Politics

You are currently browsing the archive for the Politics category.

“My Dream Would Be To Fly To The Moon And Build Permanent Structures”

June 19, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Olaf Stampf, who always conducts smart interviews for Spiegel, has a Q&A with Johann-Dietrich Wörner, the new general director of the European Space Agency. Two quick excerpts follow, one about a moon colony and the other about the potential of a manned Mars voyage.

______________________________

Spiegel:

Which celestial body would you like to travel to most of all?

Johann-Dietrich Wörner:

My dream would be to fly to the moon and build permanent structures, using the raw materials available there. For instance, regolith, or moon dust, could be used to make a form of concrete. Using 3-D printers, we could build all kinds of things with that moon concrete — houses, streets and observatories, for example.

______________________________

Spiegel:

Wouldn’t it be a much more exciting challenge to hazard a joint, manned flight to Mars?

Johann-Dietrich Wörner:

Man will not give up the dream of walking on Mars, but it won’t happen until at least 2050. The challenges are too great, and we don’t have the technologies yet to complete this vast project. Most of all, a trip to Mars would take much too long today. It would be irresponsible, not just from a scientific standpoint, to send astronauts to the desert planet if they could only return after more than two years.•

Tags: ,

“The Flag Of Dylann Roof—Still Flies On The Capitol Grounds In Columbia”

June 19, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

The Confederate flag is an American swastika. In calling for its retirement in the aftermath of the horrific Charleston church massacre, Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic reminds that the impulse to enslave was initially driven by plunder. Of course, the American flag itself has a similar history, it being the chief symbol of the other U.S. holocaust–the plight of the Native Americans–which was a land grab drenched in blood, first conducted under flags of colonialist nations and then our own.

Coates’ opening:

Last night, Dylann Roof walked into a Charleston church, sat for an hour, and then killed nine people. Roof’s crime cannot be divorced from the ideology of white supremacy which long animated his state nor from its potent symbol—the Confederate flag. Visitors to Charleston have long been treated to South Carolina’s attempt to clean its history and depict its secession as something other than a war to guarantee the enslavement of the majority of its residents. This notion is belied by any serious interrogation of the Civil War and the primary documents of its instigators. Yet the Confederate battle flag—the flag of Dylann Roof—still flies on the Capitol grounds in Columbia.

The Confederate flag’s defenders often claim it represents “heritage not hate.” I agree—the heritage of White Supremacy was not so much birthed by hate as by the impulse toward plunder. Dylann Roof plundered nine different bodies last night, plundered nine different families of an original member, plundered nine different communities of a singular member. An entire people are poorer for his action. The flag that Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, does not stand in opposition to this act—it endorses it.•

Tags: ,

“The Crisis Of The Presidency Has Led Some Critics To Advocate A Reconstruction Of The Institution Itself”

June 18, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

At the time of Watergate, the Presidency itself was seen as the problem, that no one person could handle running the most powerful country in the free world, but now I think gerrymandering and the way we apportion national senate seats without regard to population is more the trouble. The system still works, but certainly not optimally, sometimes barely. 

Because of a promotional tie-in with a new Tom Hanks documentary about the ’70s, the Atlantic is presenting several of its key articles from that decade, including Arthur Schlesinger’s 1973 piece “The Runaway Presidency.” An excerpt:

The crisis of the presidency has led some critics to advocate a reconstruction of the institution itself. For a long time people have felt that the job was becoming too much for one man to handle. “Men of ordinary physique and discretion,” Woodrow Wilson wrote as long ago as 1908, “cannot be Presidents and live, if the strain be not somehow relieved. We shall be obliged always to be picking our chief magistrate from among wise and prudent athletes,—a small class.”

But what was seen until the late 1950s as too exhausting physically is now seen, after Vietnam and Watergate, as too dizzying psychologically. In 1968 Eugene McCarthy, the first liberal presidential aspirant in the century to run against the presidency, called for the depersonalization and decentralization of the office. The White House, he thought, should be turned into a museum. Instead of trying to lead the nation, the President should become “a kind of channel” for popular desires and aspirations. Watergate has made the point irresistible. “The office has become too complex and its reach too extended,” writes Barbara Tuchman, “to be trusted to the fallible judgment of any one individual.” “A man with poor judgment, an impetuous man, a sick man, a power-mad man,” adds Max Lerner, “each would be dangerous in the post. Even an able, sensitive man needs stronger safeguards around him than exist today.”

The result is a new wave of proposals to transform the presidency into a collegial institution. Mrs. Tuchman suggests a six-man directorate with a rotating chairman, each member to serve for a year, as in Switzerland. Lerner wants to give the President a Council of State, a body that he would be bound by law to consult and that, because half its members would be from Congress and some from the opposite party, would presumably give him independent advice. Both proposals were, in fact, considered and rejected at the Constitutional Convention.

Hamilton and Jefferson disagreed on many things, but they agreed that the convention had been right in deciding on a one-man presidency. A plural executive, Hamilton contended, if divided within itself, would lead the country into factionalism and anarchy and, if united, could lead it into tyranny.•

Tags: ,

“Who Really Cares About The Internet When One Considers Clean Water And Flushing Toilets?”

June 18, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a Foreign Affairs essay, Martin Wolf has a retort for techno-optimists, contending that wearables are merely the emperor’s new clothes. One of his arguments I’m curious about concerns the statistical evidence that output per worker has recently decreased. How, exactly, does automation fit into that equation? Technology would seem to only improve productivity among workers if it’s complementing, not replacing, them. I do think Wolf makes a great case that “unmeasured value” has been a big part of life long before the Internet. The phonograph, after all, couldn’t be any more fully measured than the iPod. An excerpt:

…the pace of economic and social transformation has slowed in recent decades, not accelerated. This is most clearly shown in the rate of growth of output per worker. The economist Robert Gordon, doyen of the skeptics, has noted that the average growth of U.S. output per worker was 2.3 percent a year between 1891 and 1972. Thereafter, it only matched that rate briefly, between 1996 and 2004. It was just 1.4 percent a year between 1972 and 1996 and 1.3 percent between 2004 and 2012.

On the basis of these data, the age of rapid productivity growth in the world’s frontier economy is firmly in the past, with only a brief upward blip when the Internet, e-mail, and e-commerce made their initial impact.

Those whom Gordon calls “techno-optimists”—Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example—respond that the GDP statistics omit the enormous unmeasured value provided by the free entertainment and information available on the Internet. They emphasize the plethora of cheap or free services (Skype, Wikipedia), the scale of do-it-yourself entertainment (Facebook), and the failure to account fully for all the new products and services. Techno-optimists point out that before June 2007, an iPhone was out of reach for even the richest man on earth. Its price was infinite. The fall from an infinite to a definite price is not reflected in the price indexes. Moreover, say the techno-optimists, the “consumer surplus” in digital products and services—the difference between the price and the value to consumers—is huge. Finally, they argue, measures of GDP underestimate investment in intangible assets.

These points are correct. But they are nothing new: all of this has repeatedly been true since the nineteenth century. Indeed, past innovations generated vastly greater unmeasured value than the relatively trivial innovations of today. Just consider the shift from a world without telephones to one with them, or from a world of oil lamps to one with electric light. Next to that, who cares about Facebook or the iPad? Indeed, who really cares about the Internet when one considers clean water and flushing toilets?•

Tags:

“Robots And Humans Can Augment And Complement Each Other’s Skills”

June 17, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

If you’re looking for an optimistic rejoinder to the concern about mass technological unemployment, there’s “The Robots Are Coming,” a Foreign Affairs piece by MIT computer scientist Daniela Rus that looks at the future through rose-colored Google Glasses. Rus believes driverless cars and robotic assistants will be potent elements of the economy soon enough–something those who worry about automation concur with–but her contention is that these machines will co-exist with workers instead of replacing them and even create many new jobs. I doubt the former but the latter is certainly possible. 

The writer sees a future in which “people may wake up in the morning and send personal-shopping robots to the supermarket to bring back fruit and milk for breakfast.” Rus offers no precise timeframe for when these silicon servants will begin appearing, which is probably wise.

The opening:

Robots have the potential to greatly improve the quality of our lives at home, at work, and at play. Customized robots working alongside people will create new jobs, improve the quality of existing jobs, and give people more time to focus on what they find interesting, important, and exciting. Commuting to work in driverless cars will allow people to read, reply to e-mails, watch videos, and even nap. After dropping off one passenger, a driverless car will pick up its next rider, coordinating with the other self-driving cars in a system designed to minimize traffic and wait times—and all the while driving more safely and efficiently than humans.

Yet the objective of robotics is not to replace humans by mechanizing and automating tasks; it is to find ways for machines to assist and collaborate with humans more effectively. Robots are better than humans at crunching numbers, lifting heavy objects, and, in certain contexts, moving with precision. Humans are better than robots at abstraction, generalization, and creative thinking, thanks to their ability to reason, draw from prior experience, and imagine. By working together, robots and humans can augment and complement each other’s skills.

Still, there are significant gaps between where robots are today and the promise of a future era of “pervasive robotics,” when robots will be integrated into the fabric of daily life, becoming as common as computers and smartphones are today, performing many specialized tasks, and often operating side by side with humans. Current research aims to improve the way robots are made, how they move themselves and manipulate objects, how they reason, how they perceive their environments, and how they cooperate with one another and with humans.

Creating a world of pervasive, customized robots is a major challenge, but its scope is not unlike that of the problem computer scientists faced nearly three decades ago, when they dreamed of a world where computers would become integral parts of human societies. In the words of Mark Weiser, a chief scientist at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center in the 1990s, who is considered the father of so-called ubiquitous computing: “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” Computers have already achieved that kind of ubiquity. In the future, robots will, too.•

Tags:

“I Don’t Think America Is A Complete Asshole Nation”

June 17, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

In “The Asshole Theory of International Relations,” the Philosopher’s Beard helpfully names the nations that are the biggest stains on humanity and explains how we should deal with them. That’s right–I said them because the piece argues that America is only assholish but not full-on asshole. Hooray! Let’s celebrate by blowing stuff up. Maybe stuff in the Middle East.

An excerpt:

Some readers may be puzzled – or even outraged – that I have not yet referred to our global hegemon, America, self-appointed world policeman and serial invader and destroyer of Muslim countries. Of course you are welcome to apply my typology to America yourself and come to your own judgement. But, in case you were wondering, I don’t think America is a complete asshole nation. At least not at present. A strong case can be made that for the 4 years or so following 9/11, the unchallenged height of Bush’s “Either you’re with us or you’re with the enemy” moral unilateralism, America was a pathological asshole or something very close to it. (Provoking that moral blindness was Al Qaida’s greatest achievement.)

America certainly has significant asshole tendencies, as apparent in its attempts to dominate Latin America (over 150 years); its pouting rejection of international institutions that don’t let it have everything its own way – refusing to pay its membership dues to the United Nations, and rejecting international projects like the International Criminal Court or climate change mitigation treaties; and, not least, its personalisation of and ghastly failures in the war on terror. And this misbehaviour has a clear source in Americans’ popular belief in their country’s moral and civilisational exceptionalism.

But America also has significant anti-assholish tendencies, which usually predominate, and this is what differentiates it from countries like Russia. America’s exceptional power is generally exercised in the service of preserving the world order, as a self-appointed global policeman, rather than to get away with moral exceptionalism. In contrast to Russia, America often acts on the principles it espouses even when that isn’t convenient. They aren’t merely a rhetorical ploy to manage complaints and obfuscate what it is doing.

I think this understanding of America’s moral character is implicitly held by its critics. The reason America gets so much moral criticism from around the world is that criticism of America is not futile.•

Tags:

“It’s The Things We Don’t Even Expect That Will Happen Really Fast”

June 17, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Online videos exploded because the Youtube founders didn’t wait for legislation to catch up to technology and just went ahead with their plans. That’s led to great things and bad things for content. Google similarly began testing driverless cars on public streets before laws were established governing them. It’s difficult to believe at this point that any auto (or auto-software) manufacturer, in Detroit or Silicon Valley, would risk flouting the growing legislation in regards to driverless. But other transportation innovations will arrive at a surprisingly brisk pace because laws haven’t yet anticipated them.

From “Tipping Point in Transit” by Farhad Manjoo at the New York Times:

Communication systems and sensors installed in streets and cars are creating the possibility of intelligent roads, while newer energy systems like solar power are altering the environmental costs of getting around. Technology is also creating new transportation options for short distances, like energy-efficient electric-powered bikes and scooters, or motorcycles that can’t tip over.

“Cars and transportation will change more in the next 20 years than they’ve changed in the last 75 years,” said M. Bart Herring, the head of product management at Mercedes-Benz USA. “What we were doing 10 years ago wasn’t that much different from what we were doing 50 years ago. The cars got more comfortable, but for the most part we were putting gas in the cars and going where we wanted to go. What’s going to happen in the next 20 years is the equivalent of the moon landing.”

Mr. Herring is one of many in the industry who say that we are on the verge of a tipping point in transportation. Soon, getting around may be cheaper and more convenient than it is today, and possibly safer and more environmentally friendly, too.

But the transportation system of the near future may also be more legally complex and, given the increasing use of private systems to get around, more socially unequal. And, as in much of the rest of the tech industry, the moves toward tomorrow’s transportation system may be occurring more rapidly than regulators and social norms can adjust to them.

“All the things that we think will happen tomorrow, like fully autonomous cars, may take a very long time,” said Bryant Walker Smith, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law who studies emerging transportation systems. “But it’s the things we don’t even expect that will happen really fast.”•

Tags: ,

“The Robots Are Dancing”

June 17, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The near-term future of automation isn’t dramatic like the new Channel 4-AMC show Humans. There’ll be no Uncanny Valley to disorient us, just a downward slope. No struggle for dominance–it’s been decided. Tomorrow won’t look unsettlingly sort of like you and me. It will look nothing like us at all.

An entire team of Australian dockworkers has been disappeared by machines in the last two months. From Jacob Saulwick at the Sydney Morning Herald:

At Sydney’s Port Botany, every hour of every day, the robots are dancing.

Well, they look like they are dancing – these 45 so-called AutoStrads, or automated straddles, machines that have taken on the work that until a couple of months ago was at least in part performed by dockworkers.

Almost 20 years ago, the Patrick container terminal at Botany played host to one of the most divisive industrial battles in Australian history, as the stevedoring company attempted to break the back of its union-dominated workforce.

In some respects that battle was won in April.

It was then that Patrick introduced, following a four-year investment program, a level of automation into its stevedoring operation that might be unsurpassed in the world.

“This is fully automated, there are no human beings, literally from the moment this truck driver stepped out of his cabin from then onwards this AutoStrad will take it right through the quay line without any humans interfacing at all,” Alistair Field, the managing director of Patrick Terminals and Logistics, a division of Asciano, said on Wednesday.•

Tags: ,

“He Has Begun Worrying About Something That Would Have Been Unimaginable To Him A Few Years Ago”

June 16, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Hod Lipson loves robots, but love is complicated. 

The robotics engineer is among the growing chorus of those concerned about technological unemployment leading to social unrest, something Norbert Wiener warned of more than 60 years ago. Is it, at long last, in this Digital Age, happening?

In a long-form MIT Technology Review article, David Rotman wonders if the new technologies may be contributing to wealth inequality and could ultimately lead to an even a greater divide, while considering the work of analysts on both sides of automation issue, including Sir Tony Atkinson, Martin Ford, Andrew McAfee and David Autor. The opening:

The way Hod Lipson describes his Creative Machines Lab captures his ambitions: “We are interested in robots that create and are creative.” Lipson, an engineering professor at Cornell University (this July he’s moving his lab to Columbia University), is one of the world’s leading experts on artificial intelligence and robotics. His research projects provide a peek into the intriguing possibilities of machines and automation, from robots that “evolve” to ones that assemble themselves out of basic building blocks. (His Cornell colleagues are building robots that can serve as baristas and kitchen help.) A few years ago, Lipson demonstrated an algorithm that explained experimental data by formulating new scientific laws, which were consistent with ones known to be true. He had automated scientific discovery.

Lipson’s vision of the future is one in which machines and software possess abilities that were unthinkable until recently. But he has begun worrying about something else that would have been unimaginable to him a few years ago. Could the rapid advances in automation and digital technology provoke social upheaval by eliminating the livelihoods of many people, even as they produce great wealth for others?

“More and more computer-guided automation is creeping into everything from manufacturing to decision making,” says Lipson. In the last two years alone, he says, the development of so-called deep learning has triggered a revolution in artificial intelligence, and 3-D printing has begun to change industrial production processes. “For a long time the common understanding was that technology was destroying jobs but also creating new and better ones,” says Lipson. “Now the evidence is that technology is destroying jobs and indeed creating new and better ones but also fewer ones. It is something we as technologists need to start thinking about.”•

Tags: , , , , ,

“We Cannot Change What Generations Of Diplomats And A Series Of UN Resolutions Have Not Been Able To”

June 16, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Sports | Permalink

The International Olympic Committee (new slogan: “At Least We’re Not FIFA!”) is currently led by Thomas Bach, who god knows, doesn’t have an easy job. The host country is essentially taking on a gigantic money pit, which has thinned the herd of interested parties, so much so that hosts can now hold some events in other countries to avoid the cost of building so many new facilities. The weak pool of applicants has left autocrats looking to purchase prestige in a good position to snare the Games.

In a smart Spiegel interview conducted by Lukas Eberle and Maik Großekathöfer, Bach speaks to the IOC’s position on political responsibility. An excerpt:

Spiegel:

Before the start of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the IOC emphasized that it was helping open China to the world.

Thomas Bach:

No, we don’t do that. The Games are a way for us to set an example of an open society that is free of discrimination. We want to create an atmosphere in the Olympic Village in which all athletes can meet in an unprejudiced environment. And if, in the process, this leads to contemplation in the host country, then that’s entirely a good thing. But we have to respect the laws of a sovereign country. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia recently made a measured effort towards the Olympic Games. My reaction was: As long as women cannot have the same access to sports as men do in Saudi Arabia, as long as women can’t even enter the stadium there, we won’t accept an application.

Spiegel:

You’re making it easy for yourself by taking up sports as an issue. Why don’t you just say: As long as bloggers are whipped in Saudi Arabia, the country will not receive the Games?

Thomas Bach:

Once more: The IOC is a sports organization. We cannot change what generations of diplomats and a series of UN resolutions have not been able to.

Spiegel:

Since 2014, paragraph six of the Olympic Charter also bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. For the 2022 Winter Games, there are two candidates: Almaty and Beijing. If you were serious about your charter, you would need to reject both cities.

Thomas Bach:

Why?

Spiegel:

In Kazakhstan, politicians have been pushing a Russian-style anti-gay law for years. And in China there are clinics in which gay men are tortured with electric shocks.

Thomas Bach:

The responsibilities of the IOC, as well as the opportunities, are tied to the Olympic Games and the processes that are directly related to them. We can only provide an inspiration for the development of societies and countries, not instructions.•

Tags: , ,

“The Striking Thing Is That It Doesn’t Go Away Afterward”

June 15, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

A couple months ago, I posted some exchanges from a Reddit Ask Me Anything conducted by a nonagenarian from Stuttgart who came of age during the rise of Naziism and even briefly met Adolf Hitler. What struck me about her attitude is that she didn’t seem to embrace her own culpability as a worker for the Nazi cause, something I’ve noticed over the years with other German citizens who grew up on the wrong side of World War II. It’s like they never fully processed the horrors that occurred–they were completely brainwashed but only partially deprogrammed–and some even seem to still harbor a degree of admiration for Hitler. It’s just stunning.

An Associated Press piece by Frank Jordans reports on a new study that gives credence to the worst fears about Germans of that generation, revealing that those indoctrinated into Nazism during their wonder years retained feelings of anti-Semitism. The effect was most pronounced in areas where anti-Semitism had been exhibited before the Nazis solidified power.

The opening:

BERLIN (AP) — Anti-Semitic propaganda had a life-long effect on German children schooled during the Nazi period, leaving them far more likely to harbor negative views of Jews than those born earlier and later, according to a study published Monday.

The findings indicate that attempts to influence public attitudes are most effective when they target young people, particularly if the message confirms existing beliefs, the authors said.

Researchers from the United States and Switzerland examined surveys conducted in 1996 and 2006 that asked respondents about a range of issues, including their opinions of Jews. The polls, known as the German General Social Survey, reflected the views of 5,300 people from 264 towns and cities across Germany, allowing the researchers to examine differences according to age, gender and location.

By focusing on those respondents who expressed consistently negative views of Jews in a number of questions, the researchers found that those born in the 1930s held the most extreme anti-Semitic opinions – even fifty years after the end of Nazi rule.

“It’s not just that Nazi schooling worked, that if you subject people to a totalitarian regime during their formative years it will influence the way their mind works,” said Hans-Joachim Voth of the University of Zurich, one of the study’s authors. “The striking thing is that it doesn’t go away afterward.”•

Tags: , ,

“We Have To Understand That ISIS Is A Country Now”

June 15, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

ISIS is Hollywood, but it’s also Silicon Valley, a digital caliphate marrying Middle Ages barbarism to social media, Medieval yet mobile. The next-level Al-Qaeda has upped the ante on terror despite the absence thus far of a 9/11 on American soil. It’s thrived on small acts of well-publicized brutality and by doing something that Osama bin-Laden never come close to accomplishing: establishing a nation of sorts, if a tentative one of shifting borders.

While my default assumption is that things are constantly collapsing within any terrorist organization, Malise Ruthven’s NYRB piece about Abdel Bari Atwan’s new book depicts the Islamic State as a disciplined machine. An excerpt:

Bin Laden is dead, thanks to the action of US Navy SEALs in May 2011, but as Abdel Bari Atwan explains in Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate, Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s official successor as leader of “al-Qa‘ida central,” looks increasingly irrelevant. Bin Laden’s true successor is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the shadowy caliph of ISIS, the so-called Islamic State. As “Commander of the Faithful” in that nascent state he poses a far more formidable threat to the West and to Middle Eastern regimes—including the Saudi kingdom—that are sustained by Western arms than bin Laden did from his Afghan cave or hideout in Pakistan.

One of the primary forces driving this transformation, according to Atwan, is the digital expertise demonstrated by the ISIS operatives, who have a commanding presence in social media. A second is that ISIS controls a swath of territory almost as large as Britain, lying between eastern Syria and western Iraq. As Jürgen Todenhöfer, who spent ten days in ISIS-controlled areas in both Iraq and Syria, stated categorically in January: “We have to understand that ISIS is a country now.” …

The jihadists of ISIS may be terrorists—to use an imprecise, catch-all term—but as Atwan explains, they are both well paid and disciplined, and the atrocities they commit and upload on the Internet are part of a coherent strategy:

Crucifixions, beheadings, the hearts of rape victims cut out and placed upon their chests, mass executions, homosexuals being pushed from high buildings, severed heads impaled on railings or brandished by grinning “jihadist” children—who have latterly taken to shooting prisoners in the head themselves—these gruesome images of brutal violence are carefully packaged and distributed via Islamic State’s media department. As each new atrocity outdoes the last, front-page headlines across the world’s media are guaranteed.•

Tags: , , ,

“How Bad Is A World Where The Majority Of People Are Scientists?”

June 15, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

In a recent interview conducted by Wait But Why writer Tim Urban, Elon Musk discussed his misgivings about genetic engineering (e.g., the Nazi connection). But a hammer is a tool or a weapon depending on how you swing it, and modifying genes could cure or even end an assortment of horrible diseases, especially rare ones which never receive adeqaute funds to make a cure possible.

At her blog, biology of aging specialist Maria Konovalenko offers a riposte to Musk and other doubters. The opening:

When I hear that the conversation is about an ethical problem I anticipate that right now the people are going to put everything upside down and end with common sense. Appealing to ethics has always been the weapon of conservatism, the last resort of imbecility.

How does it work? At the beginning you have some ideas, but in the end it’s always a “no.” The person speaking on the behalf of ethics or bioethics is always against the progress, because he or she is being based on their own conjectures. What if the GMO foods will crawl out of the garden beds and eat us all? What if there will be inequality when some will use genetic engineering for their kids and some won’t? Let’s then close down the schools and universities – the main source of inequality. What if some will get the education and other won’t?

That’s exactly the position that ‪Elon Musk took by fearing the advances in genetic engineering. Well, first of all, there already is plenty of inequality. It is mediated by social system, limited resources and genetic diversity. First of all, why should we strive for total equality? More precisely, why does the plank of equality has to be based on a low intellectual level? How bad is a world where the majority of people are scientists? How bad is a world where people live thousands of years and explore deep space? It’s actually genetic engineering that gives us these chances. From the ‪#‎ethics‬ point of view things are visa versa. It’s refusing the very possibility of helping people is a terrible deed. Let’s not improve a person, because if we do what if this person becomes better than everybody else? Let’s not treat this person, because if we do he might live longer than everybody else? Isn’t this complete nonsense?•

Tags: , ,

“They Started Hanging Around A Lot Where They Weren’t Wanted…I Didn’t Dig That Too Much”

June 14, 2015 in Politics, Sports, Videos | Permalink

Another Jesus H. Christ! edition of Geraldo Rivera’s 1970s talk show, Good Night America, is this one from ’75 which focused on the FBI’s aggressive attempts to capture at-large Symbionese Liberation Army hostage/soldier Patty Hearst, the newspaper heiress getting more ink than anyone in the country. What’s most interesting to me is that hippie-ish basketball player Bill Walton, then playing with the Portland Trail Blazers, was hassled by the Feds who believed he knew where “Tania” was hiding. He certainly would have if she had been lodged inside Jerry Garcia’s colon. The host taped an interview in San Francisco with the NBA star and speaks in studio to sportswriters Jack and Micki Scott and attorney William Kunstler.

Unrelated to the SLA madness, Rita Moreno visits the studio, there’s a report on male go-go dancers and the guest announcer is Don Imus, the rodeo clown who spent all morning looking for Hearst in a bowl of cocaine. Watch here.•

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Old Print Article: “Skeleton All That Remains Of Army’s Camel ‘Cavalry'” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1920)

June 14, 2015 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Camels are mostly associated with other parts of the world, but they originated in what we today call the United States of America. In the 1850s, Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, thought the desert animals might be useful for military purposes, scouting expeditions and as beasts of burden transporting goods and water across the Southwest, so he ordered a couple shiploads of camels to be purchased abroad and delivered to Texas. An article in the October 17, 1920 recalled the effort, which ultimately failed for several reasons, including that little thing called the Civil War.

Tags: ,

“Every One Can Be Described As A Full-Blown Adult Failure”

June 12, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

At the London Review of Books, Chris Lehmann has written one of his customarily excellent pieces, this time about the elephantine field of GOP hopefuls, all of whom could be described as the embodiment of the Horatio Alger myth, a bunch of ragged Dicks. As bad as any might be nominal frontrunner Jeb Bush, who has thus far shown in public and private life that being the “brighter Bush brother” doesn’t suggest a significant difference in wattage.

Lehmann’s opening:

It is a cliché of American electioneering for candidates to advertise their humble beginnings and unstinting ascent in the face of adversity. Even George W. Bush, with his Andover and Skull-and-Bones East Coast Brahmin pedigree, offered up his own version of the log cabin myth, alluding to his drunken youth and subsequent soul-saving entry into the evangelical fold, and taking self-deprecating potshots at his tricky time as part-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. The message was that these episodes were tests of the candidate’s resolve, temporary setbacks in the higher drama of his journey to the Texas governor’s mansion. (It didn’t matter that Bush’s gubernatorial track record was decidedly dismal, since the log cabin myth is about how you attain great office, not what you actually do when you get there.)

But the emerging field of Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential election is something else altogether. Of the dozen or so people who have declared or are thought likely to declare, every one can be described as a full-blown adult failure. These are people who, in most cases, have been granted virtually every imaginable advantage on the road to success, and managed nevertheless to foul things up along the way. There is, for starters, George’s younger brother Jeb: not yet a formal candidate, but already on course to raise $1 billion in campaign funds. (He has deliberately delayed his official entry into the field in order to wring every dollar he can from big-money political action committees; once he becomes a runner, the rules forbid him from dealing directly with them.) Jeb has dined out for most of his career on his image as the clever Bush brother, but as his quasi-campaign heated up and the press started to ask questions about actual policies, he immediately undermined this unearned plaudit by saying he would have followed to the letter George’s catastrophic decision to invade and occupy Iraq. After realising that this was a position now seen as insane even by most Republicans, he tried to retreat from it with a series of flailing clarifications.

Jeb Bush’s own track record is terrible.•

 

Tags:

“Here At DARPA We Don’t Do Science For Science’s Sake”

June 12, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Among other things, Matt Novak’s Paleofuture dispatch from the DARPA Robotics Challenge explains why technology associated with the agency–the Internet, driverless cars–usually pans out even if it initially seems outré. That something to consider since it has more than a passing interest in robotic warfare. An excerpt:

If DARPA has an interest in any particular technology, there’s a reasonable chance that it’ll be a practical reality within your lifetime. DARPA specializes in “high risk, high reward” research and development, which means that it’s pushing the limits of what’s possible. But DARPA isn’t interested in dicking around with impractical nonsense. Or anything that doesn’t have applications that contribute to national defense. “Here at DARPA we don’t do science for science’s sake,” Steven Walker, deputy director of DARPA, says in a video at the expo. Walker goes on to explain that one of the reasons DARPA was created was to create “technological surprise.”

The agency was founded in 1958 (then known as ARPA) on the heels of the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, into orbit. It was a national embarrassment for the United States — especially the Cold Warriors who insisted that American style capitalism would produce the best goods, services, and technologies. So the Eisenhower administration decided that it wouldn’t be surprised again.

Just one of many technologies developed by DARPA is the driverless car. Americans have been waiting on the fully automated driverless car for decades. In fact, scifi visions of the driverless car are nearly as old as the automobile itself. And with each passing day, we inch closer and closer to driverless cars becoming a mainstream reality on America’s roads.

Today we associate companies like Google with driverless car development. But DARPA has been working on driverless cars since before Google even existed.•

Tags: ,

“It Won’t Be An Encounter, Or Even A Conquest. It Will Be A Gold Rush.”

June 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Private enterprise endeavoring to start a new Space Race isn’t merely about cashing in–it’s also about the survival of a variant of our species–but the rich asteroid belt near Mars has certainly caught the attention of billionaire explorers. We want to mine up there to build new colonies but perhaps they’ll be a little something left over so that our first trillionaire can be minted. It would be the least pleasing result of space exploration, but it’s undoubtedly a driving force.

Sometimes during a gold rush people lose their manners. It’s important then to begin thinking now about how we’ll treat our hosts, whether they be microbial or what have you. At Aeon, Lizzie Wade has written a smart essay about what could become a next-level land grab–Manifest Destiny meeting Space Odyssey. She suggests that perhaps the Antarctic Treaty System could be used as a template for curbing our worst impulses. An excerpt:

There are two forms the discovery of alien life could realistically take, neither of them a culture clash between civilisations. The first is finding a ‘biosignature’ of, say, oxygen, in the atmosphere of an expolanet, created by life on the exoplanet’s surface. This kind of long-distance discovery of alien life, which astronomers are already scanning for, is the most likely contact scenario, since it doesn’t require us going anywhere, or even sending a robot. But its consequences will be purely theoretical. At long last we’ll know we’re not alone, but that’s about it. We won’t be able to establish contact, much less meet our counterparts – for a very long time, if ever. We’d reboot scientific, philosophical and religious debates about how we fit into a biologically rich universe, and complicate our intellectual and moral stances in previously unimaginable ways. But any ethical questions would concern only us and our place in the Universe.

‘First contact’ will not be a back-and-forth between equals, but like the discovery of a natural resource
If, on the other hand, we discover microbial or otherwise non-sentient life within our own solar system – logistics will be on our side. We’d be able to visit within a reasonable period of time (as far as space travel goes), and I hope we’d want to. If the life we find resembles plants, their complexity will wow us. Most likely we’ll find simple single-celled microbes or maybe – maybe – something like sponges or tubeworms. In terms of encounter, we’d be making all the decisions about how to proceed.

None of this eliminates the possibility that alien life might discover us. But if NASA’s current timeline holds water, another civilisation has only a few more decades to get here before we claim the mantle of ‘discoverer’ rather than ‘discovered’. With every passing day, it grows more likely that ‘first contact’ will not take the form of an intellectual or moral back-and-forth between equals. It will be more like the discovery of a natural resource, and one we might be able to exploit. It won’t be an encounter, or even a conquest. It will be a gold rush.

This makes defining an ethics of contact necessary now, before we have to put it into practice.•

Tags:

“The Only Real Barrier To The Immediate Adoption Of Self-Driven Trucks Is Purely Legal”

June 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

It’s not easy for driverless cars to navigate tiny side streets that are barely mapped. Autos will have to communicate with one another, sharing information about unplanned detours and such. But that’s something corporate trucking need not worry about, its vehicles transporting via highways. As Scott Santens points out at Quartz, many of the nearly nine million workers in the sector could be unemployed as soon as it’s legally allowed. The technology is already there. An excerpt:

Any realistic time horizon for self-driving trucks needs to look at horizons for cars and shift those even further towards the present. Trucks only need to be self-driven on highways. They do not need warehouse-to-store autonomy to be disruptive. City-to-city is sufficient. At the same time, trucks are almost entirely corporate driven. There are market forces above and beyond private cars operating for trucks. If there are savings to be found in eliminating truckers from drivers seats—which there are—these savings will be sought. It’s actually really easy to find these savings right now.

Wirelessly linked truck platoons are as simple as having a human driver drive a truck, with multiple trucks without drivers following closely behind. This not only saves on gas money (7% for only two trucks together), but can immediately eliminate half of all truckers if, for example, two-truck convoys became the norm. There’s no real technical obstacles to this option. It’s a very simple use of present technology.

Basically, the only real barrier to the immediate adoption of self-driven trucks is purely legal in nature, not technical or economic. With self-driving vehicles currently only road legal in a few states, many more states need to follow suit unless autonomous vehicles are made legal at the national level. And Sergey Brin of Google has estimated this could happen as soon as 2017. Therefore…

The answer to the big question of “When?” for self-driving trucks is that they can essentially hit our economy at any time.•

Tags:

“Eventually There Will Be Artificial Wombs”

June 10, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Transhumanist Party Presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan wants to radically extend life with the aid of organ printing, brain implants, etc. But won’t that lead to a dangerously crowded planet? That was one question asked of the fledgling politician in a smart Q&A conducted by Sarah Fecht of Popular Science. The exchange:

Popular Science:

How can the planet support an immortal population?

Zoltan Istvan:

There’s a very strong chance that within 10 years, most of us will be using IVF techniques and designing our babies. We’ll still probably be using the uterus for another 10 years, but giving birth is something that’s medically dangerous. Eventually there will be artificial wombs. There won’t be such a natural family as we see it now. In 25 or 30 years, making a family will be very much something where you sit in front of a computer, and you decide how you want to do this, and then probably they’ll have something–an aquarium or something in your living room or at the hospital, similar to the Matrix. Again that might be 35 years out, and it’s all dependent upon whether this kind of technology is ethically passed. But I do believe the future of having children will change dramatically, and that will also impact the population levels. You’ll find that people won’t necessarily want to have children if they can spend 100 years in great health.•

 

Tags: ,

“If Caitlyn Jenner Wants To Be A Republican, She Is Welcome In My Party”

June 10, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Deciding to become a woman is the first normal thing Bruce Jenner has done since the decathlon.

I do feel a bit the way I would if Sarah Palin had become the first female American President, back when that bullshit seemed possible: Well, great, but did it have to be her? Jenner has long been your typical ex-jock conservative who never spoke up once when his party consistently sold discrimination in the U.S. to achieve its political ends. But pioneers are pioneers, so good for Caitlyn on her transition. Much happiness to her.

Some un-bylined writer at the Economist has given voice to something that’s true of both parties in the U.S.: They can only move as far Left or Right as the moment will allow. Despite being the standard-bearer of the GOP, President Richard Nixon pursued universal heath care and guaranteed basic income because those things were in the air at the time. Similarly, when it comes to Jenner, even the sweater-vest wing of the GOP has had to be restrained in its comments because the conversation about LGBT issues has so seriously shifted. 

From the Economist:

“I can only imagine the torment that Bruce Jenner went through,” offered Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina. “I hope he’s—I hope she has found peace.” Though Mr Graham affirmed that he is a “pro-life, traditional marriage kind of guy”, he added that “If Caitlyn Jenner wants to be a Republican, she is welcome in my party.”

“If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman,” said Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator not known for his open-mindedness. “My responsibility as a human being is to love and accept everybody. Not to criticise people for who they are.” As an outspoken critic of gay relationships, Mr Santorum has long reserved the right to criticise people for what they do, but he refrained from knocking all that Ms Jenner has done to make herself womanly.

This combination of silence and accommodation has unsettled some conservative commentators. “A surgically damaged man appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, and the applause is mandatory,” writes David French of the National Review. He then argues that the “sexual selfishness and radical personal autonomy” of the transgender movement “shares the same logic as such cultural catastrophes as no-fault divorce and abortion on demand”, which are naturally to blame for “poverty, depression, and increasing inequality between two-parent families and the transient remainder”. Mr French contends that conservatives are being bullied into a dangerous silence by left-leaning cultural arbiters. “By refusing to speak,” he writes, “we contribute to the notion that even conservatives understand that something is wrong—something is shameful—about our own deepest beliefs.”

Steve Deace, a syndicated radio host based in Iowa, offered a similar but more practical warning: “If we’re not going to defend as a party basic principles of male and female, that life is sacred because it comes from God, then you’re going to lose the vast majority of people who’ve joined that party.” 

It is surprising that a warning like this needs to be issued at all. Until recently, Republican politicians have been brash culture warriors.•

Tags: , , , ,

“The Reality Is That China Is Now Shifting Its Appetite To Robots”

June 10, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Martin Ford has written a New York Times op-ed explaining why “China could well turn out to be ground zero for the economic and social disruption brought on by the rise of the robots.” Outsourcing used to mean moving jobs out of country, but more and more it will mean shifting them out of species. And no matter what the official line is, better jobs don’t necessarily await the displaced. The opening:

OVER the last decade, China has become, in the eyes of much of the world, a job-eating monster, consuming entire industries with its seemingly limitless supply of low-wage workers. But the reality is that China is now shifting its appetite to robots, a transition that will have significant consequences for China’s economy — and the world’s.

In 2014, Chinese factories accounted for about a quarter of the global ranks of industrial robots — a 54 percent increase over 2013. According to the International Federation of Robotics, it will have more installed manufacturing robots than any other country by 2017. 

Midea, a leading manufacturer of home appliances in the heavily industrialized province of Guangdong, plans to replace 6,000 workers in its residential air-conditioning division, about a fifth of the work force, with automation by the end of the year. Foxconn, which makes consumer electronics for Apple and other companies, plans to automate about 70 percent of factory work within three years, and already has a fully robotic factory in Chengdu.

Chinese factory jobs may thus be poised to evaporate at an even faster pace than has been the case in the United States and other developed countries. That may make it significantly more difficult for China to address one of its paramount economic challenges: the need to rebalance its economy so that domestic consumption plays a far more significant role than is currently the case.•

Tags:

“There Are Japanese People Being Paid To Do Things That No One, Not Even A Robot, Should Be Paid To Do”

June 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Japan currently has a very low unemployment rate of 3.30%, but economist Noah Smith would like it to rise.

Well, that’s not exactly true. He thinks that number is illusory and the nation’s rife with bullshit jobs (in Graeber-ian terms) and redundancies, positions suited neither for humans nor robots. He argues that elevator operators or extraneous clerks will find something else to do and the economy will gain steam. Perhaps. But if all busywork is eliminated and many in these positions are only qualified for busywork, what would become of them? Even those qualified to do more may have to compete with white-collar automation going forward. What exists is a free-market safety net of sorts, and if you want to eliminate it, there probably should be a Plan B in place. Believing a political solution will necessarily come to pass if the market doesn’t provide seems optimistic.

From Smith at Bloomberg View:

There’s something even better than robots that could replace large numbers of Japan’s human jobs: nothing. 

Japan is a country famous for its low white-collar productivity; this is borne out by the statistics. Some of that comes from the reluctance by tradition-minded companies to adopt modern workplace technologies — there are still companies using fax machines or copying electronic documents onto paper. Some of it is from outdated management practices. Some of it is from employees staying at work for too many hours, long after their productivity has gone into free-fall. But some of it is certainly just a function of useless jobs. There are Japanese people being paid to do things that no one, not even a robot, should be paid to do. 

Any American who has lived in Japan has a long list of anecdotes about jobs that seem utterly pointless. There are security guards being paid to guard vacant lots. There are women standing in elevators pushing the button for you. There are crossing guards at intersections with functional traffic lights. 

Then there are the useful jobs for which Japanese companies simply hire too many personnel.•

Tags:

“Some Warehouse Workers Already Wear Wristbands Or Headsets That Measure Their Productivity”

June 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Wearables that track workers are, for now, mostly optional. Some employees get rewards for voluntarily attaching themselves to gadgets that provide real-time feedback to their bosses. But that trend toward quantification seems clear, especially in countries where unions are weak and good jobs may grow scarcer with increased automation. Even for that contingent job, you may need to surrender to the nudge of modern technology. It’s a further Uberization of the workforce.

From Sarah O’Connor at the Financial Times:

Technology has made it possible for employers to monitor employees more closely than ever, from GPS trackers for delivery drivers to software that tracks which websites office workers visit. Companies such as Profusion think wearable gadgets could open a new frontier in workplace analytics, albeit one that would further blur the lines between our work and private lives.

“I think there’s an inevitability that it will gain ground, and there’s a backlash risk that will follow if the data get abused,” says Mr Weston.

For employers, the simplest way to use wearable gadgets (and so far the most common) is to give them to staff and try to nudge them into healthier lifestyles — a financially worthwhile goal if the company is on the hook for their health insurance. BP, for example, gives Fitbits to workers in North America and offers them rewards if they meet activity targets. Indeed, one of Fitbit’s five strategic goals is to “further penetrate the corporate wellness market”, according to its IPO prospectus. Wearables could also be straightforward tools.

But the bigger prize is to use the data from such devices to make the workforce safer or more productive. Some warehouse workers already wear wristbands or headsets that measure their productivity and location in real-time.•

 

Tags:

“The New Industries And Companies…Will Only Use People To Do The Work If They’re Better At It Than Machines Are”

June 9, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

As someone consumed by robotics, automation, the potential for technological unemployment and its societal and political implications, I read as many books as possible on the topic, and I feel certain that The Second Machine Age, the 2014 title coauthored by Andrew McAfee and Eric Brynjolfsson, is the best of the lot. If you’re just beginning to think about these issues, start right there.

In his Financial Times blog, McAfee, who believes this time is different and that the Second Machine Age won’t resemble the Industrial Age, has published a post about an NPR debate on the subject with MIT economist David Autor, who disagrees. An excerpt: 

Over the next 20-40 years, which was the timeframe I was looking at, I predicted that vehicles would be driving themselves; mines, factories, and farms would be largely automated; and that we’d have an extraordinarily abundance economy that didn’t have anything like the same bottomless thirst for labour that the Industrial Era did.

As expected, I found David’s comments in response to this line of argument illuminating. He said: “If we’d had this conversation 100 years ago I would not have predicted the software industry, the internet, or all the travel or all the experience goods … so I feel it would be rather arrogant of me to say I’ve looked at the future and people won’t come up with stuff … that the ideas are all used up.”

This is exactly right. We are going to see innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity that I can’t even begin to imagine (if I could, I’d be an entrepreneur or venture capitalist myself). But all the new industries and companies that spring up in the coming years will only use people to do the work if they’re better at it than machines are. And the number of areas where that is the case is shrinking — I believe rapidly.•

Tags: , ,

« Older entries § Newer entries »