Unsorted read more

Cracking the infinity barrier read more

Internet subcultures, the miracle of trans-geography read more

Technology-the great humanizer read more

The infinite extracranial implant-the ultimate chip-the divinity chip read more

Taming the power of black holes read more

Inventions that turn garbage into gold read more

Everything we conceive and believe, we can achieve read more

Dumping our selves into more durable bodies read more

Biotech-making the desert bloom read more

Weapons of the future-surrealism bathed in nightmare read more

The ultimate electronic nest-sensors, sensors, everywhere read more

TIA-the possible fruits and dangers of Total Information Awareness read more

The day of the techno housewife read more

Wraparound tv-paper the room with color pixel sheets read more

The ultimate butler and maid-intelligent agents that read your needs read more

Can computers read your emotions by watching your face? read more

James Santagata conversations read more

Michael Clauss ideas fr hb read more

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Unsorted
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hb: I'd settle for the wall opposite me in my bedroom being sheeted above the bookcases with a 20 foot long by six foot high flat screen video panel able to show real time, full-motion, panoramic shots of seascapes, street scenes in Hong Kong, mountain jungles in Bali, the view from an outdoor table at a cafe in paris, walks through Prospect Park, or whatever was most conducive to expanding the mind and soothing the soul at the moment.
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Hello, HAL Three books examine the future of artificial intelligence and find the human brain is in trouble. By COLIN McGINN New York Times Book Review
1999 January 3 COLIN McGINN's book review on the future of artificial intelligence is extremely good in its pursuit of the nature of subjective human experience, that whirling flow of things we feel and don't quite know overlaid with a thin covering of verbal facility. However in pursuing the theme of human consciousness McGinn follows an old pattern of thinking about new technologies. We tend to cast the new in the form of the old and fail to see that its difference, which we initially find alien and try to cover up, is the seed of what it will become---something very different than we've ever seen before. When the Egyptians invented the stone column, they used it as a substitute for their old means of building support--bundles of reeds. To compensate, they flowered the top to make the stone look like the "real thing"--rope-wrapped papyrus shoots. The Greeks went further: they fluted the column to imitate the indentations in clusters of tree limbs or thick stems; they carved stone bands wrapping the "bundle" horizontally like the ropes of the "genuine article;" and they, too, flowered the tops to make the whole thing seem less "artificial." When plastic came out, boxes were marbled to look like wood or tortoise shell--the real thing syndrome again.

Now Colin McGinn wants future machine intelligence to look like the genuine article, the real thing, the sterling silver standard, us. But new technologies lead in new directions. Once stone pillars and plastic were allowed to do their own thing, they made possible buildings and household objects in forms no one had imagined before. Machine intelligence will eventually go so far beyond our control and understanding that we puzzle at it and wonder what in the world it is. Once we stop trying to make it look like us, it will show its own possibilities--and they will undoubtedly hold many a surprise.

When autonymous, self-recreating, learning, and adapting forms of machine intelligence have become sufficiently complex, it really won't matter whether they have consciousness or not. It's their actions we will either wonder at or dread. We don't have to know that a lion is conscious to realize it is a sentient, self-powered, and self-motivated form of life around which we must watch our step very carefully. What will the roar and claws of an autonomously intelligent, adaptive robot built for war be like? Howard

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In a message dated 2/6/00 1:33:27 PM Eastern Standard Time, 5-38@wizdom.co.uk writes:

<< http://www.wizdom.org.uk/TheVingeSingularity.shtml >>
Many thanks for the tip. I've skimmed the article and have a brief comment.

<<Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after,
the human era will be ended. >>

Interesting idea, but the end of the human era? no. the rise of multicellular beings did not eliminate the proliferation of microbes. In fact when one looks at sheer numbers, this is more the microbial era than the human century. Nor did the rise of us multicellulars eliminate eukaryotic cells, trillions of which live by joining together in the organized cooperatives called you, me, and Verenor Vinge. One technology usually incorporates another rather than replacing it. The same is likely to be true of biology and of biology's newest toy, intelligence. Howard Bloom

In a message dated 3/6/00 5:25:51 AM Eastern Standard Time, alex.burns writes:

A provocative column and nice anecdote. I passed a flock of eleven baby ducklings on my way to the university email terminal

hb: wonderful. I'd have loved to see the sight.

and didn't catch even one.

hb: Alex, have you been kidnapping birds again? Shame, shame.

In answer to
your queries:

> Does anyone have an idea of what is happening to my
> beloved frog populations? I mean, if there are no frogs, > what in the world are kids of the new generation going
> to catch and keep in buckets for a day? Howard

The latest batch of synthetic Pokemon.

hb: Alex, you've hit it smack on the head. Pokemons and Sony's new electronic puppies. As Nikko Tinbergen demonstrated, supernormal stimuli--supercues--are more appealing to animals than the real thing. and we are animals with innumerable layers of cultural and cortical clothing. We, too, will take the supercues rather than the real thing sometimes. I wonder if I'd rather have the cat currently living with me or a future Sony battery operated model that recharges itself, sleeps on the bed purring when I want it to, and never sleeps on my head or sprawled across my feet--an best of all, never walks arrogantly past me when I call to it, ignoring me completely.

Now that we are finally on the verge of realizing the great MIT dream of possessing thousands of micro-robots which all communicate with each other, I wonder what their silicon group mind will think, what new motivations it will grow, and how its collective feelings (should they develop such things) and mind will interface with us, the makers and purchasers of these strangely independent robot colonies. See story below.

>P.P.S. Are some forms of humor a sublimation of the bullying many kids find so enjoyable--heaping humiliations on the class scapegoat--but doing it
>ever-so-more subtly through entertainment?

It's not entertaining for the class scapegoat according
to this recent RealVideo speech by Marilyn Manson:

hb: having been in this position through most of my childhood, as have many others in this group, I can guarantee you it's no fun. It does, however, give you unusual perspectives on life and the viciousness inherent in human social groups.
Howard
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Source: Michigan State University (http://www.msu.edu) Date: Posted 3/3/2000 Robotics Team Goes "Micro" To Combat Crime, Aid Rescue Efforts The gunman is barricaded in a small room with hostages. As he calculates his next move, he fails to notice that he is not alone--not by a long shot. A handful of robots the size of Palmetto bugs move in on him, navigating floors and furniture, scaling walls and ceilings, tunneling through the ventilation system. Before he realizes what is happening, the SWAT team storms into the room... The above sounds like a scenario dreamed up by Steven Spielberg, but is actually created by a multidisciplinary team out of Michigan State University's College of Engineering. The team of six is collaborating on a three-year, $1.6 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, DARPA for short, to design and build adaptable, reconfigurable micro-robots for use in law enforcement, intelligence gathering, and search and rescue. Lal Tummala, professor of electrical engineering and manufacturing, and project coordinator, says that in a scenario such as the one described above, law enforcement officials have only a few seconds between the moment they open the door and the time in which they act. Obviously, he says, the more information they have at the time of entry, the better off they are. The U.S. Department of Defense wants to develop a means for safe and efficient fact-finding when the environment is dangerous or inaccessible to humans. The idea is that if very small robots--no bigger than five centimeters in diameter--are equipped with cameras, thermal and infrared sensors, and microphones, they can obtain and transmit useful information about a situation before a person is required to enter the scene. "Possibly," says Tummala, "the robots could be dropped by helicopter or shot like bullets into a building. From there, they could go about their business, gathering information without notice." In putting together their proposal, the MSU team brainstormed numerous design ideas based upon several open-ended criteria: that the robots be manufactured inexpensively so that a large number could be dispersed and left on site, that they have excellent maneuverability and that they have the ability to communicate robot-to-robot and thus coordinate their actions.

Considerations like keeping power usage to a minimum and keeping the components small enough to fit inside the five-centimeter framework provided more concrete restrictions to the group's eventual design. The group arrived at a bipedal caterpillar-like structure that could both slink along floors and rugged terrain as well as climb vertically on stairways and walls using its suction-cup feet. According to Tummala, the use of suction to climb walls, ceilings and even glass windows was unique to Michigan State's proposal. Dean Aslam, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is designing the suction cup feet--what he refers to as SRF's, short for "smart robotic foot." The SRF consists of a suction cup, a pressure sensor and a vacuum pump. The sensor, mounted inside the suction cup, will signal whether the pressure is at or below atmospheric pressure, if it is below, the motor in the vacuum pump will switch on, creating a vacuum within the cup. Other distinguishing features of the micro-robots include the use of diamond coatings and sensors. Diamond coatings result in reduced friction between components, thereby lengthening battery life, and can be applied to even the most difficult-to-reach places. Ranjan Mukherjee, associate professor of mechanical engineering, designs and builds the robot, while Ning Xi, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, creates the task-driven controller, which maintains stability of the robot, and commands the direction of movement. Sridhar Mahadevan, assistant professor in the computer science and engineering department, and John Weng, associate professor in the same department, will be assisting in the cognitive development of the robots. Mahadevan will be responsible for designing a hybrid task planner, which will provide the main software interface to control the robot. The planner comprises a high-level strategic module that can be given specific tasks, such as finding a window on the second floor of the building and taking a picture, and a lower-level tactical system, which will provide basic reflex behaviors such as avoiding obstacles. Mahadevan also studies the use of group behaviors to coordinate the actions of multiple robots and examines how the robots' performance can be improved through reinforcement learning.

Weng applies the SHOSLIF technology that he and his students have developed to help the micro-robots "see" (through the use of micro-cameras) and to learn from those visual inputs. Weng also will investigate a new learning direction for robots, which he calls "developmental learning." Weng will be employing a developmental algorithm that allows the robot to learn as it experiences throughout its "life"--from "birth" through "adulthood"--in much the same way that humans learn. MSU is one of 11 schools in the country to receive a grant under this DARPA program. A finished product will be delivered to the Department of Defense in May 2001.

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Cracking the infinity barrier

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In a message dated 3/26/00 6:57:38 PM Eastern Standard Time, Nancy writes:

<< One of the most intriguing things I've learned from my mathematician husband is that, in the universe of numbers, there are greater & lesser infinities. Thus also in metaphoric infinity, don't you think? >>

yes, very much, and that's the wonder of it. I often think infinity is simply a way of saying that something is bigger than we can comprehend. It is a way of blaming the limitations of our concepts and perceptions on something outside ourselves. Perhaps we are like those peoples who haven't developed numerical systems and hence can't count beyond six. Our upper limit is considerably higher than that of these primitives, yet we still are stopped by a strange ceiling which forces our minds to boggle and our computers to gag when a matter on which we're chewing tosses infinity into an equation. If this is true, then ahead of us somewhere ahead of us lies the creation of a system with which we may be able to count, name, and even manipulate those different things we now lump under the single name, the name of the unnamable infinities. Howard

Internet subcultures-the miracle of trans-geography
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anthropologists at the end of the 20th century feared that as tribal cultures withered, anthropology would dry up. There'd simply be no truly bizarre cultures left to infiltrate. But in the global era, there are more weird cultures than ever before. They're growing like kudzu, fed by the mists of the internet. Howard
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In a message dated 4/11/00 7:21:42 AM Eastern Daylight Time, skoyles writes: >hb: it would be a dream come true. actually the google search engine is >closer to providing cyber wish-fulfillment than the engines of just two years >ago, so things are moving fast. Absolutely right about google.com. It does miracles. Far more important than Harnad's cogprints. hb: aha. what interesting stuff has Harnad been up to since I last visited his website several years ago? what are cogprints? Several times I have typed in names and got to people's homepages and their publications. Puts Yahoo, Excite et al to shame. > The problem with the internet is that who wants to read comments > posted by anyone -- electronic graffiti? Few. But who has the time to edit > it so that only quality and interesting comments get posted? In comes > automated moderation. Software by which comments upon comments upon > comments can be weeded through like Wimbledon seedings so that is > communitywise seen as rubbish and gems get stared as such. It turns a game > screaming loudest on the net into a game of reputation by which people > write what they are prepared to be judged and damned upon if empty, flame, > badly written or nonsense. Write more on this if interested. > >hb: John, this could become a one-size-fits-all star system as restrictive as >today's peer process review system, which I consider a nightmare which, to >use Einstein's words "crushes creativity." No. The beauty of the system is that comments could be ranked upon different kinds of reputation. It would let you weed out those that are unorthodox but fair and those that are boring and standard. The problem with comments on the internet is flaming, poor writing and mere social hellos. If people could comment upon them, they could be filtered out leaving the really interesting stuff to stand out. [Of course, such comments might be used to eliminate these as well but since software will be looking for patterns it will remove not only those that flame etc, but those that misleadingly comment that others flame]. hb: I'm a veteran victim of the comment system. amazon.com uses it. since Islamic pressure groups have targeted me and attempted quite literally to end my publishing career since 1991, I've seen how a pressure group can organize a blizzard of allegedly independent and personal comments which are designed to discredit a book. Take a look at www.amazon.com's website for The Lucifer Principle, read the comments, and you'll see what I mean. Here is a posting that Steven Harnad did not allow. uTOK is a program that enables a person to post and read the virtual equivalent of Post-it® notes at any Internet location. Any uTOK user browsing the pages will be able read what others have had to say [URL for details below]. hb: sounds intriguing.

Obviously, few of us would want to read Post-it® notes of cranks, bores, and verbose pontificators. uTOK ensures we do not -- it has an inbuilt software moderating system. Each note and note maker gets rated by other note makers and readers. Smart algorithms then extract from these ratings, a smart rating that sorts out the good raters from the bad. hb: is there an algorithm which can foil a well organized campaign for or against a website, book, etc.? People that write notes that get rated highly get their new ones rated highly. And the system digs deeper: people's rating of other ratings will depend upon how they are rated. Of course, uTOK has no independent criteria other than the hidden internal consistency with which raters rate other raters and their comments. But science does. And this makes uTOK a very interesting development if applied to papers in an open archive. hb: I'd still prefer a ranking by a personal Darwinian algorithm that reads my tastes and fetches the unconventional material I like. Imagine a science archive where people leave commentary notes on new papers - papers that have yet to receive an objective ISI citation impact ranking -- and guess what that will be. As time passes, impact values will become available and can in turn be used to rate commentators into the insightful and not. Another objective rating could come from status of university affiliation, society membership and established ISI paper citation. This will not necessarily disadvantage those without such objective measures of reputation due to the value raters change the weight given to other raters. A young Einstein that picks a dozen papers as central to the future of their subject and turns out right by their future citation rating gets their reputation rewarded. Likewise, a young Einstein that makes comments that interest FRS and Noble laureates. Without a human moderate, a new level of science commentary literature would emerge as the thousands of ratings create a self-quality control process. hb: again, sounds intriguing. Two points: (1) would a scientific uTOK emerge, and (2) how would it feedback upon the papers archived and the scientific quality control process. (1) Before we read a paper we know that it is limited - even the best paper can be improved -- they are written, after all, by humans. We want to know how well to trust what we have read: have the authors ignored important ideas, experimental problems, references etc?

Have more important findings emerged since it was written? Hence, the success not only of commentary journals like Current Anthropology, Brain and Behaviour Sciences and Psycoloquy but the frequency use of commentary special issues in many journals. Moreover, with papers we judge important, we would like to contact people similarly impressed with them - scientific communication is about forming 'invisible colleges'. hb: darned good point. in fact, www sites like AOL are very much facilitators which allow the formation of new transnational and transcontinental subcultures based on common interests more precisely attuned to their members' needs than old style in-person mixing and matching make possible. The web makes it possible for social groups to take a giant leap forward in transcending geography. Transnational subcultures began in Greece in the sixth century BC, enabled by regular shipping connections between the Greek colonies spread from Spain and Italy in the west to the Black Sea coasts of Southern Russia in the east. They took another great leap forward in the age of St. Paul via the ease of sending letters--which is why St. Paul was able to quickly internationalize Christianity via his epistles. Then transnational subcultures slipped backward when the Roman Empire fell and the old sea lanes and land highways were cut by wandering tribes of barbarians. The transnational subculture took off again in roughly 1500 when the rudimentary postal system of the day allowed Erasmus Desiderius to pull together an international community of humanists. The Web has somehow given these transnational subcultures a vitality, a heartbeat, a warmth and immediacy which those of old never could achieve. Just think of all the people who make love online. This is a radical step forward in trans-geographic intimacy. js: Many scientists are isolated and at present have to attend conferences to form the required contacts. A strong motivation exists therefore for people to leave commentaries, and an equally one to read them. Such commentaries moreover would be worth reading: since the smart and self-generating rating system would reward only those that wrote readable, relevant and pertinent opinions, people would be strongly motivated to write just such contributions. (2). Such commentaries, of course, would not only be rated but so would the archived papers themselves. In turn this could feed upon prepublication referees and the prepublication quality control process. Suppose every published paper were tagged with markers as to who refereed them that enabled software access to their original rating of the paper.

A smart rating system that could read their identities and prepublication scorings could retrospectively rate referee competence. Referees that at the prepublication stage that rated papers highly that later became highly rated, and vice versa, rated lowly those that later become poorly rated would acquire a good referee reputation, those that did not, a bad one. This would provide editors with an objective source of information as to who was and was not a good potential referee. Of course, no one knows how science communication will evolve. Maybe future communication will look much as it does today and uTOK like programs will have little relevance to science as present day newsgroups; but we should be aware that open archiving might go in directions presently unforeseen by its creators. hb: one of the very things which make the system intriguing--the unexpected directions could take. uTOK is based in Tel Aviv. It has 15+ employees. http://www.utok.com/docs/company/ http://www.utok.com/ hb: John, I'm downloading it now and will soon know what it does. thanks. Howard

from John Skoyles 4/12/00
I absolutely agree. Geography has changed in the last two years more than it has in the last two thousand. The only equivalent revolution to the internet is the 'city'. That was revolutionary because it allowed people to come together with people of their choice rather than physical proximity. It allowed for clubs and associations of like minded folk and the phenomena of strangers [people that lived near-by but which shared no interests with you]. In a rural and farming area there are no strangers and as importantly you are not a stranger to anyone else. But the city required you live near people; the internet puts us together whereever we are on the globe. The problem is getting like minded folk together. The city solved this with the coffee house, the gentlemen's club, this and that society and association. The internet is still evolving from its newsgroup stage to egoups to who knows what might evolve out of uTOK stage.
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Technology-the great humanizer

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Yahoo! Messenger: Conference fgf01-8134 started.
Yahoo! Messenger: gerryreinhartwaller has joined the conference.
Yahoo! Messenger: rhondayp has joined the conference.
fgf01: i am here
howbloom: you did it
Yahoo! Messenger: jack_fox2000 has joined the conference.
fgf01: gerry
gerryreinhartwaller: i'm here too
howbloom: congratulations!!!!
gerryreinhartwaller: now what
fgf01: take it away gerry
howbloom: i was fearful the technology would defeat us
fgf01: you moderate.
gerryreinhartwaller: Ok. first I'd like to welcome everyone
howbloom: hi, says howard bloom
rhondayp: hello all
gerryreinhartwaller: shall we begin with questions?
fgf01: yes
fgf01: you ask thefirst
howbloom: hang on
howbloom: i just maximized my window
howbloom: ok, all ready
howbloom: but i have questions too
gerryreinhartwaller: In GB you mention that selfishness and altruism need to be reconciled. Any ideas how you would go about melding the two concepts.

howbloom: yes
howbloom: they are being reconciled even as we speak
gerryreinhartwaller: Howard, are you able to answer the above question or is it too fast.
howbloom: the process has been going on ever since
gerryreinhartwaller: ever since what
howbloom: animals evolved tournament rituals
howbloom: in which they measured themselves against each other
gerryreinhartwaller: tournament rituals?
howbloom: did a few ritual gestures
howbloom: and the one who felt the lesser in strenght
howbloom: confidence
howbloom: and power
howbloom: slunk away
howbloom: this was competition
gerryreinhartwaller: is that all
howbloom: played out without violence
howbloom: gerry, i've been going over
howbloom: huizenga's homo ludens today
gerryreinhartwaller: going over what
gerryreinhartwaller: huizenga
howbloom: with an eye to mapping out the evolution of non violent competition
gerryreinhartwaller: s homo ludens?
howbloom: Johann Huizenga, i believe his name is
gerryreinhartwaller: I like the idea of non violent evolution
gerryreinhartwaller: never heard of him
howbloom: homo ludens is a book which should have had enormous impact
howbloom: but is more of an obscurity than it should be
gerryreinhartwaller: what is the meaning of ludens
howbloom: it says the civilization evolved not out of confrontation and violence
howbloom: but out of play
gerryreinhartwaller: play?
howbloom: homo ludens means man the player
howbloom: yes
gerryreinhartwaller: play -- as in sitting back and watching one
howbloom: in the original interpretation of the concept i was exposed to many years ago
gerryreinhartwaller: one
howbloom: it went something like this
gerryreinhartwaller: one's own self fall
howbloom: necessity is not the mother of invention
gerryreinhartwaller: trip or fall
howbloom: play is
howbloom: long before man invented things for such practical purposes as to fill his belly
gerryreinhartwaller: play is a necessity? I think so.
howbloom: he invented them for the sheer heck of it
howbloom: the fun
gerryreinhartwaller: I'll buy that
howbloom: the urge to gain recognition
gerryreinhartwaller: is what
howbloom: the urge to play games and take his chance on winning
howbloom: one example
gerryreinhartwaller: gotta take chances
howbloom: in south and meso america
gerryreinhartwaller: go ahead
gerryreinhartwaller: yes
howbloom: men had no machines with wheels
howbloom: no wagons
howbloom: no chariots
howbloom: no carriages
gerryreinhartwaller: but the toys had wheels
howbloom: it was an enormous handicap
howbloom: exactly, gerry
gerryreinhartwaller: what about in the middle east
howbloom: if there had been more time before the conquistadores brought the apocalypse
gerryreinhartwaller: then what
howbloom: those toy wheels would in all probability have evolved into wheels on vehicles
howbloom: however as in most religions
howbloom: an apocalypse was predicted
howbloom: and indeed it did arrive
howbloom: but we stray from your questio
gerryreinhartwaller: which was
howbloom: about competition and cooperation
howbloom: huizenga, who was a historian
gerryreinhartwaller: what about cooperation
howbloom: mentions in passing a highly critical point in Greek history
gerryreinhartwaller: which is
howbloom: up until then men had competed violently
howbloom: then came the establishment of the polis
howbloom: the city
howbloom: and by aristotle's day, a full 900 years
howbloom: after the iliad and odyssey
howbloom: (in both those books battle was the accepted form of competition)
howbloom: there was a shift
howbloom: men competed with each other in demonstrating civility
howbloom: civic virtues
howbloom: their ability to win honor and the approbation and attention of others
gerryreinhartwaller: men battled to be pleasant?
howbloom: via adding more to the cause of the city
howbloom: or being more polite
howbloom: exactly
howbloom: in China at the same time
howbloom: there were literal battles of courtesy
howbloom: in which men competed to see who could outdo the other
howbloom: in yielding to the other and offering to him every form of generosity
howbloom: this was part of the evolution of the civility
howbloom: vital to pluralism
howbloom: and to democracy, a form still in its evolutionary infancy
howbloom: but one in which competition is performed with words, gadgets, and other contributions
gerryreinhartwaller: so pluralism is vital to democracy
howbloom: ideas, theories
howbloom: rather than bloodshed
howbloom: yes
howbloom: and the habits of pluralism, many modern socieities still don't have those habits
howbloom: cuba in the days when fidel castro
howbloom: was a university student was decidedly lacking in the civic virtues
howbloom: fidel was highly competitive
howbloom: but for him competition was a macho business
howbloom: every politically involved student at havana university
howbloom: carried a gun
howbloom: violence was accepted as a legitimate form of competition by the best educated students in cuba
howbloom: so violence was the only method through which new governments came to power
howbloom: and the only way subcultures and their spokesmen could compete for top position
howbloom: in the hierarchy of subcultures,
howbloom: hence fidel took to the path of revolution
howbloom: and there hasn't been a single peaceful change in government head
howbloom: in the last 32 years
howbloom: nor had there been one before
howbloom: Battista, fidel's predecessor
howbloom: had been a military man who had taken power by coup
howbloom: democracy is new to the Latin countries
howbloom: but it is finally taking hold
howbloom: and hopefully will stay in place long enough to take root
howbloom: and bear good civic fruit
howbloom: another society which hasn't learned civility
howbloom: according to a tiny bit of info in huizenga
howbloom: is that of the arab societies
howbloom: at the same time that the chinese were using rituals in which they attempted to outdo each other in courtesy
howbloom: the favored form of competition among the pre-Islamic Arabs was
howbloom: a contest of invective
howbloom: a tirade of hate
howbloom: however even this was an advance over the use of weaponry
howbloom: it involved boasting while you boiled with fevered words
howbloom: not slicing your opponent in the throat
howbloom: ibn khaldun
howbloom: the great islamic historian, philosopher of history
howbloom: and pre-sociologist
howbloom: who wrote over 500 years ago
howbloom: had brilliant theories about cultural evolution, but they were predicated
howbloom: on making the bedouin the ideal
howbloom: not the city folk
gerryreinhartwaller: Thanks Howard. Now are you perhaps ready for another question?
howbloom: and on replacing the impurities and corruptions, as he called them
howbloom: of city society
howbloom: periodically with the blood of warriors, the ethic of warrior, blood spilling purity
howbloom: of desert folk
howbloom: ummmm, finished, me? ever?
howbloom: LOL
fgf01: I will yield to others, Jack, Rhonda?
jack_fox2000: My question is oesn't the existence of modern communications technology make it easier for the individual to affect society without reliance on a group?
howbloom: ok, on to the next, but i'd like to squeeze in a bit of indo european history
howbloom: yes and no
howbloom: it makes it easier for the individual to create or join new group-s
howbloom: groups are much more fluid and more free of geography
howbloom: in Global Brain I went over the rise of subcultures in sixth century greece
howbloom: how the city gave them scope
howbloom: and trade, the free flow of goods and ideas
howbloom: allowed intercity, international subcultures like that of the pythagoreans to flourish
howbloom: which meant if you were a certain type feeling all alone in Samos
howbloom: you could find others like yourself in Athens or Miletus or Italy
howbloom: or even spain
howbloom: but it was a slow going business
howbloom: today i see friends in kentucky
howbloom: finding others like themselves in texas
howbloom: or a philosopher of history in siberia (literally)
howbloom: founding a group of like minded folk everywhere from Brussels and Buffalo, NY
howbloom: to Barcelona and Bogota
howbloom: thus its easier for us to bind on ever finer points which distinguish us from those around us
howbloom: but bring us together with others like ourselves
howbloom: however still, for all the new richness this allows
howbloom: in the shape, flavor, and nuanced content of groups
howbloom: in their messages
howbloom: in their contributions to society at large
howbloom: we still flock
howbloom: we still gather in groups and depend on others for the nourishment of our individuality
howbloom: make sense?
gerryreinhartwaller: yes.
howbloom: has anyone had experiences of being a loner on the internet?
howbloom: experiences I'm overlooking?
rhondayp: I'm never alone on the internet
gerryreinhartwaller: having a machine as one's only friend leaves much to be desired. It really isn't a good way to proceed.
rhondayp: In fact I find it easier to communicate online
howbloom: no, it's very lonely in fact
howbloom: me too, now why is that rhonda?
howbloom: i have my ideas but yours first
rhondayp: Easier to talk to someone who doesnt see my face
rhondayp: really know who i am
howbloom: yes
howbloom: that's it
rhondayp: i guees i am alone on the net'
howbloom: but how quickly does he get to know you?
howbloom: and how well?
howbloom: or she
howbloom: may i guess?
rhondayp: not well at ll, never really knows me
rhondayp: Really
howbloom: hmmmmmmm, strange
howbloom: i find it the opposite
howbloom: i develop quick, fiercely personal relationships on the internet
rhondayp: Yes, so do I
howbloom: and they are more me
howbloom: than relationships based on how i look
howbloom: or so i find
rhondayp: But I find that because I have never met this person IN person, I don't know them veru well...is that odd
howbloom: and they are more the other person too
howbloom: hmmmmmmm
howbloom: it is strange, because i also find that there is body language without bodies on the internet
jack_fox2000: me too Howard ...I think peolple can read between the lines.

rhondayp: how so
howbloom: nuances of imagery which give away whole volumes of meaning which the author didn't know he was saying
howbloom: yes, i did an analysis
howbloom: of some very long ims
rhondayp: and
howbloom: and found that there were two conversations taking place simultaneously
howbloom: one of which the participants weren't wholly aware of
howbloom: the woman kept using body imagery to develop her thougths
howbloom: she focused consciously on only the overt content of what she said
howbloom: but the images carried on another thread of thought
howbloom: they were flirtations
howbloom: they said she was open to sexuality
howbloom: and gave signals to the man of the waxing and waning of her phsyical openness
howbloom: but she was totally and completely unaware of the subtext
howbloom: of her second level conversation
howbloom: i mean totally
howbloom: when i pointed it out to her she was amazed
howbloom: then i did the same for the male end of the conversation
howbloom: and she saw an entire set of answers and duets on his part
howbloom: she had never seen
howbloom: though believe me she had sensed them on a level below verbal awareness
howbloom: there's more about the internet, though
rhondayp: Are those flirtations more or less overt in person to person conversations? I mean, she may have that same second level of conversation in person?
rhondayp: right?
howbloom: no, in person to person conversations i suspect many of the flirtations that could be
howbloom: don't take place
howbloom: the woman who asked me to analyze her conversations with men
howbloom: was very tall
howbloom: and very heavy
howbloom: and very physically unattractive
howbloom: but she had a wonderful soul
howbloom: and a wonderful intelligence
howbloom: and a marvelous, educated sense of humor
howbloom: so which was the real she?
howbloom: the she of in person reality?
howbloom: of the ugly body and face?
howbloom: or the she of the beautiful words
howbloom: and the verbal grace?
howbloom: has anyone here read Hegel?
rhondayp: no
howbloom: the philosophy of history?
fgf01: some
howbloom: well its premis is this
jack_fox2000: Not I
howbloom: frank, you'd know this
howbloom: hi, jack
jack_fox2000: hey

howbloom: hegel traces history
fgf01: what is the premise
howbloom: as an attempt by Spirit to fight its way through the material world
howbloom: into existence
howbloom: and that is indeed what has been happening courtesy of technology for a very long time
howbloom: before musical instruments appeared roughly 27 thousand years ago or so
howbloom: men and women had to make do
howbloom: with the melodies they could sing
fgf01: you mean technology and spirituality go together?
howbloom: then came simple bone flutes
howbloom: and changed everything
rhondayp: By not involving the physical, the spiritual essence of each is more likely to come together?
howbloom: yes, technology is the greatest humanizer
howbloom: yes
howbloom: exactly
rhondayp: thru technology?
rhondayp: i c
howbloom: spirit claps hand, sings, takes wing
howbloom: to quote yeats
howbloom: but it does it through technology
rhondayp: Explains the ease of online chat.
fgf01: come on, I though they were opposites?
howbloom: once the harp and lyre were invented men and women could make more of the melodies which ran
howbloom: through their brains appear in the material air where others could hear them as well
howbloom: but it took well trained heaveily callused fingers to play a lyre
howbloom: and not that many folks could master it
howbloom: so melodies rose and died in many a brain without taking flight in the material world
howbloom: in the 16th and 17th century
howbloom: making elaborate mechanical contraptions with levers and gears
howbloom: was a major thing
howbloom: that was the period of the automata--the life like mechanical figures of men and animals
howbloom: which inspired a man of the time
howbloom: Descartes
howbloom: to come up with his mechanistic theory dividing body from mind
howbloom: it was also the period when a gadget maker
howbloom: produced a labor saving device for the making of music
howbloom: two of them, in fact
howbloom: the harpsichord
howbloom: which would pluck its strings for you
howbloom: actually pluck a lute or harp for you
howbloom: if you only pushed an easy to feather key
howbloom: and the clavier, the piano
howbloom: those who decry technology might have screamed that music
howbloom: the sound of the soul
howbloom: was being mechanized
howbloom: dehumanized
howbloom: but the opposite took place
howbloom: those with melodies in their minds
howbloom: could take them all the more easily into the material world
howbloom: and reify them
howbloom: make them realities
howbloom: Hegel's Spirit
fgf01: Howard, everything you mentioned so far has a physical nature. How can the physical be spiritual?
howbloom: had just taken a great leap forwar in instantiating itself
howbloom: very easily
howbloom: having said that let me pause and think
howbloom: it's a good question
howbloom: how can matter have motion?
howbloom: how can there be motion without matter?
howbloom: these are related questions, believe it or not
howbloom: spirit comes from contact of the brain with the physical and social world
howbloom: the social world is material, as are we
howbloom: we'd have no spirit without our flesh
howbloom: as it's been popular to point out in alternative medicine
howbloom: descarte's mind body split is a false one
howbloom: spirit, as i refer to it
howbloom: consciousness filled with emotion and intuition and fixation and flux and passio
howbloom: may have only evolved in its human form
howbloom: after the creation of language some time between two millio
howbloom: million and 35,000 years ago
fgf01: Isn't this the subject of your next book?
howbloom: thought even that is a tricky proposition
howbloom: hmmmm, not exactly and yet yes
fgf01: I thought you were going to do a book on consciousness
howbloom: i have two next books in mind, and i'd like your opinions on what to give which priority
fgf01: shoot
howbloom: but first, hang on a minute while i take a pit stop, ok?
fgf01: sure
fgf01: gerry you stil lthere
gerryreinhartwaller: still here
fgf01: I wish we had voice. This would be a lot easier.
gerryreinhartwaller: is rhonda still around.
rhondayp: yes
fgf01: Dad?
jack_fox2000: duh....lol
gerryreinhartwaller: I purchased a mic
rhondayp: how can spirit only have evolved with language?
rhondayp: were we not in the flesh b4 language evolved?
fgf01: it's an evolutionary thing
gerryreinhartwaller: that's a good question. could it have something to do with the letters?
rhondayp: letter?
gerryreinhartwaller: letters, alphabet
rhondayp: I know
gerryreinhartwaller: like A, G,TC
rhondayp: so what ur saying is that we could only have evolved this spirit after sharing letters with another?
gerryreinhartwaller: again A,G,T,C
rhondayp: words?
rhondayp: thoughts were still in our minds Im sure even b4 words came from our mouths
gerryreinhartwaller: no, the language of DNA
rhondayp: o
howbloom: hmmmmm
howbloom: good issues
howbloom: good questions
fgf01: Howard, I have a hard question for you --who will win the World Series?

howbloom: gerry, dogs and cats have feelings
howbloom: very nuanced ones
howbloom: LOL, frankly I don't follow sports, some homo ludens, i am, eh?

gerryreinhartwaller: but cats and dogs don't have words
howbloom: quite right
howbloom: but the have spirit
howbloom: they have what i'd call soul
gerryreinhartwaller: yes they do
rhondayp: don't need words to feel i dont think
howbloom: and the soul of each animal i've known has been different
howbloom: ok, no lemme toss in something here
howbloom: a bit i skipped over
howbloom: once the lyre was born, men imagined melodies in new ways
howbloom: there were new possibilities
howbloom: one could now hum internally a tune with both the voices of human beings and those of inanimate stringed things
howbloom: with a sound all their own
howbloom: once the lyre evolved into the piano
howbloom: the quality of imaginings became even more rich
howbloom: hence mozart and beethoven
howbloom: both post piano boys
howbloom: a dog or cat has highly nuanced emotions
howbloom: in that sense it has spirit
howbloom: and we can see in its face sometimes how badly it wants to "speak" to us
howbloom: to communicate something
howbloom: to which its equipment is not adequate
howbloom: if we gave dogs and cats language
howbloom: as we've given it to chimps
howbloom: suddenly they'd be able to communicate oodles of pent up things
howbloom: but something else would happen too
howbloom: the language would open up new possbibilities
howbloom: and in the spirity of canus ludens
howbloom: dogs would soon begin playing fetch and catch with words
howbloom: just joying in the things
howbloom: new sorts of thoughts would tumble through their minds, or feelings, or wooflettes or whatever
howbloom: our technology remakes our minds
howbloom: our minds make new technologies
howbloom: its an iterative loop
howbloom: upping the level of complexity
howbloom: a wonderful one, by the way
howbloom: technology the humanizer
howbloom: bodies, the most indispensable of soul stuff
fgf01: Ridley says language and intelligence are not related.
howbloom: materiality, the bed of insubstantiality
howbloom: hmmmmmmm, what evidence does he present?
fgf01: He says they ar elocated i ndifferent parts of the brain.
howbloom: seems unlikely and not unlikely
fgf01: that you can talk well but not have a ration thought in you head
howbloom: unlikely because there is a direct correlation between language fluency
howbloom: and IQ, which is why so much of the IQ test is dedicated to language
howbloom: on the other hand, a person can be very good with reason and yet very dumb
howbloom: the trick is to yoke the linguistic mind
fgf01: you can have a high IQ and not be fluent.
howbloom: the interpreter in the left brain, as gazzaniga calls it
howbloom: with the intuition and emotions
howbloom: frank, what do you think of ridley's proposition?
fgf01: I think it has merit.
howbloom: how would one see the intelligence of a person poor in language manifesting itself?
fgf01: I think the two are related but not dependent.
howbloom: yoik, i have an answer, but you first
howbloom: i suspect you are right
fgf01: What about you next book?
howbloom: ok, here are the two candidates
howbloom: first a word
howbloom: there are about 20 books in the computer largely researched and written
howbloom: they are all interrelated parts of a common weltaanschaung
howbloom: one on which i've been working since i was a kid
howbloom: literally
howbloom: so it's been hard to pick and choose which to write next
howbloom: but one of the following i will write myself
howbloom: and the other with a collaborator to speed the process up
howbloom: book one: the biopsychology of getting a grip: contol and the mystery of self
howbloom: book two: the big bang tango: quarking the social cosmos--notes toward a post-newtonian science
howbloom: any sense of what these are from the titles?
fgf01: Book One -- like the Roscicrucians
howbloom: i don't think so, though i don't know the rosicrucian books except through their ads
howbloom: what are their books about?
fgf01: They go back and say that revelatioon is important
fgf01: secret revelation and all that
howbloom: hmmmmmm, i'd agree, though i'm an atheist, but why secret?
howbloom: Einstein had a revelation when he imagined himself riding on a beam of light
fgf01: privileged, not for everyone
fgf01: you have to join their cult to get it.
howbloom: hmmmm, sounds more like the instinct of group formation and group elitism than anything else--though you said it more simply before i had a chance to finish typing this
howbloom: the first book is about the self
howbloom: what is it?
fgf01: what is your thesis for this mastery of life
howbloom: how did it evovlve?
howbloom: why is it so easily threatened
howbloom: especially in love relationships
rhondayp: well
howbloom: why do we need to assert it when we are teenagers
howbloom: why do we need to fight our parents so hard to differentiate our "selves" from them
howbloom: why are we afraid we'll lose it when we get close to intimacy?
howbloom: what is a self?
howbloom: and why do we need the illusion?
fgf01: you know my thesis - the self is a type of memory. An extreme long term memory.
howbloom: what does it mean to "find one's self"
howbloom: etc.
howbloom: self and control are part of the same picture
howbloom: and though this book is largely theory, since i enjoy probing the whys of things more than anything else
howbloom: its also has practical application
howbloom: sort of like the lucifer principle
fgf01: What of the second book?
howbloom: which seems to have helped many an individual with his or her personal life
howbloom: the second book is about, ummm, how can i put this
howbloom: corollar generator theory
howbloom: a theory of who the universe comes to be
howbloom: how it evolves in levels of complexity
fgf01: sounds like Chardin.
howbloom: and why the future almost literally is alive in our dreams
howbloom: that's a strange thing frank
howbloom: i seem to be revisiting chardin's preoccupations
howbloom: but with science rather than mysticism
fgf01: Did you read the Tipler book?
howbloom: though not at all without mysticism
howbloom: no, what is it?
fgf01: He says eternity will depend of the evolving of machines.
howbloom: hmmmmmmmmm, i suspect that's only partially so
fgf01: Human immortality will depend on developing these machines.
howbloom: we've already talked about how the entry of spirit into the world of flesh has depended on technology
howbloom: on that i think he's right
howbloom: dead on target
fgf01: you should read theTipler book.
howbloom: you should see the stack of books to read here
howbloom: it's frightening, alas
fgf01: Howard, I like both ideas, both books.
fgf01: Could you combine the two.
howbloom: no, they are very very different
fgf01: not really I think you could.
howbloom: and i discover that there isn't room in one book to cover in the way i'd like
howbloom: even the limited material i carve out for just one book
howbloom: there are so many subjects i had to pass over with a few paragraphs in global brain
fgf01: OK so which one do you favor first?
howbloom: to which i'd dedicated years of worl
howbloom: and on which there was so much more really interesting stuff to say
howbloom: my plan
howbloom: is to write the big bang tango myself
howbloom: since it is the more difficult of the two books and no one else could write it
howbloom: and to do the book on self with a collaborator
howbloom: a process i've already put in motion
howbloom: however during the last week the theories of self i've been working on have taken great leaps forward
howbloom: so it's hard to pry myself away from it
howbloom: nonetheless, i can feed that material to my collaborator
fgf01: Howard, have you ever considered writing fiction?
howbloom: yes
fgf01: like what
howbloom: i frankly had planned to begin that again
howbloom: when i hit sixty
fgf01: what genre
howbloom: but i'm about ten years behind in my schedule
howbloom: fiction is strange, frank
howbloom: you don't plan it
howbloom: you sit at a blank page and let the fiction write you
fgf01: yes, it involves both sides of your brain.
howbloom: it's like stepping offf a cliff and trusting that something will catch you and carry you up in flight
howbloom: well, my science books are very deliberately all brain oriented
howbloom: they're very emotional
howbloom: very intuitive
fgf01: yes, they are.
howbloom: they involve a quest i began long ago to track the passions and the gods down to their lair
howbloom: and illuminate them with science in the process not
fgf01: They stimulate my imagination.
howbloom: demystifying them, not denuding them of the substance of power and wonder
howbloom: but to make them even more magical
howbloom: by adding new layers of scientific understanding
howbloom: as william james had done in his varieities of the religious experience
howbloom: in which he made the religious experience come to life with astonishing vividness
howbloom: but, alas, didn't do as well with the science
howbloom: i'm glad they do
howbloom: i'm sorry that global brain came at such a difficult period in my life
howbloom: i feel it took a bit of the life out of the book
howbloom: however the interest in the books seems to be picking up at a snowballing pace
howbloom: frank, when you said
howbloom: that global brain is not a book one necessarily finishes
howbloom: does that mean it is hard to read?
fgf01: yes
howbloom: or that its train of thought is hard to follow?
fgf01: yes, it is hard at places
howbloom: or that if fails to pull you toward its ending
howbloom: darn, i thought so
howbloom: it's the impact of an unwelcome divorce, alas
howbloom: when you're a wreck emotionally while writing a book, it shows
howbloom: books are like our skin
howbloom: they are very personal and contain all of us
fgf01: But as you know, it has so many ideas. Most book have one or two ..... it is almost like a textbook of a new science.
howbloom: so if we are in pain or need to shut off great portions of our lives to survive
howbloom: the books suffer
howbloom: in a sense that's what it is
howbloom: i was horrified when researching the thing
howbloom: to discover that none of the paleontologists i spoke with
howbloom: with the exception of the insect folks
howbloom: were bothering to look for clues to sociality
howbloom: thought, emotion, etc.
howbloom: so early in the book's life
howbloom: i had to invent a discipline which didn't exist but should have all along
fgf01: one last question
howbloom: not because I wanted to invent a discipline
fgf01: Is science one of the major conformity enforcers of the modern world?

howbloom: yes, and no
howbloom: there is huge intolerance in science
howbloom: and there is great diversity
howbloom: the intolerance is, well, intolerable
howbloom: and the diversity should be greater
howbloom: but those are goals to fight for
howbloom: what's your impression?
fgf01: I think it si both
howbloom: me too ")
fgf01: a conformity enforcer and diversity generator
howbloom: well, ladies and gentlemen
howbloom: thanks for a wonderful workout
howbloom: i enjoyed this enormously
fgf01: just like every other human endeavor
fgf01: me too.
howbloom: yup well put
howbloom: let's do it again at some point
fgf01: I am tired and ready to go.
gerryreinhartwaller: good bye howard, thank you
jack_fox2000: nite all ....thanks howard.......nite Frank

fgf01: thanks to gerry.
howbloom: night, night everyone
rhondayp: Thank you
rhondayp: night all
gerryreinhartwaller: good night
fgf01: bye all.
howbloom: yes, gerry, thanks
gerryreinhartwaller: bye, bye
Yahoo! Messenger: fgf01 has left the conference.
_______________________________

The infinite extracranial implant-the divinity chip
_________
I'm looking forward to The Ultimate Brain Chip--the tiny patch that fits behind your right ear and lets you store in computer memory all those terrific ideas you have while walking from the bathroom to the bedroom, the flickers of genius that escape you by the time you find a pad and pencil or whip your Palm Pilot out of hiding. The same chip will fetch you the names of the people you meet so you don't have to stand there silently like a petrified ox wondering if the chap on your right is Tom, Dick, or Harry. It'll bring you those words and facts that are right on the tip of your tongue but won't roll off. It will learn your interests and feed you the stories of the day that hit your sweet spots. When you have a new idea, it will find old ones that relate and ask if you want to hook them together. It you've got the right stuff in you, it will help you sew a string of thoughts together into an instant book. It'll even search through ideas other people have had and deposited online, looking for thoughts that give yours heft--and for people you might enjoy. And it'll fetch just the right facts you need to backup your point when you're in hot debate or when you're so tongue-tied your memory goes dry as you're trying to impress a would-be mate. Arrival time: not, alas, due in your local Radio Shack very soon.

But the research and development that will put this gizmo underneath your hairline is literally making progress every day. Howard Bloom
_________
The subject--the divinity chip. the ultimate transcranial chip. the size of a small round bandaid. infinite storage for those great ideas you think of on your way from one room to another and never have time to write down. a doubling of the power of consciousness, so you CAN finally drive, talk on the cell phone, and make notes in your head for the speech you're going to give in half an hour (notes that you shelve in your chip-connected storage). The chip with which you can give yourself trascranial magnetic stimulation to get your religious brain's point of view, your logical brain's analysis, or your wholistic right brain's visceral take. Then you can combine them all in one grand synthesis. The chip with darwinian intelligent agents that learn what you like and discover how to anticipate what you need. The Darwinian intelligent agents that will find what you'll delight in, that will anticipate what you'll forget (your keys, your cell phone) and that will take note of where you left them, that will fetch you the name of that general from the Franco-Prussian war, the one whose picture is in your mind but whose moniker won't release its grip from just the tip of your tongue. The chip that will feed you interesting new facts and back your ideas up or show you where they may be a bit askew. The chip that will augment your fantasies, that will sculpt whole new paradises in your dreams. The chip that will make you an entire team--with all the world's knowledge at your synapse-tips--and will even help you energize when you grow fuzzy. The chip that will help you find friends in any city whose sidewalks you're roaming, folks who believe and think about some of the same things you do. The chip that will network and find the five people who need exactly the service that you want to give...then hook you up for a thought-phone-call. As for sexual fantasies, I leave that to the makers of porn content. This chip is just a portal for the mind, a small taste of infinity.
________
Actually I can't wait for the 23rd century. I'm tired of a brain without instant outboard storage for those wonderful ideas that come in a flash then disappear. and writing takes too long. I want to think my books. I want to dream the imagery. I want it all in Kublai Khan time. The whole poem came to Coleredge in a flash. Then his technology, the pen, undid him. It took a long time to write it down. Wordsworth's sister, on whom he had a crush, came over and interrupted him midway. By the time she'd left, he'd forgotten the rest. With ubiquitous, direct-to-brain storage he'd have had the thing in the flash it took for it to come to him...and it would never have been lost. Howard
_________
At this point I'm roughly two lifetimes behind in my reading. What a liberation it will be when the Divinity Chip allows us to read three books simultaneously, write our own material, and drive all at the same time. Howard
________
This story has some intriguing implications. First, it strongly supports Eshel Ben-Jacob's assertions that the genomic rings within bacteria are computational engines. Second, it supports the high hopes for parallel computing that were raised in 1986 when the PDP group published its first book on the topic. (James L. McClelland, David E. Rumelhart and the PDP Research Group, Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition--Volume 2: Psychological and Biological Models. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986.) Third, it gives a whiff of support to the notion proposed in my second book, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century, that societies of microbes, ants, bees, crayfish, baboons, and humans operate as massive parallel processing devices, solving problems in ways their individual components-we mere mortals-have yet to comprehend. It also supports the future scenario proposed at the end of Global Brain-that of microbial colonies equipped with both their own dna and with dna computers we've spliced into their genomes, colonies we can send out on missions we humans could not normally achieve.

Bacteria can withstand the pressures of the deep earth and the deep sea. I suspect that when encysted and reengineered a bit, they could also tolerate the rigors of outer space. Our trick would be to build into them a morality that tells them not to harm human beings. Otherwise our creations could become the human-chewing gray goo Bill Joy has talked about. Meanwhile, it would be wise if we could build violence-aversion into humans as well. How we'll do that, I can't imagine, but that's another problem for another email.

Leonard Adelman has hinted at a brilliant new challenge for the 21st century technology. We've mastered the gift of physics, the electron in the late 19th and early 20th century, he says. Now it's time to master the macromolecules presented to us by biology.

I'm still waiting for the single-cell sized dna implant that gives me instant access to all the library material in the world and an instant storage system for all those terrific thoughts that disappear before we have time to type them up. We shall see. I strongly suspect I will not live to see the birth of this gizmo, but just think, if handled properly, it could change the way we do psychological and social science.

Imagine the dna-implant that plugs us into the world wide web of the future and gives us facts the instant we realize we need them, stores our important thoughts, has intelligent agents that learn our tastes, remind us of bright ideas we've had in the past that relate to what we're pondering right now, bring us facts they anticipate we'll find interesting, and have strict privacy controls. If we manage to keep big brother out of our brains, psychological research might change dramatically. In exchange for access to the final data or some other perk, I make my brain available for a psychological research project. Ten thousand other volunteers and I can be studied in our natural environment. Our passions can be measured and weighed in crisis, in play, and in events of the everyday. It's ethology and mass psychology combined-finally really entering, measuring, and getting a new feel for the human mind.

The dna chip might also provide a new tool for democracy. It's just a thought. But thanks to the multigenerational project we call technology, we're getting better at turning our thoughts into realities every day. Howard

Retrieved March 21, 2002, from the World Wide Web
Reprinted from ScienceDaily Magazine ... Source: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory Date Posted: Thursday, March 21, 2002 Web Address: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/03/020315072402.htm Using "Nature's Toolbox," A DNA Computer Solves A Complex Problem A DNA-based computer has solved a logic problem that no person could complete by hand, setting a new milestone for this infant technology that could someday surpass the electronic digital computer in certain areas. The results are published in the online version of the journal Science on March 14 and will also run in the print edition. The new experiment was carried out by USC computer science professor Dr. Leonard Adleman, who made headlines in 1994 by demonstrating that DNA -- the spiraling molecule that holds life's genetic code -- could be used to carry out computations. The research was partially supported by grants from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., as part of the Computing, Information and Communication Technology Program. The idea was to use a strand of DNA to represent a math or logic problem, and then generate trillions of other unique DNA strands, each representing one possible solution. Exploiting the way DNA strands bind to each other, the computer can weed out invalid solutions until it is left with only the strand that solves the problem exactly. Although they are still nowhere near primetime, "DNA computers do have several attractive features," said Adleman, distinguished professor of computer science and biological sciences and holder of the Henry Salvatori Chair in Computer Science in the USC School of Engineering. "They are massively parallel, compute with extremely high energy-efficiency and store enormous quantities of information." Adleman's first experiment proved that computing with molecules was possible. But the problem solved -- to find the shortest route among seven cities -- could easily have been solved by a person with a pencil and paper. Adleman's new experiment solves a problem requiring the evaluation of more than one million possible solutions -- too complex for anyone to solve without the aid of a computer. It required a set of 20 values that satisfy a complex tangle of relationships. Adleman's chief scientist, Nickolas Chelyapov, offered this illustration: Imagine that a fussy customer walks onto a million-car auto square and gives the dealer a complicated list of criteria for the car he wants. "First," he said, "I want it to be either a Cadillac or a convertible or red." Second, "if it is a Cadillac, then it has to have four seats or a locking gas cap."

Third, "If it is a convertible, it should not be a Cadillac or it should have two seats." The customer rattles off a list of 24 such conditions, and the salesman has to find the one car in stock that meets all the requirements. (Adleman and his team chose a problem they knew had exactly one solution.) The salesman will have to run through the customer's entire list for each of the million cars in turn -- a hopeless task, unless he can move and think at superhuman speed. This serial method is the way a digital electronic computer solves such a problem. In contrast, a DNA computer operates in parallel -- with countless molecules shimmying around together at once. This is equivalent to each car having a valet inside who will listen to the customer read his list over a PA system and will drive off the lot the moment his car fails one of the conditions. By the time the customer finishes his list, his dream car will be waiting alone on the lot. While the time needed to solve problems of this class (called "NP-complete problems") increases exponentially (2, 4, 8, 16 ... ) for serial computers, it increases only linearly (2, 4, 6, 8 ... ) for parallel computers. In principle, then, the DNA computer should outstrip the electronic computer on savagely complex combinatorial problems -- breaking encryption schemes, for example. Unfortunately, Adleman said, the DNA computer currently is too error-prone to achieve its great potential. "In the past century we've become really good at controlling electrons," he said. "It would take a breakthrough in the technology of working with large biomolecules like DNA for molecular computers to beat their electronic counterparts." Still, even if no one finds a way to beat electronic computers on very complex problems, Adleman said, DNA computers might find applications in other areas. "It's possible that we could use DNA computers to control chemical and biological systems in a way that's analogous to the way we use electronic computers to control electrical and mechanical systems," he said. Adelman suggested, for example, that such systems might someday be engineered into living cells, allowing them to run precise digital programs that would interact with their natural biochemical processes. "We've shown by these computations that biological molecules can be used for distinctly non-biological purposes," he said. "They are miraculous little machines. They store energy and information, they cut, paste and copy.

They were built by 3 billion years of evolution, and we're just beginning to tap their potential to serve non-biological purposes. Nature has given us an incredible toolbox, and we're starting to explore what we might build." Other co-authors of the Science paper were Ravinderjit S. Braich, a post-doctoral student; Cliff Johnson, a neurobiology Ph.D. graduate student and Paul W.K. Rothemund, who received his Ph.D. and is now at Caltech. The research was also supported by grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Copyright © 1995-2002 ScienceDaily Magazine
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A museum of modern art questionnaire (http://www.moma.org/docs.cfm/site/survey) asks those who fill it out to finish the following sentence: One of the best things that could be done to reinvent work would be:

here's my suggestion. i wonder what yours would be:

implant a small, protein-based nanocomputer in the skull to expand the extracranial memory of the brain. allow it to associate names with faces so you're never stuck staring at someone you've known for years whose name suddenly and embarrassingly refuses to materialize. equip the network into which your cranial biochip taps with intelligent agents which learn your tastes in data, anecdotes, ideas, visual scenes, etc. set up the biochip so that the intelligent agents will converse with you about new ideas, make suggestions of analytic techniques which you'd find of value or facts which support or negate the case you are trying to make, teach you new skills, tell you how to operate baffling new programs and equally baffling new equipment, crack a relevant joke (or a surprisingly irrelevant one now) and then, and generally turn your three pound glob of neurons into a mind of vastly larger and more enjoyable proportions.
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Hb and amy alkon 5/5/01 Amy--look, a miracle--I'm only four days behind on my email--for another twelve minutes. at midnight i'm five days behind again. now to read the pastry tray of your words.... aa: We are twins. We even talk the same. hb: what's worse is that i watched my latest tv performance the other day and realized I come across best when I'm hyper. So in today's radio interview I sped along at Alkon speed--2,400 words per minute. the first caller said, "can't you get him to talk slower?" but the show's producer emailed an open invitation to return over and over again (it's my second visit on this particular show and my third on this particular radio outlet--eyada.com). aa: Wasn't quite sure where your sentences ended and mine began, and I heard every word even when we talked over each other (or rather, blended sentences). hb: I once had a friend with whom I could converse by simultaneously talking and listening. so we got in twice as much conversation in half the time. and we understood each other totally. it had slipped my mind until you arrived. then I was tempted to suggest we try it...but I think we would have short-circuited Nando's fuse. aa: I don't know how we got separated or I got so tall. (Then again, growing is about all there is to do in Michigan.) hb: look how big the lakes are. they have nothing to do but puddle into enormity. that and swallow the occasional ice fisherman. aa: Wish I could have spent more time with you -- the surface is still unscratched. hb: i think I mentioned this, but without the audience we could look into each others eyes and dive into each others most personal passions. i'm not talking sex but soul. aa: It's so exciting to watch your brain do its backflips. hb: but amy, yours sails along at warp speed, absolutely amazing and, yes, overwhelming me. see, another overwhelmed man. but i have a theory about that, amy.

i think you need to: 1) perform (me too); and 2) keep people at a distance. There's an intimacy void somewhere. you say no but I say yes. I want to find it and let it out. intimacy voids usually come from fear. you are amazonian in your fearlessness. (I like to be Odyssean, another way of courting adventures even if they skirt the rim of death.) But aim, everyone is insecure. i mean e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e. (me most of all.) I must tell you the story of Sylvia with the Red Hair. It's in How I Accidentally Started The Sixties. Do you have time to read an unpublished book that Timothy Leary liked? (in fact, it's probably what killed him.) Did I ever show you the Leary quote? "This is a monumental, epic, glorious literary achievement. "Every page, every paragraph, every sentence sparkles with captivating metaphors, delightful verbal concoctions, alchemical insights, philosophic whimsy, absurd illogicals, scientific comedy routines, relentless, non?stop waves of hilarity. "The comparisons to James Joyce are inevitable and undeniable. Finnegans's Wake wanders through the rock 'n roll sixties. "Wow! Whew! Wild! Wonderful!" Timothy Leary aa: Also, we're quite similar in other ways -- that we're both fixers... hb: yes, and I want to fix you. by all means feel free to fix me too. aa: although, I must say, you are remarkably unfucked up compared to most people with psych degrees. And then again, you're crazy, like me. But that's crazy in a good way. "Sane" people lack passion. hb: yup. I think I understand what you were saying about needing a Diane in your life in light of how hard it is to be alone if you're intense -- understand that on a personal level. That need for communion with another person burns a hole in me. Most of the time, I try to live with it. Sometimes it gets a little deep and dark. hb: before di arrived I was getting suicidal again. i have to tell you the story of the suicide attempt, the three days in a corpse state, and the resurrection, complete with, i am not kidding you, stigmata. it's an amazing story with a lot of lessons buried in its details. aa: Also, it's hard if you're the fixer...because sometimes you wish on a bad day or in a tough moment that somebody would come along scrape you off the sidewalk and put you back in the flowerpot,

hb: lord, do i envy your gift for imagery. amy, that's what i'm here for, so use me. call when you've got problems--between 7pm and 12am is best. Then, at 12:30, like clockwork, I call Di. aa: but...people get used to you (me) being the strong one all the time...so we're generally left to do the scraping for ourselves. hb: i've had some remarkable experiences this last year in the infantilizing department--letting go and letting the other person take over for ten or fifteen very intense moments, then reversing the roles again and being on top. di is remarkable in her ability to duet in things of this nature (and here we ARE talking sex--and its emotions, which can be beyond primal). aa: I can do it...but the the need to have someone do it for you -- it's the idea of community I read in your work --an o remake relationships and the way we live in the world...to stop clinging to the idea of the nuclear family as something healthy and viable (I call this the antique gold standard...which disintegrates when exposed to air)...and replace the nuclear family with communities of people...more like the hunter-gatherer bands...as ways to raise kids and simply to be less isolated than we are in this societal structure. aa: as you know, that was my notion too. communities of mutual feeling and complementary emotion and thought is part of what Global Brain's about. with cyberspace as a connective medium, this is the age for it. the trick is to create a bonding that's as solid as that we have with people we've known since we were five. my only way to achieve that bond has been through sex--which is probably why my closest friends are women. the sex doesn't need to happen more than two or three times (or does it? in my experience a relationship lasts about 3.5 months and then continues for quite a while before the bonding is there.) however at this point i've gone monogamous, so there must be some other way to create the bond. eating together should do it, thanks to the wonders of cholecystokinin, one of the two great bonding hormones. we should have a meal together--a tricky proposition since I eat dinner at 2 am. the other great bonding hormone is oxytocin--but that only surges when a woman is suckling, at least so far as the current research goes.

No way can we exchange the use of nipples without getting sexual. so food will have to do it. aa: People sneer at cell phones as isolating devices; hb: how can they? they are the penultimate social connectors. the next step is an intelligent protein chip implant that gives us access to any info we need--like the name of the person we've just remet and barely remember plus his life story, or the name of that general from the Pelopennesian Wars who's on the tip of our tongue--let's us park in computer memory those stray thoughts we know will disappear in an instant but seem brilliant at the time, and lets us dial up other folks and communicate with them simply by thinking about it. just think, even if you're like me and can't hum a lick but can create wonderful pieces of music or art in your mind, you'll be able to communicate the tune--orchestrated just the way you hear it--to someone your thought-communicating with. It'll change the nature of art, music, film, and literature more profoundly than the invention of the pen, the flute, and the piano. and what will people say about it? that it's dehumanizing. that it's playing god with nature. Of course it has to have absolute privacy features so others can only pluck from your mind what you want to put on public display. No government peeking. But, yes, if you want Amazon.com to be able to suss out your needs and suggest just the item you didn't realize you need but will do the trick magnificently, that's fine. As long as you can opt in or out--put up the privacy shield and shut down the access of others. Ah, social connection. We dould imagine hugs, Amy. I could send some to you and you could send a few to me. better yet, di and I could spend the nights together even if we're asleep. yes, the future will be better. and we'll owe the research, development, manufacture, and low prices of these gizmos once they've gone past the luxury phase to multinational corporations in a capitalist economy hopefully transformed by the notions of business as self revelatiion and secular salvation.

aa: I see them in a different way -- that people's lust for community is so great that they have an obsessive need to be "connected" to other people hb: yes, yes, yes. the old technologies for this were television and radio, which gave off massive dollops of social cues and made us feel we weren't alone. but those are pallid stuff compared to the real thing--cell phone communication with actual, live humans. real life has all the stuff of plots, and so do the relationships we nurture via phone contat. they have their introduction of characters, their dilemmas, conflicts, competitions, antagonisms, affections, loyalties, and desires for love. Then they have their crises, their catachresies, and their denouements. We live drama. We are soap operas. And we feed onthe plankton of social contact. aa: -- even about the most mundane things. The medium IS the message. hb; if the medium is social connection then, yes, absolutely, you've just given the first definition of "the meaning is the message" that makes sense. aa: Anyway, enough rambling for now. Have much more to say, but the mundane awaits...must go for now. So happy to have you in my life. Stick around! hb: you, too. ") howard

correspondence between Howard Bloom and JD Moyer: hb: Your musings are remarkable. I've been playing with the implications of an implantable, networked microprocessor since first writing a science fiction story about the notion back in 1970 or so. Just last night I was working out some of the ramifications--possibly about the same time you were writing the following. There's a snag to figuring out at what point intermeshed conscious brains produce a superconsciousness in which all participate but which no one brain controls. We don't know what allows for the emergence of consciousness in the several trillion smart, networked neural cells within the skull. why does consciousness flower when we're roughly three and not instantly at birth--or in the womb? what's present in the cranium at three that isn't when we slither free of the placenta? We haven't a clue. jdm: I do conceive of an eventual conscious/thinking superorganism, or society of superorganisms. Considering that we (humans) are already well down the road of cyborgification (enhancing our senses, manipulative abilities, communication channels), it seems plausible that AI enhancement of the human brain is not too far off (starting with sensory recording mechanisms, extra memory, arithmatic computations, etc. but moving on eventually to more complex functions such as data analysis, enhanced logic, prediction, etc.). Once the human brain is enhanced, it can be networked real time with other brains. Two or more humans can share a mind. I imagine that the sense of self, the "I" will slowly migrate away from the slower electro-chemical connections to the exponentially faster silicon/dna computer/quantum computer/whatever computer medium. Once this happens, there is the opportunity for a real thinking superorganism, a conscious "I" that influences/controls perhaps a hundred or a thousand human/cyborg minds and bodies.

I realize that sounds very Star Trek hb: no--we already have "common-sense"--a common perception of what's right. we also have the collective opinions of a subculture, a nation, and even of the developed nations and underdeveloped nations. there's international (though not unanimous) consensus on what human rights are basic, for example. and we often seem to gain our voice when the newspaper or pundit of our choice says what we felt but hadn't previously put into words. In that sense, a media personality can act as the tongue (or typing fingers) for a multitude of us, summing up one of the competing streaks of opinion in the group mind. So further moves beyond the cell phone into hands-free telephony, then implanted telephony, implanted tele-thinkery, tele-dreamery, interpersonal tele-vision, etc. are probably only 30 or 40 years off. jdm: but I'm imagining that free will could co-exist hb: I suspect that all superorganismic forms feed off the free-will of their parts. Those give the whole its flexibility. Too much of it, and the whole would disintegrate. But then even we humans have far less free will than we imagine and probably a good deal more than absolute determinists believe. jdm: on the human individual level, while there would be this simultaneous sharing of mindspace with the "overmind." Just a wild speculation but it also seems like a not that unlikely progression of events. There is also the question of human/ai's migrating away from manifest reality to virtual/created/simulated reality, inhabiting virtually created worlds, hb: we've had these as long as we've had storytelling. novels and films advance a very old human practice of sharing meta-realities--artificial-but-shared realities. Remember all the pictures of sea serpents and beings with umbrella heads and dog-faces on maps of the world from the fourteenth century or so? These beasts existed in a shared virtual reality.

The really big leap forward will come when I can dream up a fantasy and share it directly with you, bypassing language. Then what sci-fi authors predicted way back in the '50s will finally spring into existence--folks who practice the art of dreaming up fantasies complete with vivid visual and tactile effects and plots, and who make their living by offering up mindprints of what they've imagined to others. A process almost identical to that already takes place today. It's called writing a book, writing a screenplay, or directing a television show or a movie. jdm: not just to exchange information but also to experience totally lifelike simulations of realspace that would feel as real as anything, but would not be limited by the constraints of physical reality (ie gravity, strict cause and effect, being one place at a time, taking time to travel between two places, etc.). hb: the film The Matrix is a good preview of what this will be like. jdm: Obviously this virtual world couldn't exist without an infrastructure to support it (of computers or other physical computational devices), so this existence would be a cumulative level of reality, not a replacement for the way humans live now. hb: all we need is the software and hardware of a Pixar Animation Studios compressed to a protein-based microprocessor with internet-style connectivity and rigid privacy controls inserted surgically, tatooed on to some unobtrusive part of the skull, or worn like a yarmulke. Then we can pick who and what we'd like to plug into--whether it's a creative team or a friend on another continent. Howard
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Taming the power of black holes
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Peter

In a message dated 97?07?07 12:50:04 EDT, you write:

<< there are many irreversibilities in the "work" that available energy does. >>

Now you have me curious. What are these irreversibilities? Heat has been the primary form of entropic dissipation mentioned in this forum to date. And heat can power innumerable existing biological and technological machines. Feces have been mentioned once??and in a very real sense, the entire earth has been demonstrated to be made of feces?? biologically recycled stuff, most of which has come back to use at some time or another.

Are we talking radiating neutrinos? Fly away electrons? Photons? The mass presumably being sucked into a black hole? All of these seem, in the scope of future time, usable. The power generated by black holes, for instance, is much like that of Niagara Falls. What an incredible resource when some inanimate, animate or technological system manages to harness it.

As for the 1% of solar energy currently used by life, humans are working at turning much more to good use. Solar panels are now, I believe, approaching the 27% efficiency level. Considering that human technology is so young it would barely show up on a geological time line, that's pretty good??a technology in its infancy. If we don't blow ourselves to bits, give us another 35 thousand years and there's no telling what we might do. Thirty five thousand spins around the sun is geological small change indeed. Dinosaurs survived for roughly 5,000 times that slivered mill of time.

Nor should we be so homocentric as to think that we are the only form of functional system gradually working its way toward utilization of such stuff as leakage from the sun. If not our sun, perhaps another one.

Or is my evolutionary optimism somehow blinding me? Howard

Inventions that turn garbage into gold
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Thanks to Timothy Perper's essays on heat dissipation, I yesterday proposed at length to Ford Motor Company's Advanced Technologies Division, which has been kind enough to pick my brain, that the automomobiles of 20 years from now be equipped with ceramic engines, which operate at truly blistering heats but transform fuel to usable energy with an efficiency of 75% rather than the 25% now common among today's most advanced piston?driven internal combustion devices. The logical ancillary to this step would be to regard the generated heat not as waste but as a resource, transforming it to electricity and using it to power the batteries in a hybrid vehicle. Ford got very excited about the notion. But it was a simple derivation from the education you guys are giving me in thermodynamics' possible fit within the evolutionary mosaic.
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Everything we conceive and believe, we can achieve
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In a message dated 98?03?21 07:19:41 EST, everything inconceivable happens eventually. i'm all for helping it along, no matter how misconceived were the routes the AI folks took in the 70s and 80s. I suspect the Darwinian algorithm and artificial life approaches hatching since the days of the Game of Life are gonna pay off big time in another decade or two. toss in some fuzzy logic and several developments as unforeseen today as fractals were in the '50s, and you've got a potentially hot mix. Add another hundred years of hacker?storming from fifteen year old electronic quirksters and you've got weirdnesses beyond anything you or I have imagined. Machines able to take such loopily insightful approaches that they outdo Loki, the African trickster rabbit, and Reynard the Fox a millionfold. Howard
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Dumping our selves into more durable bodies
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In a message dated 4/17/02 8:40:23 AM Eastern Daylight Time, MBG@dr.dk writes: I am now back from Viborg...the ninja-girls was a very interesting experience. Most of them come from ordinary, normal and well-functioning families. The girls do good in school and most of them have jobs and every thing should be squeeky clean and nice. But when these girls get together in their weekends, they really like to beat up other girls, just for the fun of it. Its violence for the sake of violence. Almost like a lolita-version of "A Clockwork Orange". hb: astonishing. how do you account for it? mb: I did an interview with a bewildered socialworker in Viborg who handled the case, and he told me has we completly lost...these girls are the expression of a new kind of reality, which I dont understand, he told me. I also managed to get an interview with one of the girls. She was very normal and nice...and she told me girls like to watch videos at home. What kind of videos, I asked. Cartoons, she told me. Do you a favourite cartoon, I asked. Yes, its Disneys Snowwhite, she said... hb: watch snow white on dmt. it's one of the most sadistic, horrifying movies ever made. mb: I still think about the deeper meaning in this piece of information. If there is any. Howard, things in Denmark are very hairy now because of the war in Israel. Tomorrow the israeli soccer-team are playing against the Danes here in Copenhagen, and the police and the local palestinians are preparing for quite a showdown. hb: the subcultur wars have come to Europe and this time Islam's crusade to take over the West is using a different approach. Not a head-on clash, but a take over from within. an accidental takeover created by an influx of economic migrants--the new tribal wanderers (and perhaps conquerors) of the 21st century.

mb: Yesterday members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir were handing out leaflets in Copenhagen, urging muslims to kill the jews, hb: yikes!!! The Jews are key because hatred of us, we Jews, is the one thing that unites an otherwise fragmented and quarreling Islamic imperium. mb: and now the goverment is talking about banning Hizb-ut-Tahrir. But lets talk about IF I HAD KNOWN...I think our premier-issue should contain two big features-stories, say about 10 -12 pages each, and the rest should be enquettes and petit-journalism of various sorts. hb: sounds good to me. I'd suggest we dive into the gender bending cultures in US high schools. Send a writer to Waco, Texas, where we have a guide ready to take us on a tour of a teen subculture that warps what we've always known as reality. If we need more, I've got a guide who can take us to similar subcultures 1,500 miles away at Vassar College. Alex, who'd make a good subculture diver for this? And how can I get whoever it is to spend an evening with me before and after the trips to Waco and Poughkeepsie to get the wetware spin on the thing? mb: Are you guys down with this? But what should the two features be about? Personally I think the issue "new kinds of drugs" is interesting - like in the story about Fukuyama, and I think it would be neat to follow this lead to the end of the road. What do you guys think? Lets begin scetching a dummy from page 1 through to page 48. hb: I'd suggest we go beyond drugs and look at all the biotech ways the human body and the human experience can be altered dramatically in the next 40 years. Do a roundup of interviews from Fukuyama to Kurzweil. Look for the seemingly psycho visionaries who have a handle on an emerging reality. Folks like Eric Dressler, who sounded nuts when he first made his predictions about nanotechnology in the 1980s. I didn't choose my body, did you? Why not have faces and forms that reflect who we are and what we want to achieve? Let brains begin to make bodies. Right now it's bodies that make--and then enslave--our brains. But what will the unintended consequences, the accidental shifts in social patterns, be? Howard ps Steven Johnson, the author who wrote the Fukuyama piece in the Washington Post, is due to come over here for a visit one of these days. He is amazing.

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<< Is there an easy antidote to a megamachinegun spray of particles that

can whack every molecule in your body into a twisted, broken wreck? Not

yet. >>

Hmm...well, I knew that part...I wonder if anyone's doing research into that kind of thing, though.

hb: here's the ultimate medical source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed I've checked it to see about research on radioactivity cures, and, frankly, my choice of searchwords didn't do the trick. Yes, I found radioactivity poisoning research. No, nothing on antidotes. but please go over to PubMed and try a few more word permutations and combinations. It's the source all of us in science use for biomedical stuff.

cm: You'd think they would have started roughly ten minutes after the Manhattan Project got off work. Was just curious if you had any theories in that department, since the hundred year quarantine that would follow any kind of nuclear disaster (to say nothing of the "nuclear cloud" that would bop around the planet) is a real drag. If you were to play future Super-scientist for just a moment, what do you think the key would be?

hb: remove humans from the human body, it's a drag. it's always breaking down. if its not a knee or back problem, it's a headache, If you neck doesn't have a charley horse, you may be in for a quick stroke or a heart attack. Getting the human personality into a more durable, replacable, and all-functions-capable body might help. However it would need something beyond the protein circuitry that's about to come online. Radioactivity blows proteins to bits. And present-day silicon chips go nuts when hit with radioacitivity. But there are apparently gallium-arsenide chips developed by the military that can't be wonked out of whack by the radioactivity of a nearby nuclear blast. Let's hop ourselves into them asap.
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Biotech-making the desert bloom
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I love biotech. There are new things popping out all the time. Aside from rabbits that glow in the dark--an old story by now, I'm most intrigued by something that may bore you to tears--grains that can be grown in salty soil (which means they can be watered with seawater) or can live and remain robust in drought conditions. Why not turn the Sahara and the Sahel back into gardens blooming with food? We've had too much starvation in nations whose weather we can't predict--the Sahel and Bangla Desh, for example. Then there's one more little fact. The farmlands that provide the foods you and I eat are likely to go through major weather changes in the years that come. We need crops that can thrive in extreme conditions to keep those of us accustomed to eating what we want when we want alive.
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Weapons of the future-surrealism bathed in nightmare
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If the plans in the works from the Office of Naval Research become reality, machines will finally achieve the sort of complex adaptive intelligence that has powered bacterial colonies and human cultures. A complex adaptive system is one composed of autonomous individual agents, nodes, citizens, participants, or whatever you'd like to call them. All fuse their data. From the resulting information soup there arises a ghost, an emergent property, a group mind. Eshel Ben-Jacob argues that such collective intelligenses among bacteria have gone from mob computation to crowd-powered creativity. Bacteria, he argues, can spot a problem, test solutions, then reprogram themselves to surmount obstacles, or, in cases of even greater cleverness, can turn their obstacles into hors-d'oeuvres, transforming crisis into opportunities. At what point will a network-mind of independent robots gain this creative capacity? If the robotic mass mind becomes a creative massively parallel processed intelligence, will it turn on us? Will a mass mind built to kill someday kill its creators?

It seems time to resurrect Isaac Asimov's basic rules of robotics, rules that said under no circumstances should a robot harm a human being. But rules are made to be broken, and creativity is the art of breaking rules in unexpected ways. How can we work synergistically with a web of lethal servants? Perhaps we should train them to confuse and disable, but not to maim and kill. Where is a mind-ray when we need one? And if we find one, how long will it take before it's turned on us?

On the positive side, the new form of networked intelligence envisioned for the battlefield could have amazing applications for civilian life-if only civilian life can survive the independent decisions made by armies of microchips programmed for murder.

Below is an article on the Office of Naval Research's Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents, or Minuteman project. And further down are Isaac Asimov's 1940 Laws of Robotics. See what you think. Howard

Retrieved July 24, 2002, from the World Wide Web http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/technology/circuits/11NEXT.html?ex=1027404 558&ei=1&en=3506d9d02ffffc0e A War of Robots, All Chattering on the Western Front NYT July 11, 2002 By NOAH SHACHTMAN SINCE the United States military campaign began in Afghanistan, the unmanned spy plane has gone from a bit player to a starring role in Pentagon planning. Rather than the handful of "autonomous vehicles," or A.V.'s, that snooped on Al Qaeda hideouts, commanders are envisioning wars involving vast robotic fleets on the ground, in the air and on the seas - swarms of drones that will not just find their foes, but fight them, too. But such forces would need an entirely new kind of network in which to function, a wireless Internet in the sky that would let thousands of drones communicate quickly while zooming around a battle zone at speeds of up to 300 miles an hour. Such a network would have to be able to deal instantaneously with the unpredictable conditions of war and cope with big losses. Designing this network is a monumental task. Consider how poor much cellphone coverage is in some areas. Now imagine how much worse it would be with no base towers to direct signals, and with hostile forces trying to jam calls and blow up phones. An association of nearly 300 sc