Smarter Teens Have Less Sex

Slashdotter CmdrTaco posted this (it's not clear to me whether this person is also Tech.Luver@gmail.com, or is reposting this material) abstract titled "Smarter Teens Have Less Sex" (see quoted text, below).

There are, of course, people laughing. Despite the resources necessary to cultivate an intellectual (or, in cases, because of them) anti-intellectual humor is pervasive, and the stereotype of a nerd - pale, extremely proficient in a mixture of useful and very odd areas, socially inept, perhaps clumsy - is widespread. Those who laugh at others may be masking insecurities about their own attractiveness and adequacy. But whatever the case, one way to interpret this is to read it as "smarter" = 'less attractive'.

To be a critical thinker, one must consider the alternative perspectives.

Is it possible that intelligent teens are making choices based on risk assessment? I'm an old nerd myself, and my opinion may not be worth much to you, but I think this is a far more likely explanation.

Consider the risks associated with sexual behavior - not just the sexually transmitted diseases, not just the risk of pregnancy, but the emotional complexities, anxiety, delusions, euphoria, and addictive behaviors that are commonly part of sexually active lifestyles. Ask someone who knows all about this, and it's likely they'll tell you a lot of sad stories.

Think again about what "smarter teens" are, and consider that there are very, very few with tape on their glasses these days. Although I'd like to know more about the specific Intelligence Quotient assessment used in this study, I suspect this is accurate. And I read it as intelligent = cautious. I'd like to believe intelligence also connects to an increased control of one's own sexuality, but that's beyond this data set.

Tech.Luver writes "Gene Expression reports, "Tyler Cowen quotes from a new study testing the relationship between grades and delayed sexual activity. Last December I passed a paper along to Razib showing that high-school age adolescents with higher IQs and extremely low IQs were less likely to have had first intercourse than those with average to below average intelligence. (i.e. for males with IQs under 70, 63.3% were still virgins, for those with IQs between 70-90 only 50.2% were virgin, 58.6% were virgins with IQs between 90-110, and 70.3% with IQs over 110 were virgins) In fact, a more detailed study from 2000 is devoted strictly to this topic, and finds the same thing: Smart Teens Don't Have Sex (or Kiss Much Either).

Hidden Dangerous of the Ubiquitous iPod

It is somewhat unlikely that you will be hit by lightening, but not as unlikely as you may believe.

Here are some raw statististics, as reported by WLEXTV18 of Lexington, Kentucky

ODDS OF BECOMING A LIGHTNING VICTIM

• 280,000,000: U.S. 2000 Census population
• 1/700,000: Odds of being struck by lightning in a given year (reported deaths + injuries)
• 1/240,000: Odds of being struck by lightning in a given year (estimated total deaths + injuries)
• 1/3000: Odds of being struck in your lifetime (Est. 80 years)
• 1/300: Odds you will be affected by someone being struck (Ten people affected for every one struck)

We're gathered here today not to lament for that person you know or known to someone who you know, he or she who was struck by lightening that time, but instead to consider a new factor associated with this ancient peril.

The iPod. Bringer of lightening.

I suspect that any MP3 player -- any device with headphones -- would cause the same result, but iPod is the one everyone in the developed world has or seems to want, and iPod is the one in the news. Apparently if you wear it outside during a thunderstorm, you are taking quite a risk.

Beware: listen to an iPod outdoors during a thunderstorm, and the last thing you hear could be great balls of fire. (excerpt from a story in the Guardian Unlimited)

A number of cases in the US suggest that using the popular music player during a
thunderstorm increases the severity of injuries suffered by anyone struck by
lightning.

While lightning usually flashes over a victim's skin, the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reports that the headphones of an iPod can act as a conductor, directing a bolt of electricity straight inside the listener's ear - rupturing eardrums and leaving severe burns.

(You'd think that, living in New England as I do, I would have read this in the New England Journal of Medicine rather than in the Manchester, England newspaper, but no.) Read the whole story here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2125560,00.html

First, let's consider the basic risk associated with all headphones, and thus with this immensely popular device, that of hearing loss. (Remember that Washington Post article? Oh, and you'll find dozens more - Slashdot, Buzzle, BetaNews. Or maybe you heard a rapper talk about this in your high school at a school assembly.) Just as keyboards are associated with an increased risk of repetitive motion, this technology comes at a price for some users. Yes, with all life, there is risk. This risk is worth thinking about, however, because it is related to a consumer choice under your control, and thus can, in theory, be more easily managed than many other types of risk. In fact, it can even be entirely avoided. But in our culture in 2007, what are the odds that you will forgo headphones and associated devices entirely?

And now let's consider what happens when you are struck by lightening. Instead of flashing over your skin and dispersing, scorching hair, perhaps leaving burns, the lightening follows the track of those ear buds straight to your eardrums, and, yes, also to your hip or whereever you'd stowed your iPod.


Jason Bunch recovers from his injuries in July 2006 after lightning struck nearby as he was listening to his iPod while mowing the lawn in Castle Rock, Colorado. Photograph: Helen H Richardson/The Denver Post/AP

I love technology and gadgets. They make life better. There should, however, be an evaluation of the associated risks.

My question has to do with risk and consumer choice. Whose responsibility is it to evaluate the risks of that hot new device that will change everything? Is it the inventor's, the manufacturer's, the consumer's, the government's? Another entity? Do these and/or others share the responsibility, or is it all in the hands of one party?

How you answer (and if you attempt to answer at all) will probably reflect the culture in which you were raised. Typical American answers vary a bit across the political spectrum, with the most common answer being that the manufacturer and consumer share responsibility: it is the manufacturer's responsibility to provide a quality product that functions as it is expected to, and the consumer's responsibility to choose the device and study the known risks and the fine print. The government is usually disinvited from the party by some and disproportionately held accountable by others.

What do you think?

Oh, and please be careful. Watch the skies.

Neuroeconomics / The Ultimatum Game

The ultimatum game is one in which one player has control of a sum of money, divides it up, and offers a share to another player. The share offered can be any size, so I could take 99 pennies out of the dollar and offer you one. If you reject the offer, we both get nothing. If you accept the offer, you get the penny and I get the 99 cents.

This game is the reason, or so a recent article in The Economist says, "psychologists know that economists are wrong." Economic principles, we're told, prescribe the acceptance of any offer that results in a financial gain, however small. Hey, it's free money, right? But in reality, there are those who will protest "a stingy offer" -- that's not fair! -- and refuse the offer on principle.

Interestingly enough, the refusers tend to have higher levels of the hormone testosterone. The title of the Economist article is "Men with a lot of testosterone make curious economic choices", something it's likely we all suspected to be so. Read the whole article here:
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=9433782&fsrc=nwlgafree

The article describes a study by a Dr. Terence Burnham, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, in which the ultimatum game was played and testosterone levels were measured:

... the responders who rejected a low final offer had an average testosterone level more than 50% higher than the average of those who accepted. Five of the seven men with the highest testosterone levels in the study rejected a $5 ultimate offer but only one of the 19 others made the same decision.

What Dr Burnham's result supports is a much deeper rejection of the tenets of classical economics than one based on a slight mis-evolution of negotiating skills. It backs the idea that what people really strivefor is relative rather than absolute prosperity. They would rather accept less themselves than see a rival get ahead. That is likely to be particularly true in individuals with high testosterone levels, sincethat hormone is correlated with social dominance in many species.

Economists often refer to this sort of behaviour as irrational. In fact, it is not. It is simply, as it were, differently rational. The things that money can buy are merely means to an end--social status--that brings desirable reproductive opportunities. If another route brings that status more directly, money is irrelevant.

There's a lot here. If this is what we do when the offer is one of free money just for saying yes, think of what we do when society itself -- the very context in which our social standing is so important -- is in the balance.

Are there other cases in which people (hormones or no) reject solutions that would benefit them? Why? If you can think of one example, that's plenty for now.

Artificial Intelligence / Limits of Possibility?

Writing for Technology Review, David Gelernter suggests that "it is hugely unlikely, though not impossible, that a conscious mind will ever be built out of software" and directs us to a debate centered around models that are labeled "simulated conscious mind" and "simulated unconscious intelligence." What can we build? Ever?

"Artificial Intelligence Is Lost in the Woods" (synopsis from Ray Schroeder, Techno-News Blog)

A conscious mind will never be built out of software, argues a Yale University professor. Artificial intelligence has been obsessed with several questions from the start: Can we build a mind out of software? If not, why not? If so, what kind of mind are we talking about? A conscious mind? Or an unconscious intelligence that seems to think but experiences nothing and has no inner mental life? These questions are central to our view of computers and how far they can go, of computation and its ultimate meaning--and of the mind and how it works.

http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/2007/07/artificial-intelligence-is-lost-in.html

Whole original Technology Review article by David Gelernter is here: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18867/

Yes, it's all fascinating, and it may offer a more specific vision of artificial intelligence, one that we may contrast with the many fictions that've shaped the definition of AI for the bulk of humanity.

It may also suggest that there will be things we can't quite achieve, goals which we may approach, catch sight of, but never actually realize.

Utopians in particular tend to view human potential as limitless, and any goal, particularly their own goals, as entirely attainable, whether or not (usually not) there are specific, funtional plans in place to reach them.

Is it possible that there are limits? That our progress in a given direction is asymptotic to our goal? It's unlikely this question can be answered, as it's a matter of faith: either we believe a goal is attainable, or we do not, and, as we have not reached it yet, either hypothesis is unproven. If it is a fact that particular goal is unreachable but that we may draw ever closer to it, it is probably useful to believe that we can attain the goal.

Goal-oriented thinking can be dangerous if the end (accepted as attainable on faith) is used to justify certain means.

Please do think about AI and the possibilities for a better future that might include it. But here's my question for you: what is an example of an unreachable goal? Explain.

Second Earth / WWW2B

It's coming soon - the 2nd Earth phase of the world wide web. If you use the internet, you're somewhat familiar with online multiuser environments. If you play a game like World of Warcraft or Second Life, then you've had a glimpse of things to come. The prediction (of people like Wade Roush of Technology Review) is that there will be a world wide simulated environment, a metaverse a little like the one described in Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel Snow Crash. Of course, we've heard these "everything will change" predictions before. It's possible that a backlash over privacy concerns (or intellectual property, or access and usability) could send us spinning in yet another direction. What do you think?

Second Earth -Wade Roush, Technology Review:

The World Wide Web will soon be absorbed into the World Wide Sim: an environment combining elements of Second Life and Google Earth.... This, then, is how the Metaverse will take shape: through the imaginations of the programmers, merchants, artists, activists, and networkers who are already moving there. If these part-time émigrés from reality want embellishments like running water or six sunsets a day, they'll code their universes that way. The rest of us may smile at their whimsy--but we will take up, and come to depend upon, the serious tools that underlie their play. And if the world we create together is less lonely and less unpredictable than the one we have now, we'll have made a good start.

http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/2007/07/second-earth-wade-roush-technology.html

Autonomous insect cyborg sentinels

The idea appears to be to create insect/robot cyborgs with a variety of uses. I'll admit that it's easier to imagine existing in a future that is more dystopian than eutopian. If you have a favorite perspective, however, try to consider the alternative viewpoints.

Autonomous insect cyborg sentinels by ZDNet's Roland Piquepaille -- In a very brief article, AZoNano reports that nanotechnology is turning insects into flying cyborgs. Researchers from Cornell University have implanted 'microfluidic devices in insects before they hatch into fully grown flying creatures.' Of course, when they grow, these insects still carry the sensors. And if this works, they'll be used for monitoring and security surveillance. The article doesn't say that this project is funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which has a full Hybrid Insect MEMS program. The goal of this program is to realize 'cyborgs with most of the machine component inside the insect body to provide stealthy robots' at low cost.

New Zepplin

The Zepplin may be making a comeback.

A start-up company is planning to offer tourists rides in a 250-foot zeppelin over the San Francisco Bay, Napa Valley and the Golden Gate Bridge. Airship Ventures said Thursday that it plans to begin passenger flights in a German-made Zeppelin NT airship, to be based at NASA's Moffett Field airstrip about 40 miles south of San Francisco, in mid-2008.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6192579.html

This company (http://www.zeppelin-nt.de/index_e.htm -- website is in German, with some English) has already built, flown, and sold a few of these new passenger zepplins around the world. Of course, we've had generally passengerless dirigibles like the Goodyear blimps around for many, many years.

The article interest me because of my personal affinity for dirigibles, but it's also thought provoking in that it suggests the future echoes the past in unexpected ways. Jet Age retrofuturism projected rocket cars and personal jet packs for commuters, innovations that are not practical realities and exist today only for a tiny number of committed thrill-seekers. The Zepplin, once a symbol of modernity and the conquest of the air, was not expected to contend for the skies again after the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, yet it may be more likely to feature in our real future that anything like the hover bubble/rocket car featured in The Jetsons.

What other elements of the past do you expect to be more a part of the future than they are of the present?

The History of Air Travel / Controversy

The first Zepplin, named for Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin (1838-1917), flew in 1900. It was by no means the first such airship. A French design existed as early as 1784, and one was demonstrated in 1850. Developments in the field of aeronautics followed. Santos Dumont made a famous flight around the Eiffel Tower in a dirigible in 1901.

When I lived in Brazil as a boy, I was often told that Santos Dumont (Albert Santos Dumont, 1873-1932) invented the airplane. This fact was widely taught in schools there. The Wright Brothers, commonly credited with this feat in American history books, were not part of the story at all. The Wright Brothers famous flight was in 1903, and Santos Dumont didn't fly an airplane that took off, flew, and landed (the way we think of an airplane flying, without the assistance of catapults, winds, high cliffs, guide rails, etc.) until 1906. But Dumont flew gliders from dirigibles -- airplanes with gas bags attached -- before he made a flight without such support. The headline from December 18, 1903 edition ofThe Dayton Daily News reported the Wright Brothers' flight with this headline: "Dayton Boys Emulate Great Santos Dumont".

Today's topic for your consideration today is the nature of history. As a great critical thinker, doubt is your friend, and you will naturally refuse to accept historical "fact" until you have delved more deeply into the details. There are a variety of factors that make believing any given version of history desireable to a particular audience. Can you identify the reasons the Americans or the Brazilians would want to tell different versions of the "first in flight" story? Note that the presence of bias towards a particular fact or interpretation of the facts does not of itself make the fact false.

Read more online:
http://www.dirizabl.co.yu/eng/dirigible.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont

Should Children Tell Parents The Truth?

Utopian visions are structured around specific principles, those values accepted as perfect by the founders, rulers, or members of the utopian society. Perfection, like infinity, is a highly useful concept but problematic if you need to bring some in to show the class.

If I ask you to imagine a parent's utopia, you'll consider what you know about parents, identify the values you assume would be important to parents, and then imagine a society that serves or promotes said values. Consider the number of assumptions you need to make, particularly if you are not a parent yourself; even if your assumptions about parental values are correct, you'll find it difficult to scale up from the family unit level to a society-wide level without making even more assumptions. It's okay, so long as you are aware of it. Use your imagination, and cherish your doubts about whatever you conclude.

Writing for InformationWeek, Sharon Gaudin reports that

More than 70% of the surveyed children, ages 11 to 17, said their parents ask them about their online activities, but they may not be getting accurate answers. ... Forty-three percent of teens who use social networking sites said a stranger invited them to meet within the past year. At the same time, nearly 40% of children ages 11 to 17 reported receiving a sexually explicit e-mail or pop-up advertisement within the past year. Nearly 100% of the children surveyed said they use e-mail.

Read the whole article here: Kids Don't Tell Parents The Truth About Online Activities

Your interpretation of this data will vary depending on the role you choose for yourself, consciously or unconsciously. Identify with the children and you may wish them freedom from intrusive supervision. Identify with the parents and you may decry this exposure of the young to the seemier side of the adult world. The facts that you were once a child yourself and had parents of your own will both help and hinder your analysis.

As a thought experiment, let's imagine a perfect world, or, at least, a perfect society. What would parents be like? And their children? Having imagined perfection, try to outline the steps it would take to get us there.

"Wiiitis"

A doctor in Spain has diagnosed a [n otherwise healthy 29 year old] patient with "Acute Wiiitis" - an ailment caused by playing too much of Nintendo's video game Wii Sports Tennis. Read the Wired post here.

By now, anyone who might be reading any sort of blog is likely to know about the Nintendo Wii, a game console with a kinetic controller. They know, for example, that you can play a tennis game with it. The human player holds the controller, which serves as a virtual racket, and faces a simulated court and opponent. It's reported to be very engaging and enjoyable, accessible to a wide variety of users who might not otherwise play a video game.

As the iPhone may, the Wii has become a "hot new gadget that will change everything."

The Wii adds exercise to life, with the accompanying potential risks of injury, along with the same old risks of addiction.

In a more perfect tomorrow, will everyone play such games? No one? What will the roles of exercise and entertainment be for human beings?

If you read the whole article, you'll notice the last line refers to the potential for lawsuit. Other issues for you to consider might be those of liability and justice. What are appropriate consumer protections, if any, in an utopian society? If you have a favorite perspective, try to understand alternative views.

Optimism: Possible?

Progress has long beckoned us forward with the promise of a better tomorrow. The way we feel about that promise varies from age to age, as do our definitions of "better." Early 20th century visions of the future included all sorts of things that were easy to be optimistic about at the time but haven't quite happened -- flying cars, domed cities, personal robots. Nostalgia for these (recently) past visions of the future is called "retro-futurism." As with any ideas, there are detractors who think the old ideas are silly and not worth mourning.

The issue for this post is optimism. It is contended that people alive today share "sarcasm and irony" and are thus inclined to poke fun at shiny visions of the future, plausible or otherwise. What is your opinion?

Writing for Wired, John Browlee, author of the post below, comments on Matt Novak's original commentary (indented, with link to the full text at the end). Each has a slightly different perspective on the issue. If assigned to do so, what would you add to this discussion?

The Sadness of Retro-Futurism by John Brownlee (June 06, 2007)

URL: http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/06/the_sadness_of_.html

Matt Novak, who runs the excellent retrofuturism blog Paleo-Future, has a fantastic essay up at MungBeing exploring the lost ideals of futurism that were lost with the ubiquitousness of sarcasm and irony:

There is a genuine sense of sadness detectable when you talk with people about flying cars and meal pills. Oddly enough, most people don't want meals-in-a-pill, they simply want the fanciful. We long for the world where anything is possible. We exist in a rather unique age when most American's basic necessities are met. You and I have luxuries unseen in human history and yet we want more.

I would argue that 1997 was a major tipping point for futurism. American consumer culture could no longer get behind the idea of "building a bridge to the 21st century." Such sentimentality made one vulnerable to ridicule. Even Disney, the definition of sentimentality, had abandoned the sincere brand of futurism with it's redesign of Tomorrowland in 1997, replacing the promise of tomorrow with Buck Rogers versions of how we used to view tomorrow.

I disagree with Matt's point that people no longer believe in the future in any meaningful way: the Internet is full of techno-utopians. But people no longer believe in the magic of technology. It is understandable: the average person is far more informed about the capacity for technological growth and its slowly evolutionary nature than they were fifty years ago. That's why retro-futurism is so alluring to people like me: they are technological fairy tales.

Matt Novak's complete article:The Postmodern Paleo-Future [MungBeing]

Children: Unsupervised Play?

When I used to teach a course called Introduction to Literature, I often assigned students to read a poem titled "Strangers Like Us: Pittsburg, Raleigh, 1945-1985" (published in 1992) by notable 20th century American poet Gerald Barrax:

The sounds our parents heard echoing over
housetops while listening to evening radios
were the uninterrupted cries running and cycling
we sent through the streets and yards, where spring summer
fall we were entrusted to the night, boys
and girls together, to send us home for bath
and bed after the dark had drifted down and eased
contests between pitcher and batter, hider and seeker.

Our own children live imprisoned in light.
They are cycloned into our yards and hearts,
whose gates flutter shut on unfamiliar smiles.
At the rumor of a moon, we call them in
before the monsters who hunt, who hurt, who haunt
us, rise up from our own dim streets.

In addition to talk about poetry itself, this poem lead to interesting discussions about freedom and protection, the role of parents, and the role of unsupervised play for children, which is the issue for this post.

In a more perfect tomorrow, would children play unsupervised? How would this be structured, if at all?

Typical student readers relate to the children in the poem, and they want freedom for them and lament the loss of the night. On the other hand, a case might be made that parents allowing said freedom would be neglecting the role of protectors. As usual, when thinking about this scenario, I encourage you to look at it from multiple perspectives; if you have a favorite view, try to understand the alternative viewpoints.

It's reported in The Guardian (UK) today that:

Children are not being given the freedom to play out unsupervised with their friends because of adult fears over their safety, a survey has revealed.

Research for The Children's Society found 43% of adults think children should not be allowed out with their friends until they are 14 or over, even though most of them were allowed to play unsupervised from the age of 10 or younger when they were children.

Link to full story.

What is your opinion of this trend?

How would children play in an "utopia"? What would parents and society do or not do to assure or risk the safety of these children?

That Hot New Gadget That Will Change Everything

Writing for Information Week, Stephen Wellman outlines the first things he would do with the iPhone should he find one in his hands. He considers how he would test the dream against the reality.

Read the article here: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/06/the_first_eight.html

I love gadgets, but I do not invest in them lightly, and I still do not use a cellular phone for a variety of reasons, including the limitations of rural mountain life and the number of tasks I'm already completing in any given day. Still, if I could get service for a Blackberry device, something that could handle my schedule and get me my email, I would be tempted.

The issue for this posting is technology, specifically the new gadget designed to revolutionize some aspect of your life. Such items are a common feature of futuristic utopian visions, and also of dystopian fantasies (including, for example, 'R.U.R. or Rossum's Universal Robots', the 1920 play by Karel Capek that introduced us to the word "robot", a word coined by the playwrite's brother Josef.)

For a specific example, we have the hypothetical iPhone. After Steve Jobs' demonstration in January, "iPhone" became shorthand for "the next big thing." It's notable, however, that this is a next big thing that is not yet available, and has not yet been subjected to the trials and tribulations of the actual consumer market, nor passed the test that is ordinary, contemporary life.

Will this gadget actually bring on a revolution? Will it simply be a "hot" version of the same cellular communication technology available today, more or less the same as other phones but bearing the Apple brand?

More broadly, can a new gadget revolutionize society or individual lifestyles? How so?

Did you ever desire such an object? What was it? Was your life changed by it? Were you disappointed by it in some way? Try to consider your own experience objectively, and to understand multiple perspectives on the facts that are part of your history. If you have a favored perspective ("it was a waste","it was the ultimate") try to engage with alternative perspectives.

Earthquakes

There were earthquakes in my home state of New Hampshire yesterday. Though I didn't experience them personally, it's cause to reflect of processes and events that are larger than we are and perhaps beyond our control.

To the ancient mind, earthquakes might represent the wrath of nature, of the gods, or of God; indeed, there are still people who'd make this suggestion around today.

As a critical thinker familiar with scientific reasoning, what is your opinion of how earthquakes would fit into a better future? What would your approach be to preparing an utopian society to deal with such events?

Three Quakes Shake NH Coast
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/06/04/ap3784455.html

Measuring Reputation

Plato considered the role of "guardians", elite members of society distinguished by their ability to do greater good or greater harm. The archetype of the "philosopher king" - a great and worthy ruler whose wisdom in governance and service to society safeguards the utopian Republic - comes our of his description of perfected treatment of these guardians, who must complete extensive education and public service to be considered as rulers.

How do we identify the elites in our own society? The United States do not have rulers per se, but we do have our celebrities. You've heard of "A list" and "B list" and so on -- how do we know who's hot and who's not? The media has always played a role. With the rise of new media, such as the internet, we may develop new ways to measure reputation. What are the potential benefits and harms of such developments?

Remember that reputation is not exclusive to individuals; the reputation of companies (who are afforded many of the same legal rights as individuals in contemporary society) is arguably as important. Whether or not we each ever have a personal reputation score that can be checked like a credit score, it's likely there will be methods developed to measure to reputation of companies and the economic value of that reputation.

Again, I encourage you to imagine extreme scenarios along with those that might be considered reasonable. If you have an opinion about what could or should happen, carefully consider alternatives to it in addition to developing your own favorite perspective.

Online Reputation Is Hard To Do
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/06/03/1947227.shtml

Symblized writes "A new article from InformationWeek argues that not only does the Web need ways to verify identity, it also needs better ways to measure reputation . The article uses Digg, Wikipedia, and eBay as examples and muses whether their models could be applied more widely. There's also a profile of Opinity, a company that tried to introduce a reputation system and didn't make it. Choice quote from a source in the article: 'The idea of a transferable, semantic reputation is identity nirvana.'"

Future of Aviation

Although aviation was not part of More's Utopia, he does devote many words to descriptions of travel, which was a big part of his imagined island society.

In this Forbes article, the issue is the future of aviation. Remember those early 20th century promises of easy air-commutes via jet pack or personal air transport? Why do you think people believed that would be convenient or good (and what could go wrong if it all actually came true)? Have you flown anywhere lately? What was the experience like? Do you think that air travel would be part of a better future? How would it change? Consider extreme possibilities along with those that might be considered reasonable.

Read the Forbes articles on "The Future of Aviation", including "11 Ways To Fix Air Travel."

http://www.forbes.com/home/business/2007/06/01/aviation-airlines-jets-biz-cx_0604aviationlander.html

Greater Fuel Efficiency

Slashdot, one of my favorite reads, tends to focus on technology as the avenue to a better tomorrow because it's written by people obsessed with technology. The issue in this posting is fuel efficiency, and it is related to broader energy-related issues.

What would the ramifications of greater fuel efficiency be for the future? As usual, you're encouraged to consider the extreme possibilities and those that might be considered reasonable. If you are in favor of a particular view, try to consider alternative viewpoints as well. Remember that utopian thinking could lead to dystopian realities (as the old saying goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions.")

New Fuel Cell Twice As Efficient As Generators
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/07/06/04/0237222.shtml

Hank Green writes "A new kind of Solid Oxide Fuel
Cell has been developed that can consume any kind of fuel, from hydrogen to bio-diesel; it is over two times more efficient than traditional generators. Acumentrics is attempting to market the technology to off-grid applications (like National Parks) and also for home use as personal Combined Heat and Power plants that are extremely efficient (half as carbon-intensive as grid power.)"

Role of Women

This posting's issue is gender. Would a better tomorrow see a change in the roles held by men and women? Would they be more equal? Plato's Republic is one example that seems to suggest they would be, not that the issue is entirely resolved there.

Contemporary author Sylvia Ann Hewlett suggests that gender is an issue in current society, and that women continue to be marginalized. It is likely she would agree that greater equality would be appropriate in any more utopian tomorrow. What form do you think would that equality take? It's useful to consider both far-fetched and reasonable possibilities (in part because different people consider different things reasonable or extreme).

Excerpt from the review of Sylvia Ann Hewlett's new book (in the Guardian):

Hewlett's latest research shows that 37% of professional women will drop out at some point in their careers, either to look after children or ailing parents, and another third will take what Hewlett calls "a scenic route", going part-time for a while, perhaps. And if these women try to "on-ramp" again, they "get lost on re-entry", paying enormous fines, in terms of both cash and their career arc, for taking trying to go outside what Hewlett calls the "male competitive model" built on a bedrock of unbroken service. "Two-thirds of women are sideswiped, side-lined, pretty much for the rest of their lives, by this model," she says.

Even more depressingly, Hewlett says, the situation has been getting worse over the past decade. Globalisation, modern communication technology, plus what she sees as the increasing polarisation of the really good jobs and all the rest, has led to a rise in "extreme working". "The workload has really gone through the roof," she says, "and the fact that increasing numbers of women are stepping back for a while, or stepping out for a while, is actually not because they got wimpier, but because the work model got worse. And not only did jobs get more extreme, but parenting also got more extreme. The pressure on parents to be massively engaged with their kids has really gone up." It's the "folk who can pony up the 73-hour week", she says, who win in the new world.

So that is the bad news: an enormous, largely ignored, female brain drain. But there is good news too: Hewlett says that things have begun to change, that soon employers everywhere are going to have to wake up to the repercussions of this
wholesale squandering of female training and talent.

Read the whole thing:
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2094856,00.html

Utopia Tomorrow?

I suppose what you need to know is that I teach a critical thinking seminar for first year college students, and also that I am somewhat optimistic about the potential for a better tomorrow.

The word "utopia" has become commonly associated with perfection; it would be a stretch to say I believe tomorrow can actually be perfect in every way.

The word, coined by Sir Thomas More for the title of his 1516 book (the full title is "A fruteful and pleasaunt Worke of the beste state of a publyque weale, and of the newe yle called Utopia; written in Latine by Syr Thomas More knyght, and translated into Englyshe by Raphe Robynson"), is derived from the Greek words for "not" and "a place." It is a play on "eutopia" - only one letter different - which would mean "happy place". In brief, Thomas More may have been suggesting with this pun that there is no perfect happy place at all, that a perfect society is not possible (though note that this is still debated by scholars, and there is room for you to read his Utopia, consider the available information, and form your own opinion about what More intended.)

Critical thinking is, at least most of the time, antagonistic of unfounded optimism. A good critical thinker actively analyses ideas he or she encounters, and rejects or neglects those that are fallaceous. When I accept on faith that tomorrow could be better than today, I am a poor critical thinker.

Posts here will be brief, and include links to news about potential trends. Some will suggest a better tomorrow. Some will not. A typical post will include a news item, a comment, and a question for your consideration. Thanks for your interest. See you in the future.