The Needham question, 9/11 and the next fifty years

I've not much time to develop this thesis, so I'll go quickly here. Maybe I'll get to it later.

There are four parts to this:

• The Falling Cost of Havoc (9/11)
• The Needham Question
• The Next Fifty Years
• The Innovator's Dilemma
  

The Needham question is basically: "Why didn't China sail a steamship bristling with canon into Manhattan @ 1750?".

The Falling Cost of Havoc is the observation that small groups of individuals can now afford some of the military capabilities (bioweapons, worldwide secure communication channels, advanced data mining, evolved terrorist techniques) that were once available only to nations.

The Next Fifty years is my post suggesting, somewhat to my own surprise, that the next fifty years may not be all that different from the last fifty years. (Speaking Mandarin and using low speed low energy vehicles is not that big a difference.)

The Innovator's Dilemma is a fascinating business book pointing out that well run dominant enterprises are appropriately good at stifling disruptive technologies.

The thesis is that these are connected.

The best current answer to the Needham question is that China was doing pretty well during the 14th through 18th centuries, and it had developed a governmental system that was very stable* and very good at eliminating disruptive interruptions. In other words, it behaved like a well run corporation. Innovation is disruptive, disruption is dangerous.

If the next fifty years is to resemble the last fifty years (by no means the worst outcome), then the world must become far better at stifling disruption and managing the falling cost of havoc. The world will rediscover China's answer to the Needham question. (Ironically, China will need to rediscover it too ....)

My guess is that the world will do this, whether geeks like me like it or not. I think the history of the counter-revolution has been greatly under appreciated.

Ok, that's all for now.

* The past 5 years of US history has dramatically diminished my faith in the stability of democracies.

New Scientist: The 50 year prediction

Marginal Revolution pointed me to New Scientist's the Next 50 Years. I'll spend some time reading it.

On the one hand, 50 years seems far too long to make sensible predictions about. On the other hand, imagine someone in 1950 predicting life in 2000. Any futurist worth their salt was predicting flying cars to Mars, but the right answer would have been 'sort of like 1950, but most people have more money and live ten years longer'. The shock for 1950 would not be computers (what? They're not sentient?), but rather gay marriage and gay adoption. Oh, oil prices would have been shocking too -- we were supposed to running on nuclear fusion by now.

So in the same vein, I'll predict that we don't get sentient AI, we don't boost human IQs substantially, and we don't prevent aging. Life in 2056 is rather like 2006, but we live 10 years longer and most people have more money. The shocking part is ....

Update 11/19/06: The authors are generally as cautious as one would expect. They are reputable sorts, and thus fearful of foolishness. There is, however, a clear trend. Several contributors speculate that we'll learn about extraterrestrial life. I suspect they mean sentience too, but that's too brash and idea. I suspect they toopuzzle over the Fermi Paradox.

Healthcare Reform: The Faughnan One Slide Presentation

I will never be invited to a public debate on healthcare reform. Bit of a shame -- I could make a case that I'm unusually well suited by experience, training, and employment to opine on the topic. I even have a one slide presentation, which I came up with in the shower this morning. Here it is (imagine the two visuals on the same slide).


and next to it


The top image is a new Lexus. It's a very fine car. There's a luxury premium to be sure, but perhaps not so much as with a Mercedes. You really do get a lot of quality when you buy a Lexus.

The bottom image is from a Manhattan subway. I think the subway is better now than when I strolled the then mean streets of Manhattan; in those days it was smelly, dirty, and very noisy. It delivered excellent value for the price, though it was not a pleasant ride.

If you lived in Manhattan, sometimes the subway was really a much better way to get from A to B than the Lexus. The Lexus, of course, would be most people's first choice if they could afford it.

That's all you need to know about Healthcare Reform in America.

I grew up in Quebec when socialized medicine was new. It was fabulous for us. Everyone got a Honda Accord and was more or less satisfied with that. Cost structures changed over time, and now everyone rides the subway. That doesn't work for those who can afford a Lexus, or even an Accord.

The mistake of socialized medicine was thinking that it was possible to provide an Accord forever, to everyone.

I live in America, where almost everyone insists on a Lexus and a heck of a lot of people are walking. Without shoes. In winter. Increasingly the walkers are newly underemployed and unemployed men and women aged 50 to 65.

The tragedy of American healthcare is obvious.

America will aways provide the Lexus, and the Mercedes, and the chauffeur driven Rolls-Royce to those who wish can afford them -- and choose them. It will also provide the Accord for a heck of a lot of people. Those who get the Accord and the Lexus will often, but not always, get better experiences and outcomes than those who ride the subway.

All Healthcare reform discussions in America are about the subway.

That would be the end of my presentation.

The meaning of Apple - will it always stand alone?

I sigh when I look upon my Samsung PalmOS phone. It's almost good, the last of a discontinued line that was within spitting distance of Apple elegance. Alas, Palm fumbled, Samsung floundered, and the moment passed. Every phone on the US market sucks. Spectacularly sucks.

I wait for the iPhone. It may not be what I want, but I know I will respect it. I may change my wants to suit it. It will not suck.

My toaster sucks. I've looked for its replacement for years. I figure I'll pick one up the next time I'm in Germany. I find myself wondering if Apple will make a toaster. I'd buy it ...

Then I read this Mark Morford SFGate column (I've added him to my bloglines collection)...

When Apple Rules The World / What does it mean when you really, really want to lick a new MacBook Pro, and swoon?

....I don't mean [Apple] they've solved world hunger or cured cancer or ended racism or muzzled Ashlee Simpson. But I do mean something that, in its way, is nearly as profound: They've managed to make the world just a bit more pleasurable, tasteful, beautiful. They've added a dash of that rarest of human qualities, especially when talking about factory-made tech crap: They have added a touch of grace.

You know it's true. Apple has done more than perhaps any other mass-market consumer line on the planet to affect the look and feel of nearly every gizmo made today. This cannot be underestimated. It's a George Bush world, after all, one that values sameness, mediocrity, intellectual and spiritual laziness. But merely rub your hand across the top of a MacBook or whip your thumb around the click wheel of an iPod and notice: Feel that throb? That's your id saying mmmmmmm.

What? What's that you say? Why yes, other tech companies have changed the world, too. Microsoft, for example. They invaded the global cube-farm and made everyone's workday a bit more bloated and annoying and sad and just a little uglier, buggy as hell, frustrating, virusy and lonely and numbing. Truly, it has been quite an impressive accomplishment...

Read the whole thing. It's a funny, slutty, paeon to Apple. It's over the top, and yet true. No other company, save Google on a good day, actually delivers elegance (Aperture excepted). Apple really is different. I can only pray it won't be alone forever; I could sure use a new toaster.

Microsoft? It's far less than the sum of its excellent people. Some corporations can do that.

PS. My new MacBook is due this week ...

Suzhou, China - Home of my MacBook

When I ordered by Core-2 Duo MacBook, I received a FedEx notice that it was being shipped from Suzhou, China. Google Earth provided a low-res picture. Note the massive urban landscape and what appears to be industrial smog and black some ominous looking black water.

On the one hand, this is a snapshot of 21st century life. On the other hand, the 'map view' has no geographic details and there are no embedded links to local pictures, webcams, etc. (Google Earth would have more, but it died with my laptop drive and has yet to be resurrected). In a year or two, the rest of the puzzle will be in place.

It's not that far from Suzhou to some impressive looking mountains and forests ...

Update 11/25/06: In another note on the changing technology of shipping, my MacBook arrived in a relatively compact box that would not have survived the shipping methods of old, or even travel in a conventional UPS truck. The shipping box was a fraction of the size of the box that held my iBook years ago. Even so, the external box looked flawless. I'd like to read a story about how FedEx does this kind of thing.

Voting: just do what Minnesota does

Schneier gives a good rundowns of the ongoing electronic ongoing electronic voting machine debacles. Then he reveals his residence in my home state:

...In Minnesota, we use paper ballots counted by optical scanners, and we have some of the most well-run elections in the country. To anyone reading this who needs to buy new election equipment, this is what to buy...

I've heard only five states use optical scanners. Must be an IQ thing. When Caltech and MIT joined up (rare event) to review the Gore/Bush voting debacle, they concluded optical scanning was by far the best choice. Every review I've read since has come to the same conclusion. Come on guys, let the frozen north lead the way ...

The gravest threat we know of ...

Years ago, the Economist pointed out that based on risk assessment asteroid impact warranted as much attention as airplane crashes. That was then ...

Did an Asteroid Impact Cause an Ancient Tsunami? - New York Times

... Most astronomers doubt that any large comets or asteroids have crashed into the Earth in the last 10,000 years. But the self-described “band of misfits” that make up the two-year-old Holocene Impact Working Group say that astronomers simply have not known how or where to look for evidence of such impacts along the world’s shorelines and in the deep ocean.

Scientists in the working group say the evidence for such impacts during the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene epoch, is strong enough to overturn current estimates of how often the Earth suffers a violent impact on the order of a 10-megaton explosion. Instead of once in 500,000 to one million years, as astronomers now calculate, catastrophic impacts could happen every few thousand years.

If the hypothesis is accepted, then the risk to life of a meteor impact will have increased about 500 fold. That would move it very high up the risk index, perhaps above thermonuclear war.

If that happens, and if humans were logical creatures, we would put a significant share of the world's GDP to surveilance and diversion research. Alas, humans are far from logical ...

PS. The 2807 BC rock landed on, of course, Atlantis. :-)

Neandertal is us: the meaning of species

We all know how confusing the terms race and ethnicity are. It turns out that things are equally messy when one tries to define was a species is.

John Hawks sifts the narrative, and basically decides that species is a semi-useful term that can be largely ignored -- particularly in the fossil records. His read is that Neandertals are probably members of the same species as us, but that the distinction is pedantic and misleading. He does strongly feel that our genome contains evidence of Neandertal descent, but that the discussion is missing the point (emphases mine):

... I think that evidence of introgression reinforces the hypothesis that modern humans emerged in an adaptive context, making use of adaptive variation from a widespread (possibly pan-Old-World) population of archaic Homo. It's one of the two main patterns in the evolution of modern humans.

We're all waiting to learn what the other pattern is, Hawks won't tell us yet. The fundamental shift is to stop thinking of Neadertals mating with "us", and to instead think of modern humans as something that evolved from a large number of "archaic Homo" populations. We are Neandertal, but we are also one of many old populations.

When the cliche is real: falling on the grenade

It's an old cliche. Falling on the grenade. I assume there isn't time to think. Cpl Jason Dunham has been awarded the medal of honor.

The uncelebration: blinking in the light

Krugman feels (mostly) relieved, not giddy. Tom Tomorrow writes:

... It’s as if the biopsy results just came back and you don’t have cancer after all. You’re not giddy, exactly, but you can finally take a deep breath and maybe let some of the tension drain out of your shoulders...

...It’s time to have grownup conversations now. It goes without saying that the Democrats will to disappoint us, one way or another. So what? The test results came back, and it’s not terminal. We got a little breathing room, and isn’t that all you can really ever hope for in life?

I'm not hearing any Dem trash talk or braggadacio. My fellow commies aren't cackling with glea. We've been living in the shadow of Mordor for years, but now the smog is lifting. We find we're at the bottom of a deep pit surrounded by lions, tigers, and hyenas, but at least we've stopped sinking. The hard slog back may begin.

Conde Nast: An unusual spammer

CondeNast Publications puts out Gourmet, Wired, and many other periodicals. They are also a major league spam generator. This is rare with big vendors, SONY is the only other example that comes to mind. (SONY stopped spamming sometime around their rootkit fiasco, but even so no self-respecting geek will buy from SONY.)

Gourmet has been bad forever -- clicking on the 'remove me' link never did anything. Subscription solicitations kept rolling in. I blacklisted gourmet.com. That worked for a while, but now the spam is coming from gourmet@email.condenast.us. Recently, they started doing the same thing with Wired.

I guess it works for them, but it's really weird to have Wired be owned by a major spam producer. I get it for free somehow, but even if I really liked Wired I wouldn't pay for it. Their owner is too disreputable.

I've added condenast.us to my blacklist, so that should do it for now -- until they come up with a new email address.

Thank you, Howard Dean

Many democrats have been praised in the past few days, but perhaps the most important one has not been mentioned at all. Until now ...

Howard Dean, vindicated | Salon.com

...Despite all the complaints and demands directed at him over the past 18 months, Dean stuck to his principles. He and his supporters in the netroots movement believed that their party needed to rebuild from the ground up in every state, including many where the party existed in name only. These Democrats prefer to think of their party as one of inclusion and unity. They openly disdain the divisive strategies of the Republicans who have so often used racial, regional and cultural differences to polarize voters.

And they believe that relying on opportunistic attempts to grab a few selected states or districts as usual -- rather than establishing a real presence across the country -- conceded a permanent structural advantage to the Republicans that would only grow more durable with each election cycle.

Breaking that advantage would be costly and difficult, as Dean well realized, but it had to be done someday, or the Democrats would fulfill Karl Rove's dream of becoming a permanent minority party -- or fading away altogether. Against the counsel of party professionals, whose long losing streak has done little to diminish their influence, the new chairman began the process of re-creating the Democratic Party in 2005. And contrary to the gossip and subsequent press reports, he succeeded in raising $51 million last year, about 20 percent more than in 2003 and a party record for an off year...

Humanity owes a debt to Howard Dean.

Election 2006: how pathetic are American newspapers?

Every newspaper in the nation and state is full of the same news, but to find out that my home state passed a silly constitutional amendment I have to personally track down the results on the Secretary of State web sitee. A friend may complain about the absurd lack of coverage of the Ohio voting machine debacle, but this is what I'll remember.

Journalism is really in crisis. We desperately need journalists, so I hope they come up with a new business model. Heck, if the Dems can win the Senate, anything can happen.

Are we neandertal?

John Hawks has numerous posts on a recent paper suggesting that a key gene regulating human brain development might have originated in neandertals living in what is now europe. John Hawks Anthropology Weblog : 2006 11 is one example.

Hawks says to expect quite a bit of Neandertal news this week. I think most laypersons, like myself, had come to believe there was no sapiens-neandertal interbreeding. Surprises indeed.

I'll be reading Hawks' blog closely this week.

Can it be?

I still do not believe the senate will go Democrat. That is so far outside the envelope of the possible. Could I have been that wrong in my pre-election expecations?

On the other hand, I was right about the October surprise. Sure, it wasn't Bush with an executive order impacting Roe v. Wade, but surely Mark Foley was a surprise? What, that doesn't count?

DeLong has pointed out that the Dems appear to have won by an enormous percentage of the popular vote (by modern standards). Now Bob Harris puts the results in a different context:

This Modern World: An historic blow-out

An historic blow-out

The good guys’ win is even more one-sided than it looks at first glance.

If the numbers stay as they are, here’s the final scoreboard, assuming I haven’t missed something:

• Not one Democratic incumbent lost in the Senate.
• Not one Democratic incumbent lost in the House of Representatives.
• Not one Democratic incumbent lost in any state Governorship.

All told, 504 major offices were at stake tonight.

Not one changed hands going Democrat to Republican.

I’ve looked, and while several past elections saw a greater number of seats changing hands, I can’t find a more one-sided repudiation of a ruling party in U.S. history. (Although I fully expect someone out there reading this will, about five seconds after I hit the “publish” button.)

I still think something will happen to take the Senate away. In fact, even to have written this has probably ensured that the GOP will pull out an upset in Virginia ...

It is too early to say that bleeding has stopped. Wait, Rumsfeld is gone?! Next you'll tell me Bush voted Democrat ...

Update 11/8: Still don't believe it ...