Monthly Archives: September 2005

To Plug or not to Plug…

The October issue of Popular Mechanics has an article (not available online) entitled, “Fueling the Future.” The article highlights five emerging energy technologies:

  1. Next Generation Wind Power

  2. Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles

  3. Cleaner Fusion

  4. Ocean Wave Energy Buoys

  5. Microbial Fuel Cells

  6. Organic Solar Cells

All of these ideas are worth a post. But I’m particularly glad that the idea of plug-in hybrids is getting some mainstream attention. This article states that most Americans drive an average of 30 miles a day. According to Dr. Andrew Frank of the University of California, an electric engine that’s recharged nightly could handle all of those miles. And unlike all-electric vehicles, there is no range issue. The car’s gasoline engine will kick in if the battery gets low or if high speeds are required. We have the gasoline infrastructure in place to allow these vehicles to take long trips.

The primary reason carmakers appear to favor the “charge-sustaining” approach is convenience. They don’t think drivers will want to be bothered with having to plug in their vehicles when they come home at night, which the “charge-depletion” approach requires.

Well, that’s kind of silly. If the owner of a plug in hybrid doesn’t want to plug in, he doesn’t have to. It’s only an option. Such a car would be no different from the hybrids on the road today. They run primarily on gas, but use some electric power harvested from braking. Dr. Frank:

“We are also working on automating the charging. The only thing that is required for you to do is that you park in the same place every night. You park the car, you take the key out, you hear a little click underneath the floor and the car is on charge, automatically.”

Dr. Frank believes that plug-in hybrids could become a stepping stone to other fuel sources like hydrogen. He imagines a plug-in hybrid hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.

I Swallowed a Bug

That was my favorite line from Serenity, a film rich with (among other good things) potential favorite lines of dialog. And, no, that’s not a spoiler. Absent the context in which the line occurs, it’s virtually meaningless.

Serenity also boasts an excellent cast, nifty effects, fine acting, a generous helping of character-driven drama, an even bigger helping of Hideous-Mutant-Cannibal-driven suspense, a lot of big laughs, and — most importantly — two hours in an intriguing and engaging world.

I wasn’t sure that Whedon would be able to pull that last bit off.

serenity-teaser-poster.jpgI caught maybe as many as three episodes of Firefly on FOX when the series first ran three years ago. I liked the show, but frankly I never thought it made a heck of a lot of sense. Generally speaking, if I can’t follow what’s going on, the problem is with the subject matter. Not me.

However, in this case, it turns out the problem was neither with me (which wouldn’t have been posible, anyway — see above) nor with the subject matter. The problem was that the Supergenius Programming Wizards at FOX didn’t air the Firefly pilot until late into the show’s run. I’ve never seen the pilot, but I can’t help but imagine that it clears quite a few things up.

So going into the screening on Tuesday, I still saw the Firefly universe as a confusing and disjointed place. But not for long. I think what impressed me most about Serenity was the seamless manner in which just enough background was provided to make the story coherent. A few minutes in, we know who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, and broadly what motivates each. There are no plodding introductions or explanations — just plenty of action and unusually memorable dialog.

El Jefe Grande and I were able to score a pair of tickets to the free screening at the Denver Pavilions where we joined the ranks of Matt Moore, zombyboy, Dorkafork, Stephen Green, and other area bloggers. Mine was the only blogger name that somehow didn’t make it on the reservations list, but I was able to smooth-talk Mike and myself in, anyhow. (Okay, full disclosure. They took one look at me and concluded that I belonged among that bunch. Flattering for everybody!)

It was a fun evening.

If I have any complaint with the movie it would be that it goes a little too “Buffy” for my tastes in the end. Also, in the light of day a couple of days later, I question the plausibility of the setting. (Though it gave me no trouble while viewing.) What are they in, like one really huge solar system? How many habitable planets could you have orbiting one star? Actually, setting a space opera in a single solar system is not a bad idea — it certainly conquers the much greater implausibility of FTL travel which we have winked at in genre movies and TV for decades.

A Digression

Another observation about the setting (not in any wise a criticism of the movie): I think we have reached the point where all space operas have become what Stephen calls past-futures. This is an interesting development. We are nowehere near the time or level of technological development portrayed in Serenity, but we can already say with some confidence that that kind of world, or any facsimile other than a virtual digital world constructed largely for entertainment purposes, will never exist.

Space operas put modern humans (or even archetypes from the past, as in Serenity or the Star Wars movies) into spaceships where they can have all kinds of adventures, most of which are “spaced up” versions of adventures that explorers or frontierfolk or soldiers have had — mythically, anyhow — from time immemorial.

That’s all well and good, but for three little letters: GNR. Space opera images of the future rely on huge advances in propulsion and virtually nothing else. How many centuries ahead is Serenity set? Certainly far enough that we might expect that human lifespan would be a little longer; I’ve taken issue with TV shows set in the present for not thinking about that. The Alliance, the Reavers, Mr. Universe’s robot girlfriend — just about everything “futuristic” in Serenity — will, in a few years, be obsolete.

Again, this is not a criticism of the movie. Just a reflection on how quickly our visions of the future are being replaced.

Joss Whedon's "Serenity"

In migrating the “Firefly” mythos to the big screen, writer-director Whedon executes a precarious but ultimately successful combination of manga and morality play, all in glorious cinematic live-action. Even more than in previous works (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Angel”, “Firefly”), Whedon’s characters don’t so much discuss, banter, or shout their lines as declaim them in tight, pithy, speech-balloon-sized sound bites and ensemble and crew make it work, frequently moving the audience to laugh, gasp, shriek or sigh out loud and just plain ‘get into’ the story.

At its best, Whedon’s prose rises to the nearly-Shakespearean, though it sometimes trips over itself becoming merely better than average for a science fiction movie. His heritage as a third-generation television writer shows a bit in the overall structure of the piece, but the triphammer pacing of the first two thirds of the movie compare favorably to the work of James Cameron, and, although the overall graphic style and composition of the cinematography owe more to Stan Lee and Jim Sternanko, there are elements of John Ford particularly in Whedon’s space shots.

This film is, obviously, a must-see for hardcore fans of the cancelled television series. For those who have seen a few episodes, either during the original run on FOX in 2002 or recently on the Sci-Fi channel, and liked what they saw or for fans of other Whedon franchises, this is also money well spent and probably an easy decision. For fans of the SF genre, action film buffs, and even open-minded horse-opera devotees, sufficient background is provided in the opening scenes of the movie and in the somewhat stereotypical roles of Serenity’s crew and the characters they interact with, that confusion should be minimized. A late arriving summer popcorn muncher for those who like action fantasy disguising a refreshingly thoughtful and thought-provoking set of characters and situations, “Serenity” is one of the rare films (even rarer in the era of big-budget, franchise driven SF) that works on many levels.

For those who feel that no movie review is complete without a slug-worthy grade or rating, I’ll give this film a solid B+ for “Firefly” fans. Surprisingly, for those new to the franchise, I’d rate it an A- as a standalone SF movie unencumbered by relation to prior events and character expectations.

(Note for fanboys: Be on the lookout for a scene reminiscent of Han Solo in the Bespin carbonite chamber. “Vest, No Vest, Vest”)

“Serenity”: B+ / A-

Joss Whedon’s “Serenity”

In migrating the “Firefly” mythos to the big screen, writer-director Whedon executes a precarious but ultimately successful combination of manga and morality play, all in glorious cinematic live-action. Even more than in previous works (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Angel”, “Firefly”), Whedon’s characters don’t so much discuss, banter, or shout their lines as declaim them in tight, pithy, speech-balloon-sized sound bites and ensemble and crew make it work, frequently moving the audience to laugh, gasp, shriek or sigh out loud and just plain ‘get into’ the story.

At its best, Whedon’s prose rises to the nearly-Shakespearean, though it sometimes trips over itself becoming merely better than average for a science fiction movie. His heritage as a third-generation television writer shows a bit in the overall structure of the piece, but the triphammer pacing of the first two thirds of the movie compare favorably to the work of James Cameron, and, although the overall graphic style and composition of the cinematography owe more to Stan Lee and Jim Sternanko, there are elements of John Ford particularly in Whedon’s space shots.

This film is, obviously, a must-see for hardcore fans of the cancelled television series. For those who have seen a few episodes, either during the original run on FOX in 2002 or recently on the Sci-Fi channel, and liked what they saw or for fans of other Whedon franchises, this is also money well spent and probably an easy decision. For fans of the SF genre, action film buffs, and even open-minded horse-opera devotees, sufficient background is provided in the opening scenes of the movie and in the somewhat stereotypical roles of Serenity’s crew and the characters they interact with, that confusion should be minimized. A late arriving summer popcorn muncher for those who like action fantasy disguising a refreshingly thoughtful and thought-provoking set of characters and situations, “Serenity” is one of the rare films (even rarer in the era of big-budget, franchise driven SF) that works on many levels.

For those who feel that no movie review is complete without a slug-worthy grade or rating, I’ll give this film a solid B+ for “Firefly” fans. Surprisingly, for those new to the franchise, I’d rate it an A- as a standalone SF movie unencumbered by relation to prior events and character expectations.

(Note for fanboys: Be on the lookout for a scene reminiscent of Han Solo in the Bespin carbonite chamber. “Vest, No Vest, Vest”)

“Serenity”: B+ / A-

Carnival of Tomorrow #10

The Tenth Carnival of Tomorrow is being hosted by J. Random American at his “Ideas in Progress” blog.

J. sampled the latest the blogosphere has to offer in space exploration, the Singularity, machines, convenience, science, warfare, nanotech, and energy.

Carnival of Tomorrow #11 will be back at The Speculist. If you would like to contribute to it, email us at:

mrstg87 {@ symbol} yahoo {dot} com

or

bowermaster {@ symbol} gmail {dot} com.

Arthur C. Clarke's New Space Elevator Prediction

hoist.goingup.jpgArthur C. Clarke agrees that we shouldn’t use rockets to go back to the Moon.

Explorers, he said, made it to the South Pole before the technology existed to make it practical to stay there. They used dog sleds because that was the best method available. After that first dangerous trip, it took fifty years before people went back. But when they went back, they stayed permanently. Dog sleds were not involved.

Now we are planning to return to the Moon 50 years after Neil Armstrong, but we’re planning to do it again with rockets. Rocket technology will not allow us to maintain a permanent presence on the Moon. They are the dog sleds of Lunar exploration.

The Space Elevator is the technology that will make permanent Lunar bases supportable.

I love how he closes the column:

nanotube.from.above.jpgI am often asked when I think the first space elevator might be built. My answer has always been: about 50 years after everyone has stopped laughing. Maybe I should now revise it to 25 years.

He doesn’t explain this new optimism. But it would have to be based on recent carbon nanotube advancements and, perhaps, the work of Bradley Edwards.

Hat tip to Instapundit who believes that “the laughter has pretty much stopped.”

Between the Lines

I’ve learned a lot over the past 48 hours at Accelerating Change 2005. Yesterday’s sessions ran from 8:30 AM until after midnight. I intend to write up what I’ve learned at the various presentations and panels…eventually. My original plan was to do little mini-write-ups between sessions, but this has prove impractical. The brief intervals between the sessions turns out to be more packed even than the sessions themselves. They provide the opportunity to discuss the ideas we’re hearing amongst ourselves. And frankly, I couldn’t resist the opportunity spend a few minutes talking with the likes of:

Methuselah Mouse Prize co-founder Dave Gobel, who can introduce more interesting new ideas into a single conversation than most people come up with in a lifetime.

Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence leaders Tyler Emerson, Michael Anissimov, and Eliezer Yudkowsky, who continue to challenge me on the subject of the risks that the Singularity potentially represents.

Foresight Nanotech Institute Chair of the Board Christine Peterson, whose long-anticipated interview we will be publishing over the next week or so, along with an update on what’s happening with the Institute now.

Futurist George Gilder, founder and editor of the influential Gilder Technology Report and driving force behind the annual Telecosm conference.

Ray Kurzweil, who has suggested that we interview our old friend Ramona on FastForward Radio…great idea!

Peter Bishop, Chair and Professor, Studies of the Future MS Program, University of Houston, and Tom Malone, author and Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, both of whom have me seriously thinking about going back to school.

And, of course:

ASF founder John Smart, who puts on one heck of a conference.

More later.

Sounds Familiar

When I get a minute, I’ll provide a full update on Accelerating Change 2005, the first full day of which is today. Yesterday was pre-conference workshops. I attended the workshop on Foresight Consulting, about which I will write more later.

At last night’s reception, I met up with Michael Anissimov, who directed me to a quote from hin in Ray Kurzweil’s new book, The Singularity is Near (which I am pleased to finally have a copy of, signed by the author):

Involuntary death is a cornerstone of biological evolution, but that fact does not make it a good thing.

Michael first opined to that effect here.

Or you can read it here (page 320):

It’s just as I feared. This “Kurzweil” guys is getting all his material from us!

More later.

Carnival of Tomorrow 9.0

home800.jpg

We open the Carnival this week with this image entitled “Home” from 3-D passion.

J. Random American explains that fan films hint at the ways we will spend our free time in the future.

If Aubrey de Grey holds SENS II, and the media ignores it, did it make a sound? I exaggerate, but not by much. I’m aware of only one MSM article on the conference.

[SENS stands for Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence - this was a conference on the science of human life extension - ed.]

So Blogger Kevin Perrott performed an invaluable service by blogging the event. He promises more on the subject after he recovers from the marathon conference, but his first impressions were very, very positive:

…the feeling of the eclectic and high-level group of individuals who attended was electric. The conversations at the final evening were filled with the sound of the positive connections and exchanges which one hears at the beginning of something. We all knew that underneath the data, below the hard science, that something is moving and that the fields represented there were in the ascendant.

One thing shared by ALL of us which was amazingly apparent as we broke up to return to our respective lab benches, computers and studies, was the renewed vigor to pursue our research knowing that although the search for truth is ever at the base of scientific pursuit, the application of that research for the alleviation of suffering is becoming more possible than ever, and we are in the vanguard of this increasingly evident army that is assaulting ancient biological challenges.

Will we achieve these goals within my lifetime? Will ‘negligible senescence’ be realized, perhaps even for my parent? If the trajectory we saw at SENS II is maintained, there is no doubt in my mind these goals will be reached and that the chance for near term anti-aging is high.

Metacool writes that “Nano is the new Turbo,” saying basically that the term jumped the shark with the new Ipod Nano.

…nano is the new turbo, another technical term appropriated by marketing people and applied in so many ways as to make it meaningless.

This is part of the “fake nanotech” Phil mentioned awhile back. I’m sure that this new iPod has circuitry that could arguably be called nanotech, but it’s hardly “spooky.”

Howard Lovy started a new job, but we lost an outstanding nanoblogger. Read all about it.

Godspeed Howard.

It appears that embryonic stem cell lines have an expiration date.

FuturePundit has the story.

Google Blog Search beta is out!

Josh Cohen at Multiple Mentality sounds resigned to high gas prices, but he offers some suggestions.

And Engineer Poet comments.

Speaking of Engineer Poet, don’t miss his energy article at The Ergosphere, “A Lever and a Place to Stand.”

Michael Kanellos reports that the Dartmouth’s new small robot measures 60 microns wide and 250 microns long. This is not quite a nanobot yet, a micron is 1000 nanometers.

Here’s the original Dartmouth press release.

extruder-small.jpgAndrian Bowyer continues to make remarkable progress on his RepRap project.

When completed the RepRap will be a fab lab that is capable of reproducing most of its own parts. The promise this holds for wealth creation and unleashing creativity is staggering.

Pictured at the right is the newly completed extruder head – analogous to a printer head for 3-D products.

Make sure to visit the RepRap blog to keep up to date.

If you think fabbing your own products is still years away, think again. Writer Clive Thompson recounts for Wired his experience fabbing an electric guitar via eMachineShop.

If that’s not enough great future blogging, stick around here for more:

The Age of Choice

Ecological Twofer

Innovation in Delcine?

And, of course, our Second Blogiversary post.

If the Carnival seemed a little less polished this week, blame me. Phil is traveling today.

If you would like to host or contribute to the tenth edition of the Carnival of Tomorrow, please write:

mrstg87 {@ symbol} yahoo {dot} com

bowermaster {@ symbol} gmail {dot} com

The Age of Choice

Glenn Reynolds, in a quick review of why we appear to be closing fast on the Singularity, concludes with this intriguing thought:

The future is almost here, but we’ve still got some choices about how things will turn out. Let’s try to choose wisely.

In context, Glenn is referring to the when and where of the Singularity. Will it occur (or rather, will it start) in the US or in China? Or someplace else? Interesting questions.

Does it matter where the Singularity begins?

Possibly, if only because the place of origin might have something to do with what kind of Singularity occurs. Although we tend to talk about the Singularity as a kind of monolithic proposition, there are a number of scenarios that embrace an eventual technological singularity, and not all of them are particularly nice. In fact, some are pretty horrible.

One of the scariest is the grey goo scenario. It isn’t generally classified as a “technological singularity” per se, but of course it is that. In the grey goo scenario, self-replicating nanomachines get carried away with their ability to reproduce and end up deconstructing the entire world (or universe, depending on the flavor of the scenario) into a pile of — well, self-replicating nanomachines. From our macroscale vantage point, the world would then look like nothing but a mass of gray goo. But of course there would be no one around to see it from our vantage point, beacause everyone and everything would be taken apart to make more randy little robots.

The good news is that grey goo looks increasingly less likely as models for implementing nanotechnology mature. But it’s far from the only scenario. Glenn quotes from the Vernor Vinge essay that introduced the idea of the Singularity:

If networking is widespread enough (into ubiquitous embedded systems), it may seem as if our artifacts as a whole had suddenly wakened.

Which raises a very important question: What kind of mood will the machines be in when they wake up? How will they view us? How will they be disposed towards us?

Hollywood has had no shortage of answers to those questions. In The Terminator and its sequels, the newly awakened machines view humans as rivals (or pests) that need to be eliminated. In the Matrix films, the machines treat us more like cattle — useful, but ultimately disposable.

In the real world, the “mood” of the awakened machines will come down to two things:

  1. The human values and ethical systems with which they are innately imbued (if any).

  2. The values and ethical systems that they develop independently, using their own reason and their own unique perspective.

Ultimately, we have to hope that the second item looks like a new and improved version of the best of the best from the first item. We may be able to help the machines in that direction by programming them to be nice in the first place. But it’s far from a being a given that they will be nice. What if we develop computers with human-level (or greater) intelligence before we figure out how to make computers nice? Eliezer Yudkowsky sets out this dilemma in rather bleak terms, somewhat reminiscent of Bill Joy at his most buzzkillish:

Moore’s Law does make it easier to develop AI without understanding what you’re doing, but that’s not a good thing. Moore’s Law gradually lowers the difficulty of building AI, but it doesn’t make Friendly AI any easier. Friendly AI has nothing to do with hardware; it is a question of understanding. Once you have just enough computing power that someone can build AI if they know exactly what they’re doing, Moore’s Law is no longer your friend. Moore’s Law is slowly weakening the shield that prevents us from messing around with AI before we really understand intelligence. Eventually that barrier will go down, and if we haven’t mastered the art of Friendly AI by that time, we’re in very serious trouble. Moore’s Law is the countdown and it is ticking away. Moore’s Law is the enemy.

Um, yikes.

All of which leads us back to those “few remaining choices” that Glenn referred to. The fact that there aren’t many choices to be made does not diminish their significance. On the contrary. This is something that we have to get smart about now, and that we have to get right the first time. The Singularity isn’t likely to lend itself to a do-over.

But if we do manange to get it right, to make machines that are nice — or if we fail to do it, but the machines figure out how to be nice on their own, or if it turns out that “niceness” is ultimately a function of intelligence and is bound to win out in a superintelligent system — then the choices that we make now will pay off in ways that we can’t really even imagine. Which is why they call it a Singularity, after all.

Suffice it to say that the true age of choice — the age in which each one of us is able to choose, at the most fundamental level, who we are, what our lives are, what the world is — that age begins after the Singularity; that is, the right kind of Singularity. The stakes couldn’t possibly be higher. So let us “choose wisely,” indeed.