Monthly Archives: November 2005

Turning off the Fear Switch

This is interesting:

Deactivating a specific gene transforms meek mice into daredevils, researchers have found. The team believe the research might one day enable people suffering from fear – in the form of phobias or anxiety disorders, for example – to be clinically treated.

The research found that mice lacking an active gene for the protein stathmin are not only more courageous, but are also slower to learn fear responses to pain-associated stimuli, says geneticist Gleb Shumyatsky, at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US.

So here we have the beginnings of a technique which, ultimately, a meglomaniac could use to breed an army of truly fearless warriors. Or a fanatical dad could use to produce the perfect football player.

This idea reminds me of one of those self-help-seminar questions you run across sometimes: what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? Of course, living without fear isn’t exactly the same as knowing you can’t fail. Presumably, it would be more like not caring that you can fail. That sounds kind of dangerous.

On the other hand, we read this:

The lack of the protein does not appear to affect other learning experiences, as both sets of mice were able to memorise the paths out of mazes equally well. “This is a good sign for an eventual clinical application that could let people deal with their fears in an entirely different way,” Shumyatsky says.

If I could be smart enough to assess risks rationally and then operate without fear, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I might go for a boost of intelligence before I think about turning off the fear switch.

Bigger than Big

Individual contributor. That’s my classification at work. It means that I’m a manager (reasonably senior), but no one reports to me.

So what does that tell us, exactly? That I’m a foot soldier? A worker bee?

Actually, it means that I am — to some extent — a unit unto myself. Some tasks require a team. My tasks require a team of one. Which is not to say that I’m not a part of any team. As a matter of fact, I’m part of several. But they are all of the dotted-line, cross-functional, here-today-gone-tomorrow variety. I participate in teams, but my role is not that of a team member. My role is that of an individual contributor.

Reading over Glenn’s thoughts on bigness and smallness, a thought occured to me that may be an answer to his rhetorical question: “How big can small get?”

My “organization” at work has one member — you can’t get any smaller than that. But that wasn’t the question. The question wasn’t how small can small get, but rather how big can it get. What it comes down to is this: How big can a group of one be?

The answer is…a lot bigger than it used to. Glenn talks about a corporation being a web of contracts and the business world being a web of relationships. Exactly. Is it any wonder that the dominant metaphor for the Internet would be that of a web? All bloggers are individual contributors; a few of them have achieved a level of prominence and influence that large media orgnaizations could not. One can be more than many. Small can be bigger than big.

Part of the resaon for this is what I have dubbed de-industrialization:

After 20 years or so, it’s easy to forget that a small revolution in its own right occured when, all of a sudden, virtually anyone anywhere could produce typeset copy. If you wanted to be a publisher, all you needed was a computer, a laser printer, and access to a photocopier. Publishing, or at least a good-sized piece of it, was de-industrialized. That is to say, the big industrial components that only a big company could afford to purchase, house, and operate — in this case, a linotype machine and an offset press — were made optional.

Over the past two decades, de-industrialization has emerged in many other areas. The recording industry has been massively de-industrialized. The equipment for making a musical recording has been simplified, but that’s nothing compared to the change in infrastructure used to distribute a recording. We no longer need factories to press vinyl records; at this point, even burning CDs is starting to seem kind of quaint and clunky.

De-industrialization has empowered the individual in a very literal sense. One person can now do what it used to take many to do. That’s why we are all (mostly) now our own travel agents, photo processors, and print shops. Not to mention grocery clerks.

Artists have always been individual contributors. But now musicians can record, market, and sell their work without a studio and without a label. Now novelsists can write, publish, and distribute their works all on their own. Small is as big as big, if not bigger.

One more example. We now have this notion of the long tail. Not only can individual producers be as big as, if not bigger than, large organizations; individual consumers — markets of just a few or perhaps as few as one — can be bigger than mass markets.

So maybe, in the future, small will be bigger than big, and one will be bigger than small. Kind of Zen, isn’t it?

The Lucky 13th Edition of The Carnival of Tomorrow

friday.jpgThis week we are tempting fate by publishing the thirteenth edition of The Carnival of Tomorrow.

But the future looks bright, so we’re feeling pretty lucky. Read on if you dare!

J Random American at Multiple Mentality points out that news coverage has changed drastically in the past few years, but more change is on the way:

“The Future of Media, Not Now But Soon”

cat under ladder.jpgIronman at Political Calculations looks at the myriad ways that several major inventions have come into being and points to how today’s technology will affect future development around the world.

Eric at Eric Grumbles Before the Grave has details on NASA’s first annual Space Elevator Games.

Eric’s post inspired Stephen to write more generally about “Push Prizes” – prizes, like the X-prize, that seek to push the development of technology.

Jack William Bell asks “Is There a Future in Futurism?”

Our answer to that question would have to be an emphatic YES.

The host of the last edition of the Carnival of Tomorrow, Micah Glasser wrote that “Google Resumes Construction of ‘Turing’s Cathedral.’”

Google employee quote:

“We are not scanning all those books to be read by people… We are scanning them to be read by an AI.”

Stephen reports that Google Print is now open in beta form.

step on a crack2.JPGIn fact, Micah has been on fire lately: writing on automatic speech translation, the hydrogen economy (a response of sorts to our post on the Israeli car), and the large binocular telescope. Go to his blog and start scrolling.

Speaking of vehicles and fuel and that sort of thing, Glenn Reynolds has had some thoughts about hybrids and energy efficiency both on his own blog and at SinceSlicedBread.  And CNET covers the 12th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems including BMW smart cars that operate in packs to assess the road and travel conditions.

Paul Hsieh has the latest on research towards allowing the US military to set phasers on stun (second item).

mirror3.jpgFingers upon fingers upon fingers: Technovelgy describes amazing downwardly cascading waldoes. Scroll down for the creepy picture/video. Also on Technovelgy, a report on the new shopper’s best friend:

TMSUK has created a new shopping assistant robot. This service bot will follow you around autonomously, carrying your heavy bags full of purchases. The robot will be tested at a shopping mall located in the Fukuoka airport in February of 2006. It turns out that British science fiction writer John Brunner wrote about a robot with a similar purpose in his 1975 masterpiece Shockwave Rider…

Of course, shopping bags aren’t the only things that machines are helping out with these days. Rand Simberg reports that we can’t do math without them anymore.

Mike at DistracTech provides us a map of North America ca 3005. Looks like a very wet place.

Regine at We Make Money Not Art reports on a new robot being developed at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California which has a brain with 20,000 electronic brain cells.

Darwin VII is a trashcan-shaped robot that has just 20,000 brain cells.

It crawls across a floor strewn with blocks, grabbing and tasting as it goes, its malleable mind impressionable and hungry to learn. It is adapting, discovering that the striped blocks are yummy and the spotted ones taste bad.

This does raise the question of how we could possibly know what tastes good to a robot, but maybe we have to take Darwin’e creator’s word for it.

spilled salt.jpgSam Dinkin at Transterrestrial Musings dismisses those who worry about China’s new entry into the space race:

I think the interesting story that no one is telling is why the Chinese mimic the dead end space programs of the US and the USSR. It’s some kind of misguided nostalgia or timewarped hero worship.

We’d worry less if our nation wasn’t also still committed to the old expensive model.  It certainly helps that NASA is beginning to look at alternatives, but that’s a tiny, tiny percentage of the NASA budget.

For more future-related news, don’t miss our recent “Better All The Time” feature.

This week’s Carnival was put together by Phil, Stephen, and Michael.

If you would like to host or contribute to the 14th edition of the Carnival of Tomorrow, please write:

mrstg87 {@ symbol} yahoo {dot} com

or

bowermaster {@ symbol} gmail {dot} com

Network-Centric Road Warriors

If BMW (among other manufacturers) have their way, the US Department of Defense may not be the only place the mantra “Every Platform a Sensor” is heard.

The automaker’s “Connected Car” concept is being shown at the 12th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems (pics at CNET, after images of VW’s hydrogen-powered HyMotion concept) in San Francisco this week and coming on the heels of last month’s DARPA Grand Challenge success, it looks like smart cars, sharing information with each other, their drivers, and possibly the road network may be the ‘tail fins’ of the latter half of this decade.

(h/t Geekpress)

Refreshing

Very interesting:

AUSTRALIANS could be drinking treated sewage within a decade thanks to “good” bacteria in clean water feasting on germs.

CSIRO researchers injected treated sewage into a Perth aquifer as part of a $3million trial of the water for domestic, agricultural and industry use.

The researchers found that natural bacteria in the aquifers “eat” dangerous germs and viruses.

Further tests will investigate whether the aquifers can be used as part of the water treatment process.

What a great story. It has familiar elements — bacteria, sewage, the need for clean drinking water — plus a surprise ending.

Talk About Outsourcing

From today’s Kurzweil roundup:

Amazon creates artificial artificial intelligence

Amazon.com has launched a new program called Amazon Mechanical Turk, through which a computer can ask humans to perform tasks that it can’t do itself, such as identifying objects in photographs.

I knew it was just a matter of time before lazy, spoiled computers started palming work off on us. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a dozen times: this is what happens when you coddle them.

From the original article:

Examples of what humans can do for computers? Evaluate beauty, translate text and find specific objects in photos.

I should really stop carping and just be glad that we’re still good for something. Of the three things listed above, the first one might well be the final hold-out for humanity’s ability to add value. Machines are already translating text and it shouldn’t be too long before they can identify objects in photos. But long after machines can outperform us in either of those tasks, they may continue to seek input from us because of our quirky aesthetic tastes.

As the Fourth of Five Kids

…I’m bummed:

Predictors for exceptional human longevity may include birth order, place of birth and early-life living conditions, according to a recent Society of Actuaries (SOA) study that suggests there are several factors linked to one’s longevity. The data indicates that first-born daughters are three times more likely to survive to age 100 compared to later-born daughters. The chances for exceptional longevity are minimal for sons having a birth order of four to six compared to those born earlier or later.

Although this isn’t great news for me personally, there is a very nice upside: my mother, my wife, and my daughter are all first-born daughters. But why would birth order make such a difference? Randall Parker has some thoughts on that:

…one could imagine ways that a woman’s body could treat an earlier pregnancy differently than a later pregnancy. During a first pregnancy a woman could have a larger store of minerals and vitamins to give to a fetus. So a woman could compensate with vitamin supplements. But alternatively the immune system of a woman’s body could could respond to a succession of pregnancies differently and become poorer at avoiding immune responses to a pregnancy. That’d be harder to do something about.

That’s a possibility, but it doesn’t explain why daughters seem to benefit more from birth order than sons. There are environmental and other factors to be considered. Since people who live to be a hundred were all born a century ago, there’s no question that a lot has changed, and that the prospects for someone born only a few decades ago might be very different from those of a person born in the late 19th or early 20th century.

Birth order and environment will probably not have the same predictive power for the longevity of younger generations as it currently does for older ones. Work is being done to skew the numbers in everyone’s favor.

Better All The Time #24




Dispatches from a rapidly changing, rapidly improving world
#24
11/05/05

It’s that time again. Take a break from all the gloom and doom and enjoy a
walk, however brief, on the positive side. We’ve assembled ten news items
guarantee to make you feel better about the world and where it’s headed.

So let’s get started. 

A Tale of Two Bozos

CORRECTION:

“Cole” emails to point out that contrary to my assumption, A Tale of Two Cities is not under copyright. Anything written prior to 1923 is in the public domain. Since that formed one of my points within this post, my face is just a little red.

Yes, the copy that Google scanned for “Google Print” is under copyright. Apparently additional material (illustrations or notes) added to the public domain text allowed for this.

Here’s where you can read the novel in its entirety online.

In an age of partisan rancor unlike anything in living memory, it’s refreshing to see displays of bipartisanship – two congressmen from opposite sides of the aisle coming together to discuss policy, draft legislation, or in retirement, to write a column on an issue that’s important to the country.

It sure would help if they weren’t dead wrong.

Retired congressmen Ms. Pat Schroeder (D) and Mr. Bob Barr (R – well actually he’s a Libertarian now) managed to write a column on the Google Library Project – Google Print – without once considering the service that Google is performing.  Even to dismiss it.

We’re both authors and both believe intellectual property should actually mean something.

And so we find ourselves joining together to fight a $90 billion company bent on unilaterally changing copyright law to their benefit and in turn denying publishers and authors the rights granted to them by the U.S. Constitution.

The part of the U.S. Constitution that Schroeder and Barr are referring to is from Article I section 8.

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

From the very beginning it was understood that intellectual property was a balancing act.  Promoting progress required both that writers and other innovators be allowed to benefit from their contribution, but also that the public be able to access that knowledge.  That balance was made at the time of the constitution by securing “exclusive” rights for a “limited” time.  Schroeder and Barr are complaining that the “exclusive” half of this equation is eroding.  Eroding in the hands of a company that must be evil because it’s valued at $90 billion. 

But the “limited times” counter-balance eroded a long time ago.  For an example, let’s go to the newly opened Google Print service and search for “A Tale of Two Cities.”  Several versions and some study aids pop up .  Examining each version I discovered that this book is still copyrighted.  Charles Dickens wrote the book in 1859 and died in 1870.  

Why do we allow copyrights to be renewed indefinitely?  Was there any danger that Dickens would not have written his book unless he believed it would remain under copyright for 146 years…and counting?  I think not.  Is there no point when a literary work can be said to belong to the world?

Anyway, let’s take a look at how Google is trampling on the rights of Charles Dickens.  Clicking on the first copy listed brings up the table of contents.  Aha! The first page of the book and you didn’t pay for it!  There’s even a page turn indicator so that you can click to see more.  So I clicked.  Two more pages came up and then I hit a dead end.  Google allows you to see the first three pages of a copyrighted book.  If you want to read more you are probably going to click one of the links in the bottom left corner to buy the book.

Oh, the horror!  You might actually read a page or three before buying.  I would never think to do that in a book store!

In fairness, Schroeder and Barr would probably not be too concerned if Google were only scanning in the first three pages of every book.  That would simply be the table of contents for many books.  But Google has scanned entire books.  So, instead of seeing just the table of contents for “A Tale of Two Cities” I could actually start reading the book if I knew the first line of the book.  It helps that this book has one of the most famous first lines of all time, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

So I use the “search within this book” option and type in that line.  Sure enough, the first page comes up.  Again, though, I’m limited to three pages following that quote.  Now I’m sure that with clever searching I could continue to bring up three page sections of the novel.  In fact I did.  My fifth search term brought up pages 4, 5, and 6.  But that’s a big hassle.  This sort of reading without paying will occur less often than just reading the book at the bookstore…or checking it out from the library.

Schroeder and Barr’s problem with Google’s move is that it is new.  Nobody has ever done this before.  Nobody could – technology has only now made this possible.  But thanks to this technology we can now search books for that one passage we remember but can’t place.  We can also search within books for subjects of interest.  This is highly valuable to readers. 

The constitutional goal of promoting “science and useful arts” remains paramount.  But as technology changes, the balance must be revisited.  We should always seek to reward innovators (and their sponsors) sufficient to maximize innovation.  But innovation loses value the more it’s locked away. 

All this will shake out in Google’s favor.  We readers are going to love the service, and the writers and their publishers will come to appreciate the revenue stream flowing from Google. 

Our “leaders” will catch on an election or two after that.

The Power of the "Push Prize"

Cash prizes for technology – what I’m calling a “push prize” – is an old idea that’s recently come back into favor in a big way.  Until recently the most famous of these prizes was the Orteig Prize.  Charles Lindberg won this $25,000 prize when he made his famous flight across the Atlantic in 1927.

XPrize_graphic.jpgThe Orteig Prize directly inspired the $10,000,000 Ansari X Prize.  The X-prize was awarded last year to the Tier One Program, which flew twice into space with a privately developed spacecraft called SpaceShipOne.

This year, a team from Stanford University won the $1,000,000 DARPA Grand Challege with their robot-piloted Volkswagen “Stanley.” The Defense Department promoted that contest with the ultimate goal of making one-third of ground military forces completely automated by 2015 – thereby lowering the casualty rate from roadside bombs and ambushes in places like Iraq.

And the fund for the Methuselah Mouse Prize just received an anonymous donation of $1,000,000 to conquer aging in mice – prep work for doing the same in people.

Public and private institutions keep returning to the prize model to push breakthrough technologies because it works and it’s cheap.  Who would have imagined that a mere $10,000,000 could help launch any kind of space program?  Apparently the founders of the X-Prize thought so, but the cheap route is hardly the way NASA goes into space.

Or that’s what I thought until I learned about NASA’s sponsorship of the Space Elevator Games. NASA, it seems, is starting to look beyond rockets to new ways to get into space.  This is important because it now costs roughly $2,000,000 to take 200 pounds into orbit atop a rocket.  Nobody in the private sector, beside a few billionaire tourists, will be able to properly utilize space at that cost.  Space has got to get cheaper – but rockets sufficient to break Earth’s gravity will always be expensive.

So NASA is giving serious thought to the Space Elevator.  This structure will be exactly what it sounds like – a gentle, slow ride from the surface of the earth into space in a vehicle that will climb a tether.  The cost to get a hypothetical 200 pound astronaut into orbit will fall from $2,000,000 to $1,000.  This, according to NASA’s Space Elevator consultant, Dr. Bradley Edwards.

In 2000 NASA retained Dr. Edwards to do a feasibility study on the Space Elevator.  This study showed that the Space Elevator was possible given foreseeable improvements in existing technology.  Previously it had been known that a Space Elevator would require a material much stronger than any that existed at that time.  This unknown material was often referred to as fictionite or unobtainium.

That changed in 1991 when Japanese researcher Sumio Iijima discovered the carbon nanotube.  Theoretically the carbon nanotube could be 100 times the strength of steel at one-fifth of the weight.  This is three times stronger than needed for a Space Elevator, but producing nanotube ribbons of sufficient length and strength has continued to be a challenge.

The other major hurdle is producing a practical “climber” vehicle powered by laser light shot up from the base station to the climber.  A light-powered climber would not have to lift a heavy load of fuel.  This increases the climber’s useful lift capacity – more people and materials can be sent up at lower cost.

With these issues in mind the first annual Space Elevator games were held the weekend of October 22, 2005 at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. There were two events: a “tug a war” of sorts, and a “rope climb.”  Each event had a cash prize of $50,000.

In the “tug-a-war” a machine literally pulled each team’s tether until it broke.  In order to win a team had to produce a tether that was at least 50% stronger than NASA’s previous best tether AND beat all the other teams.  While the best tether that day was not quite 50% stronger than NASA’s previous best, it was quite a bit stronger.  No team won that contest, but NASA now has a better tether.

Teams competing in the “rope climb” event sent light powered climbers up a tether.  While none of the teams were able to climb at NASA’s minimum meter-per-second pace, they were able to demonstrate that light powered climbers are feasible.

NASA intends to repeat the contest annually with increasing prize amounts as a part of NASA Centennial Prize program.

NASA should be commended for it’s willingness to think “outside the box” in several respects.  Not only is NASA daring to consider a path to space beyond the traditional rocket, but they are also harnessing the energy and imagination of a new generation of engineers eager to make a name for themselves.  Bravo!

And if the mouse prize works out, more of us will live to see this Space Elevator in action.