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“A Few Places Will Let Ems Go Wild”

June 2, 2016 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Currently marching to the end of everything else I’m reading so I can start Robin Hanson’s The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth, which sounds like remarkable science fiction, though the author insists it’s science–or will be soon enough.

“Em” refers to brain emulations, computer reproductions of top-notch human brains which will provide gray matter for robots. These ems will then grow that intelligence far beyond our abilities. It’s will be something like Moore’s Law for intellect. We can use this method to produce inexpensive armies of ems to handle all the work, with Hanson predicting the world economy could continually increase at a heretofore impossible pace. Or maybe the ems will grow resentful and harm us. Perhaps a little of both.

Here’s a fuller description from the book’s website:

Many think the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations or ems. Scan a human brain, then run a model with the same connections on a fast computer, and you have a robot brain, but recognizably human.

Train an em to do some job and copy it a million times: an army of workers is at your disposal. When they can be made cheaply, within perhaps a century, ems will displace humans in most jobs. In this new economic era, the world economy may double in size every few weeks.•

The writer has a timeframe of roughly a century for when his outré vision can be realized. You know me: I always bet the way, way over when it comes to such dizzying visions.

Hanson just conducted an AMA at Reddit on this topic and others. A few exchanges follow.

Question:

I understand how brain emulations could make things cheaper by flooding labour markets, but they will still only be as smart as the brains they were emulated from. Won’t scientific progress still be constrained by the upper limits of human intellect? Is there any way for brain emulations to get smarter than humans? I am aware that they could think faster than humans because they run on computers.

In your talks about brain emulations, you say that biological humans will have to buy assets to make money. Since the economy will grow very quickly with lots of emulated workers, it won’t take very many assets to generate a decent income. You also say that brain emulations will not earn very much money because there will be so many of them that wages will fall to the cost of utilities. Why don’t brain emulations buy assets like humans are supposed to in this future economy, and where are humans supposed to get the wealth to buy assets from since they won’t be able to work?

Robin Hanson:

Eventually, ems will find ways to make their brains smarter. But I’m not sure that will make much difference.

Humans need to buy assets before they lose their ability to earn wages. After is too late.

Question:

If and when Em like entities come into existence do you think society will embrace them be against them and actively try to stop them or will it be a case of “ready or not here I come” and they will force themselves upon us as their emergence will be like evolution?

Robin Hanson:

Most places will probably try to go slow, with commissions, reports, small trials, etc. A few places will let ems go wild, perhaps just due to neglect. Those few places can quickly grow to dominate the world economy. This may induce conflict, but eventually places allowing ems will win. Ems may resent and even retaliate against the places that tried to prevent them or hold them back.

Question:

So in this new economy humans wont actually be getting anymore “stuff” as all the growth will come from demand created by these Em?

Robin Hanson:

Humans will own a big % of the em economy, and use it to buy lots of “stuff” from ems.

Question:

Will we live in a utopia in 100 years?

Robin Hanson:

I don’t think humans are capable of seeing any world, no matter how nice, as “utopia”. We raise our standards and compete for relative status.•

Tags: Robin Hanson

“Who Will Be The Next President?”

June 1, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Although it has a Magic 8 Ball vibe, the artificial hive mind UNU can’t offer vague retorts, so it’s a good thing the “brain of brains,” which operates on a swarm-intelligence principle, fared well with Oscar predictions and nailed the Kentucky Derby Superfecta. Turning its attention to the volatile realm of politics, UNU conducted a Reddit AMA, answering all things Trump, Hillary, Bernie and more. A few exchanges follow.

Question:

Where do you source your swarm intelligence from?

UNU:

UNU is built as an open platform, so anyone can create their own Swarm Intelligence and populate it with people. When UNU predicted the Kentucky Derby and got the Superfecta right, we put an ad on Reddit and asked for volunteers who know about horse racing. We also put ads out on other sources like Amazon.

That said, a totally different group predicted the Trifecta correctly for the Preakness, two weeks after the Kentucky Derby and that one was fielded by a reporter, herself (Hope Reese, TechRepublic). She pulled together her own swarm, made her own predictions, and they more than doubled their money on Preakness day.

So, there’s lots of ways to form a swarm. The one thing that seems to always be true – the swarm will out-perform the individual members. For both the Preakness and Kentucky Derby, for example, none of the individual participants got the prediction right on their own. Only as a swarm did they win.

Question:

How is this different from a real time poll?

UNU:

Since the system relies entirely on human knowledge and even instinct, it’s easy to think of it as a kind of crowdsourcing platform for opinions and intelligence. But according to Rosenberg, UNU doesn’t work like a poll or a survey that finds the average of the opinions in a group. Instead, it creates an artificial swarm that amplifies a group’s intelligence to create its own. For instance, when predicting the Derby winners, the group picked the first four horses accurately to win $11,000 in a grand bet called Superfecta. But individually, when asked to make the same predictions, none of the participants had more than one winning horse.

Question:

Hi UNU, I’ll ask the obvious question. Who will be the next President?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: “Hillary Clinton”

COMMENTARY: This was a difficult decision for UNU, with the swarm highly divided.

Question:

Which of the current running candidates have the best skills suited for president of the United States?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: “Bernie Sanders”

COMMENTARY: UNU was asked to pick among Trump, Clinton, and Sanders and had a preference for Sanders.

Question:

IF Bernie wins the nomination, how would he do against Trump?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: “WIN’S BIG”

COMMENTARY: UNU expressed strong conviction that Bernie Sanders would win big against TRUMP.

Question:

Voter turn out will be driven most by support for a candidate or dislike of a candidate?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: “DISLIKE OF A CANDIDATE”

COMMENTARY: UNU had VERY strong conviction on this point – 100% certainty.

Question:

What are the odds of campaign finance reform during a Clinton presidency (or any upcoming presidency for that matter)?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: 0% CHANCE

COMMENTARY: UNU has strong conviction on this point, expressing little faith that real campaign finance reform will occur.

Question:

Who will Donald Trump pick for Vice President?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: “Chris Christie”

COMMENTARY: UNU has high conviction at the present time, although it’s still very early to make such a pick.

Question:

How similar would Trump be to Ronald Reagan if he won the presidency?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: “NOT SIMILAR AT ALL”

COMMENTARY: UNU expressed high conviction, showing 90% certainty in his answer.•

“Like Many Of Trump’s Evangelical Supporters, Tamara Does Not Mind The Thrice-Married Candidate’s Lurid Tabloid Past”

May 31, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Edward Luce of the Financial Times has done some of the very best writing about America’s shock jock campaign season, in which the eternally insincere Donald Trump, a lower-case insult comic and Reality TV host, a narcissist who manages to steadfastly ignore the many cracks in his mirror, has won the GOP nomination, confounding his own party’s power structure as well as anyone with common sense. The hideous hotelier has carved a surprisingly wide niche by promising to “Make America Great (read: ‘White’) Again,” vowing he can magically bring back manufacturing jobs increasingly handled by robots and make coal cool once more. Those scenarios are as likely as the condo salesman actually reading the Bible he keeps his right hand on when campaigning in evangelical bases.

Luce’s very best piece to date on the topic is his new article about a visit he paid to Buchanan County, the Virginia district that gave Donald Trump his biggest victory percentage-wise in America. In the shadows of the Great Smokies, the mines are dead and dying, not only because of regulation intended to constrain climate change but also because a new era has arrived, which has made many dangerously nostalgic. Problem is, yesterday seldom ever returns and if it does you mostly get only the bad parts.

In the county, Luce encounters 22-year-old nonconformist Daniel Justus, who believes Trump is just the latest opioid to be swallowed by the locals, whom he disagrees with vehemently but loves all the same. He also spends time with Tamara Neo, Trump’s most vocal supporter in the community. An excerpt:

Tamara Neo, Trump’s main cheerleader for the region, certainly sees it that way. Every morning she puts her three children into her Range Rover for the 45-minute drive to a private Christian school across the state border in West Virginia. There is too much godlessness in today’s public schools, she believes. As we drive, Tamara tests her children on the Bible. “John 1, verses 16-18,” she barks into her iPhone’s Siri app. The verses appear on screen. “Now say the verse, Axella,” she says to her daughter, who’s in fifth grade. Axella stumbles over it then yawns. “Again,” says Tamara, until she gets it right. She moves on to Io, her eldest: “Exodus 20, Verse 12,” she says. “Go Io.” Next comes Flux. Then she makes them recite Lincoln’s Gettysburg address — all 278 words of it. She does not stop until they get it right.

With children called Io, Axella and Flux, Tamara betrays her western origins. People in Virginia are conservative with names. Tamara and her husband Flux, also a lawyer, moved here from Colorado 10 years ago because they loved the beauty of the Great Smokies. She ran as commonwealth attorney for Buchanan County — an elected position as chief prosecutor for the area. She lost her re-election in 2010 but not before putting scores of people away for prescription drug-dealing. “In a close-knit community like this, a prosecutor quickly prosecutes herself out of a job,” says Tamara. “You know too many people.” Almost never in her four years on the job did she come across cocaine or even meth. “The epidemic is in prescription pills,” she says. “People will do anything to get hold of them.”

Like many of Trump’s evangelical supporters, Tamara does not mind the thrice-married candidate’s lurid tabloid past. After all, Ronald Reagan had been divorced. “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future,” she says. What most appeals to her about Trump is that he talks without a trace of political correctness. He calls things the way he sees them. Gaffes that would have felled a lesser man — calling illegal Hispanic immigrants “murderers” and “rapists”, for example, or obsessing over supposed slights about the size of his penis — have left Trump unscathed. “He just keeps walking through one fire after another and coming out the other side untouched,” says Tamara. “I take this as a sign.”•

Tags: Edward Luce, Tamara Neo

“The City Will Talk To Us More”

May 31, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Cities are pretty much cities throughout history, and tomorrow’s urban centers won’t differ so greatly physically from today’s in the more obvious ways. There will probably be some new infrastructure to try to deal with rising sea levels and occasionally something like phone booths will come and go, but the buildings will still look like buildings.

The real changes will be more subtle, so quiet you won’t even hear a hum. In the same way driverless cars will carry on “conversations” with one another and all types of gadgets in the cloud, the Internet of Things will allow a city’s skyscrapers and furniture to communicate with its inhabitants and collect endless information about them. Much of that new reality will be beneficial, helping to ease traffic and lower crime, but it will also place all of us inside of a machine with no opt-out button.

In a Curbed interview conducted by Patrick Sissons, MIT’s Carlo Ratti, author of The City of Tomorrow, discusses smart buildings, among other topics. An excerpt:

Question:

One of the topics you discuss in your book is this idea of buildings being more reactive and smart. How interactive will architecture get, and how will it change the look of our cities?

Carlo Ratti:

I think it’ll be very interactive. But overall, the interaction will happen through people; our lives will change a lot, but public space won’t. A city from Roman times doesn’t look terribly different from a city today. The shift is more about how our human life and interactions in the city will change, not the shapes of buildings. That’s where we’ll see a lot of transformation.

Question:

It’s not really as much about infrastructure changes, but how we interact with the infrastructure.

Carlo Ratti:

Yes. The city will talk to us more. We’ll have new buildings, new materials, and more interactive facades, but overall, the key components will remain the same. Buildings are about horizontal floors for living, vertical walls for partitions, facades that protect us from the outside, and windows that give us a view of the outside. They were like that a hundred years ago, and they’ll be there tomorrow and in the future.

Question:

What are some great examples of these new types of buildings and architecture?

Carlo Ratti:

The project we did at the World Expo in Zaragoza, Spain, the Digital Water Pavilion, offered a vision of digital, fluid architecture. Think about a park; there are so many things you can do, between interactive lights and more responsive technology. This coming technological change is like the internet. That transformed so many parts of our lives, and the upcoming Internet of Things will do the same to our environment and cities. For instance, the city of Melbourne successfully developed an “internet of trees,” which allows residents to visualize and map urban forests.. It’s a platform, like an open street map for trees, that will help them grow, monitor, and measure, and help people take care of their parks, and compare them against those of other cities.•

Tags: Carlo Ratti, Patrick Sissons

“None Of This Puts Us In The Realm Of The Gods”

May 31, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, a book of history and speculation, was my favorite read of 2015. He has a follow-up coming later this year, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, which extends the forecasting element of his last, which was probably the most debated section. The hopeful cover line, “What made us sapiens will make us gods,” is offset by dire predictions that AI and automation will lead to a class of people “useless” politically and economically. Harari thinks solutions will have to be found in policy, something that’s true if even part of his prognostications pan out, but in America we’re currently not great at bipartisan problem solving.

From Ian Sample at the Guardian:

AIs do not need more intelligence than humans to transform the job market. They need only enough to do the task well. And that is not far off, Harari says. “Children alive today will face the consequences. Most of what people learn in school or in college will probably be irrelevant by the time they are 40 or 50. If they want to continue to have a job, and to understand the world, and be relevant to what is happening, people will have to reinvent themselves again and again, and faster and faster.”

Even so, jobless humans are not useless humans. In the US alone, 93 million people do not have jobs, but they are still valued. Harari, it turns out, has a specific definition of useless. “I choose this very upsetting term, useless, to highlight the fact that we are talking about useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system, not from a moral viewpoint,” he says. Modern political and economic structures were built on humans being useful to the state: most notably as workers and soldiers, Harari argues. With those roles taken on by machines, our political and economic systems will simply stop attaching much value to humans, he argues.

None of this puts us in the realm of the gods. In fact, it leads Harari to even more bleak predictions. Though the people may no longer provide for the state, the state may still provide for them. “What might be far more difficult is to provide people with meaning, a reason to get up in the morning,” Harari says. For those who don’t cheer at the prospect of a post-work world, satisfaction will be a commodity to pay for: our moods and happiness controlled by drugs; our excitement and emotional attachments found not in the world outside, but in immersive VR.

All of which leads to the question: what should we do?•

Tags: Ian Sample, Yuval Noah Harari

“These Medieval Practices Were Exported To Manhattan”

May 30, 2016 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In our time, the wrong-minded and dangerous anti-vaccination movement has frustrated efforts to control and eradicate a variety of devastating diseases. Historically there have been numerous flies in the ointment that have similarly inhibited efforts to control contagions, from the rise and fall of religions to global exploration to government malfeasance to economic shifts. An interesting passage on the topic from Annie Sparrow’s New York Review of Book‘s piece on Sonia Shah’s Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond:

Shah describes those conditions in “Filth,” a chapter devoted to human excrement. She attributes the decline in sanitation in the Middle Ages to the rise of Christianity. Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and Jews all have built hygiene into their daily rituals, but Christianity is remarkable for its lack of prescribed sanitary practices. Jesus didn’t wash his hands before sitting down to the Last Supper, setting a bad example for centuries of followers. Christians wrongly blamed plague on water, leading to bans on bathhouses and steam-rooms. Sharing homes with livestock was normal and dung disposal a low priority. Toilets took the form of buckets or open defecation. The perfume industry, covering the stink, thrived.

During the seventeenth century, these medieval practices were exported to Manhattan, where wells for drinking water were only thirty feet deep, easily contaminated by the nightly dump of human waste. Nineteenth-century New Yorkers tried to make their water palatable by boiling it into tea and coffee, which killed cholera. But the arrival of tens of thousands of immigrants overwhelmed these weak defenses, and the city succumbed to two devastating cholera epidemics.

Corrupt economic gain, a recurrent theme in the history of cholera, is illustrated by the story of how a powerful Manhattan company—the future JPMorgan again—was established by diverting money from public waterworks to 40 Wall Street. This resulted in half a century of unsafe drinking water as the city abandoned plans to pump clean water from the Bronx and substituted well water from lower Manhattan slums. In a more recent case, the 2008 subprime mortgage collapse fostered by JPMorgan Chase and others in the banking industry left thousands of homes abandoned in South Florida. Their swimming pools of stagnant water provided ideal breeding grounds when Aedes mosquitoes arrived in 2009 carrying dengue fever. In part as a result, this tropical disease is now reestablished in Florida and Texas, transmitted by the same mosquito that carries yellow fever, West Nile, and Zika virus.•

Tags: Annie Sparrow, Sonia Shah

“You Couldn’t Have Two More Extreme Positions”

May 30, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

If and when 3D printers become excellent and cheap and ubiquitous–3D printers printing out more 3D printers-it will be fascinating to see the effect that tool has on manufacturing. Will small start-up car companies become a possibility? Will brands be besieged? Will large corporations be usurped?

It’s worth remembering the rise of the personal computer did not lead to everyone writing their own software. Individuals still deferred to experts. It just made room for new companies to elbow aside yesterday’s giants. 3D printers could operate along the same lines, but my guess is they’ll have a more destabilizing effect. Maybe not for companies that traffic primarily in information but for those that deal in physical products.

In a Singularity Hub article by Jason Dorrier, Deloitte’s John Hagel looks at a couple of possible business scenarios of tomorrow. He believes companies will have to pivot quickly when threatened and individual workers will soon have “freedom and flexibility,” which sound (unintentionally) like Gig Economy euphemisms. An excerpt:

Speaking at Singularity University’s Exponential Manufacturing conference in Boston, Hagel outlined a powerful, decades-long economic trend his group calls the “big shift.”

Hagel believes understanding the big shift is key to navigating an increasingly uncertain economy driven by digital technology, liberalization, and globalization. The question is less about whether the big shift is on and more about where it’s taking us. And according to Hagel, two competing visions vie for our economic future.

“There’s one side of the debate which argues that the impact of all this digital technology is to fragment everything,” Hagel says. “We’re all going to become free agents—independent contractors will loosely affiliate when we need to around specific projects. But basically, companies are dinosaurs. We’re going to fragment down to the individual. The gig economy to the max. That’s one side.”

Another view, Hagel says, suggests we’re moving toward a winner-take-all economy in which network effects enable a few organizations—the Googles or Facebooks of the world—to capture most of the wealth while everyone else is marginalized.

“You couldn’t have two more extreme positions,” Hagel said. “Which one is right?”•

Tags: Jason Dorrier, John Hagel

“We See It In Smaller Groups And Take Away Different Memories”

May 30, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

The 1970s miniseries Roots, for all its limitations and compromises, awakened many white Americans, at least for awhile and perhaps longer for some, to one of the country’s bitterest truths, to the sins of our forefathers and to our perpetuation of those historical wrongs in myriad lower-case ways. It made heroes of slaves, reveled in their cleverness, and encouraged people who committed acts of casual racism in day-to-day life to look again with fresh eyes.

Not to say the TV show won the hearts and minds of KKK members, but for blue-collar people like my own relations, it was an epiphany. In a three-network world, the whole country seemed to be in it together–the watching of the show and the experience of coming to terms with who we really were. The program offered no solutions (nor could it) but made “Chicken George” seem like a member of every U.S. family, which, of course, he was. African-Americans I’ve discussed the show with have mixed feelings about it, but it was the impetus for the broad interest in the ancestral roots of people who had been violently torn from one ground and crudely replanted in another. History could no longer be denied by anyone who cared about the truth, though that population is never what you hope it would be.

In the spiky moment of our current political landscape, Roots has been rebooted, which is still sadly necessary. Maybe Chris Rock is right: The Tea Party mentality which disqualified our first African-American President and seeks to replace him with an orange supremacist could be just rage against the dying of the light, the death rattle of deep-seated racism in the country. But the ill feelings that drives such awfulness seems embedded in humans whether expressed in connection to color or nation or gender or what have you. There’s something inside us that dreams of being supreme, which can create nightmares for others. In that sense, there’s a Roots to be made for every age.

James Poniewozik’s wonderfully written New York Times review of Roots redux has a great passage near the end explaining why this iteration won’t have the collective wallop of the original. The excerpt:

Overall, the remake, whose producers include Mr. Burton and Mark M. Wolper (whose father, David L. Wolper, produced the original “Roots”), ably polishes the story for a new audience that might find the old production dated and slow. What it can’t do, because nothing can now, is command that audience.

As homogeneous as the old-school, three-network TV system could be, as many faces as it left out, Roots was an example of what it could do at its best. I watched it when I was 8 years old because it was all anyone was talking about, including the kids in my mostly white small-town school. A generation of viewers — whatever we looked like, wherever we came from, wherever we ended up — carried the memory of Kunta having his name beaten out of him.

Viewers will have to seek out this Roots, like every program now. Today’s universe of channels and streaming outlets presents a much wider range of identity and experience. But we see it in smaller groups and take away different memories.

That’s not the fault of Roots, of course; it’s simply our media world.•

Tags: James Poniewozik

“Silicon Valley’s Power Brokers Should Not Get Involved”

May 29, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

It’s been said by some economists that widening wealth inequality is unimportant if everyone is getting somewhat richer. I’ve never agreed. That much money concentrated at the very upper region of a society will come back to haunt, in the form of undue political power or in other ways. The Libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel insinuating himself in the Gawker-Hulk Hogan trial is just such a case in point.

If you’d told me five years ago that Gawker might go under because it needlessly published a Hulk Hogan sex tape, I would have thought, Yes, that sounds about right. A dicey if occasionally righteous publication from the start, the site had come to house a few too many immature, prurient, destructive employees. They chose their fights stupidly, myopically, maybe fatally.

That seemed to be the end of the story: Hulk Hogan is dumb, and Gawker even dumber, somehow making him seem sympathetic. That’s not how it had to be. If the site had leaked just the part of the video in which the former professional wrestler made his ugly racist remarks, the company would have been widely supported. But Gawker being Gawker, it pointlessly aimed for the crotch. End of story, it seemed.

But then it was revealed that Thiel had been quietly bankrolling the Hogan suit, trying to use his endless cash to put the publication out of business as part of a personal vendetta. It’s a chilling action, one that creates a template for the megarich to cow our press, a bloodless analogue to Russian plutocrats “relieving” journalists of their duties. It’s even worse behavior than Thiel being a delegate for a bigoted, xenophobic horror like Donald Trump, who has himself threatened to curb the powers of the press should he become President. If the country is guided by the thin skin of the super-rich rather than the parchment of the Constitution, we’re not exactly America.

In the Washington Post, Vivek Wadhwa writes of Thiel’s wrongheaded gambit and Silicon Valley’s general resistance to media scrutiny. The opening:

Gawker infringes on privacy and publishes tabloid-like stories that damage reputations. It is one of the most sensationalist and objectionable media outlets in the country. It also has not been kind to me. So it’s not a company that I would expect to be defending. But I worry that the battle that billionaire Peter Thiel has clandestinely been waging against it will be damaging to Silicon Valley by furthering distrust of its motives.

For better or worse, Gawker is entitled to the same freedom as any other news outlet. If it crosses the line, as it likely did with wrestler Hulk Hogan, the courts should deal with it. Silicon Valley’s power brokers should not get involved because they have access to resources that rival those of governments. They can outspend any other entity and manipulate public opinion.

Silicon Valley has more than an unfair advantage; its technologies exceed anything that the titans of the industrial age had. These technologies were built on the trust of the public — and that is needed for an industry that asks customers to share with them with literally every part of their lives. This enormous influence should come with restraint and an understanding that those with power will be scrutinized — sometimes unfairly and unjustly.•

Tags: Peter Thiel, Vivek Wadhwa

“A Sense Of Paranoia Is Growing Among His Campaign Staff Members”

May 27, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Donald Trump, Chairman Mao with a Big Mac, celebrated his GOP nomination by shoveling heart-clogging comfort food into his Sad Clown face, but winning can’t placate a truly miserable person for more than a few minutes. Despite the victory, the candidate’s inner circle is engaged in a Hunger Games-esque contest for power within the campaign while fearing conspiracy from the outside. The ugliness has taken on the paranoia of a cult, not surprising for a campaign based on Identity Politics ugly enough to make Mussolini blush.

From Ashley Parker and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times:

BISMARCK, N.D. — A constant stream of changes and scuffles are roiling Donald J. Trump’s campaign team, including the abrupt dismissal this week of his national political director.

A sense of paranoia is growing among his campaign staff members, including some who have told associates they believe that their Trump Tower offices may be bugged.

And there is confusion among his donors, who want to give money to a “super PAC” supporting Mr. Trump, but have received conflicting signals from top aides about which one to support.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump secured the Republican P arty’s nomination for president, a remarkable achievement for a political newcomer. But inside his campaign, the limits of the real estate mogul’s managerial style — reliant on his gut and built around his unpredictable personality — are vividly on display, according to interviews with nearly a dozen Republicans inside and outside of the operation.

Two months after assurances that was the candidate would become “more presidential” and transition to a more unifying phase of his campaign, Mr. Trump continues to act as if the primary is still underway.•

Tags: Ashley Parker, Donald Trump, Maggie Haberman

“So, In Brief, What Went Wrong?”

May 27, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

I’m an atheist, but I’m not religious about it. Not like Richard Dawkins or Bill Maher or Penn Jillette. They’re truly devout, trying to proselytize those who lack their faith. I don’t think you’ll go to hell if you believe in God.

Spending time arguing there’s no supreme being reminds me of when John Stossel did a 20/20 investigative report to prove that professional wrestling was fake. Um, yes, thanks for the memo.

While the righteous point out that religion has been used to sanctify many an atrocity, it’s just one such tool, easily replaced by nationalism or racism or many other -isms. Evangelicals embracing Donald Trump tells us their beliefs might have more to do with a skin color than a holy spirit.

Sure, as an American, I’d prefer to live in a country in which no one tried to overlap church and state, but, like Miniver Cheevy, I was born too late. The United States was founded (partly) on booting God from the halls of power–throw the bum out!–but over time religion proved a barnacle attached to the hull of the Mayflower. It just wouldn’t let go and now Jesus is supposedly worried about laws that guarantee Transgender people can use a toilet or gay people order a wedding cake or women acquire birth control pills. It’s enough to make me understand Dawkins’ high-decibel output, though I wish he, and everyone else, could embrace a practical brand of rationalism.

Secularists are the most impressive voting bloc in America that’s never appealed to by any politician running for office. They need to organize and demand fair representation. You’ll put a Bible in my cold, dead hands.

Angry so-called originalists often say we’ve lost touch with the Constitution, that the Founding Fathers would not have approved of us forgetting our Christian beginnings. But it was George Washington himself who said that the “government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion.” Those words most accurately express our origins. We were bathed in heresy long before we were baptized. How did we get here from there?

In “American Secular,” Sam Haselby’s excellent Aeon essay, the writer wonders how and why we drove ourselves back into the Garden, a far thornier place than we recalled. He says: “Political life is where American secularism ran into a wall: the simple problem was its unpopularity.” Even George Washington himself, Haselby points out, demonstrated conflicted feelings on the topic. Slavery and the Southern plantation economy also proved foes of secularism. The opening:

In the beginning was the thing, and the thing was against God. So might begin the gospel of American secularism. The sudden flourish of secularism at the time of the United States’ foundation is incongruous, a rogue wave of rationality in a centuries-long sea of Protestant evangelising, sectarianism and God-talk. But it is undeniable. In 1788, with the adoption of its Constitution, the United States became the first modern republic founded on a legal separation of church and state. In a country that holds sacred the intentions of its revolutionary-era founders, those founders’ secular ambitions are clear. Thomas Jefferson wrote a book, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, to try to prove that Jesus was not Christ, that the man was not the son of God. Around the world, his pithy expression ‘a wall of separation between church and state’ continues to represent a particular secular ideal of separating religious and political power.

James Madison, the primary author of the US Constitution, was an even more rigorous and consistent, if less poetic, secularist. On grounds of what he called ‘pure religious freedom’, Madison opposed military and congressional chaplains, believing that they amounted to government sponsorship of religion. Every step short of this ‘pure religious freedom’, he wrote, would ‘leave crevices at least thro’ which bigotry may introduce persecution; a monster… feeding & thriving on its own venom’.

So, in brief, what went wrong? How did the country founded by visionary secularists, and that made historic advances in both religious freedom and the separation of religious and political powers, nonetheless become the world’s most religious political democracy? Understanding secularism better helps to answer the question. Secularism is not one simple thing; it has distinct theological, philosophical and political lives. Its theological and philosophical versions are formed from simple, if explosive, ideas. In its political guise, ideas are less important than institutions, and it is on the shoals of institution-building that American secularism wrecked.•

Tags: Sam Haselby

“What Appears At First Utopian Has More Than A Hint Of The Ominous”

May 26, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Anyone who lived through the horrors of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy may have glimpsed the future.

Pre-airplane urban centers were traditionally placed on coastlines to be convenient trade-route stops for ships and boats. That was before climate change made living near the water very inconvenient. Moving forward, we’ll have to reinvent our cities to survive what we’ve wrought, especially the ones that might drown. That reality has become even more pressing over the last couple of decades as China’s radically urbanized its population, placing it in the mouth of the whale.

In a wonderfully written Guardian piece, Darran Anderson addresses the challenges ahead, including rising sea levels and other modern problems. Floating cities? Walking cities? Everything should be on the table. The opening:

Amid the much-mythologised graffiti that appeared around Sorbonne University during the French civil unrest in May 1968, one line still stands out as intriguing and ambiguous: “The future will only contain what we put into it now.”

What appears at first utopian has more than a hint of the ominous. While augmented reality creates a city individualised for every occupant, and developments in modular architecture and nanotechnology might result in rooms that change form and function at a whim, the problem lies in the unforeseen. The smart city will also be the surveillance city.

For the moment, we remain largely wedded to superficial visual futures. The likelihood is that the prevailing chrome and chlorophyll vision of architects and urbanists will become as much an enticing, but outdated, fashion as the Raygun Gothic of The Jetsons or the cyberpunk of Blade Runner. Rather than a sudden leap into dazzling space age-style cityscapes, innovations will unfold in real-time – and so too will catastrophes. The very enormity of what cities face seems beyond the realms of believability, and encourages postponement and denial.

“Survivability” should be added to urban buzzwords like connectivity and sustainability. Three quarters of all major metropolises lie on the coastline.•

Tags: Darran Anderson

“The Deal Has Abandoned Them”

May 26, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Capitalism is a pretty sticky thing. People like owning, buying and selling, or at least have convinced themselves they do. Key to such a system is, of course, having plentiful jobs paying a living wage, which has been less and less true in America over the last four decades. Every now and then there’s a green shoot, but the arrow overall has pointed down. Thanks to political dysfunction on an epic scale, even a relatively short-term bandage like infrastructure investment has been kept in the medicine cabinet.

It’s not easy to see a long-term solution to AI and robotics disappearing millions and millions of positions. Automation may be our friend in the aggregate, but that doesn’t help those left behind to pay the mortgage. Maybe new industries reliant on humans will emerge, work we can’t yet imagine, but it would seem we’re in for a huge transition this century. How much of a role will capitalism play in this new normal? That’s TBD. I don’t think it’s disappearing, but it is poised for a reinvention.

Not everyone agrees, however. In the same vein as Paul Mason’s writing, Paul Rosenberg has penned the Free-Man’s Perspective post “The System Won’t Survive the Robots.” The writer sees no possible transition within the current system from the way things have been to the way they will be. He believes it will be a break, though not likely a clean one. An excerpt:

We All Know the Deal

We usually don’t discuss what the “working man’s deal” is, but we know it just the same. It goes like this:

If you obey authority and support the system, you’ll be able to get a decent job. And if you work hard at your job, you’ll be able to buy a house and raise a small family.

This is what we were taught in school and on TV. It’s the deal our parents and grandparents clung to, and it’s even a fairly open deal. You can fight for the political faction of your choice and you can hold any number of religious and secular alliances, just as long as you stay loyal to the system overall.

This deal has been glamorized in many ways, such as, “Our children will be better off than we are,” “home ownership for everyone,” and of course, “the American Dream.” Except that it isn’t working anymore, or at least it isn’t working well enough.

Among current 20- and 30-year-olds, only about half are able to grasp the deal’s promises. That half is working like crazy, putting up with malignant corporatism and trying to keep ahead of the curve. The other half is dejected and discouraged, taking student loans to chase degrees (there’s more status in that than working at McDonald’s), or else they’re pacified with government handouts and distracted by Facebook.

The deal is plainly unavailable to about half of the young generation, but as I noted above, hope dies slowly and young people raised on promises are still waiting for the deal to kick in. It’s all they know.

Regardless, the deal has abandoned them. It has made them superfluous.•

Tags: Paul Rosenberg

Old Print Article: Willy Ley Encourages America To Use Mail Rockets, Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1935)

May 25, 2016 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Wernher von Braun, center, with Willy Ley, right, in 1954.

Ley with daughter Xenia at the Hayden Planetarium, 1957.

The top photograph offers an odd juxtaposition: That’s Wernher von Braun, a rocketeer who was a hands-on part of Hitler’s mad plan, whose horrid past was whitewashed by the U.S. government (here and here) because he could help America get a man on the moon; and Willy Ley, a German science writer and space-travel visionary who fled the Third Reich in 1935.

A cosmopolitan in an age before globalization, Ley only wanted to share science around the world and encourage humans into space and onto the moon. He knew early on Nazism was madness leading to mass graves, not space stations. When Ley arrived in America for a supposed seven-month visit by using falsified documents to escape Germany, he worked a bit on an odd rocket-related program: Ley led an effort to use missiles to deliver mail. It was a long way to go to get postcards from point A to point B, and an early attempt failed much to the chagrin of Ley, who donned a spiffy asbestos suit for the blast-off. An article on the plan’s genesis ran in the February 21, 1935 Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

“Bits Drive The New Economy”

May 25, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

According to the Economist, the narrative of Donald Trump as avenging agent of white working-class Americans left behind by globalization and technology is a seriously overstated myth. The great majority of his supporters, the magazine reports, are doing quite well. My best guess is the well-to-do ones are likely drawn to the hideous hotelier by Identity Politics or racial bias.

In a Newsweek piece, “Trump Revolution Rooted in Resentment of Technology,” Kevin Maney relies on other reports that conversely name a lack of college degree the surest indicator of a Trump follower. The columnist argues that our economy is currently one of Atoms vs. Bits, which means a battle between a declining industrial sector and an ascendant information one. The Atoms, Maney writes, are the truckers, factory workers and other laborers raging against the dying of the light.His theory is an oversimplification as any broadly drawn one is, but it’s hard to deny the societal transformation we’re now experiencing.

Which idea about Team Trump is more correct? Both are probably true enough to be troubling in their own ways, as the rise of the current hate-filled nationalism knows many parents.

Maney’s opening:

We’ve got two Americas now: Atoms America and Bits America.

People used to worry about a digital divide. Well, that’s now looking more like the border between North Korea and South Korea—tense and bristling with pointed missiles, one nervous misunderstanding away from mayhem. This new dynamic is evident in everything from the transgender bathroom laws in the South to proposals from Silicon Valley to institute basic income for all the people technology is going to throw out of work.

And while we’re at it, let’s include the 2016 presidential election, which is really all about Atoms vs. Bits.

Twenty years ago, Nicholas Negroponte, then head of the MIT Media Lab, wrote about the changing relationship between atoms and bits in his book Being Digital. Atoms make up physical stuff. Bits are digital. As Negroponte presciently pointed out, atoms represent the old economy of manufacturing and trucks and retail stores and, as it turns out, a lot of middle-class work. Bits drive the new economy—which today includes mobile apps, social networks, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, 3-D printing and other technologies that are eating the old economy.

Atoms America is getting poorer and angrier. Bits America pretty much rules the global economy and churns out billionaires.

Atoms America wants to “make America great again” because reclaiming the past seems a hell of a lot better than whatever the future holds. Bits America patronizingly believes that the Atoms people would be fine, at least in the short run, if they would only take some Khan Academy courses and learn to code.•

Tags: Kevin Maney

“Apple Is Expected To Gain Access To Highly Valuable Data”

May 25, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

China and Apple have risen to new heights simultaneously, and that’s not completely a coincidence. Steve Jobs’ products were manufactured in Foxconn factories and sold for prices that would have been impossible had they been made in a more developed country like, say, America. While the Chinese couldn’t afford the products initially and settled for knockoffs, during the Tim Cook era they’ve embraced the genuine iPhone with both hands.

Apple’s recent announcement that it would invest $1 billion in a Chinese ride-hailing company may have seemed odd on the surface, but down below it was an investment in driverless, Chinese markets and, ultimately, markets all over the world. Whether the wager pays off is years from being known, but it is an informed gamble.

From Brian Fung at the Washington Post:

Apple’s backing of the ride-hailing company makes sense for a host of reasons. The blossoming partnership could insulate the U.S. tech giant from a global slowdown in iPhone sales. It may lead to even greater visibility for Apple in China, something it has spent years pursuing even as the country has frustrated other foreign tech companies. And the deal could help Apple understand how to build better online services, an area where the company has had mixed success but is increasingly exploring with ventures such as Apple Pay and Apple Music. (Besides, the vast majority of Apple’s $233 billion in cash and securities is parked overseas. Investing that money in the United States would come with a hefty tax bill.)

Through the deal, Apple is expected to gain access to highly valuable data on the 11 million trips a day made through Didi. That information will be immensely useful, not only for Apple’s traditional business selling phones and computers in China, but also for its attempts to design a vehicle that could someday appeal to drivers around the world, analysts say.

“This valuable data is critical to all manufacturers interested in developing a fully autonomous future,” said Tony Lim, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book. “The learnings from China can be applied here in the U.S. and other industrialized nations.”•

Tags: Brian Fung, Tony Lim

“You Scan Their Brains And You Get Robots That To All Intents And Purposes Are Indivisible From The Humans”

May 24, 2016 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

My near-term concerns about Labor have nothing to do with jobs being handed over to robots powered by brain scans of the greatest geniuses among our species. It may seem thin gruel by comparison, but Weak AI (driverless cars, delivery drones, robot bellhops, etc.) can do plenty to destabilize society. Not only are jobs traditionally filled by humans to disappear but entire industries will rise and fall with dizzying speed. In the aggregate, this transition could be a good thing, with the resulting challenge being we need to find an answer not for scarcity but distribution.

The futuristic scenario I presented at the opening comes from the pages of The Age of Ems: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth, a speculative book by Robin Hanson, who often seems to be mid-chug on a sci-fi bender at Chalmun’s Cantina. The author feels AI is evolving too slowly in its march toward intelligent machines but his scanning scheme is close to reality. Whatever scenario is realized to bring about superintelligence, however, Hanson believes the sea change is coming very soon and everyone will be caught in its waves. In the very long run, anything is possible, but I’m not too anxious over his theory, though I plan on reading the title.

Pivoting off Hanson’s new volume, Zoe Williams has written a thoughtful Guardian piece about fashioning a stable and fair society if work is offloaded to Ems, AIs or WTFs. An excerpt:

Robin Hanson thinks the robot takeover, when it comes, will be in the form of emulations. In his new book, The Age of Em, the economist explains: you take the best and brightest 200 human beings on the planet, you scan their brains and you get robots that to all intents and purposes are indivisible from the humans on which they are based, except a thousand times faster and better.

For some reason, conversationally, Hanson repeatedly calls these 200 human prototypes “the billionaires”, even though having a billion in any currency would be strong evidence against your being the brightest, since you have no sense of how much is enough. But that’s just a natural difference of opinion between an economist and a mediocre person who is now afraid of the future.

These Ems, being superior at everything and having no material needs that couldn’t be satisfied virtually, will undercut humans in the labour market, and render us totally unnecessary. We will all effectively be retired. Whether or not we are put out to a pleasant pasture or brutally exterminated will depend upon how we behave towards the Ems at their incipience.

When Hanson presents his forecast in public, one question always comes up: what’s to stop the Ems killing us off? “Well, why don’t we exterminate retirees at the moment?” he asks, rhetorically, before answering: some combination of gratitude, empathy and affection between individuals, which the Ems, being modelled on us precisely, will share (unless we use real billionaires for the model).•

Tags: Robin Hanson, Zoe Williams

“Much Of This Has To Do With One Man”

May 24, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

One person can make a big difference, which can be a good or bad thing.

St. Louis has become an unlikely world capital of chess thanks to the constant urging and philanthropy of Rex Sinquefield, who was raised in an orphanage after his father’s death and grew fabulously wealthy via index funds. His largesse extends beyond the cerebral game of kings and pawns, however, as the megarich Missouri man has also poured millions into promoting a staunch right-wing economic agenda. To some he’s a hero and to others a mixed blessing.

From David Edmonds at BBC News:

Much of this has to do with one man. Rex Sinquefield, a grey-haired man in his early 70s, is sitting in the audience watching the US Chess Championship. He’s in his shorts, wearing a baseball cap, and fuelling his concentration with glass after glass of Diet Coke. Sinquefield is a rich man, and he likes chess. He likes it so much he’s put tens of millions of dollars into the game. No, he’s not partially responsible for the renaissance in American chess, former US champion Yasser Seirawan corrects me – he’s entirely responsible.

The scale of Sinquefield’s wealth is unknown. He claims, a bit implausibly, that he himself has no idea. Unlike other super-rich, he’s not one to brag about his bank account, though it’s widely assumed he’s a billionaire. The money comes from a career in finance – he created some of the first index funds, funds that are cheap to run because they simply track the performance of a stock-market index.

In Missouri, Rex is a deeply contentious figure, a looming giant of local politics -Tyrannosaurus Rex, he’s been called. He pushes a radical free-market agenda and wants to abolish the state income tax. He’s funded right-wing think tanks and backed selected candidates to the tune of $40m (£28m) – no-one in the state has ever given more. Missouri is the only state in the United States which has no limits to campaign donations, a freedom Sinquefield has exploited to the full. Laura Swinford of Progress Missouri, an advocacy organisation, believes his power in politics is pernicious: “I think we would all throw ticker-tape parades down the centre of the city if he would only focus on chess and his charitable donations,” she says.

But Sinquefield says his political donations are small change compared to the sums he has spent on chess and other charities.•

Tags: Rex Sinquefield

“They Want To Be The First City In The World To Embrace Autonomous Driving”

May 23, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

China’s authoritarianism is an existential risk politically, though it does have some short-term benefits. Case in point: A top-down plan being overseen by Baidu is insinuating autonomous technology in Wuhu, aiming over a five-year stretch to turn it into the world’s first driverless city. More accurately, at the end of that term, robocars and human-driven ones are to share the road, the way horse-drawn and machine cars did for a spell more than a century ago. If it can work in Wahu, it will be possible anywhere.

From BBC Technology:

Chinese hi-tech firm Baidu has unveiled a plan to let driverless vehicles range freely around an entire city.

The five-year plan will see the autonomous cars, vans and buses slowly introduced to the eastern city of Wuhu.

Initially no passengers will be carried by the vehicles as the technology to control them is refined via journeys along designated test zones.

Eventually the test areas will be expanded and passengers will be able to use the vehicles.

“They want to be the first city in the world to embrace autonomous driving,” said Wang Jing, Baidu’s head of driverless cars, in an interview with the BBC’s Click programme.

“This is the first city that is brave enough, daring enough and innovative enough to test autonomous driving,” he said.•

Tags: Wang Jing

“North Korea Now Has A 1 Percent”

May 20, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Even in Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian state there are haves and have-nots who experience wildly different lifestyles. In the midst of the politically driven arrests and murders, military parades and nuclear threats, there exists a class of super rich kids familiar with squash courts, high-end shopping and fine dining. “Pyonghattan,” it’s called, this sphere of Western-ish consumerist living, which is, of course, just a drop in the bucket when compared to the irresponsible splurges of the Rodman-wrangling “Outstanding Leader.” Still weird, though.

From Anna Fifield at the Washington Post:

PYONGYANG, North Korea — They like fast fashion from Zara and H&M. They work out to be seen as much as to exercise. They drink cappuccinos to show how cosmopolitan they are. Some have had their eyelids done to make them look more Western.

North Korea now has a 1 percent. And you’ll find them in“Pyonghattan,” the parallel universe inhabited by the rich kids of the Democratic People’s Republic.

“We’re supposed to dress conservatively in North Korea, so people like going to the gym so they can show off their bodies, show some skin,” said Lee Seo-hyeon, a 24-year-old who was, until 18 months ago, part of Pyongyang’s brat pack.

Women like to wear leggings and tight tops — Elle is the most popular brand among women, while men prefer Adidas and Nike — she said. When young people go to China, they travel armed with shopping lists from their friends for workout gear.

At a leisure complex next to the bowling alley in the middle of Pyongyang, they run on the treadmills, which show Disney cartoons on the monitors, or do yoga.•

Tags: Anna Fifield, Kim Jong-un

“This Book May Have Shaped My Outlook More Than Any Other”

May 20, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

It’s funny Bill Gates is such a big fan of The Great Gatsby since F. Scott Fitzgerald was responsible for the line, “There are no second acts in America,” a very quotable and completely ludicrous uttering, silly especially in the case of the Microsoft founder, who it could be argued has had the best second act of any notable U.S. citizen.

In his earlier incarnation as a cutthroat software mogul, Gates was an a-hole. No way around it. His business practices were dicey from the start and his personal behavior detestable. You can’t take from him all he accomplished with Microsoft, but it was definitely done with poor form, for all the riches.

The sweater-clad, avuncular 2.0 Gates, the one who is eradicating disease and building the future along with his wife, Melinda, is a revelation, however, a wonder. He could have collected cars and sports franchises, rested on his laurels. Instead he chose to direct his analytical abilities to directly reduce the suffering of so many.

Gatsby is among his selections for Gates’ “My 10 Favorite Books” entry at T Magazine, which also includes my favorite title of 2015, Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens. Excerpts of the four books I’ve also read:

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari

This look at the entire history of the human race sparked lots of great conversations at our family’s dinner table. Harari also writes about our species today and how artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and other technologies will change us in the future.

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street, John Brooks

Warren Buffett gave me this fantastic collection of articles that Brooks wrote for The New Yorker. Although Brooks was writing in the 1960s, his insights are timeless and a reminder that the rules for running a great company don’t change. I read it more than two decades ago, and it’s still my pick for the best business book ever.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

The novel that I reread the most. Melinda and I love one line so much that we had it painted on a wall in our house: “His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.”

The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker

Proof that the world is becoming more peaceful. It’s not just a question for historians, but a profound statement about human nature and the possibility for a better future. This book may have shaped my outlook more than any other.•

Tags: Bill Gates

“A Baby Born In The West Today Will More Likely Than Not Live To Be 105”

May 20, 2016 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Came across a Vanity Fair article yesterday about Olivia de Havilland, who is still alive at 99 and living in Paris, where she’s resided for the past 61 years. Funny that, according to the piece, she grew disenchanted with Hollywood in particular and America in general in the 1950s because television’s emergence was making people stay home and ruining social life. The explosion of TV (and near-TV) content today and the many ways to watch it seems to me to have done even worse damage to NYC. People binge-watch programs here the same way as everywhere else and the landscape seems flatter. It’s like Disneyland for tourists, but many of the best characters stay inside their homes.

In a slightly related vein: While I was shocked to read that the Gone with the Wind actress is still alive, to become a centenarian if she makes it just another six weeks, Simon Kuper of the Financial Times writes that some researchers believe 105 is a conservative estimate for the average lifespan for those born in the West today. A lot can happen between now and then–pandemic, asteroid, climate disaster–but it’s worth considering, if conditions hold relatively steady, how life will change when ten decades becomes routine. Certainly career and education will be altered dramatically, even more so since technology is currently destabilizing both sectors.

Kuper’s opening:

A baby born in the west today will more likely than not live to be 105, write Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott of London Business School in their crucial new book, The 100-Year Life. That may sound like science fiction. In fact, it’s only cautiously optimistic. It’s what will happen if life expectancy continues to rise by two to three years a decade, its rate of the past two centuries. Some scientific optimists project steeper rises to come.

If turning 100 becomes normal, then the authors predict “a fundamental redesign of life.” This book shows what that might look like.

We currently live what Gratton and Scott call “the three-stage life”: education, career, then retirement. That will change. The book calculates that if today’s children want to retire on liveable pensions, they will need to work until about age 80. That would be a return to the past: in 1880, nearly half of 80-year-old Americans did some kind of work.

But few people will be able to bear the exhaustion and tedium of a 55-year career in a single sector. Anyway, technological changes would make their education obsolete long before they reached 80. The new life-path will therefore have more than three stages. Many people today are already shuffling in that direction.•

Tags: Andrew Scott, Lynda Gratton, Simon Kuper

“The Entire Trump Phenomenon Has Nothing To Do With Policy Or Ideology”

May 19, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

My argument throughout the worst political season in modern U.S. history has been that as desperate as many Americans may be in the aftermath of the 2008 economic collapse, the rise of Trump has less to do with the fear of falling than the fear of other. From the first crude utterances about Mexicans during his campaign announcement in June, the hideous hotelier been selling an embrace of white privilege, an angry rebuttal to the election of our first African-American President. The methods and madness behind realizing this promise of making American white again change daily–only the supremacy is consistent. When Trump encouraged Mitt Romney in 2012 to attack Obama with the racist Birther garbage, he clearly wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Perhaps Thomas Frank and others believe that if only Kansans had been whispered to just so that none of this would have happened, but the hate speech Trump offers seems to be precisely what a surprising number of Americans want to hear.

The opening of “This Is How Fascism Comes to America,” Robert Kagan’s blistering Washington Post editorial:

The Republican Party’s attempt to treat Donald Trump as a normal political candidate would be laughable were it not so perilous to the republic. If only he would mouth the party’s “conservative” principles, all would be well.

But of course the entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or ideology. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its historic role as incubator of this singular threat to our democracy. Trump has transcended the party that produced him. His growing army of supporters no longer cares about the party. Because it did not immediately and fully embrace Trump, because a dwindling number of its political and intellectual leaders still resist him, the party is regarded with suspicion and even hostility by his followers. Their allegiance is to him and him alone.

And the source of allegiance? We’re supposed to believe that Trump’s support stems from economic stagnation or dislocation. Maybe some of it does. But what Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies — his proposals change daily. What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.•

Tags: Donald Trump, Robert Kagan

“This Is No Movie Prop”

May 19, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

It’s not that Uber shouldn’t switch to driverless vehicles when that technology is perfected, but the company shouldn’t simultaneously be selling themselves as a panacea for a tough employment market, using everyone from military veterans to the murdered Eric Garner to sell such nonsense. When not touting his company as a savior for those squeezed from a shifting job market, Travis Kalanick has spoken out fo the other side of his mouth about wanting to replace every Uber driver. He’s welcome to speak about how autonomous cars will be good for the environment and safety and costs–they likely will be–but he shouldn’t be trying to soft-pedal the effect it will have on Labor.

From Uber’s latest release on its driverless initiative:

If you’re driving around Pittsburgh in the coming weeks you might see a strange sight: a car that looks like it should be driven by a superhero. But this is no movie prop — it’s a test car from Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center (ATC) in Pittsburgh.

The car, a hybrid Ford Fusion, will be collecting mapping data as well as testing its self-driving capabilities. When it’s in self-driving mode, a trained driver will be in the driver’s seat monitoring operations. The Uber ATC car comes outfitted with a variety of sensors including radars, laser scanners, and high resolution cameras to map details of the environment.

Real-world testing is critical to our efforts to develop self-driving technology. Self-driving cars have the potential to save millions of lives and improve quality of life for people around the world. 1.3 million people die every year in car accidents — 94% of those accidents involve human error. In the future we believe this technology will mean less congestion, more affordable and accessible transportation, and far fewer lives lost in car accidents. These goals are at the heart of Uber’s mission to make transportation as reliable as running water — everywhere and for everyone.

While Uber is still in the early days of our self-driving efforts, every day of testing leads to improvements. Right now we’re focused on getting the technology right and ensuring it’s safe for everyone on the road — pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers. We’ve informed local officials and law enforcement about our testing in Pittsburgh, and our work would not be possible without the support we’ve received from the region’s leaders.•

Tags: Travis Kalanick

“Some Of Star Trek’s Blissful Vision Of Society Has Already Come To Pass”

May 18, 2016 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Even a non-Trekkie, non-TV-watching person like myself has fully absorbed the program’s ideas, so fully have they immersed themselves in the culture. Beyond the sheer entertainment of the Enterprise lies, of course, a colorblind society that during the days of Gene Roddenberry could only seem realistic in space. Imperfect though we still are, we’ve moved closer to realizing this world ever since the original Star Trek iteration debuted in 1966.

Another less talked about aspect of the sci-fi show is that it exists in a post-scarcity world. There are still challenges and obstacles, but basic needs are universally met. Manu Saadia, author of the soon-to-be-published Trekonomics, argues in a Money article that for all the very real concerns about wealth inequality, we may be closer than we think to achieving such a system.

An excerpt:

In Star Trek’s hypothetical society — the Federation — poverty, greed and want no longer exist. Most goods are made for free by robots known as replicators. The obligation to work has been abolished. Work has become an exploration of one’s abilities. The people of Star Trek have solved what British economist John Maynard Keynes pithily called “the economic problem,” that is, the necessity for individuals and societies to allocate scarce goods and resources. They live secure in the knowledge that all needs will be fulfilled and free from the tyranny of base economic pursuits.

The replicator is the keystone of Star Trek’s cornucopia. It’s a Santa Claus machine that can produce anything upon request: foods, beverages, knick-knacks, and tools. Like Captain Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation, you merely have to ask for “tea, Earl Grey, hot,” and the machine will make your beverage appear out of thin air with a satisfying, tingling visual effect.

The replicator is the perfect, and therefore last, machine. You cannot improve upon it. You ask and it makes. This signals that Star Trek speaks to us from the other side of the industrial revolution. The historical process by which machines enhance and replace human labor has reached its conclusion. …

The replicator is a public good, available to all for free. In the show’s universe, the decision was made to distribute the fruits of progress among all members of society. Abundance is a political choice as much as the end result of technological innovation. And to underscore that point, Star Trek goes so far as to feature alien societies where replicators’ services aren’t free.

To a 21st century audience, beset by growing inequality and a sense of dread in the face of coming automation, such a world seems entirely out of reach. We will probably never go where no one has gone before, nor will we ever meet alien Vulcans.

But some of Star Trek’s blissful vision of society has already come to pass.•

Tags: Manu Saadia

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