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.