The Long View

Life redefined

Although not everyone might agree, we live in exciting times at the tip of an exponential technology development curve. And we also live in the Middle Ages.

Never in the human history has change happened so fast, so relentlessly and so creatively. To the casual observer, not much seems to change other than the shape of cars, the increased use of mobile phones, computers and other media toys. We still live in houses built a century or two ago, eat and drink and sleep and suffer human stuff, go to work and go to bed.

But look closer, and you will notice that under the surface a new civilisation, and, potentially, a new conception of life, is being groomed. The new era is defined by complexity, data management, dematerialisation and redefinition of points  of reference and barriers previously considered as absolute.

The essence of life in itself is being redefined in three important areas:

The advent of synthetic life: This week the papers were full (and rightly so) with the announcement of the creation of the first artificial living cell. This redefines the frontiers of life, of civilisation and of what it means to be human, in a not dissimilar fashion to how the atomic bomb consolidated humanity's capacity of destroying itself – just at the other end of the spectrum, and in much more complex ramifications. The Bomb was achieved by physicians, which places it squarely in the paradigm of the past century. The synthetic cell is designed by biologists - the complexity bearers of our century.

The gradual convergence of life and machine: Ray Kurzweil defines the Singularity as the melting of the boundaries between man and machine and he predicts the sigularity for about 2040. The exponential evolution of computing power will certainly contribute to reshaping the world in a way that is still not fully understood. The synthetic cell mentioned above was made possible by computers, and computers will regulate every single other aspect of human life for each individual from the cradle to the grave to the extent that they will turn into indispensable life enhancers and brain extensions. in case you are smiling (or crying) at the prospect: we should never forget that computers have been around for less than 50 years - and in evolutionary terms they are in their infancy, really. 

The Water challenge: No life without water - I have mentioned it before - and this week the Economist carries a long report on water management. While water was no real issue until 30 or 40 years ago, the recent doubling of the world's population, along with the economic development of the middle classes in emerging (and populous) economies are quickly turning water into one of the hot topics of the century. The need for safe drinking water for 9 billion people (2050), and even more the related industry and agriculture will turn this commodity into the most coveted resource of the coming generations. Not least because there is a finite amount that is readily available (about 97% of the earth's water is sea water, not easily usable - and desalination remains a technological challenge). In particular India and China are heading for a water disaster and we are just beginning to understand some of the geopolitical implications. Water management is likely to emerge as one of the major skills for the next twenty years. The pressure to provide sufficient and safe drinking water to their populations will reshape politics and recast power balances across the globe.

The management of synthetic life (with its opportunities and risks), the unpredictable outcomes of the ongoing information revolution and the relentless need to sustain life in its most basic form is transforming how we see and describe ourselves at breathtaking speed.

Our grandchildren may well deem us as archaic as we consider the Middle Ages.

Whole Earth Discipline

Stuart Brand has written a remarkabe book. 

Whole Earth Discipline, An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. Footnotes and excerpts on a special website.

It flies in the face of much conventional wisdom and deserves to be talked about at length.even better, read it, thnik about it, then read it again.

Here the main thrust:

Cities are green. By 2050, 80% of the world's population will live in cities. That is good news because cities typically carry a lower carbon footprint per inhabitant than rural areas. Also, rural space will be freed up for nature restoration projects.

Nuclear energy is green. Alternative energies will be incapable of ensuring the baseload energy requirements of the coming decades. And even if they did, it would come at a huge cost. Clean coal is anything but reality. Nuclear has the power to generate enough electricity for the electric transport society. Nuclear is safe. There has not been a single nuclear accident nearly 25 years (also compare to Chinese coal mines).

GM (or GE) food is green. Agriculture has been about genetic modification since Day One. GM crops simply increase the speed of evolution and are more selective and exceedingly precise about which traits of the crop are modified. GM crops allow to reduce the use of pesticides and other harmful agricultural methods.

Geoengineering may well become a major civilisation shaper of the coming years and, who knows, its potential saviour.

You may not agree. Initially, I was skeptical about the nuclear bit. It now looks a lot more enticing and I will do some research around this. 

Increasingly, though, it looks like the old Green Movement is fighting a bit of a rear guard battle in the face of climate change and our other little challenges.

Stuart Brand has written a remarkable book. I will read it again.

Welcome to the moon. Would you like to taste our local water?

On 9 October 2009, the NASA LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) Impactor caused a stir in the dust of a lunar crater. Preliminary data indicate that water exists in a permanently shadowed lunar crater Cabeus near the Moon's South Pole.

You can also watch a full (scientific) panel discussion with images of the impact. Infrared impact pictures around 53-59 min into the video.

For a full history of lunar water exploration you can rread Paul Spudis's blog post on AirSpaceMag.

So, water on the moon, And, according to first accounts, quite a bit of it. To put this into perspective, let's not forget that transporting 1 litre of water to the moon costs about $50,000. 

Implications?

• Learn how to live in space (for those for whom that holds attraction)
• Opportunity to establish a permanent base for further space explorations (Captain Kirk, are you still around?)
• A boon for a new kind of travel agent (Virgin Galactic possibly?)
• Emigration for some brave (or just rich) citizens of Earth
• Renewed power play around who owns how much of it (let's hope they don't find oil as well…)
• Competition in the super-premium segment for the Earthian bottled water industry
• A new mental frontier for human colonisation (yeepee, here we go again…)

Invitation to brainstorm:

Let me know if you can think of any other implications you can think of.

PS: Regardless of the short or medium feasibility - have you noticed how many paradigms and conventional items of wisdom are being swept away at the moment? After Digital (abstract), Nano (the super tiny), now the outward reach (Mega-Big) has gained new traction and focus.

What is real?

Screenshot from the Second Life homepage 

"One of the things that our grand-children will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real… in the future that will become literally impossible." (William Gibson, writer)

That is the size of the revolution we are going through. We may not even have begun to grasp the significance of the current transition. 

Yesterday I watched an online talk at the Long Now Foundation by Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life, an online digital world that has become a proper place over the past few years. (On Second Life, real life countries have real embassies; real life companies have real presence; real life schools have real courses). He said that in the digital realm, we might find it much easier to fulfil some of our aspirations, fantasies, dreams and relationships. In some ways.

Right or wrong, that's not the question at this point.

What matters, however, is that the digital realm will become part and parcel of our every day lives, way beyond anything we can even begin to imagine today. 

Really, if you can forgive the pun, in a world where we can create movies whose special effects are so special that we cannot distinguish them from a naturally filmed scene, we have potentially just cloned the world. And much more than that- we can extrapolate our existence into the digital dimension way beyond our physical world and, - without harming it.

Just think of this banal greeting exchange of the future: 

"How are you today?"

"Really I am fine, but digitally I just got dumped."

We are mutants. We are merging with our avatars. 

Get ready.

The all exciting Global Last Minute approach

Does it ever happen to you to leave things to the last minute? Regularly? What does this do for you?

This is not necessarily about procrastination. For some it's an adrenaline rush, others become more focused and effective in what they have to deliver.

The pressure of the deadline. The curious joy of being on the brink of collapse. The art of Just-in-Time.

I am coming to think that as humans, this is how we advance (and, on occasions, kill) our civilisations.

Forever on the verge of collapse. Empires rising and falling on the whim of a battle. Alesia (ask the French about that one). Trafalgar. Waterloo. (and yes, Agincourt, as well). The Cuban Missile Crisis. The Cold War...

In many cases decisive action (or, in some, inaction) came as last minute or ad hoc decision.

Recently, we have taken the art of the brink a step further, and started successfully applying it to aspects of human civilisation as a whole. We have become so much more sophisticated on the edge.

A few random examples:

• Acid Rain in the 80s: when we almost lost most of the pine trees in Central Europe.
• Deforestation: well that is a great one - how late can we leave this one?
• Animal protection: Once the numbers start hovering below the self-renewal stocks, they become protected and a huge and costly battle engages with poachers.
• Fish depletion: The Times of London announced in a Tube advertisement that we had 41 years of fish stock left.
• Oil: We know it's going to disappear. We will probably come up with viable alternatives (market forces or regulation will likely adjust price levels to appropriate levels) - just-in-time.

And of course, Global Warming. We have known about it for about a generation, and now the prospect of the December Copenhagen Conference is beginning to wake up nations. (Indonesia, for example, will announce a major Geothermal initiative.)

Of course, whatever the Copenhagen outcome, it will not be enough. There will be resolutions and powerful statements, large scale initiatives for sure - but binding agreements?

The prospect of new technologies and the pious wish that the next generation will be creative and innovative enough to come up with the right answers will do enough to allow everyone a sense of relief and reprieve.

In 2009, it is still not sufficiently last minute, and clearly, still not hot enough around the collar. On a global scale, we may or may not ……… (fill in the missing verb as you see fit from the following choices: wake up, invent, act, react, survive)

In short: the dreaded deadline is Monday, but let's enjoy the weekend barbecue first.

Mindset v dataset

Hans Rosling is at it again: Let a statistician change your mind about the world. Do you have a "mindset that corresponds to reality at the time when your teachers were born"?

Priceless.