on the future
3. Linearism: imagining that technology advances in a linear fashion, rather than exponentially, or along several parallel tracks
4. Static Worldview: a failure to envision how technology will deeply alter society and culture
5. Unrealistic models of human nature: certainly what we view as ‘average’ will shift in the future

Ten predictions for News Media in 2011

Really Inspiring!

Meryl Comer and Chris Mooney make a strong (overwhelming, in fact) case thatinvestments in science and R&D nearly always prove to be the best possible way to advance the economy, to stimulate job growth, advance public health and improve our balance of payments. There are no excuses for not making R&D a top priority.  Which means that the party that sabotaged science in the United States for so long has no conceivable rationalization or eexplanation, other than deliberately sabotaging their own country.

And… Space News

One way to reduce launch costs: manufacture parts in space. A new company, Made in Space, proposes launching 3-D printers into orbit and using them to manufacture parts for spacecraft (satellites or the space station) – which would then be assembled in zero gravity. This would reduce the need to bring spare (plastic) parts. Broken pieces would be recycled as ‘feedstock’ for rapid prototyping. (I did some preliminary work on this in the early eighties!)

Will we be able to grow crops on other planets to sustain human colonies? Scientists analyze soils on the Moon,Mars and Venus for potential agriculture.  Aeroonics is another possibility for soil less agriculture.

Project Icarus is a Tau Zero Foundation (TZF) initiative in collaboration with The British Interplanetary Society (BIS). Daedalus was a BIS project in the late 1970’s conducted over several years, to design an interstellar probe for a flyby mission to Barnards Star. Over three decades has now passed and it is an opportunity to revisit this unique design study.

Earlier this week my son and I stood in our backyard and observed the International Space Station crossing through the night sky  — an inspiring sight. If you want to know when and where to look, check Heavens Above for your geographic position. It tabulates the location of the ISS, and satellites, as well as any visible comets.

And… Science Fiction

The 100 best movie spaceships.

How does Serenity compare to a TIE Interceptor, or Babylon 5 Station to a Klingon Transport vessel?  Starship Dimensions, an online museum of vessels inspired by science fiction, puts it all to scale, contrasting dimensions of starships to real-life vessels.

And…. The Economy

James Fallows comments on “The Chinese Professor” Ad from Citizens Against Government Waste.

Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes – The Joy of Statistics… and the statistics of joy… Important perspective!

About the ever-widening income gap, Frank Rich writes, in a New York Times article: Who will stand up to the super-rich? : “As Winner-Take-All Politics documents, America has been busy building a bridge to the 19th century – that is, to a new Gilded Age. To dislodge the country from this stagnant rut will require all kinds of effort from Americans in and out of politics. That includes some patriotic selflessness from those at the very top who still might emulate Warren Buffett and the few others in the Forbes 400 who  that it’s not in America’s best interests to stack the tax and regulatory decks in their favor.”

Uncle Sam needs you to solve America’s budget crisis: On this interactive site, you can choose which domestic and foreign programs to eliminate, and see how it affects the budget gap forecast for 2015 and 2030. You can choose to close tax loopholes, add a national sales tax, eliminate farm subsidies, cut military spending, or raise the Social Security age, and then share your plan online.

This really fascinating program (based at Northwestern U.) follows dollar bills and makes it possible to map connections among americans.  Interesting and easy to become a participant of “Follow George.”

Then….

The idea that we are entitled a life of happiness is a relatively new one. Past generations were more likely to accept their lot in life – with happiness a function of birth, bestowed by the fates or the gods, the reward for a virtuous life – or even delayed til a glorious afterlife. We who are less patient, believe it is our due, and yet, in the bustle of modern life, few seem to attain it…See A History of Happiness.

And finally...
Here’s hoping that the end of the Naughty Oughts (I named em in 1998) will bring a decline in grouchiness, a return of reasonableness and fizzy can-do, ambitious problem-solving!  And may you and yours have their best decade yet. (Though the worst of those that follow…)

Keeping Fear Alive — and When a Candidate’s Religion Matters

I am supporting Stephen Colbert’s Rally for Fear, for several reasons. First, my career lies in scaring people via vivid science fiction novels. (Sure, they also contain science, reason and confidence in a bold future… still, what would a plot be without pulse-pounding peril? Keep fear alive!!)

Second, I’m fuming with rage at Jon Stewart for blatantly stealing the title of my novel EARTH, for his merely-hilarious guidebook for aliens visiting this planet. Heck, I won’t even tell you want it’s called, so you can’t order it, right away, and laugh yourself sick.

(Mind you, one of my novels was a finalist for the Stephen Colbert Award for Literary Excellence! But I would never allow that to sway my judgment! (Guess which novel?))

All right, I admit that I kinda like “sanity” and share Stewart’s overall worry about the plague of sanctimonious, self-righteous indignation that aging-sourpuss baby boomers are inflicting on this great land, from every political extreme.  (I’ve even written about the scientific/biological aspects of this epidemic, and spoken about it at the National Institutes on Drugs and Addiction.)  I’m glad the rallies on Saturday will be about restoring the calm spirit of negotiation that was the hallmark of the Greatest Generation… and that might return, after the bilious Boomers fade and our smarter kids take over!

Hence I’m pleased that (despite some overlap) this won’t be a rally for the Democratic Party.  Certainly, the left has some indignation jockeys of its own, who give Glen Beck a run for it.  Oh, they aren’t in the same league, when it comes to outright puppeteer-lying!  But Keith Olbermann certainly matches Beck when it comes to choleric-polemic pyrotechnics!

Hence, I seldom link to Olbermann, even when I agree with him! We should all be tired of proof-by-loudly-delivered-anecdote… and his latest screed serves one gigantic helping of separate and questionably-linked anecdotes, about the truly “eccentric” gang of Tea Party candidates who are spearheading the Fox Crusade To Distract Populist Wrath Away From The Oligarchy And Instead Toward All the People Who Know Stuff.

Again, I find anecdotes less persuasive than sanity and facts. Still you have really got to watch this Olbermann rant! Endure the first few minutes for the sake of what follows — a lengthy and scary list of maniacal quotations from the new Know Nothing Party that seeks to “march this nation as far backward as it can get… an attempted use of democracy to end this democracy…”

While I have you, here are items to show that “ostrich conservative” of yours, who dislikes the Bushites but who has so far convinced himself that “the alternative is marginally worse.” Or who actually believes that his movement has not been hijacked by crazies.  (There are millions of these poor, abandoned, Nice Conservatives. Help them!

A pair of older pieces I wrote in 2004, before things got THIS crazy…
War in the 21st Century: Maturity vs. NeoCon Panic and the True Role of Pax Americana

Neoconservatism, Islam and Ideology: The Real Culture War

And for your libertarian theoretician friend or brother – the under-achieving MENSA-member who goes on and on about Left, Right, and MODELS of government systems and Adam Smith and what keeps getting in the way of freedom and markets send him here for a wake-up.http://reformthelp.org/reformthelp/marketing/positioning/models.php

Oh, Back to Jon Stewart… here’s a chilling parallel! Stephan Richter writes  “Jon Stewart is a powerful one-man version of all the Weimar cabarets. If the underlying causes of his rise were in any way a reflection of what ailed the Weimar Republic, that would be bad news indeed — not just for the US, but also the world as a whole.”  I love it when someone makes me stop and go “huh!” Even when I’m not sure what his point is!

… And now our feature thought of the week…
=== When is it appropriate to contemplate a politician’s religious beliefs? ===

Good question.  We have grown up during an era when – progressively – a candidate’s private faith has become ever-less relevant in American political life (a trend even more pronounced in Europe and Australia.) Moreover, most of us see that as progress, akin to the putting of racism and sexism and corruption into disrepute (though their remnants are still vile and remain with us.)

Indeed, the modern reflex is to cringe back from anyone who says that we should scrutinize the private beliefs of a public person.  And yet, are there exceptions? Are there times when it would be negligent – even stupid – not to take those beliefs into account?  I suggest that such articles of faith have real – even profound – relevance, when they reflect upon a politician’s general view regarding the world, the value of his or her fellow citizens, and the prospect of applying those articles toguide actions in the temporal world. For example, specific dogmas are highly relevant:

1. When those beliefs cast Judgment (with a capital “J”) on the fundamental worth and goodness of a majority of Americans. Or, indeed, any large and non-criminal minority of them.

2. When those beliefs implicitly or explicitly declare it acceptable, even glorious, that a majority (or large minority) of his or her fellow citizens are… or should be…consigned to eternal torment (in Hell) for holding differing beliefs.

3. When a candidate prays openly to hasten the day when her nation will end and democracy vanish, I have to assert that is pertinent to whether voters might want to democratically elect her to lead that nation.

4. Further, when he or she yearns openly for events to unfold that will purportedly “rain fire from the sky,” is that pertinent to our decision whether to assign such a person control over our nuclear tipped missiles?

I find these questions – entailing the potential survival of my children – to be entirely germane to making political choices as to whom I should entrust with our nation’s military, political and practical power.  Moreover anyone who sneers that I am bigoted, merely for asking them, is no friend of the republic, of human civilization, or of me.

…and finally… I’ll finish with a large except from a recent and powerful article about the roots of the financial crisis.  I’ll post the fist few paragraphs here… and then some more down below, under “Comments.”  It makes very clear to whom we owe the recent near-depression, that was spawned in an era when the Federal government’s sole reason to exist seemed to be enabling vampires to run wild. And that is still the agenda of the party that got us into the mess.

Get out the vote.

=== The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America and Spawned a Global Crisis ===
by  Michael W. Hudson

A few weeks after he started working at Ameriquest Mortgage, Mark Glover looked up from his cubicle and saw a coworker do something odd. The guy stood at his desk on the twenty-third floor of downtown Los Angeles’s Union Bank Building. He placed two sheets of paper against the window. Then he used the light streaming through the window to trace something from one piece of paper to another. Somebody’s signature.

Glover was new to the mortgage business. He was twenty-nine and hadn’t held a steady job in years. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew about financial sleight of hand—at that time, he had a check-fraud charge hanging over his head in the L.A. courthouse a few blocks away. Watching his coworker, Glover’s first thought was: How can I get away with that? As a loan officer at Ameriquest, Glover worked on commission. He knew the only way to earn the six-figure income Ameriquest had promised him was to come up with tricks for pushing deals through the mortgage-financing pipeline that began with Ameriquest and extended through Wall Street’s most respected investment houses.

Glover and the other twentysomethings who filled the sales force at the downtown L.A. branch worked the phones hour after hour, calling strangers and trying to talk them into refinancing their homes with high-priced “subprime” mortgages. It was 2003, subprime was on the rise, and Ameriquest was leading the way. The company’s owner, Roland Arnall, had in many ways been the founding father of subprime, the business of lending money to home owners with modest incomes or blemished credit histories. He had pioneered this risky segment of the mortgage market amid the wreckage of the savings and loan disaster and helped transform his company’s headquarters, Orange County, California, into the capital of the subprime industry. Now, with the housing market booming and Wall Street clamoring to invest in subprime, Ameriquest was growing with startling velocity.

Up and down the line, from loan officers to regional managers and vice presidents, Ameriquest’s employees scrambled at the end of each month to push through as many loans as possible, to pad their monthly production numbers, boost their commissions, and meet Roland Arnall’s expectations.