Author Archives: Phil Bowermaster

Conference Day 1

Mid-Atlantic Library Futures Conference, Day 1 Re-Cap

Here’s a run-down on the sessions I attended at the first day of the conference:

You Are Becoming Me and I Am Becoming You! Setting the Record Straight on Latinos Being the Majority Population in the US

Salvadaore Avila, Las Vegas – Clark County Library District

Salvadore Avila quickly brushed past his provocative title, pointing out that Latinos will not be in the majority in the US for some time, and that the increased incidence of intermarriage between Latinos and Anglos will ultimately render the transition less dramatic than we tend to picture it today. Based on the rest of his talk, I take the title to be an attention-getting device, offered up tongue-in-cheek.

The Conference So Far

I’ve been to two sessions so far at the Mid-Atlantic Library Futures Conference so far. Kurzweil killed with his keynote — got a standing ovation. At lunch, I was talking to a couple of the librarians who mentioned that they were surprised at how optimistic he is.

I’ll have lots more to say later, but my initial observation is that accelerating change thinking — including the Singularity, although Ray did not explicitly go there — continues to move into the mainstream. A librarian conference isn’t exactly a dentist or Realtor get-together, but neither is it a Foresight Nanotech Vision Weekend.

These folks may be surprised by what they’re hearing, but not shocked or scandalized. They are pleasantly surprised.

Russian Nanotechnology

Mike Treder has some insights on a subject we definitely want to keep an eye on:

Of the many questions that must be answered about molecular manufacturing, one of the most important is: Who will attain the technology first?

It matters a great deal if this powerful and potentially disruptive new manufacturing technique is developed and controlled by aggressive military interests, commercial entities, Open Source advocates, liberal democracies, or some combination thereof. How each of those disparate groups, with different priorities and motivations, would plan to use and (maybe) share the technology is an issue that bears serious investigation. That’s a major purpose behind CRN’s project to create a series of scenarios depicting various futures in which molecular manufacturing could be developed.

One likely player in this high-stakes, high-tech drama is Russia.

Recently it was announced that “Russia will pour over US$1 billion in the next three years into equipment for nanotechnology research.” (That seems like a lot of equipment, and it may be that the quoted story conflated spending on tools and with spending on researcher salaries or other infrastructure, but in any case, a billion dollars over three years is plenty to get a strong program off the ground.)

Read the whole thing over at Responsible Nanotechnology.

It's a New Phil, Week 68

Working Toward the 500

A really intense exercise plan was developed for the actors in the movie 300 which allowed them to be just about the only thing in the movie that wasn’t a special effect. The 300 workout is pretty intense, a total of 300 moves consisting of:

25 pull-ups

50 deadlifts at 135 pounds

50 push-ups

50 box jumps with a 24-inch box

50 “floor wipers” (a core and shoulders exercise at 135 pounds)

50 “clean and press” at 36 pounds (a weight-lifting exercise)

25 more pull-ups — for a total of 300 reps

As I mentioned last week, I’m currently doing about 250 repetitions of six different exercises with each workout. Not all of my sledgehammer exercises are as intense as those listed above, although some are pretty much the same — push-ups, for example. All that’s to say, when I hit the 500 mark on reps later this year, I’ll be doing a total of 3000 moves with each workout. But again, my moves aren’t quite as intense.

So, no, I won’t be in ten times better shape than the actors in 300.

leonidas.jpg

Maybe just four or five.

It’s a New Phil, Week 68

Working Toward the 500

A really intense exercise plan was developed for the actors in the movie 300 which allowed them to be just about the only thing in the movie that wasn’t a special effect. The 300 workout is pretty intense, a total of 300 moves consisting of:

25 pull-ups

50 deadlifts at 135 pounds

50 push-ups

50 box jumps with a 24-inch box

50 “floor wipers” (a core and shoulders exercise at 135 pounds)

50 “clean and press” at 36 pounds (a weight-lifting exercise)

25 more pull-ups — for a total of 300 reps

As I mentioned last week, I’m currently doing about 250 repetitions of six different exercises with each workout. Not all of my sledgehammer exercises are as intense as those listed above, although some are pretty much the same — push-ups, for example. All that’s to say, when I hit the 500 mark on reps later this year, I’ll be doing a total of 3000 moves with each workout. But again, my moves aren’t quite as intense.

So, no, I won’t be in ten times better shape than the actors in 300.

leonidas.jpg

Maybe just four or five.

Future of Libraries

I will be attending this conference Monday and Tuesday of next week:

For two days in May, three hundred librarians will meet with visionaries from the disciplines of anthropology, architecture, public policy and science to discuss the future of libraries. By looking outside of the library, we seek to explore unique ideas that will make the difference. Imagine merging information, inspiration and imagination to transform the way we look at our future. And then working together to build a solid foundation that will serve as a concrete plan with which to move forward.

The theme of the conference is an evocative one: Imagination to Transformation. Or if I may paraphrase: “live to see it.”

Speakers at the conference include Ray Kurzweil, Mary Catherine Bateson, Bob Treadway, and others. Should be a fascinating couple of days.

Part of the program will also involve an exercise derived from our Seven Questions About the Future. Remember those? We had a lot of great responses back in the day.

I saw a good show on PBS last night about an a villa excavated some time ago in Herculaneum (Pompeii’s upscale neighbor) where a library of more than 1800 ancient manuscripts was found, each one rolled up tight and toasted by Vesuvius. The efforts of scholars over the past couple hundred years to unroll (much less to read) these ancient books have been nothing short of heroic. There was initially hope that a lost tragedy of Sophocles or dialog of Plato might be found among these books; so far no such luck. But as modern chemistry makes it easier to unroll them, and new imaging technology makes it easier (and in many cases, possible) to read some part of them, we are learning quite a bit about the school of Epicurean philosophy to which they apparently belonged.

papyrus.jpg

One of the papyri from Herculaneum

When picturing the library of the future, it’s hard not imagine some kind of Google interface connecting everything ever published to everything else ever published via logical, cognitive, and semantic linking schemes that we can hardly imagine now. But I think the tireless efforts to decipher these burnt manuscripts give us another hint as to the role that libraries will continue to play. Libraries aren’t just collections of books — they are a link with the past. When ancient books such as these are found, it’s as though some piece of the past that was lost has been restored to us.

This is also why the destruction of a great library — such as occurred in Alexandria at some point 1500-1800 years ago — represents such a tremendous loss. It’s as though some part of the past has been blotted out.

Libraries are the original databases and the original time machines. It will be very interesting spending a couple of days getting a handle on where libraries are going — and how in the future they will be even more effective at showing us where we’ve been.

How Not to Get Cancer

Randall Parker says that it could be as easy as ABC…D:

60% Cancer Drop From Vitamin D Supplements

As regular readers know, I’ve been after you for years to raise your body vitamin D levels. If you haven’t gotten off your duff yet to do anything about it how about this as something to get you going? A study coming out in June will report a more than halving of the incidence of cancer by taking vitamin D supplements.

The linked article goes on to describe the study which has yielded these astounding results in greater detail, noting that a drop of 60% indicates twice the impact on cancer of smoking. However, Randall urges caution about mega-doing on vitamin D:

I would suggest refraining from doses above 2000 IU, at least for now. Vitamin D research has become such a hot topic that we should expect more clarification on the risks and benefits of higher doses. But my guess from what I’ve read so far is that a 2000 IU dose daily is enough to provide the vast majority of the benefit.

Of course, the other way to get vitamin D is through exposure to the sun, but then that raises the risk of cancer. So we have a lot to learn. Still, this is potentially a huge development. And I don’t think it’s out of line at this stage to suggest that we should all at least be getting our RDA of vitamin D.

There Are No New Inventions

…only improvements. Or so says TechRivet’s friend, “M”:

There have been only a few true scientific breakthroughs since WWII that truly have been impactful on our lives. I include true new technology, not improvements on existing technology.

My candidates include:

* Transistor
* Integrated circuit (although this could be argued as an improvement on the transistor)
* Laser
* Some medicines, particularly the pill
* Human (and others) genome work

I can’t think of any others. There certainly have been improvements on existing technology galore, but little new science that has made a difference.

Well, but wasn’t the transistor just an improvement over some previous analog technology — tubes and so forth? The pill was just an improvement over the rhythm method, wasn’t it? I think there may be a definitional issue, here. What’s an improvement vs. a wholly new invention?

I think there’s a notion of discontinuity that makes an invention a true invention, rather than just an change over something that came before. These folks had some interesting thoughts about that.

Anyhow, TechRivet goes on to issue a kind of intriguing challenge:

Excluding the list above, what new inventions have had an impact on society? Since WW2? Since 1960? Since 1995?

Make it new and make it impactful. I’ll be doing a follow up post or two on this subject because it is fascinating. What if there has been no new inventions? Does it matter? Do we still need them? Does the law of accellerating returns require new inventions? Are new scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs still looking for anything truly “new”?

So what do you think, folks? Have there been any new inventions? Are any on their way? I can think of one or two, but I’d be interested to see what others come up with first.

It's a New Phil, Week 67

My Third Day of Exercise

I topped 72 hours of exercise for the year this week, meaning that I have spent a total of three days working out since the year began. Most of that time has been spent doing one of my two sledge hammer routines, but I have also been walking and have now added riding my bike to the list of activities.

Dedicating this much time for exercise hasn’t been too big a challenge, but I’m getting to the point now where I have the endurance to do much longer workouts with the hammer, so I’ve started getting up early to work out. I might have to get me an alarm clock one of these days…

I think I mentioned a while back that the standard workout consisted of 100 moves of each of 6 exercises (several of which are repeated twice on the right side and the left.) I called completing 100 moves for each of the 6 exercises a Century. Usually I would do ten sets of ten moves each. Now I’m up to 2.5 centuries per day (ten sets of 25 moves for each exercise) and I plan to increase that weekly until — sometime before the end of the year — I’m doing five centuries a day.

If nothing else, that means I’ll be doing 500 push-ups a day. So, you know, if the Marines decide they want to start taking guys in their mid forties, I’ll be ready for boot camp.