Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Sunday, March 20, 2011

It Rained Outside Therefore 30,000 People Are Without Power

Maybe I'm becoming one of those old geezers who sees the past through a roseate nostalgic haze, but it really does seem to me that infrastructure failure is becoming much more commonplace across the United States. Not only is this worrying on its own terms, but it does occur to me that we should keep such things in mind when listening to corporate flacks assuring us that the smooth function of nuclear plants on earthquake fault-lines of all things is perfectly assured.

3 comments:

jimf said...

> [W]e should keep such things in mind when listening to
> corporate flacks assuring us that the smooth function of
> nuclear plants on earthquake fault-lines of all things
> is perfectly assured.

Yer such a wet noodle, Blanche!

Hey, I paid a visit to my lately-neglected local Barnes & Noble
today. I needed to stock up on deodorant, shampoo, and
mouthwash (why is the jumbo-sized Listerine always out of
stock?), and I thought, what the hell, the bookstore is
in the same shopping center.

And I hit the jackpot -- the tables were all simply overflowing
with Kewl Science.

To start with, the New Arrivals right in front of the entrance
had
_Physics of the Future: How Science Will Change
Daily Life By 2100_
http://mkaku.org/home/?p=988
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/books/physics-of-the-future-by-michio-kaku-review.html
which has an irresistible illustration of a flying car
on the cover that looks just like a Deep Space Nine-era
Star Trek shuttlecraft. The jets, or propellor tubes,
or whatever they are, are stuck on just like warp drive
nacelles! Kewl!

So I looked up stuff about computers and the brain and AI
and shit, and after reading most of a chapter about how
AI researchers have reluctantly conceded that brains aren't
much like digital computers (we no crazy futurists here),
I skip ahead and find out that Friendly AI is the
likeliest AI scenario for our future (credited to none
other than Eliezer Yudkowsky, too. Right there in
print.) Kewl!

The book was right next to
_The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood_ by
James Gleick
http://around.com/archives/915
but that looked harder.

But it got better. At the Science table, I found
_An Optimist's Tour of the Future: One curious
Man Sets Out to Answer "What's Next?"_ by
Mark Stevenson
http://anoptimiststourofthefuture.com/
right next to
_The Hidden Reality_ by Brian Greene
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/books/27book.html
about parallel universes.

So I bought the Kaku book (just for giggles, you know),
together with
_Why Everyone (Else) is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the
Modular Mind_ by Robert Kurzban.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9271.html

Good times ahead on the bus, man. Good times!

jimf said...

Oh, I forgot to mention.

At the same table with the Kaku and Gleick (but on the other
side) I saw
_Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of
Every Person Who Ever Lived_ by Rob Bell
I actually picked this up, and tried to look up
"homosexuality" or "gay" in the index, but there was
no index. I briefly turned to the table of contents,
but I gave up because I didn't have my reading
glasses with me (actually I did -- they were in my pocket --
but I didn't realize it). I had to squint to make out
the Kaku.

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Wins-About-Heaven-Person/dp/006204964X

Dale Carrico said...

On the zombie afterlife of and weird phony authority attaching to endlessly debunked and unfulfilled promises by futurologists, I'm pretty much resigned at this point to the fact that here in hype-notized zero-culture anti-intellectual America at any rate the boosters, however rampagingly idiotic they are, do almost always eventually manage to beat out their critics, however relentlessly right they are -- but that the critics wouldn't for the life of them want to be the boosters come what may and the facts are on their side anyway so it all comes out in the wash.