Wednesday, May 07, 2003

$   ThinkingAhead:  Screw inventory; RFID this, will you?   Has anyone seen anything yet about RFID technology (identification of items tagged with radio frequency emitting chips) for luggage?   Yeah, luggage.  That stuff that goes astray whenever you’re counting on it for a lengthy vacation.  The same baggage which contains everything you can no longer carry-on as a passenger.   If, as this article suggests there’s now kill switch capability, signal emission shouldn’t really prove a problem when the ID isn’t actively being used.  RFID for luggage was introduced some time ago, but either bombed or had technical problems because it vaporized off the map.  Was it because of post-9/11 security issues?  The fall off of travel post-9/11?  The general market decline discouraging R&D expenditures?  Who knows??   It seems to me, though, that customers will be more willing to spend a few bucks on these kinds of devices – perhaps that’s the way the business model should work.  Perhaps the individual consumer should buy them, not the airlines.   Samsonite, get on the stick, will you?  Start with luggage tags containing programmable user ID’s, then move to luggage.   3:52:45 PM    comment []

	Tuesday, May 06, 2003

$   ThinkingAhead:  Langdon Winner and The Societal Impact of Nanotechnology   This is a very nice piece, a presentation given by Professor Langdon Winner to the U.S. House Committee on Science back in early April this year.  Straightforward, simplistically sweet and quietly humorous, I wish I’d been there to hear the original presentation.   Winner’s not a naysayer or a doomsdayer; while he doesn't demand brakes on development, he does propose that the citizenry should be more engaged in the early stages of this technology.   I agree; I can see where this particular technology could be fed by a boom not unlike that of the 90’s and become a scourge of sorts, as Bill Joy has suggested.  (Ray Kurzweil has also suggested that development of nanomachines could be only 25 years away, based on increasing rates of speed in technology development.)  There’s also the strong possibility that nanotechnology could become like the drug industry – corrupted by the drive to produce anything new to rush to the market, while missing the greater issue of suitability and appropriateness for society.   Good stuff.  I encourage you to read this since your government representatives have heard this message; can’t hurt at all to know whether your reps are getting their heads on straight or no on this topic.   3:34:46 PM    comment []

	Saturday, March 22, 2003

The Future is Very, Very Small   This makes me happy, knowing that kids are being introduced to the cutting edge of technology at an early age.  What will they come up with in the way of new products?  Will we get to them early enough to be able to catch them at their most uninhibited state of creativity?  Can we teach them to use ethics now, while beginning their exploration of the future?   I’m crazy about nanotechnology.  I submitted a few ideas to a Fortune 100 company’s ideation team on this stuff.  Utterly fantastic how this will change our future.  It will do for us what industrialization and computerization did for our society.   Imagine this simple application: a piece of paper, run through a printer or copier, has not one but multiple messages which can display on the paper upon command.  Yeah, nano-ink, coming to you just about any time now.  It’s been in development for a few years.   Or medicines, comprised of bucky-balls – tiny “machines” which once injected into the blood stream will seek out and attack a tumor or cancer.  Also under development.   Awesome stuff, yes?   Scary, too.  Imagine the same injected nano-machine, attacking human beings from the inside out.  Imagine if these nano-machines could self-replicate, like viruses.   Hence my comment about teaching ethics in concert with introducing this enormously potent technology.   1:22:59 PM    comment []

	Monday, January 13, 2003

Diablog: More language about language…   Okay, those of you peeking in for the first time on this language thing, here’s some background:   The Raven recently kicked off a diablog about language usage.  He’s not at all happy with the use of abbreviations in written language – specifically, LOTR for Lord of the Rings (and he’s said so twice).  Both Jan at Secular Blasphemy and Rob at Emphasis Added have both chimed in; Jan recognizes the application without denying that the learning and use of formal language is important, where Rob feels it’s a tidy mind that can reason and employ the breadth of a language.   Raven’s comments in my blog posting (wherein I express my appreciation for the need of both formal and informal communication) indicate that I may not have detailed my rationale fully.  So, here goes more details, including some questions and observations about the nature of the concern…   No, all communication is not ICQ (referring to abbreviation or compressed language used in ICQ).  The medium and context dictates format.  Professor S. F. B. Morse had limitations within which he was compelled to work; as a response, he developed Morse code.  ICQ and other networked communications engender similar limitations, resulting in a different format of communications.  The medium of communication predicated a compressed or condensed format for the transfer of meaning.   The internet, chat and blog are not newspaper, book, print-media; it's defined by both the blogger and the user.  Within that venue are persons who by way of sharing a similar culture have similar expectations about communications.  They grant license to each other to compress meaning into symbols.  Hence, Lord of the Rings becomes LOTR.   Sure, these same abbreviations show up in print/hardcopy; but that's a reflection of the response of print to pop-culture.  If Art imitates Life, and Art = expression + medium, then medium reflects Life as a subset.  There will be bleed-through of pop-cultural response because the medium can’t escape its role as mirror to society.   That's not to say there's not a place for abbreviation-free communication.  Again, medium and context dictate.  (Even within those areas of communication which we expect to be abbreviation and compression-free, we still see the use of “terms of art” to convey meaning in brevity, or the use of symbols.  Look at a lengthy contract sometime and note that the “party of the first part” becomes “Party 1” throughout the rest of the document for the sake of brevity.)   Note other aspects of language which have flexed to accommodate our changing society, in part because of an increased understanding of the nature of communication and in part because of a globalization of language.  Information Mapping® techniques, developed by Robert Horn, streamlines and improves the effectiveness of communication through condensation; these techniques are based on research indicating that humans digest information most effectively when “chunked” into an optimum size.  Consequently, more and more businesses and students use this condensed communication for greater effectiveness; its impact may be memetic in nature and spreading.  Globalization’s impact on language is pretty clear: how many words do we use regularly that came from other cultures (most having been acquired within the last 100 years)?  In some cases, the words are much more effective than the English words we would otherwise have used.  Other languages have similarly been impacted by the “encroachment” of English into their language.   In fact, Mr. Horn has been working on the development and promotion of “visual language”; this may be a naturally extension of both the Information Mapping® techniques and the use of symbols in place of language.  It’s analogous to the development of objects in programming (a language itself).  This may encourage further integration of non-English, non-text components into communications.   An essential part of this entire argument (defense?) is the concept of post-modernism's impact on communications.  Post-modernism is a state of existence and a reflection of human emergence; it is encompassing, holistic; it’s not as prone to absolutism as its predecessors, Modernism and Traditionalism.  It encourages bleed-through of communication forms across multiple media for this reason.  Being post-modern means a state has been attained where all methods of communications may be equally accessible and viable.   Note and compare these definitions of social problems from traditional and post-modern viewpoints (Prof. C. Kennedy in re: Edelman):   The traditional, rational, positivist perspective: Social problems appear, they exist in a single reality, and attempts are made to solve the problems.   The post-modern perspective: Social problems are constructions; they involve multiple realities which can be understood only by understanding who is framing the issues and what their stake is in the definition.   Is the concern with language usage a problem as defined from a traditional viewpoint, or a post-modern viewpoint?  Is usage of formal language really the only solution if it is at all possible the concern is a construct?   Perhaps one of the challenges for certain readers of condensed language is that it appears less to be interaction with a subject than with a symbol.  Is it an innate retraction from something that could be a mechanized agent’s response versus that which is a fully-interactive subjective human response?   And can the uncertainty of deep structure and meaning behind symbolic language be a frustration for traditionalists?   Perhaps another reason for frustration with abbreviated language is a rejection of the post-modernist anti-work ethic; playful behavior with language is seen as a failure to invest an appropriate amount of work into the effort of communication.  This may again be a manifestation of traditionalist values employed in this case against a postmodern venue.   Another unconscious reaction to compressed language may be a response to a perceived juxtaposition of the social ladder.  It has been observed that in organizations, senior staff members are prone to ignore grammatical standards in writing e-mail, while middle managers are careful to employ grammar.  Observers theorize that senior staff feel their time is too valuable to expend the effort on grammatical revisions (something once reserved for low-level assistants preparing dictated and typed copy), where middle managers must be certain of clarity and subsequent buy-in from both senior and junior levels.  Perhaps this upending ubiquity of use is perceived as a violation of a privilege reserved for senior staff members (senior members of society, by extension).  It’s more accurately a reflection of the same demands (which have affected only senior staffers in the near-past) now affecting pervasively all organizational (and societal) members.   What ever motivation(s) for the concern, these facts remain:   §         Situation (necessity and availability) dictates the medium; §         Medium dictates the format; §         Context comes with implied licenses that may vary; §         Society has changed expansively along with its expectations and licenses.   4:13:56 PM    comment []

	Saturday, January 04, 2003

ThinkingAhead: Remarkable human, remarkable thoughts… Excerpt from his essay, "The World As I See It": "My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling. "This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them! "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."   -- Albert Einstein   More interesting tidbits on this incredible human being, in case you’d like a refresher or an introduction.   When we think of the future ahead of us, perhaps it helps to look back from the past and attempt to see from our predecessors’ eyes what they saw as they looked about and looked ahead.  Did they see us, as we are today?  Did they see calm or calamity?  How did their vision affect the path that led humanity here?   And what constructive lessons can we realize in this process?  I think there are countless lessons – but we must look, and we must apply.   We are all as the dead, useless or extinct, without both the lesson and the application.   2:18:41 PM    comment []

	Thursday, January 02, 2003

ThinkingAhead: New study shows species displaced by global warming…   An article today in the New York Times on global warming’s results has me concerned.   And yet, I want to say:  Duh!   We’ve been hearing about global warming and the argument about its existence for so long that accruing results have been ignored.  As if nature would wait for us to agree there is/is not such a thing as global warming.   Or that we humans are contributors.   Duh!   Global warming is only the tip of the iceberg.  What happens if the earth rebounded RAPIDLY with a Little Ice Age?  All these species that have shifted north because of the increased warmth over greater surface area would be WIPED OUT.   The article quotes Dr. Richard P. Alley (a professor from Penn State who is an expert on climate not associated with the studies):    "You'll have to change what you eat, or rely on fewer things to eat, or travel farther to eat, all of which have costs.”   Yet another resounding Duh?!, I thought, after that quote.  Yeah?  What’s it cost to shift all of our existing food production to latitudes south of current subtropical climes?  Even climate experts haven’t thought that far ahead.  But we need to even if they don’t; we can’t leave this to the experts.   If we don’t slow down greenhouse gas production by reducing petroleum usage (in every way, even plastics production!), we will accelerate the results of global warming.  It will amount to far more than just species shifting places.  We may leave little or nothing for our children’s children; we might even eliminate more than half of our own existing population.   Hope you're thinking, "Duh!" at this point.  And start doing something about it.   3:55:04 PM    comment []

	Saturday, December 28, 2002

ThinkingAhead: 10 Technology Predictions from World Future Society’s The Futurist   Each year WFS' The Futurist editors prepares a list of its Top Ten predictions for the coming year.  For 2003, not only did they pick their Top Ten but they listed the following 10 predictions as a single entry under their Technology forecast:     Description Year Anticipated 1. Confessions to artificial intelligence "priests" 2004 2. Designer babies 2005 3. Video tattoos 2010 4. Insect-like robots used for crop pollination 2012 5. ID cards replaced by biometric scanning 2015 6. Nanobots in toothpaste attack plaque 2020 7. Thought recognition becomes everyday input means 2025 8. First Bionic Olympics 2030 9. Emotion-control chips used to control criminals 2030 10. Moon base the size of a small village is built 2040   Some of these predictions are fascinating, some are downright scary, and others are, well, huh?   Like number 1 on the list – confessions to artificial intelligence “priests”.  Huh?  What for?  Why would any Catholic do this, confess to a machine?  Who predicted this, a Catholic man, who feels confessing to an A.I. agent is somehow better than admitting women to the priesthood?  Did this predictor feel an artificial priest is somehow in keeping with the Church’s dogma, that this will address the shortfall of priests?    Will this prevent abuse of church members at the hands of human priests?  Who wasted their time, our time with this one?   Others, number 4 and number 6 are rather intimidating; would you let a nanobot enter your body?  What about inside your kids?  Would you trust robots (most probably nanobots) to do ONLY crop pollination, or could they be diverted into some horrible misuse in terrorist warfare?  Scary, scary stuff.  I love technology as much as the next geek, but I’m not convinced we’ll be ready for this in a mere 10 years.  20 years or more might be more likely for both predictions 4 and 6.   Prediction number 7 is rather interesting and amusing.  If it truly comes to pass that other’s thoughts can be read, blogging will become passé.  Ah, why didn’t they just come out and add the corollary, 7a. Blogging and other diarist activities become history.  Imagine it...   11:19:06 AM    comment []

	Friday, December 27, 2002

ThinkingAhead: The Practical Futurist…isn’t…   I’ve been toying for some time now with pursuing an advanced degree in Future Studies.  The study of the future fascinates me, probably an offshoot of my taste for science fiction or stemming from my studies in science and technology (or both).  We can shape and mold it or let it run over us…wow, the possibilities, the probabilities are so tantalizing, entertaining.   Consequently, I jump all over anything that smacks of futurist thinking.  The Practical Futurist sounded like just such a jumping point.  Michael Rogers’ bio indicates he might have an interesting viewpoint and sufficient credentials to generate some deep futurist thinking.   Unfortunately, the column is so short-term (short-sighted?) that I really can’t recommend it as a purely futurist resource.  A practical resource, possibly, but that’s pretty subjective.  I’m looking for information about the next 10, 20, 50 years out, the stuff that we (the editorial we, the we of the human race at large) can still shape and affect, not the short-term 5-year plan that’s already embedded in some corporate geek’s PowerPoint presentation on their laptop.  Rogers’ stuff is just that – speculation on somebody’s already laid-out 5-year plan.   There are a few interesting links (many are blogs) located with his column, though; a number are truly futurist in nature.  Check them out, see where you might be able to shape or re-shape the future ahead, before it becomes some PowerPoint presentation.   Just a few you can find by weeding through links at The Practical Futurist’s column:   Long Bets   Transterrestial Musings   bottomquark   Quark Soup   1:42:21 PM    comment []

	Monday, November 11, 2002

In re:  Postmodernism: Deconstructed (Salon's Rantoholic: the oral report)   Dear Mr. Cary Tennis –   After listening twice to your recent “rant”, I feel compelled to tell you this: there is no post-modern crisis.  Overarching, holistic descriptions of our state of affairs exist, a story that tells it all.  Things really do continue to matter; they’re not the same things that have mattered before.  Scratch that: it’s not “things” that matter, it’s values and concepts that matter.  It’s a change in the way we view the world.  It’s this shift in perception that’s occurring, not a really a crisis.   First, let’s step back to the 50,000 foot level and look at historical shifts between generations as presented in the Massey Tapes.  (Remember them? Morris Massey’s theory that you are what happened to you?  Okay, maybe I’m a lot older than I feel…)  There is a natural progression between generations, the last such shift described in Generations of Youth.  At the immediate level of day-to-day life, it’s difficult to see the naturalness of this progression; it appears as a disruption at a more intimate point of view.  These disruptions are normal “waves” or passes on a spiral, a pendulum rotation responding to creative tension.  Significant events during our formative years shape our values and opinions; as each generation has different experiences, their values will differ as well.  To some extent, each generation is also shaped by rebound and rebellion against the previous set of values – a natural swing of the pendulum.  Generations before have experienced the same distancing between themselves and the next for this reason.  Each of these swings of the pendulum mark a substantive change in a new generation’s worldview from the previous generation’s worldview.  Look at the world events and technological developments of the past couple of decades, and imagine how they’ve affected the pendulum’s propulsion in the direction of its current swing.  It’s become a global culture we’re talking about, isn’t it?   Next, let’s look at evolutionary theories of consciousness and human emergence.  Professor Jenny Wade’s work on the evolution of human consciousness suggests that contemporary Western humans are on the verge of moving from two states of consciousness to a new state.  Because such shifts occur along a distribution curve, there are already a small people in the population who have made the shift to another state while a substantial portion of the curve is still trending toward that shift.  In today’s society, most adult humans experience consciousness from achievement and affiliative states – meaning, we orient ourselves towards action and accomplishment (attaining a recognized state of power), or relationships between others and ourselves (emphasis on belonging and being needed).  The next level of consciousness to which humans may expect to evolve is an authentic state – one in which all other states of consciousness are grasped empathically and one lives to attain personal growth, fulfill a personal mission through more innovative, systemic, holistic thinking and actions.   Perhaps you are under the bell of the standard distribution curve – meaning, you have a lot of company.  But don’t fret about those at the front 1 to 3 standard deviations away in consciousness; they’re aware of us, and they’ll solve it for us, with us.  (Or perhaps you’re already on the leading edge of the curve and you’re seeing the debris and detritus of change behind you…)   The shift in human consciousness progresses as we experience fundamental changes in our values systems.  Rather, our values are manifestations of our changing consciousness and worldview.  In earlier history and in lower states of consciousness, humans were more territorial, perceiving reality as us against them; our values of absolutism and intolerance reflected this consciousness.  Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan model shifts in values as humans progressed and emerged along a spiral (based on Clare Graves’ fundamental theories of emergence); they predict the next point to which humans will trend.  Although I've not yet read it, I’m confident you’ll find the observations in Generations of Youth follow this model.  The shift to an ego-centric, narcissistic culture (Boomers) from the previous generation could be foretold.  The previous generation/culture was driven by external fears (nuclear war, post-World War II and post-Depression resource shortages); the Boomers were freed from these external fears, allowing them to concentrate on their internal concerns (fear of death, ego identification).  With these concerns having been addressed through much navel-gazing in the 70’s and 80’s (period of maturation for the ‘Me Generation’), Generations X and Y have been increasingly free to transition away from ego drivers and look to external values for motivation.  Gens X and Y do things not solely for traditional motivations like money and security, but increasingly for self-actualization and self-determination.  They choose based on a values system predicated on concepts, not based on material things and concrete measures.  There is a lack of need for bonding to a culture – ego and culture of birth no longer offer security, and frankly, don’t need to offer security.  X and Y are free to embrace all cultures; they’re free to seek the authentic beyond enculturation, free even to act androgynously.  They live externally, not internally; hence the lack of ego-defensiveness.  “No Fear” is not just a sticker on their car window, but a genuine state of existence.   Ken Wilber, the foremost theorist of human emergence, lays out the matrix of human emergence in A Theory of Everything.  Not only do humans emerge in values along a spiral, but the entirety of our human experience is actually a matrix, a fabric, along and about which we continually shift as individuals and as a society.  Wilber demonstrates in this seminal text that we are all multi-dimensional and capable of reaching all levels; real emergence will require those at the forefront to not only move each of their own individual selves along the way, but move previous hierarchies (segments of population, in this case at earlier levels of emergence) along with them.  Those that are in or beyond the post-modern will lift others along, just as a tide lifts all boats.   Lastly, note Professor Richard Florida’s comments in his text, The Rise of the Creative Class, regarding the changes that have occurred over the last one hundred years.  In terms of societal impact, changes in technology are greater than social change between 1900 and 1950, but it’s social changes that are greater than technological change between 1950 and 2000.  On this same curve we could reasonably expect that social changes will be continue to have greater impact on human development than technology.  Your “rant” discusses the overwhelming choices available and the bombardment of media – but it’s not the material things that are important, hence the marketer’s frustrated flailing excess in attempting to reach those you label post-modern.  It’s the authentic, the real that’s of value.  Current youth generations aren’t necessarily adept at “navigating” the vast bombardment of choice; they’re adept at seeing through the propaganda, can tune out selectively and see things for what they are, as pure hype versus the real and authentic.   Older readers may remember a time in which advertising was seen as the truth (anyone remember “healthful smoking”?)  Post-moderns assume quite the opposite.  Hype is a pretty toy, a fluffy plaything to post-moderns; I certainly wouldn’t bet my company’s profits on marketing hype and excess being effective on post-moderns over the long run.   You can perceive the post-modern shift under way; you’ve got a foot in that world.  Making the transition merely requires a change in consciousness, shifting from the focus on achievement, through or past consciousness of relationships, to a state of being aware of and finding value in the authentic.  Define the authentic, seek it, and you are there.  And if you don’t feel you’re making this shift, you’ll be propelled along as we all progress together.  Hang on, it could be a wild ride.  Certainly not a crisis.   And that’s the big story that explains it all. 4:31:40 PM    comment []

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