Excerpts

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“France Is Different From The U.S.A.’s El Dorado”

April 27, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

If it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck, and Jean-Marie Le Pen and his youngest daughter, Marine, are a couple of ducks.

The former and current leaders of the National Front Party are at odds these days, as Marine attempts to provide the far-right French political group with a more polished and professional face than her loose-cannon dad ever did. But the FN brand of nationalism, even when espoused more politely, is still loathsome and unsettling. From Lucy Westcott’s Newsweek interview:

Newsweek:

Can you see any comparisons between the French and U.S. immigration systems?

Marine Le Pen:

France is different from the U.S.A.’s El Dorado, American Dream image. Millions of people hope to find a better future here. There’s a big difference between France and the U.S. In the U.S., immigrants must work to live. In France, they’re taken care of by public finances. In France, there are millions of unemployed people already. We cannot house them, give them health care, education…finance people who keep coming and coming. The weight is very, very heavy now.

Newsweek:

Do you think France could benefit from an immigration system more like that of the U.S.?

Marine Le Pen:

In general, France always imports from the U.S., but this doesn’t really work. If we could, we’d import a measure that’s consistent: If you come, you’ll have to live by your own means. We do not have the means, the money, to give you free health care, free schools. [This would] dissuade immigrants from coming.

Newsweek:

You’re in the U.S. as European leaders are getting ready to meet to find a solution to the enormous crisis of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean en route to a better life in Europe. What can be done to find a solution and what role can France play?

Marine Le Pen:

Politics shouldn’t invite those deadly trips, all of them are very dangerous. We need to stop the boats and put the immigrants in safety, but also bring them back to their points of origin. In Europe it’s a huge call, an open call, for people to risk their lives in the Mediterranean. [The National Front released a statement after a boat capsized last weekend, killing up to 800 people, calling it a “particularly terrible and shocking tragedy.”]

But we should ask the right questions: Who is responsible for that? Who is responsible for this huge crisis in Libya, for example, for those massive waves of illegal immigration? American leaders and French leaders.

Sarkozy is the guilty one in this situation because he contributed to the Islamist fundamentalist in power over there, with all the consequences that you now know about. [Last Monday, Le Pen blamed former French president Nicolas Sarkozy for the migrant crisis due to his 2011 invasion of Libya.]•

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“We’ll Have To Get Used To Them, Much Like We Did With Mobile Phones”

April 27, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Comparing delivery drones to mobile phones seems an odd choice–or at least only half the answer.

Drones may soon be ubiquitous as smartphones, as one analyst asserts in Lucy Ingham’s sanguine Factor-Tech piece, “Forget the Fear,” but they have the ability to be as destructive as guns, even more, actually. Is that a pizza or a book or a bomb that’s coming our way? Drones will likely be ever-present soon and will do a lot of good, but even if they’re closely regulated, it’ll be easy to rig up your own and deliver whatever you want to someone–even fear. 

The piece’s opening:

Drones are set for mass proliferation, despite commonly voiced concerns about privacy and use, according to a leading British aviation safety expert.

Speaking at a panel discussion during SkyTech, a UAV conference held today in London, Gerry Corbett, UAS programme lead for the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s Safety and Airspace Regulation Group, said that people would have to get used to the presence of drones in urban areas.

“Society has to accept that we’re going to see a lot more of these flying around towns and cities,” he said.

“We’ll have to get used to them, much like we did with mobile phones.”

However, in order for this to happen, regulation will need to improve in order to ensure that the drones are safe.•

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“Won’t Lawyers Be Replaced By Computers In The Next 10 Years?”

April 27, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Recent law-school graduates are having a hell of a time securing jobs in their chosen profession. (According to the New York Times, only 40% of 2010 grads are currently employed in the field.) At Forbes, Reuven Gorsht wonders if things will soon get worse, whether middle-skill work, including law, will ultimately be largely automated. The opening:

Sarah is at the top of her game.  She’s been climbing the ladder at one of the top legal firms in the country.   If all goes according to plan, she will likely make partner in the next 5 years.   She worked hard to get to where she is today.   Working part-time jobs to put herself through law school and using her incredible work ethic and smarts to win the trust of clients and colleagues through clerking and as an associate.

“Won’t lawyers be replaced by computers in the next 10 years?” I say to her.   She rolls her eyes and brushes me off.   “I’m serious.” I said.   “There’s no way a machine can do what I’m doing! Sure robots can eventually replace low-end and repeatable job, but it can never match my education, work experience and relationships with my clients.” responds Sarah.

Is Sarah correct, or should highly skilled and educated professionals like Sarah be worried about their jobs being automated and done by robots and machines?•

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“Preferential Admission For Legacies Ought To Be An Anachronism”

April 26, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In America, the main difference between rich people and poor people is that rich people have money.

It sounds obvious, but think about it: Many of the behaviors said to be responsible for the financially challenged being in the state they’re in aren’t limited to them. Poor people sometimes are raised in broken homes and such families have greater obstacles to success. But well-to-do people also divorce; they just have more money to divide. Some poorer folks drink and use drugs which keeps them trapped in a cycle of poverty. True, but wealthier Americans suffer from all sorts of addictions as well and spend the necessary funds to get the help they need. There are people of lesser means who don’t work hard enough to thrive in school, but the same can be said for some of their wealthier counterparts. The latter just have families with enough money to create an educational path they don’t warrant based on their performance.

Pretty much any lifestyle blamed for poverty is lived by rich and poor folk alike.

You could say that if you’re coming from a less-privileged background you should be sure to avoid these habits because you can’t afford them like people with money can, and I suppose that’s true. But even if you stay on the straight path, we shouldn’t pretend we live in a perfect meritocracy which automatically rewards such clear-headed decisions. We all fall, but some have a net to catch them. Sometimes it’s been earned through hard work and luck, and often it’s woven from inherited money and connections.

From Deborah Friedell at the London Review of Books blog:

The director of Harvard admissions has said that being a ‘Harvard legacy’ – the child of a Harvard graduate – is just one of many ‘tips’ in the college’s admissions process, such as coming from an ‘under-represented state’ (Harvard likes to have students from all 50), or being on the ‘wish list’ of an athletic coach. For most applicants to Harvard, the acceptance rate is around 5 per cent; for applicants with a parent who attended Harvard, it’s around 30 per cent. (One survey found that 16 per cent of Harvard undergraduates have a parent who went to Harvard.) A Harvard study from a few years ago shows that after controlling for other factors that might influence admission (such as, say, grades), legacies are more than 45 per cent more likely to be admitted to the 30 most selective American colleges than non-legacies.

Preferential admission for legacies ought to be an anachronism, not least because it overwhelmingly benefits rich white students. Harvard’s admissions director defends the practice by claiming that legacies ‘bring a special kind of loyalty and enthusiasm for life at the college that makes a real difference in the college climate… and makes Harvard a happier place.’ That ‘special kind of loyalty’ can express itself in material ways. Graduates with family ties – four generations of Harvard men! – are assumed to be particularly generous, and they cut colleges off when their children don’t get in.•

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“Couldn’t We Say That A Tie Is Really A Symbolic Displacement Of The Penis?”

April 26, 2015 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

In “Dickheads,” an excellent Baffler essay, David Graeber measures the sociological and historical significance of the necktie, which he believes to be a phallus (how it’s shaped, where it points) full of cultural meaning about power. An excerpt:

So what does any of this have to do with neckties? Well, at first glance, the paradox has only deepened. If the message of the suit is that its wearer is a largely invisible, abstract, and generic creature to be defined by his ability to act, then the decorative necktie makes little sense.

But let’s examine other forms of decoration allowed in formal attire and see if a larger pattern of sartorial power begins to emerge. Decoration that’s specific to women (earrings, lipstick, eyeshadow, etc.) tends to highlight the receptive organs. Permissible men’s jewelry—rings, cuff links, fancy watches—tends to accentuate the hands. This is, of course, consistent: it is through the hands that one acts upon the world. There’s also the tie clip, but that’s not really a problem. The tie and the cuff links seem to fulfill their functions in parallel, each adding a little decoration to tighten a spot where human flesh sticks out, namely the neck and wrists. They also help seal off the exposed bits from the remainder of the body, which remains effaced, its contours largely invisible.

This observation, I think, points the way to the resolution of our paradox. After all, the male body in a suit does contain a third potentially obtrusive element that is most definitely not exposed, something that, in fact, is not indicated in any way, even though one does have to take it out, periodically, to pee. Suits have to be tailored to allow for urination, which also has to be done in such a way that nobody notices. The fly (which is invisible) is a bourgeois innovation, much unlike earlier aristocratic styles, such as the European codpiece, that often drew explicit attention to the genital region. This is the one part of the male body whose contours are entirelyeffaced. If hiding something is a way of declaring it a form of power, then hiding the male genitals is a way of declaring masculinity itself a form of power. It’s not just that the tie sits on precisely the spot that, in women’s formal wear, tends to be the most sexualized (the cleavage). A tie resembles a penis in shape, and points directly at it. Couldn’t we say that a tie is really a symbolic displacement of the penis, only an intellectualized penis, dangling not from one’s crotch but from one’s head, chosen from among an almost infinite variety of other ties by an act of mental will?

Hey, this would explain a lot…•

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“The Secret Is In The Adhesives On The Robots’ Feet”

April 26, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Putting ants to shame, Stanford University’s Biomimetics Dextrous Manipulation Laboratory has produced tiny robots, which operate similar to inchworms, that can haul 100 hundred times their weight. Huge long-term implications for construction and emergency rescues, like the one we’re currently witnessing in Nepal. From Aviva Rutkin at New Scientist:

Mighty things come in small packages. The little robots in this video can haul things that weigh over 100 times more than themselves.

The super-strong bots – built by mechanical engineers at Stanford University in California – will be presented next month at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Seattle, Washington.

The secret is in the adhesives on the robots’ feet. Their design is inspired by geckos, which have climbing skills that are legendary in the animal kingdom. The adhesives are covered in minute rubber spikes that grip firmly onto the wall as the robot climbs. When pressure is applied, the spikes bend, increasing their surface area and thus their stickiness. When the robot picks its foot back up, the spikes straighten out again and detach easily.

The bots also move in a style that is borrowed from biology.•

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“We Stood Back And Watched iCEO Execute This Project”

April 26, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

When people defend CEO pay, they often argue that business leaders like Steve Jobs deserve every cent they get, without mentioning how these are the most extreme outliers. There are also CEOs like probable Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, who did a really cruddy job running Hewlett-Packard, collected a monumental golden parachute when she was fired and was safely out the door when thousands of employees lost their jobs. Okay, maybe she’s an outlier also, but your average company leader isn’t an innovator (that word) but a steward. They’re very overpaid.

Automation has allowed many of these corporate titans to reduce staff over the past decade and the practice will likely continue apace, but that blade has two edges, and the received wisdom of the importance of the CEO will likely be threatened by technology as well. 

From Devin Fidler at Harvard Business Review:

For the last several years, we have been studying the forces now shaping the future of work, and wondering whether high-level management could be automated. This inspired us to create prototype software we informally dubbed “iCEO.” As the name suggests, iCEO is a virtual management system that automates complex work by dividing it into small individual tasks. iCEO then assigns these micro-tasks to workers using multiple software platforms, such as oDesk, Uber, and email/text messaging. Basically, the system allows a user to drag-and-drop “virtual assembly lines” into place, and run them from a dashboard.

But could iCEO manage actual work projects for our organization? After a few practice runs, we were ready to find out. For one task, we programmed iCEO to oversee the preparation of a 124-page research report for a prestigious client (a Fortune 50 company). We spent a few hours plugging in the parameters of the project, i.e. structuring the flow of tasks, then hit play. For instance, to create an in-depth assessment of how graphene is produced, iCEO asked workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to curate a list of articles on the topic. After duplicates were removed, the list of articles was passed on to a pool of technical analysts from oDesk, who extracted and arranged the articles’ key insights. A cohort of Elance writers then turned these into coherent text, which went to another pool of subject matter experts for review, passing them on to a sequence of oDesk editors, proofreaders, and fact checkers.

iCEO routed tasks across 23 people from around the world, including the creation of 60 images and graphs, followed by formatting and preparation. We stood back and watched iCEO execute this project. We rarely needed to intervene, even to check the quality of individual components of the report as they were submitted to iCEO, or spend time hiring staff, because QA and HR were also automated by iCEO. (The hiring of oDesk contractors for this project, for example, was itself an oDesk assignment.)

We were amazed by the quality of the end result — and the speed with which it was produced.•

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“We Will Be Able To Purchase Items Digitally And Have Them Delivered By Robots”

April 26, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In “The World in 2025,” IKEA has a dozen predictions for how life will change a decade into the future. Perhaps by that year, IKEA will have hired copyeditors because the piece surprisingly has lots of typos (which I’ve removed below). You expect that kind of slapdash nonsense from Afflictor but not from Scandinavian perfectionists! A quartet of the preognostications:

Our homes will become physically smaller

As populations age and we have less children, there will be a trend toward less people per household. Increasing real estate and transport costs in cities will favour denser living. Spaces will have to work harder in order to accommodate multiple uses by multiple people.

How might we create multifunctional spaces?

Computers will be everywhere

Even simple devices will be equipped with sensors, CPUs and transmitting devices, allowing for communication with the user, but also with each other, creating self-regulating systems.

How might we ensure that a computerised kitchen doesn’t lose its humanity?

‘Shopping’ will mean ‘home delivery’

Shopping will be seamless and impulsive. The physical act of going into a shop will be more about learning and exploration than purchasing. Instead, we will be able to purchase items digitally and have them delivered by robots, wherever we are, within minutes.

How might we integrate outside services into our kitchen behaviours?

Food will be more expensive

As populations grow, and as developing countries’ diets incorporate more meat, supply constraints will push the cost of food higher, by 40% according to some estimates.

How might we ensure that we make the most of what we use?•

“The Implications Of All This Are Mind-Boggling”

April 26, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

It’s probably a fair bet that most people believe computers are already more intelligent than us. But even computationally it’s possible our smartphones will be smarter than us in five to ten years. Even if it hasn’t happened by then, it will happen. Something that was impossible a few decades ago, that would have cost billions if it had been possible, will soon be available at a reasonable price, prepared to sit in your pocket or palm.

As Ted Greenwald of the WSJ recently reminded, smart machines don’t have to make us dumb. From automobiles to digital watches, we’ve always ceded certain chores to technology, but these new machines won’t be anything like the ones we know. They will be by far the greatest tools we’ve ever created. What will that mean, positive or negative? I’m wholeheartedly in favor of them, even think they’re necessary, but that doesn’t mean great gifts aren’t attended by great challenges.

From Vivek Wadhwa at the Washington Post:

Ray Kurzweil made a startling prediction in 1999 that appears to be coming true: that by 2023 a $1,000 laptop would have the computing power and storage capacity of a human brain.  He also predicted that Moore’s Law, which postulates that the processing capability of a computer doubles every 18 months, would apply for 60 years — until 2025 — giving way then to new paradigms of technological change.

Kurzweil, a renowned futurist and the director of engineering at Google, now says that the hardware needed to emulate the human brain may be ready even sooner than he predicted — in around 2020 — using technologies such as graphics processing units (GPUs), which are ideal for brain-software algorithms. He predicts that the complete brain software will take a little longer: until about 2029.

The implications of all this are mind-boggling.  Within seven years — about when the iPhone 11 is likely to be released — the smartphones in our pockets will be as computationally intelligent as we are. It doesn’t stop there, though.  These devices will continue to advance, exponentially, until they exceed the combined intelligence of the human race. Already, our computers have a big advantage over us: they are connected via the Internet and share information with each other billions of times faster than we can. It is hard to even imagine what becomes possible with these advances and what the implications are.•

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“Russian Humor Is Slapstick, Only You Actually Die”

April 24, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Some of Ian Frazier’s customary whip-smart, wondrous prose is on display in his NYRB piece about a raft of volumes by and about Daniil Kharms, a writer from that self-inflicted wound called Russia, who was diagnosed as schizophrenic, incarcerated for being an “anti-Soviet children’s writer” and ultimately starved to death at 36. He matured as an artist under Stalin, an era bathed needlessly in blood, his dark, absurd sensibilities perfect for the time and place or perhaps warped into midnight by them. Though Frazier wisely warns against accepting this narrative as a comprehensive explication of Kharms’ work. The opening:

Russia is the funniest country in the world. Some countries, like America and England, are funny mostly on purpose, while others, like Germany and France, can be funny only unintentionally. (But that counts! Being funny is tricky, so any way you do it counts.) Russia, however, is funny both intentionally (Gogol, Zoshchenko, Bulgakov) and unintentionally (Vladimir Putin singing, as he did at a televised event a few years ago, “I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill”). Given the disaster Russian history has been more or less continuously for the last five centuries, its humor is of the darkest, most extreme kind. Russian humor is to ordinary humor what backwoods fundamentalist poisonous snake handling is to a petting zoo. Russian humor is slapstick, only you actually die.

Surveys that measure such distinctions often rate Russians among the world’s least happy people. To judge from the Russians I know, this information would hold little interest one way or the other. To Russians, happiness is not the big deal it is to us; the Declaration of Independence they don’t have makes no statement about it. On the street or otherwise encountering strangers Russians don’t paste big grins on their faces, the way we tend to do. They look sternly upon reflex smilers. Their humor is powerful without a lot of jollity, and it’s hard to imagine Bulgakov, say, convulsed and weeping with laughter, as I have been when reading certain scenes in his novel Heart of a Dog.

Daniil Kharms, a Russian writer who came of age in the worst of Soviet times, is categorized as an absurdist, partly (I think) because it’s hard to know what else to call him. To me he makes more sense as a religious writer.

He is really funny and completely not ingratiating, simultaneously.•

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“It Will All Go Better With Genetically Engineered Plants. And Animals. And Farmers.”

April 24, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

I’m in favor of genetically modified foods, even if I have concerns about Monsanto and its ilk. Even without human-made climate change, we eventually would face a temperature shift threatening to agriculture. Let’s get started now (carefully and intelligently) on these experiments, especially since there are going to be more mouths to feed. 

In 2010, David Honigmann of the Financial Times had lunch with Stewart Brand, a strong proponent of GMOs, which were meeting with resistance in Europe, particularly France. An excerpt:

Food, I say, is central to French culture. He scoffs. “Socialised agriculture is OK?” He takes some fig jam with his cheese. France, I say, is full of small farmers, not dominated by agrochemical combines. “That’s fair.” None the less, he insists that “it will all go better with genetically engineered plants. And animals. And farmers.

“We’ve had 12 or 13 years of genetically engineered food in this country and it’s been great. My prediction is that in a couple of years we’ll see a soyabean oil that has Omega 3 fatty acids to cut down heart disease. Who would refuse that, any more than people refuse to take medicine?”

In the long run, he insists, opposition will die out. “IVF is the big example. I remember when that was an abomination in the face of God’s will. As soon as people met a few of the children, they realised that they were just as good as the ‘regular’ ones. My hope is that, unlike nuclear, which involves almost a theological shift, getting gradually used to genetic foods will be a non-issue.”•

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“It’s Like Taking An Application And Putting A Brain Into It”

April 24, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a Harvard Business Review piece, Brad Power looks at the timetable of AI entering the business place in earnest. In the “What’s Next” section, he handicaps the horizon, though I caution that he bases part of his ideas on a bold prediction by Ray Kurzweil, who is brilliant but sometimes wildly inaccurate. An excerpt:

As Moore’s Law marches on, we have more power in our smartphones than the most powerful supercomputers did 30 or 40 years ago. Ray Kurzweil has predicted that the computing power of a $4,000 computer will surpass that of a human brain in 2019 (20 quadrillion calculations per second). What does it all mean for the future of AI?

To get a sense, I talked to some venture capitalists, whose profession it is to keep their eyes and minds trained on the future. Mark Gorenberg, Managing Director at Zetta Venture Partners, which is focused on investing in analytics and data startups, told me, “AI historically was not ingrained in the technology structure. Now we’re able to build on top of ideas and infrastructure that didn’t exist before. We’ve gone through the change of Big Data. Now we’re adding machine learning. AI is not the be-all and end-all; it’s an embedded technology. It’s like taking an application and putting a brain into it, using machine learning. It’s the use of cognitive computing as part of an application.” Another veteran venture capitalist, Promod Haque, senior managing partner at Norwest Venture Partners, explained to me, “if you can have machines automate the correlations and build the models, you save labor and increase speed. With tools like Watson, lots of companies can do different kinds of analytics automatically.”

Manoj Saxena, former head of IBM’s Watson efforts and now a venture capitalist, believes that analytics is moving to the “cognitive cloud” where massive amounts of first- and third-party data will be fused to deliver real-time analysis and learning. Companies often find AI and analytics technology difficult to integrate, especially with the technology moving so fast; thus, he sees collaborations forming where companies will bring their people with domain knowledge, and emerging service providers will bring system and analytics people and technology. Cognitive Scale (a startup that Saxena has invested in) is one of the new service providers adding more intelligence into business processes and applications through a model they are calling “Cognitive Garages.” Using their “10-10-10 method” they deploy a cognitive cloud in 10 seconds, build a live app in 10 hours, and customize it using their client’s data in 10 days. Saxena told me that the company is growing extremely rapidly.•

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“I Would Love To Augment My Brain With Access To The Internet”

April 24, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

How soon will it be until robots walk among us, handling the drudgery and making us all unemployed hobos? It probably depends on how much time the geniuses at MIT waste conducting Ask Me Anythings at Reddit. Ross Finman, Patrick R. Barragán and Ariel Anders, three young roboticists at the school, just did such a Q&A. A few exchanges follow.

____________________________________

Question:

  1. How far away are we from robo-assisted “personal care”?
  2. Given the chance, would either of you augment (with current and newly developed equipment) yourselves, and if so: to what extent?

Ross Finman:

1) Well… cop out answer, but it depends. Fully autonomous health care robots that would fully displace human health care professionals will be decades. The level of difficulty in that job (and difficulty for robots is deviation) is immense. Smaller aspects can be automated, but as a whole, a long time.

2) I would love to augment my brain with access to the internet. When hitting a problem and then taking the time to go and search online for the solution is so inefficient. If that could be done in thoughts, that would be awesome! Also, one of my friends is working on a wearable version of Facebook that could remind you when you know someone. Would avoid those awkward situations when you pretend to know someone.

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Question:

What is currently the most challenging aspect of developing artificial intelligence? (i.e. What are the roadblocks to me getting a mechanical slave?)

Patrick R. Barragán:

This question is pretty general, and most people will have different answers on the topic. I think there are many big problems with developing AI. I think one is representation. It is hard in a general way to think about how to represent a problem or parts of a problem to even begin to think about how to solve it. For example, what are the real differences between a cup and bowl even if humans could easily distinguish them. There is a representation question there for one very specific type of problem. On the other end of the spectrum, how to deal with the huge amount of information that we humans get every moment of every day in the context a robot or computer is also unclear. What do you pay attention to? What do you ignore? How much to your process all the little things that happen? How do you reuse information that you learned later? How do you learn it in the first place?

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Question:

I remember reading this article about robot sex becoming a mainstream thing in 2050, according to a few robotics experts:

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/256430

Do you agree or disagree with this assertion?

Patrick R. Barragán:

I guess it’s possible, but if that is where we end up first on this train, I would be surprised. The article that you linked to suggests that people have built robots for all kind of things, and it suggests that those robots work, are deployed, and are now solutions to problems. Those suggestions, which pervade media stories about robotics, are not accurate. We have produced demonstrations of robots that can do certain things, but those sorts of robots that might sound like precursors before we get to “important” sex robots don’t exist in any general way yet.

Also, I don’t know anyone who is working on it or thinks they should be.

____________________________________

Question:

Do you think programming should be a required course in all American schools? Do you believe everyone can be benefited by knowing programming skills?
 

Ariel Anders:

Required? No. Beneficial? Definitely.

____________________________________

Question:

Will a computer be able to learn from it’s mistakes in the future?

Ross Finman:

Will humans be able to learn from their mistakes in the future?•

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“The Book Is Full Of Flatulent Tributes To The Guardian And Its Would-Be Journalists”

April 23, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The upside to the financial crisis of a medium, say like magazines with their economic model tossed into the crapper by technological progress, is that publications are forced to reinvent themselves, get innovative and try offbeat things. In that spirit, the resuscitated Newsweek assigned Wikileaks editor (not “self-styled editor”) Julian Assange to review Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man.

And what a gleefully obnoxious pan he delivers, making some salient points along the way, even if it’s not exactly unexpected that he would be bilious toward traditional media in favor of alterna-journalists like himself. Additionally: Assange proves he is a very funny writer. You know, just like Bill Cosby.

An excerpt:

In recent years, we have seen The Guardian consult itself into cinematic history—in the Jason Bourne films and others—as a hip, ultra-modern, intensely British newspaper with a progressive edge, a charmingly befuddled giant of investigative journalism with a cast-iron spine.

The Snowden Files positions The Guardian as central to the Edward Snowden affair, elbowing out more significant players like Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras for Guardian stablemates, often with remarkably bad grace.

“Disputatious gay” Glenn Greenwald’s distress at the U.K.’s detention of his husband, David Miranda, is described as “emotional” and “over-the-top.” My WikiLeaks colleague Sarah Harrison—who helped rescue Snowden from Hong Kong—is dismissed as a “would-be journalist.”

I am referred to as the “self-styled editor of WikiLeaks.” In other words, the editor of WikiLeaks. This is about as subtle as Harding’s withering asides get. You could use this kind of thing on anyone.

Flatulent Tributes

The book is full of flatulent tributes to The Guardian and its would-be journalists. “[Guardian journalist Ewen] MacAskill had climbed the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau. His calmness now stood him in good stead.” Self-styled Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger is introduced and reintroduced in nearly every chapter, each time quoting the same hagiographic New Yorker profile as testimony to his “steely” composure and “radiant calm.”

That this is Hollywood bait could not be more blatant.•

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“Six Performers Had Arrived To Offer An Erotic Dance At The Funeral Of An Elderly Resident”

April 23, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

In China, the leading cause of death is now cancer (and the mortality rate from the disease considerably higher than the world average), so you’d think the government would have its hands full with that issue. But they still have time to be concerned about “funeral strippers,” an admittedly strange lure to draw mourners to a service. There’s an official crackdown on the practice. From Te-Ping Chen and Josh Chin at WSJ:

In China, friends and family of the deceased may have to do without a special form of funereal entertainment: strippers.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Culture on Thursday, the government plans to work closely with the police to eliminate such performances, which are held with the goal of drawing more mourners.

Pictures of a funeral in the city of Handan in northern Hebei province last month showed a dancer removing her bra as assembled parents and children watched. They were widely circulated online, prompting much opprobrium. In its Thursday statement, the Ministry of Culture cited “obscene” performances in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, as well as in Handan, and pledged to crack down on such lascivious last rites.

In the Handan incident earlier this year, the ministry said, six performers had arrived to offer an erotic dance at the funeral of an elderly resident. Investigators were dispatched and the performance was found to have violated public security regulations, with the person responsible for the performing troupe in question detained administratively for 15 days and fined 70,000 yuan (about $11,300), the statement said. The government condemned such performances for corrupting the social atmosphere.•

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“The Anti-Radio Forces Proposed A League-Wide Ban”

April 23, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

New Yorkers listen to special radio broadcast of 1922 World Series.

New Yorkers listen to special radio broadcast of 1922 World Series.

Major League Baseball team owners, supposedly great champions of the free market, have often been baffled by basic economics, working against their own interests. They enjoy an anti-trust exemption to stifle competition and receive tons of corporate welfare whenever they decide its time for a new ballpark, yet they vehemently opposed free agency, which made the game a 365-day-a-year sport, putting real fire in the Hot Stove League. They even engaged in collusion to artificially suppress player movement and salaries. That very movement they despised helped turn the owners from millionaires into billionaires, something which still seems lost on some in this exclusive club. 

So, it’s no surprise that they strongly considered banning radio broadcasts of games a century ago, fearing it would kill gate receipts. Thankfully William Wrigley intervened, realizing the promotional value. Today broadcast rights, even local ones, are worth billions, making them the most valuable aspect of team ownership.

From James Walker at the Conversation:

In the 1920s, teams that did broadcast games on the radio usually charged nothing for the rights, settling for free promotion of their on-field product. For Wrigley, who was accustomed to paying retail rates to advertise his chewing gum, the prospect of two hours of free advertising for his Chicago Cubs (over as many as five Chicago radio stations) was generous enough compensation. But the anti-radio owners, led by the three New York clubs (the Yankees, Giants and Dodgers), wanted to deny Wrigley his two-hour Cubs commercial.

Although he jealously guarded his control over World Series radio rights, MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis believed local radio rights were a league matter and left the decision to broadcast regular season games to the owners. At several NL and AL owners meetings in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the anti-radio forces proposed a league-wide ban on local broadcasts of regular season games.

Pro-radio clubs, led by Cubs’ President Bill Veeck, Sr, were adamant that the choice to broadcast belonged to his club. It was no more of concern to other clubs, he argued, than the decision whether or not to sell peanuts to the fans in the stands.

But to teams like the St Louis Cardinals, it was a concern: because the Cubs’ radio waves reached the Cardinals’ fan base, they were convinced that the broadcasts negatively influenced their own attendance numbers. The decision of whether or not to broadcast games, they reasoned, was not the Cubs alone to make.•

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“Get Ready To Add $10,000 To The Price Tag”

April 23, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Driverless cars, when and if they’re perfected, won’t require as much protective weight since crashes would be greatly reduced. That will somewhat restrain the costs of this new machine, but there are other reasons why the hardware won’t be prohibitive once the software is a reality. It will cost more initially, but perhaps not as much as expected. From Alex Davies at Wired:

The cost of self-driving cars isn’t often discussed, mostly because we’re still years from commercial production, and because there are much tougher questions to answer before we can talk money. But a new report on the market for and development of self-driving cars, by the Boston Consulting Group, offers some estimates. And partly thanks to that affordable hardware, they’re not that high.

According to the group’s research, urban and autopilot will each add about $5,500 to a car’s price tag. You can have a car that parks itself for an extra $2,000. If you want full autonomy—the ability to drive anywhere, with no human input—get ready to add $10,000 to the price tag, at least in the first 10 years the technology’s on the market.

“The technology is already there,” says Xavier Mosquet, head of Boston Consulting Group’s North America automotive division.

Hardware falls into three categories: sensors, processors, and actuators. Given the high level of electronics in today’s car, actuators—the bits that allow a computer to physically do things like brake, change gears, and steer—don’t pose a problem.•

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“Astronauts Could One Day Use The Printers To Build Themselves Habitats On Extraterrestrial Surfaces”

April 23, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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The price of space travel has never fallen as precipitously as some predicted, so the cost of transporting building materials to set up permanent colonies is prohibitive. The answer is to construct communities once travelers reach the moon and planets and asteroids. NASA is planning to begin that phase of nation-building in space in the next couple of years with the aid of 3D printers. From Conor Gaffey at Newsweek:

NASA are aiming to introduce 3D printers into spacecraft within two years, allowing astronauts to set up permanent habitats on other planets and even print their own food.

In an interview with Newsweek, NASA’s 3D printing chief Niki Werkheiser says the technology will revolutionise space travel by allowing astronauts to be away from year for years on exploration missions without relying on ground control.

Current costs for space transportation are $10,000 per pound of mass. The development therefore has the potential to save millions of dollars as astronauts can travel light and print essentials on demand whilst in space.

NASA is currently developing its largest rocket yet, the Space Launch System (SLS). The SLS is due to make its first test flight in 2017 and Werkheiser says her team are working to get a 3D printer on-board.

So far, Werkheiser’s team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama have produced several rocket components and a small wrench with the technology and yesterday the team announced the first successful print of a copper engine part for rockets.

However, they are working on much more exciting projects, including printing parts for a small shelter using substitutes for Martian and lunar sand – the theory being that astronauts could one day use the printers to build themselves habitats on extraterrestrial surfaces.•

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“The Share Of Americans Convinced That Health Care Is A Right Shrank From A Majority To A Minority”

April 23, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Obamacare, as it was derisively labeled by those who wanted to scare us from it, has been one of our nation’s most successful large-scale pieces of legislation in recent memory. It’s expanded insurance tremendously, slowed formerly ballooning costs and would seem to be a long-term job creator. (Diagnostics and service aspects of medicine may soon be automated, but many other positions will require a human element for the foreseeable future.) Even Tea Party representatives have enjoyed the benefits.

You would think the populace would be thrilled, but poll numbers stubbornly suggest that the Affordable Healthcare Act has turned off much of the nation to a further sharing of our responsibility for one another. I don’t think of this as a victory for the GOP PR machine. I’m not one of those people who believe that the matter with Kansas is that the citizens have been hoodwinked. The matter with Kansas is Kansans, and to extrapolate that, the matter with America is Americans. I don’t believe we’re fooled. I think we often see things through ideology rather than by results, and that’s a dangerous stance, especially if we are headed for greater wealth inequality, encouraged by AI which will reduce employment opportunities. Perhaps futurists in Silicon Valley believe we’re entering an age of technological socialism, but the people are not enamored with such an idea, even if it would benefit them. From Thomas Edsall at the New York Times:

With the advent of the Affordable Care Act, the share of Americans convinced that health care is a right shrank from a majority to a minority.

This shift in public opinion is a major victory for the Republican Party. It is part of a larger trend: a steady decline in support for redistributive government policies. Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at Berkeley and one of the nation’s premier experts on inequality, is a co-author of a study that confirms this trend, which has been developing over the last four decades. A separate study, “The Structure of Inequality and Americans’ Attitudes Toward Redistribution,” found that as inequality increases, so does ideological conservatism in the electorate.

The erosion of the belief in health care as a government-protected right is perhaps the most dramatic reflection of these trends. In 2006, by a margin of more than two to one, 69-28, those surveyed by Gallup said that the federal government should guarantee health care coverage for all citizens of the United States. By late 2014, however, Gallup found that this percentage had fallen 24 points to 45 percent, while the percentage of respondents who said health care is not a federal responsibility nearly doubled to 52 percent.•

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“It’s A Battery Company That Happens To Make Electric Cars”

April 22, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I would love to know if Elon Musk originally viewed Tesla as solely an automaker and realized he had another business, maybe a better one, selling batteries consumers could use to power their homes when some began to repurpose them to do just that.

Electric cars often need power stations between points A and B, houses and commercial buildings don’t have that challenge, and while the company still has plenty of near-term challenges, a developing non-mobile market could ultimately be gigantic. And that’s a market that Tesla has now fully dived into. The opening of Klint Finley’s astute Wired piece labeling Tesla as primarily a battery company:

TESLA IS ADMIRED for building the cars of the future. But it’s not really a car company. It’s a battery company that happens to make electric cars.

At least, that’s the trajectory suggested by the news that Tesla will soon sell mega-batteries for homes and electric utility companies. CEO Elon Musk mentioned the possibility during an earnings call last February, and the plan was reportedly confirmed in an investor letter revealed yesterday. The official announcement is set to come next week.

Selling batteries for homes, businesses, and utilities may seem like a departure for a car company. But for Tesla, it makes perfect sense. An electric car is only as green as the electrical grid that powers it. And if Tesla’s batteries become widespread, they could help utilities take better advantage of inconsistent renewable energy sources like wind and solar. As demand for renewables rises, whether through regulatory mandate or consumer desire, so would utilities’ demand for batteries that could help maintain a consistent flow—a demand Tesla is well-positioned to meet.•

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“We Have Cameras In His Eyes And In His Chest”

April 22, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Apart from a few exceptions, any job that can be automated will be automated. Weak AI may seem dull, but it’s capable and relentless. Hanson Robotics is trying with “Han” and “Eva” to make things more interesting while rolling the future forward, developing machines that look like us and can react to voices and recognize faces. Perfect for customer service and myriad other services.

“Their Children Would Also Have Bigger Brains”

April 22, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

When speaking of neural enhancement being distributed unfairly because of wealth inequality, it’s important to remember that even without drugs or prosthetics or engineering, we already have a similar playing field and that it’s very much divided into haves and have nots. Brain function, even size, is already influenced by poverty. From Chris Gyngell’s Practical Ethics post about a fictional brain-growing drug:

A new drug, Numarol, is currently being trialled which increases the surface area of the brain in children. Numarol causes children to have bigger brains, do better in cognitive tests and generally improves their life prospects. One critic of Numarol recently pointed out it would be very expensive, and only the rich would be able to afford it. Its release would likely create a significant difference in brain size between the highest and lowest socioeconomic groups. Numarol would create a world in which biological inequalities are forged from economic ones. The rich would not only have bigger houses, better cars, and better healthcare than the poor, their children would also have bigger brains. Such a world would be abhorrent.

But we already live in this world. Numarol is fictional, but the rich do have children with bigger brains than the poor. Social inequalities have already been written into our biology. 

This is the lesson from one of largest studies of brain morphology and structure in children. Brains of children from the lowest income bracket — less than US$25,000 — had up to 6% less surface area than those from children whose parental income was more than US$150,000. These differences in brain size where then found to be associated with differences in performance in a number of cognitive tests measuring working memory, vocabulary, and reading ability. These associations were independent of age, sex, parental education level and genetic ancestry (which was assessed through a whole genome analysis).

The relationship between family income and brain size was more pronounced among children in the poorest families where “income disparities of a few thousand dollars were associated with major differences in brain structure, particularly in areas associated with language and decision-making skills.”•

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“Travel To The Earth’s Surface And Back Would Be Relatively Hard. Is That Correct?”

April 22, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

In a book which sprang from the Whole Earth Catalog successor, CoEvolution Quarterly, Stewart Brand included his 1975 discussion about space colonization with physicist Gerard O’Neill. The interviewee’s take on the economics of space travel was ridiculously hopeful for the time (and still in ours) but not theoretically impossible in the long run if we last. An excerpt: 

Stewart Brand:

If “in wildness is the preservation of the world,” then in what is the preservation of the space colony?

Gerard O’Neill:

Making it wild, I think. The long-term plan, really dream, that I would have is a situation in which, in 50, 100, 150 years, it would be so cheap to replicate large communities that you would be building quite large ones, many, many square miles in land area for each one, and they would be very thinly populated. And so the natural development it seems to me, is toward a situation where you have a great many wild species involved, and as wild an environment as you choose to make. I would imagine one on which there is a lot of forest and park area and wild areas, and a relatively small amount which is manicured and put into the form that people like to have for their dwellings.

Stewart Brand:

Now you’re restating your question, whether a planet’s surface is the best place for a wilderness?

Gerard O’Neill:

Maybe so. But this situation that I was just describing, this possibility if pursued, is one that could occur both on the Earth and in the communities of course. Because the existence of the space communities as a place to which many people might choose to move would also be perhaps the only realistic non-violent way in which the Earth’s population might really decrease.

Stewart Brand:

I’m trying to imagine the trapped feeling that one might have. Travel between communities would be relatively easy. Travel to the Earth’s surface and back would be relatively hard. Is that correct?

Gerard O’Neill:

It would be interesting to compare it in terms of real income. Passage between the colonies and the Earth probably corresponds to passenger travel back and forth between Europe and the United States in, say, the 1700’s. It’s the kind of thing that Benjamin Franklin did to go and negotiate treaties in France. It was not the sort of thing that the ordinary guy was able to accomplish.

The cost of going back and forth to the Earth – I made some rough estimates on what that might be with the technology of let’s say 20 – 30 years from now, still nothing far out like nuclear power or anything like that – and came out to about $3,000 per person for a round trip. Among the colonies it should be very easy, very cheap. From one community to another, even 5,000 miles away would probably be as little as $100 or something like that. A few dollars in energy costs is enough to launch a vehicle over that kind of distance.•

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“I Think We Will Start To Incorporate Neural Prosthetics”

April 22, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Not sure if it will occur in the next five decades, but brain enhancement is our future. In a New York Q&A, neuroscientist Heather Berlin tells Adam K. Raymond about the path forward. Everything she says seems plausible except for the potential controlling or curtailing of neural prosthetics because some will initially have unequal access to it. That I doubt. The opening:

Question:

What surprising things will we be able to do with our brains in the next 50 years?

Heather Berlin:

I think we will start to incorporate neural prosthetics. For example, electrical implants can stimulate parts of the brain to treat psychiatric illness. I think in the future we will start using these implants for cognitive enhancement — to help increase our memory or to increase our attention. Or to make us not need as much sleep and stay alert longer.

If people have neural implants, it will be possible for them to control a cursor on a computer or type emails just by using their thoughts. I also think we’ll be able to decode people’s thoughts at some level and predict what they might be thinking, maybe not with 100 percent accuracy, but maybe 70 or 80 percent.

Question:

How would that work?

Heather Berlin:

With an implant that records information. For example, there are studies where they’ll show someone a picture while they’re in an fMRI machine. We can show a person, say, a picture of a fish and a cat, and we can record what their brain activity looks like. Then we can show them a picture and without knowing the picture, look at the brain activity and predict what the person is seeing, whether it’s a fish or a cat.

That’s what we have already. Fifty years in the future we’ll get better at decoding this information. We’ll be able to predict what a person is seeing based on this brain activity or maybe even what they’re thinking.

Question:

And you think this stuff will be elective, the kind of thing people do for fun?

Heather Berlin:

The kind of stuff we’re using now to treat psychiatric illness will eventually be used for cognitive enhancement. Like the way we have plastic surgery to get a better nose or breast implants, you’ll be able to get these neural implants that will increase cognitive function. Maybe only people who can afford it get neural implants, and they have an advantage. Maybe it’s going to be like performance-enhancing drugs, where it’s going to have to be controlled.•

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“Climate Change Will Be Deemed Intolerable For Humans Long Before It Speeds Up Extinction Rates”

April 21, 2015 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Science/Tech | Permalink

There aren’t many things that can kill most of the life on Earth, though there are some (climate change for one) that can claim a heartbreaking part of it.

Recent discussion about the existential threat of global warming has led Stewart Brand to fret that perhaps all these apocalyptic daydreams may be stunting the progress of conservationists. He contends in a new Aeon essay that there’s no onrushing Sixth Extinction, as it’s been called, and though he acknowledges great concern for defaunation and ecosystem functioning, he believes humans will act with drastic measures if necessary before we bury ourselves in a global Easter Island. He further argues that biotech might allow us to reverse species endangerment and increase biodiversity.

It’s a great piece, the kind Aeon spoils us with regularly. While I agree climate change isn’t likely to extinct all of Homo sapiens in the foreseeable future, even in a century or two, it could possibly reduce population with a viciousness. Brand’s gut feeling aside, there’s no guarantee we’ll make intelligent political decisions to protect our tomorrow and that of other fauna and flora. We certainly haven’t demonstrated such big-picture fortitude yet. And bioengineering our way out of trouble means plenty of unintended consequences, no matter how careful we are. Aggressive environmentalism and conservation is still the key, which is something I imagine Brand would concur with.

From Brand:

Anyone who doubts the reality of global warming need only talk to a few field biologists. Everyone doing field research is discovering how sensitive the organisms they study are to slight changes in average temperature, in the length of the growing season, in rainfall patterns. But just because organisms are sensitive to change doesn’t mean they are threatened by it. Any creature or plant facing a shifting environment has three choices: move, adapt or die. …

Move, adapt or die. When organisms challenged by climate change respond by adapting, they evolve. When they move, they often encounter distant cousins and hybridise with them, sometimes evolving new species. When they die, they leave a niche open for other species to migrate or adapt into, and a warming climate tends to open the way for more species rather than fewer. In the same Nature essay, Thomas wrote: ‘Global-diversity gradients dictate that more warm-adapted species are available to colonise new areas than cold-adapted species retreating from those areas as the climate warms.’

Throughout 3.8 billion years of evolution on Earth, the inexorable trend has been toward an ever greater variety of species. With the past two mass extinction events there were soon many more species alive after each catastrophe than there were before it.

There is no reason to be sanguine about climate change. It is the most serious problem currently facing humanity and nature. It might lead to the loss of some species that we lament greatly, but it will also usher in new species, and unless there is extremely ‘abrupt’ climate change, net biodiversity is unlikely to decrease dramatically. Abrupt-change scenarios have been dropping out of the climate models lately, thanks to ever-improving data and growing knowledge about climate dynamics. My own prediction is that climate change will be deemed intolerable for humans long before it speeds up extinction rates, and even if radical steps have to be taken to head it off, they will be taken.•

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