Author Archives: Phil Bowermaster

Lines Through Time

[ I like dusting off some of these older posts from time to time, especially on more philosophical subjects that we haven't covered in a while. My life has taken some additional turns since I first published this piece. For example, we have already moved away from the house mentioned below as the "current" house.

Enjoy. ]

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself-Well…How did I get here?

David Byrne, “Once in a Lifetime”

Practical Time Travel is the art of getting from the present to a future of
our own choosing. We do this by navigating possibility space and by realizing
favorable outcomes. So the big question is, how do we get to a particular outcome?
To answer that, let’s start by examining how we get to any outcome.

As I’m so fond of saying, the
present is the future relative to the past. So here I am living in 21-year-old-me’s
future. Am I living the outcome that Young Phil was looking for? It’s hard to
say, for a couple of reasons:

It’s difficult from this vantage point to get back inside the head of my
younger self. Unless we’re really thinking about it, we tend to remember our
past selves as being substantially similar to the people we are today. This
is almost always wrong. We need to remember specific things we did and said
in order to really come to grips with how different we used to be. Writing
samples are tremendously helpful in this process.Unfortunately, even if we do remember what we wanted at an earlier
point in our lives, it’s hard not to evaluate those desires in light of subsequent
attitudes and experience. So I tend to say things like “I used to have
this stupid idea about becoming a tree farmer.” Granted, I did once entertain
that rather unlikely ambition and, in light of my subsequent career choices
and what I’ve learned along the way about the kinds of things I’m suited to
do — not to mention the business side of it, about which I then knew
and still know absolutely nothing — it was a pretty stupid idea.By calling it stupid, I mitigate the embarrassment of being associated with
such a harebrained idea, but I do so at the expense of truly remembering how
appealing I used to find the idea. If we can’t empathize with our younger
selves, we can’t get much of a handle on who they were or what they wanted.
Young Phil had, at best, hazy notions as to what it was that he wanted out
of life. And he tended to scrap what vague plans he did make every
few weeks. So, for all I can recall, the life I’m now living is a precise
match to one of my plans. But even if it is, it’s also a huge miss on several
other plans.

But it doesn’t really matter whether I was following a plan or not. I was there; I’m now here. The process of how that happened is instructive whether it was carefully planned or totally random. One way to get a handle on that process is to examine a chain of cause and effect from the present to the past. I was thinking about this while looking out my bedroom window this morning. Our house overlooks a small park, and as I was enjoying the view of the rosy October sun on yellow leaves and green grass, I got to thinking about how it was that I happened to be sitting right there at that moment. Why was I there and not someplace else?

We bought this house in 2001 because my wife had taken a job with a telecommunications company located in the far south end of the metro Denver area. Commuting from where we were living in Boulder County was arduous for her, so we moved. If she hadn’t taken the job, we wouldn’t have moved there.

My wife found her job through the help of a friend who worked for the same company. If it weren’t for the help of her friend, she probably wouldn’t have taken that particular job.

She became acquainted with this friend when she visited Denver in the year 2000. If she hadn’t come to see me, she never would have met her friend.

She was visiting me because I had moved back to the Denver area in 1999. I had to leave Malaysia for economic reasons. If I hadn’t moved back, she wouldn’t have been here visiting me.

Prior to coming back, I had stayed in Malaysia for as long as I could, past the extension of my contract. If I had allowed the company to rotate me back in at the end of my contract, I would have taken a job in either Europe or California in 1997.

I stayed in Malaysia for as long as I could because I wanted to be near my (then) girlfriend. If I hadn’t met her, I wouldn’t have tried to stay longer.

In 1995, my original contract in Malaysia was for a few weeks. Then I was offered a one-year contract; then a second one-year contract. If I hadn’t taken both contracts, I would never have met my girlfriend.

I was originally brought down to Malaysia because of the experience I picked up in Russia. If I hadn’t done so much work in Russia, I would never have been called down to Malaysia.

My suggestion that we use process management tools from the total quality management system in rolling out new businesses was well received by management in Russia. If I hadn’t suggested this (or if they hadn’t liked the idea) I would not have made several trips to Russia in 1993 and 1994 helping to outline the business roll-out process.

My co-worker Cap got sick and had to take a leave of absence. He asked me to take over a project for him in his absence. The project was documenting processes for our joint venture companies in Russia. If Cap hadn’t gotten sick (or if he had asked someone else to cover this project for him) I would never have taken that first trip to Moscow.

In 1992, after I had been with the company for about a year, my boss became concerned that I was being underutilized in my position as a technical editor. When the position of Lead facilitator opened up for the Product Engineering and Development quality management program, she suggested that I take it. I did. If I hadn’t become lead facilitator, I would never have recommended using tools from the quality management system for the Russian start-ups

I was hired on a technical editor at U S WEST Advanced Technologies in 1991. If I hadn’t taken the job with US WEST, I would not have been able to take over Cap’s project for him.

My friend Mike started working at U S WEST a few months before I did. If Mike had not taken a job at US WEST, I would never have learned about the job opening there and would not have applied for it.

Mike and I met in grad school in 1986. If either of us had decided not work on that particular degree at that particular time, we would have never met.

I dropped out of law school a couple of years before starting my master’s. If I had stayed in law school, I would never have started my master’s.

After I graduated from college in Kentucky in 1983, I decided to move to Denver to go to law school. Had I not decided to go to law school, I might not have moved to Denver.

So there you have it: a straight causal line across 20 years from my ill-considered (and soon regretted) decision to go law school to my sitting in my current house. The items listed are not the only possibilities that had to be realized in order for me to be there, there are others. But if you take any one of them away, the sequence is destroyed and I almost certainly would have ended up someplace else.

So that’s how a particular outcome is accomplished—through conscious choices, happy accidents, and just plain dumb luck.
Originally published October 13, 2003.

They Look Minty Fresh

Via GeekPress, Snopes says that striped icebergs are real.

Wow, first finger moneys and now this. The world is truly an amazing place, isn’t it?

Reader's Choice Video 1

Michael votes for this Ted Talk, in which physicist Brian Cox out lines the workings of the Large Hadron Collider. Amazing stuff:

Meanwhile, Harvey recommends this YouTube snippet concerning a shocking display from a recent college girl’s softball game:

That’s right — a shocking display of decency and sportsmanship. What is the world coming to, folks? Oh, wait — I think I have the answer to that. More on the story here.

We’ll try this out as a regular feature every Friday. If you have video recommendations, let me know.

Reader’s Choice Video 1

Michael votes for this Ted Talk, in which physicist Brian Cox out lines the workings of the Large Hadron Collider. Amazing stuff:

Meanwhile, Harvey recommends this YouTube snippet concerning a shocking display from a recent college girl’s softball game:

That’s right — a shocking display of decency and sportsmanship. What is the world coming to, folks? Oh, wait — I think I have the answer to that. More on the story here.

We’ll try this out as a regular feature every Friday. If you have video recommendations, let me know.

The (Solar) Singularity is Near

One of the reasons I don’t lose sleep over Peak Oil is that there is such a broad range of alternative energy sources under development. The list includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Nuclear Fission
Solar
Concentrated Solar
Ethanol — from switchgrass, cornstalks, etc.
Ethanol — from waste
Methanol — from coal
Synthfuel — from coal
Synthfuel — from shale
Synthfuel — from tar sands
Biodiesel — from waste
Biodiesel — from algae
Nuclear Fusion

Progress is being made on all of these fronts. And if oil shoots up to $200, $300, $400 per barrel over the next couple of years, we can expect interest in these (as well as funding applied to them) to skyrocket.

Let’s look at just the second and third items on the list, the two major forms of harnessing energy from the sun. What we normally think of as “solar energy” is the application of photovoltaic technology — turning the sun’s power directly into electricity. “Concentrated solar” power, AKA solar thermal energy, involves concentrating and capturing heat from the sun, which is then used to create steam and move an electricity-producing turbine.

We wrote about the tremendous promise of concentrated solar power just a few weeks ago, so I won’t rehash all that here. Suffice it to say that, even if photovoltaic technology had hit some kind of peak of its own, meaning that we wouldn’t expect much more from it than what we’re getting now, concentrated solar would remain as a major potential energy source that we have barely even begun to exploit.

But the truth is that photovoltaic solar energy is far from any peak. Ray Kurzweil has repeatedly stated his assessment that solar energy is on a Moore’s-Law-style trajectory of its own, and that all the worlds energy could be supplied by solar in as little as 20 years. So if Moore’s Law is leading us to The Singularity, is this acceleration of solar power capability leading us to a solar singularity?

Some probably wouldn’t like that term, seeing as it could make the whole question as to what exactly we mean by “singularity” even murkier than it currently is. But it has a ring to it, doesn’t it?

Solar Singularity.

Anyhow, if we are going to get to the point where solar really does (or even could) supply all the world’s power within a couple of decades, we are obviously going to have to see:

Accelerating progress in solar energy technology culminating in a fundamental shift in how the world’s energy needs are met.

And that, then, can be how we define the solar singularity. It seems unlikely that it could be confused with any other kind of singularity, doesn’t it?

We talked briefly on the most recent FastForward Radio about how we would know when we’ve reached the solar singularity. One suggestion was “when solar is cheaper than anything else.” Another was “when they don’t even bother to drill any more.” Those are both good candidates. But how could we ever get to that point?

When I Grow Up…

Karl Hallowell comments on Stephen’s review of Iron Man:

Hmmm, this is pretty pro-transhumanist. The hero has an awesome robot suit, an interesting gadget built in his chest, and a friendly AI. He also has an intriguing collection of modern and near future technology. All of this is portrayed in a mostly positive light.

One of the played-to-death tropes of future disappointment is the lack of flying cars. I used to trade in that one myself, but I got tired of it. Part of what we do at The Speculist is attempt to develop new future-related tropes. I like to think of myself as a memetician, but I will quickly admit that I don’t have any academic credentials in the field. Anyhow, one trope that Stephen and I have been developing for some time is that, in the future, we will all be super-heroes. This started way back in ’05 with our second FastForward Radio, wherein I suggested that — in the future, we will all be Batman.

But it doesn’t stop there. As we noted in our most recent FFR, a Japanese company is now working to make us all Iron Man — or at least make those of us who want or need to be…

Nice! Now some will be happy to start at having a few gadgets (Batman) or maybe access to equipment that gives the impression of having advanced powers (Iron Man), but for others that won’t be enough. One of the more obscure comics that I enjoyed in my youth was OMAC: the One-Man Army Corps. Set in the “world thats coming,” OMAC definitely played with some transhumanist ideas, as detailed by Wikipedia:

One-Man Army Corps (OMAC) is a superhero comic book created by Jack Kirby and published by DC Comics. Set in the near future (“the world that’s coming”), OMAC is a corporate nobody named Buddy Blank who is changed by an A.I. satellite called Brother Eye into the super-powered OMAC.

OMAC works for the Global Peace Agency, a group of faceless people who police the entire world using pacifistic weapons. The world balance is too dangerous for large armies, so OMAC is used as the main field enforcement agent for the Global Peace Agency.

All kinda dumb, and it didn’t last, but one thing I remember Kirby writing in an editorial he provided in the first issue of OMAC was the idea that these kinds of things might really be on their way, that one day OMAC might be “just another Joe” and that Superman might be our ultimate dream come true.

So in the future, will we all wear a cape with matching boots? Probably not. I’m not even sure I can see the path forward that would get us to OMAC (much less Superman-level) abilities. I mean, we could probably do some astounding stuff with utility fog, but that would make us more like Green Lantern and his power ring than it would Superman…not that there’s anything wrong with that! GL is very cool! But ultimately even the power ring is just an extension of Bruce Wayne’s gadgets or Tony Stark’s exoskeleton. It is technology external to the individual using it, not a reflection of innate physical ability.

If it is our destiny to be Superman, it is probably not going to happen in this substrate. It’s a lot easier to be Superman in a virtual world than it is in this one. And, in fact, in Second Life, everyone can fly — it is one of the chief means of transportation. It’s also interesting to note that in Second Life, there is a functioning Green Lantern Corps — acting as a kind of virtual Guardian Angels to protect some virtual activities from being disrupted by virtual bad-guys. Nice!

The problem with being superman in the virtual world — or even up here in meatspace assuming the technology to get us there shows up eventually — is that it isn’t as big a deal if everyone else is Superman.

The Man Who Builds Hearts

Breakthroughs in regenerative medicine have received quite a bit of attention on the web recently, with this particular story making the rounds several times. We linked to it back in March after 60 Minutes did a piece on it, although then (and today) our emphasis is more on Wake Forest University’s efforts to grow human tissues and organs than the University of Pittsburgh’s use of extracellular matrix to regrow body parts. Both are very exciting lines of research, but it was the latter that caught the attention of the BBC and ultimately the Volokh Conspiracy, who subsequently linked to this piece, wherein a “leading plastic surgeon,” apparently after carefully viewing the entire 59-second BBC clip — possibly more than once! — declared the entire matter “junk science.”

This assessment will no doubt come as a shock to the U. S. Army Institute of Surgical Research, who just awarded $42.5 million to Wake Forest and the University of Pittsburgh, in support of a “massive regenerative medicine project aimed at battlefield injuries.” Apparently both of these institutions have been working on a number of “junk science” projects with the Department of Defense over the past few years, and the DOD now sees great potential in treating a wide variety of battlefield injuries, including:

Burn repair

Wound healing without scarring

Craniofacial reconstruction

Limb reconstruction, regeneration or transplantation

Compartment syndrome, a condition related to inflammation after surgery or injury that can lead to increased pressure, impaired blood flow, nerve damage and muscle death.

Here’s hoping that this research yields significant relief and healing to patients who have suffered traumatic injuries on the battlefield.

Meanwhile, following up on our original piece on this subject, we recently caught up with Dr. Anthony Atala, the director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and got some more information on his team’s efforts to grow human tissues and organs, essentially “replacement parts” for the sick and injured. Here he talks about using inkjet printers to literally “print out” new tissues, and addresses the question of whether his research in regenerative medicine has implications for life extension research.

You’ve been quoted as saying that it is “just a matter of time” before someone grows a human heart. So let’s start with the basic question — how does one grow a heart? We’ve read how an artificially grown human bladder was recently implanted into a patient: that it was built using layers of tissue attached to a bladder-shaped scaffolding which eventually dissolved, leaving an intact organ in place. Will a human heart be built by similar means? If so, where do these layers of tissue come from? Are they grown from stem cells?

Itâ€™s hard to predict which form of regenerative medicine will eventually be used to help patients with damaged heart muscle. There is the possibility of injecting stem cells that will find their way to the damaged tissue as well as the approach of creating patches of the tissue in the lab that can be used to mend a poorly functioning organ. In many cases, you donâ€™t need an entire new heart to dramatically improve the patientâ€™s life. It may be possible to change a patch of non-functional tissue the same way you change a malfunctioning heart valve. Our interest isnâ€™t specifically to build a human heart, but to make patients better â€“ no matter what strategy is used. Not one technology is going to be best for all patients. I foresee a time when weâ€™ll have a boutique of technologies and will select one based on the patientâ€™s needs. Currently, we are attacking this challenge on multiple fronts, including using a modified ink jet technology to â€œprintâ€ a small two-chamber heart.

In attempting to describe the implications of the research you are doing, I wrote: “If this research leads to the ability to grow new kidneys, patients with severe kidney disease will be able to get replacement kidneys without a healthy person having to give one of theirs up. If this research leads to the ability to grow new hearts, patients with severe heart disease will be able to get replacement hearts without someone having to die.” Is that an accurate assessment? And, ultimately, will fully compatible replacement organs grown using these kinds of techniques eliminate the need for organ donation, and all of the logistical, ethical, and immunological difficulties associated with that practice?

There are currently almost 99,000 people on the waiting list for an organ transplant and nowhere near enough donors to meet their needs. Our goal is certainly to develop organs and tissues in the laboratory to help solve this shortage. As you know, we have already created bladders in the laboratory that have been successfully implanted in patients. These are grown from a patientâ€™s own cells, so there were no issues with rejection. Similarly, if organs/tissues are grown from stem cells that are a genetic match to a patient, rejection will not be a problem. It is much too soon to predict whether weâ€™ll be successful growing all organs and whether the need for organ donation can eventually be eliminated.

The Hood

NASA has put together a neat picture of our solar system, with various space probes contributing the images:

NASA credits the images as follows:

1. The Mercury image was taken by Mariner 10,
2. The Venus image by Magellan,
3. T the Earth image by Galileo,
4. The Mars image by Viking, and
5. The Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were taken images by Voyager.

Pluto is not shown as no spacecraft has yet visited it.

That omission will eventually be rectified. At that point, the NASA folks will face the difficult decision to make as to whether to include Pluto in this picture. You know, seeing as it’s no longer considered a planet!

Of course, the moon isn’t it a planet, and it made the cut…

It's Hard to Believe…

…that it’s only been 15 years.

On this date in 1993, Cern made the Worldwide Web public domain and the rest, as they say, is history. Cern had actually developed the technology in the late 80′s.

I remember living in a pre-Web world. I used a Mac with a dial-up Internet connection. The service was called Delphi. I used it mostly for chatting, playing games, and accessing files. Gee, that sounds just like the Web! So what was the difference?

It was all 100% text-based.

Wow, what a difference Cern made in pushing the Web out free. I was an avid HyperCard scripter back in those days, and I knew that eventually the Internet would go in a hypertext direction.

And then this thing showed up:

Nothing was ever the same after that!

It’s Hard to Believe…