Future Shock: Charles Stross and Alvin Toffler

"Future Shock"  was published in 1970. I read it as a child; what I remember best is how "shocking" Toffler thought it was to have a shopping mall appear where houses once stood. There was nothing in the Toffler's book that was anywhere as "shocking" as this post by Charles Stross, a highly regarded writer of very ambitious modern "hard" science fiction:

Charlie's Diary: Unpacking the Zeitgeist

I'm trying to work out how I'd go about explaining this news item from WOWinsider to someone thirty years ago, in 1977, and it is making my head hurt because there are too many prior assumptions nested recursively inside it to unpack easily...

...There are thirty years' worth of future shock condensed into this one news item. And the reason I'm writing about it is that I don't think I could get away with putting such an conceptually overloaded incident into one of my novels; it would take too much set-up and require so much infodumping that many readers would lose interest. This Russian doll of a news item contains some rather scary pointers to where we're going, and a harsh warning about the difficulty of accurately portraying plausible futures in literature.

There was another recent story about similar techniques (read the essay) used by children to bypass safety constraints set into Disney's online game communities. I think Schneier wrote about it; if I remember correctly the safety measures were to prevent non-game specific communications that might be exploited by very nasty adults. The children learned to rearrange objects to spell out messages they could not type.

So was Toffler being silly with his dire predictions of incapacitating "future shock" and the examples of vanishing shops that I remember? This is taken from the Wikipedia summary:

Toffler argues that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a "super-industrial society". This change will overwhelm people, the accelerated rate of technological and social change will leave them disconnected, suffering from "shattering stress and disorientation" – future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems were symptoms of the future shock. In his discussion of the components of such shock, he also coined the term "information overload".

In retrospect Toffler was wrong about the social transformations of 1970 (student unrest, racism, the civil rights movement, free speech, divorce drugs, rock and roll, antiwar demonstrations) being due to "future shock". They had a technological component (television, affordable automobiles, contraceptives, the emergent middle class, widespread education), but they were mostly due to demographics.

The examples of "future shock" I recall from the book also seem quaint nowadays, and hardly very threatening. We're used to massive structures vanishing and transforming with little knowledge, and most of us don't even live in Shanghai or Bangkok.

And yet ...

I have a suspicion we're not doing so well these days. There's a lot going on that, I think, would be setting off alarm bells in a healthy society. Instead, our society is quiet, passive, disconnected. We're more like stunned sheep than active participants in a changing world.

Maybe Toffler wasn't so much wrong as premature.

Photosynth. From ....

I expect something like this from Google, not from Microsoft.

• The TED demo: watch the video. I don't like watching videos, but this is well worth five minutes. You can zip past the boring introduction.
• Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth is the technology demo

The image management performance is astounding, but the jaw dropping part is the demonstration of the synthesis of thousands of Flickr images into a spatially coherent whole with essentially unlimited resolution.

The next demo might as well start with an picture of earth and end up with an atomic force image of an atom. Why not?

There are obvious implications for radiology imaging and image management.

Via CT.

It's time to cancel the war on terror - and the orange alert

It was a mistake. Emphases mine.

A New Declaration of Independence - Early Warning - William Arkin Washington Post

.. We live in an age where a terrorist attack could occur on any given day in any given public place. I'm afraid there's no returning to an imagined simpler era. The more we turn these criminal attacks into an assault on our national security, however, the more we reward terrorists with the attention they seek, and the more we turn terrorists into "warriors."

... the administration is applying the wrong strategy to the "fight," pursuing an approach that builds an environment of public fear. It's time, then, to declare independence from this hopeless cycle and demand a return to the pre-9/11 era of law enforcement. In the case of terrorism, war is not the answer.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says that because of the attacks and plots in the United Kingdom, security will be elevated at U.S. airports and other transit hubs today and through the holiday weekend. As President Bush says, "You never know where they may try to strike."

I'd say this response were a transparent attempt to incite fear in the public -- except that I think that the government may actually be clueless as to how best to respond. Yes, the president's observation has a partisan tinge to it. More important, however, his statement suggests another lost battle in a "war" that is no such thing.

... After 9/11, the reaction of the national security monolith was to decry the former "law enforcement" mode of counterterrorism. This was a kind of right-wing "Blame America" argument, suggesting that a litigious approach and our own high regard for the law were responsible for the ineffectual fight against al Qaeda. Only an all-out "war," the argument went, could save America and, by extension, the West....

... I'm sure that there is more that could be done, especially with the warfare paradigm: Throw more soldiers into the fight, employ better weapons, match each measure with a counter-measure. It's never-ending, because war is the wrong conception.

What is needed is a declaration that the war is over. Terrorists are not warriors, they are just criminals...

Also, can we stop with the freakin' "orange alert" already? Orange is the new norm. We aren't going back to yellow, or green, or whatever the colors used to be in the magic world we used to live in. I'd say we go to "normal" and "red", and red can't last more than 3 days without a renewal by Congress.

Morford on the pseudo-pardon - scathing and funny

Morford is in fine form today with a great rant on the sniveling pseudo-pardon. Here's the first paragraph:

Scooter Libby In Hell / What do Dick Cheney, Paris Hilton, "The Sopranos" and colon spasms have in common? Find out here!

So there you have it. Bush shrugs and smirks and then commutes the easy soft-focus sit-on-your-ass-all-day-and-knit white-collar prison sentence of a hollow political lackey who, in turn, took a bullet for his sneering mafia thug of a boss, Dick Cheney, who in turn was complicit (along with lead flying monkey Karl Rove) in the appallingly illegal outing of a CIA operative, which itself was a tiny but particularly nasty link in the giant chain of lies and deceptions undertaken to lead our wary and tattered nation into an unwinnable impossible costly brutally violent war that will now last, if current estimates are correct, until the goddamn sun explodes...

And he's off! Great reading, that man can write.

Update 7/5/07: This is witty. On first reading I was puzzled by the harsh condemnation of the pseudo-pardon by right wingnut stalwarts...

Yahoo! filters gmail invites as spam

Old news, I'm sure, but given the slow and awful implosion of Yahoo! it's worth a smile.

If you send a gmail invite to Yahoo!, Yahoo!'s usually excellent spam filters mistakenly mark it as spam.

Gee, isn't that funny.

Yahoo! is dead.

Social Atom reports on complex networks

Mark Buchanan* ("Who am I") is posting about a meeting on Complex Networks, 2-6 July, Sardegna, Italy. It's a "big ideas" topic, so fun to read about. You'll need to go to the blog to find the separate posts, they aren't linked. Oddly enough for someone writing about networks, Mr. Buchanan doesn't use Google's tags/categories to group related posts.

* "The Social Atom" is a blog to promote a book about the thesis that humans are individually simple ("atomic"), but that complex social phenomena emerge from the interaction of many "social atoms" (chemistry). The blog is pseudonymous, but the book has a name on it.

Salmonella poisoned snacks. China. Of course.

We've been playing it a bit safer with food. You know, Melamine. There was something else, but really, it's too much to keep track of. Oh, yes, defective tires. Maybe defective brakes. Definitely lead in toy point and christmas light wiring. Umm ... fraudulent medications. Fake hernia repair materials.

Let's see, what do they all have in common?

Right.

So we've been shopping at "organic" places, like our local "Mississippi market". You can't get any granolier in Berkeley. Really, I feel like an alien when I shop there. That's where my wife bought some "veggie snack" thingies that are supposed to fool the kids into eating something that's not a cookie. Snack thingies from one of those friendly "organic" companies -- Robert's American Gourmet Inc.

Snackes that were just recalled. My wife had to phone the kid's day camp to get the snacks pulled from the kid's lunches. Our local paper has a wee little blurb. Emphases mine.

Salmonella found in seasoning made with Chinese ingredients used on recalled snack foods:

...A seasoning made with imported Chinese ingredients used on recalled snack foods was contaminated with salmonella, a company official said Tuesday. The snack foods sickened dozens of people.

The seasoning, used on both Super Veggie Tings Crunchy Corn Sticks and Veggie Booty snack foods, tested positive for the bacteria, said Robert Ehrlich, president and chief executive of Robert's American Gourmet Inc. The 'veggie' seasoning's ingredients came primarily from China, the company said."...

...Ehrlich said he had been unaware of where the ingredients used in the seasoning originated. The products are made under contract; Ehrlich would not identify the manufacturer.

I love the last bit. It's so sweet. The "products are made under contract". "Roberts American Gourmet" doesn't know where they come from. Sounds a bit like Thomas the Tank Engine.

At least food is somewhat, intermittently, labeled. We don't buy any food now that has "China" on the label, but we know we can't dodge this completely.

You might consider writing your representative, thought it's been over two weeks and Betty McCollum's office has been suspiciously non-responsive (see update). Something for me to remember when the next primary comes by [1]. Or you might decide to grow your own food, but you'll have to synthesize your own fertilizer too ...

[1] In our district only the primary matters.

The only good thing is that we have a president we can rely on ...

Update 9/22/07: It took a while, but McCollum wrote me a pretty good form letter, turns out she's on the Agriculture appropriations committee. As usual, Bush is the villain here. Some excerpts:

• 2002: Farm Bill had Country-of-Origin labeling (COOL)
• 2004: Bush delayed implementation until 9/06
• 2005: Bush delayed implementation until 9/08
• 2007: Farm Bill requires COOL by 9/08 for all meat
  

McCollum has been a strong supporter of mandatory labeling, probably because it ought to boost Minnesota based agribusiness. It only applies to meat though, we need it for all food.

Liar scoots: a physics blog's commentary on Bush

CV, a physics blog, has one of the better commentaries on the Libby's get-out-of-jail pass. Perhaps the most disgusting bit of Bush's latest pile is GWB's record:

.... George W. Bush hates to pardon people or commute their sentences. Not his job to overrule a jury, he proudly proclaims. Even if we’re talking about a mentally retarded inmate sentenced to death by a jury that never had a chance to hear mitigating evidence. Those inmates could count themselves lucky if W didn’t openly mock them...

Bush is an awful human being.

Joel Spolsky starts a Wiki on the business of software

Spolsky, best known as "Joel on Software" is a hyper-productive scatter brained genius workaholic CEO. Or so I imagine. I've never met the man. I imagine he's very intimidating, but, who knows. Maybe he's actually a nice person too.

In addition to running a startup company, teaching us all on his blog, and writing several books, he has now launched a Wiki: The Business of Software Wiki.

Based on my longtime reading of Joel's blog, and the books of his I have, I assume he, and the contributors he will recruit, will create a template which anyone who wishes to launch a startup software business can try to apply. A franchise model, without the franchise fees. (Yes, someone might turn the template into a franchise model, or even create an outsourcing suite based on the template.)

Go Joel.

Ensembl Genome Browser: Take a walk on the wild side

Feeling adventurous? Visit the ensemble genome browser. Really, it's safe for work. All you have to do is click the link.

If you dare.

Come on, you know you want to. Browse a bit ...

There. That wasn't so bad, was it?

One link away.

Now, if you're old enough, remember the world of 10 years ago. I know it's hard, but try.

Things have changed more than we know.

Smarter terrorists: this seems ominous

Anyone who thinks physicians are particularly immune to evil needs a quick history lesson. Or maybe they just need to be reminded that Al Qaeda's true leader, Zawahiri, is a surgeon. Or that Serbia's genocidal murderer, still at large, was a psychiatrist. And, of course, there's dear old Mengele.

So it would not be surprising if the principals in a recent set of terrorist attacks were physicians. Not surprising, but ominous.

The last few years the terrorist attacks and plots in the UK and US have, as nearly as I can tell (I try to track this) involved pretty incompetent people. No geeks. Nobody clever. Many persons with obvious psychiatric ailments or cognitive disorders.

This group is not like this. Maybe they were incompetent, or maybe we were just very lucky, but they're not naive or disabled. They more resemble the terrorists of Hamas than of the past few years of al Qaeda.

I'd very much like to know why they're getting smarter.

Future expected, future forgotten: ubiquitous robotics

I was chatting with a colleague recently about the impact of robotics on infrastructure repair costs. Many older cities, most catastrophically New Orleans, have deferred infrastructure maintenance. In most cases this doesn't result in the annihilation of the city, but it does produce collapsing roadways in Montreal.

There's an upside to deferring infrastructure maintenance, assuming one is willing to risk a few motorists or, in the case of New Orleans, much of the city. The cost may shrink. Modern robotics is making a lot of everyday tasks, such as replacing gas mains, far cheaper. Roads are no longer torn up, instead robotic tunnelers wend their way beneath the asphalt.

Which makes me think about how the future arrives. Sometimes it arrives with great fanfare and long anticipation. Other times, though, it builds off to the side, sleepily and beneath our attention, and merges to take us unawares. I think robotics may be like that. They've been getting smarter and better in the deep ocean, on the battlefield, flying simulators with organic components, vacuuming, mowing ... Incrementally improving.

Japan is highly incented to lead in robotics. Korea is likely to take the same track. It seems inevitable that within 10-20 years most of us will own, and become dependent upon, many increasingly sophisticated robots. A future so long predicted that we've almost forgotten about it, will abruptly be upon us.

The implications for immigration, and for much of the work done by non-knowledge workers, will be substantial. (American knowledge workers, of course, are already doomed by globalization.)

Silencing Libby - Bush acts

Bush has acted as expected. It would be interesting to know what deals were made, what role Cheney played, and what Libby threatened to reveal.

Gordon's Tech is not gone -- but feeds may require a manual update

The short version: I moved Gordon's Tech to a new address: tech.kateva.org. Subscriptions (like bloglines, google reader) were supposed to auto-update, but it's not working. If you read that blog, you'll need to update your feed. Sorry!

The longer version: Gordon's Tech is one of my 3 public blogs (Gordon's Notes is this one, Be the Best You Can Be focuses on cognitive disorders). GT consists almost entirely of technical notes and discoveries I'm interested in; instead of storing them in a desktop file I put 'em into a blog. Works for me, and the results are available for search. Most readers find those posts when solving a tech problem with Google. A small number of readers subscribe to the feed, though the blog doesn't make many concessions to a subscriber audience.

Yesterday I moved Gordon's Tech from a blogspot domain to a Google custom domain. In theory Google's Blogger uses a "301 redirect" to tell feed readers to update their feeds. In practice, that's not working. So subscribers need to update manually. The new URL is tech.kateva.org.

We now return you to your regular programming ...

The joy of parasitism and the strategic wisdom of the cat

I'm a dog person, but I'm kindly inclined to the Dog's historic rival in exploiting the human host. Not that Dogs and Cats are pure parasites, though the cat's role as a toxoplamsa vector arguably moves them closer to the dark side. Dogs do eat garbage and thus reduce disease (like toxoplasma, which can't live in dogs), cat's do kill pests, which reduces disease (do cats get plague?) and food loss.

Quibbles aside, as a happy host to my current canine parasite, I'll raise a toast to the strategic brilliance of the cat, an animal that went from chewing on primates to switching sides when the time was right ... (emphases mine)

The Near Eastern Origin of Cat Domestication (Science)

... Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious wildcat crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many predators in the region, such as hyenas and larger cats.

The rodents that infested the settlers’ homes and granaries were sufficient prey. Seeing that she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated her, and their children greeted her kittens with delight.

At least five females of the wildcat subspecies known as Felis silvestris lybica accomplished this delicate transition from forest to village. And from these five matriarchs all the world’s 600 million house cats are descended....

a subsequent NYT editorial comments:

Cats Among Us - New York Times

... This new genetic evidence resolves the puzzle of cat remains turning up in Cyprus before the rise of the Egyptian civilizations that were supposed to have domesticated the cat.

The wild subspecies that gave up their DNA for these tests still exist, though barely. That is one of the painful ironies of domestication. Creatures who come in from the wild eventually prosper — domestic cats number, after all, in the hundreds of millions — while those who don’t almost inevitably fall upon hard times...

Humans are the ultimate predator, compared to which the old saber tooths were ... pussy cats. We may not last long, but in the meantime we are pretty sure to wipe out every large animal that doesn't find a way to serve us. The cat made a good strategic move. With luck they might outlast us, and return to having primates for lunch long after we're gone ...