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“Wealth Has Accumulated And Society Has Decayed”

April 19, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Last week, I read Freeman Dyson’s 1997 book, Imagined Worlds, and I wanted to present one excerpt which seems more salient now than when it was written (although that pertains to a lot of the volume). The scientist assailed the way technology was destabilizing society and creating income inequality. That process has only accelerated since.

Two things about the excerpt below:

  1. Dyson did not realize how quickly computing power would become relatively affordable.
  2. That affordability hasn’t mitigated homelessness or income gaps in America.

The passage:

Today science has once again turned good into evil. This time the evil is not a war, but a civilian technology that systematically widens the gulf between rich and poor, deprives uneducated young people of jobs, and leaves large numbers of young mothers and children hopeless and homeless. The evil is to be seen in many places around the world, especially in the great cities of North and South America. When one walks through the streets of New York after dark during the Christmas season, one sees the widening gulf at its starkest. The brightly lit shop windows are filled with high-tech electronic toys for the children of the rich, and a few yards away, the dark corners of subway entrances are filled with the dim outlines of derelict human beings that the new technology has left behind. In every large American city such contrasts have become a part of everyday life.

When I arrived in America fifty years ago, rich and poor people were less estranged and less afraid of one another, the feeling of belonging to a community was stronger, the rich had fewer locks on their doors, and the poor had roofs over their heads. Since those days, wealth has accumulated and society has decayed. It is as Haldane said, “The tendency of applied science is to magnify injustices until they become too intolerable to be borne, and the average man, whom all the prophets and poets could not move, turns at last and extinguishes evil at its source.”

My scientist friends may justly protest that the calamities of American society are caused by drugs, or by guns, or by racial intolerance, or by illiteracy, or by bad schools, or by broken families, rather than by science. It is true that the immediate causes of social disintegration are moral and economic rather than technical. But science must bear a larger share of responsibility for these evils than the majority of scientists are willing to admit.•

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“If We’re Going To Wait For Capitalism To Disappear, People Are Going To Wait Along Time”

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

Fresh from his Reddit Ask Me Anything, moral philosopher Peter Singer discusses his new book about altruism in a Gawker Q&A conducted by Hamilton Nolan, a consistently intelligent and passionate voice on the New York media scene. Among other topics, the two discuss the continued viability of capitalism and the validity of revolutions predicated on income inequality. An excerpt:

Gawker:

Can capitalism solve these problems, ultimately? Is capitalism equipped to address human poverty in the long run?

Peter Singer:

I don’t think capitalism alone is going to solve the problems, but capitalism supplemented by enough concerned individuals who would both donate some of their resources and lobby governments to prevent some of the possible abuses of capitalism, I think that could deal with the problem of poverty. If we’re going to wait for capitalism to disappear, people are going to wait a long time. I think most of them will be dead before that happens. So I don’t think that’s the right approach. We have to try to do things within the framework we have.

Gawker:

With the U.S. presidential election coming up, do you have any endorsements? Any issues you’d like to see get attention?

Peter Singer:

I don’t know that any candidate wants my endorsement! I certainly think that America’s aid to the global poor is shamefully low, and most Americans have no idea how low it is. All the surveys that ask Americans “How much of the federal budget do you think goes to foreign aid?” they come back with a median figure of 15%. And if you ask them what they think would be the right level, they’re somewhere between 5-10%. And the actual level, of course, is 1%… The other big issue is climate change. Climate change needs to come up. That’s one of the critical moral challenges we face in this century.

Gawker:

Economic inequality has become a big part of the political conversation in America. How does that tie into the poverty and altruism issues you’re writing about?

Peter Singer:

I agree that inequality in America is a problem, but I think that what a lot of Americans don’t realize is that if you look at the picture globally, they’re the top 1%. Not all Americans, but if you’re $52,000 a year, that puts you in the top 1% globally. So if people think it’s bad that there’s this top 1% in the United States, they should think it’s much worse that there is this much steeper inequality.•

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“I Was A ‘Contractor’ (‘Mercenary’ To Some)”

April 17, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

In light of the Blackwater sentencings and the subcontracting of American war made necessary during those Administrations that attempt to fight ground wars on numerous fronts, Sean McFate, erstwhile mercenary, has penned a New York Times op-ed on the topic, trying to help unmuddle a welter of issues. He makes a salient point that contractors are often held to a higher standard than our actual military, the Blackwater lawlessness prosecuted far more vigorously than the Abu Ghraib abuses. And it’s an issue that resonates in many hot zones around the globe, as more embattled nations employ mercenary forces. The opening:

WASHINGTON — Ten years ago, I found myself in Burundi, sipping a Coke with the country’s president, the American ambassador and the president’s eight-year-old daughter. The president’s life was in danger, and the American government sent me in to keep him alive.

The Rwandan genocide had begun in 1994 after the presidents of Burundi and Rwanda were assassinated. In 2004, an extremist Hutu group planned on assassinating the new president of Burundi to reignite it. My job was to prevent this from happening.

I wasn’t a member of the C.I.A. or a covert military unit. I was a “contractor” (“mercenary” to some), working for a company called DynCorp International. This is increasingly how foreign policy is enacted today.

I’m proud of the work I did as a contractor in Africa, but my buddies from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, in which I had once served, scowled that I had “gone mercenary” and was lost to “the dark side.” A fellow graduate student at Harvard accused me of being “morally promiscuous.” Yet the work was similar to what I did in the military, and the pay and benefits weren’t that great, despite perceptions to the contrary.•

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“The Sources Of News Have Become Narrower”

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

In an interview with Seung-yoon Lee of Byline, Noam Chomsky expresses his belief that the foundering of the traditional news and the democratization of the media hasn’t really changed for the better the public dialogue. Perhaps. Income inequality, for instance, has only gotten worse since the media came into the hands of the masses, though that also has to do with myriad other issues. But we won’t be leading the conversation as long as people are satisfied with bread and Kardashians.

As for Chomsky saying he learns about what’s happening in Ukraine or Syria by reading the New York Times, Associated Press and British press rather than by looking at social media and search engines, I would only suggest his news-reading habits are vastly different than the majority. It doesn’t mean he’s wrong, but he’s likely an outlier. 

Two exchanges follow, one about the state of modern media and the other about Charlie Hebdo.

____________________________

Seung-yoon Lee:

Twenty-seven years ago, you wrote in Manufacturing Consent that the primary role of the mass media in Western democratic societies is to mobilise public support for the elite interests that lead the government and the private sector. However, a lot has happened since then. Most notably, one could argue that the Internet has radically decentralised power and eroded the power of traditional media, and has also given rise to citizen journalism. News from Ferguson, for instance, emerged on Twitter before it was picked up by media organisations. Has the internet made your ‘Propaganda Model’ irrelevant? 

Noam Chomsky:

Actually, we have an updated version of the book which appeared about 10 years ago with a preface in which we discuss this question. And I think I can speak for my co-author, you can read the introduction, but we felt that if there have been changes, then this is one of them. There are other [changes], such as the decline in the number of independent print media, which is quite striking.

As far as we can see, the basic analysis is essentially unchanged. It’s true that the internet does provide opportunities that were not easily available before, so instead of having to go to the library to do research, you can just open up your computer. You can certainly release information more easily and also distribute different information from many sources, and that offers opportunities and deficiencies. But fundamentally, the system hasn’t changed very much. 

Seuny-yoon Lee:

Emily Bell, Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, said the following in her recent speech at Oxford: “News spaces are no longer owned by newsmakers. The press is no longer in charge of the free press and has lost control of the main conduits through which stories reach audiences. The public sphere is now operated by a small number of private companies, based in Silicon Valley.” Nearly all content now is published on social platforms, and it’s not Rupert Murdoch but Google’s Larry Page and Sergei Brin and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg who have much more say in how news is created and disseminated. Are they “manufacturing consent” like their counterparts in so-called ‘legacy’ media?

Noam Chomsky:

Well, first of all, I don’t agree with the general statement. Say, right now, if I want to find out what’s going on in Ukraine or Syria or Washington, I read the New York Times, other national newspapers, I look at the Associated Press wires, I read the British press, and so on. I don’t look at Twitter because it doesn’t tell me anything. It tells me people’s opinions about lots of things, but very briefly and necessarily superficially, and it doesn’t have the core news. And I think it’s the opposite of what you quoted – the sources of news have become narrower.•

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Seung-yoon Lee:

Also, regarding the specific incident of Charlie Hebdo, do you think the cartoonists lacked responsibility?

Noam Chomsky:

Yes, I think they were kind of acting in this case like spoiled adolescents, but that doesn’t justify killing them. I mean, I could say the same about a great deal that appears in the press. I think it’s quite irresponsible often. For example, when the press in the United States and England supported the worst crime of this century, the invasion of Iraq, that was way more irresponsible than what Charlie Hebdo did. It led to the destruction of Iraq and the spread of the sectarian conflict that’s tearing the region to shreds. It was a really major crime. Aggression is the supreme international crime under international law. Insofar as the press supported that, that was deeply irresponsible, but I don’t think the press should be shut down.•

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“These Results Also Suggest That Climate Engineering Could Not Offer A Long-Term Solution”

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

Science is providing hard evidence to support what is a pretty obvious guess: Geoengineering our way out of climate change might not work and would have unintended consequences. It still might end up being our only chance. From Simon Redfern’s BBC report about the European Geosciences Union General Assembly:

It is not at all obvious what the other consequences of global geoengineering approaches might be. For example, Patrick Applegate from Pennsylvania State University, reported that solar radiation management may yet fail to prevent sea-level rise from melting ice sheets, which respond on much longer time scales than the temperature effects of solar shielding.

Aside from being ineffective in stemming sea-level rise, solar radiation management – according to results from Jerry Tjiputra at Bergen University – would lead to increased ocean acidification in the North Atlantic.

These results also suggest that climate engineering could not offer a long-term solution, with the world eventually being in the same place, by 2200, as it would reach without any geoengineering interventions.

Asked whether he believed solar radiation management would be deployed, Prof [Ken] Caldeira responded: “A lot has to do with how bad climate change will end up being. Humans are quite adaptable as a species.

“On the other hand, projections for summers in the tropics suggest almost every summer will be hotter than the hottest summer yet on record, associated with crop failures. There is the possibility that there would be widespread crop failures in the tropics in the summer.

“The only thing a politician can do to start the planet cooling is solar geoengineering. If a catastrophic outcome does occur, the pressure to deploy a scheme could be overwhelming.•

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“They Allow You To Do Things In Fundamentally Different And Better Ways”

April 15, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In freestyle chess and in factories alike, carbon and silicon make for a great combination–it’s win-win. But in the long run (and perhaps not even too long from now), if humans or robots are going to be ejected from the workforce, which is more likely to go? From Matt McFarland at the Washington Post, a report about YuMi, your new coworker:

YuMi was designed to require about the same amount of space as a human worker, so it can easily slide into roles alongside humans in factories. YuMi is safe enough that ABB chief executive Ulrich Spiesshofer encouraged German chancellor Angela Merkel to put her finger in YuMi’s grip at an event Monday.

These companies see a huge opportunity in manufacturing to grow their businesses. A Boston Consulting Group report from earlier this year found that only 10 percent of manufacturing tasks are automated.

They say they have strong interest from China’s massive manufacturing sector. One of Rethink Robotics’ clients in China loses 25 percent of its workforce a month. That churn rate requires it to constantly retain workers, which hampers its efficiency.

“We will get to a point in time, whether it’s five years from now or 10 year from now, where you will not be a successful manufacturer if you do not have collaborative robots in your environment,” said Jim Lawton, chief product and marketing officer at Rethink Robotics. “They allow you to do things in fundamentally different and better ways.” …

The robotic elephant in the room is this: What happens to employment? Won’t jobs be swept away by the tide of automation?

“If you look at the countries with the highest level of robotization and automation, these are the countries with the lowest unemployment rates in the world,” Spiesshofer said. “Germany, Japan and South Korea have the highest robotization and the lowest unemployment rates. So for me, a smart application of a robot is a job security measure, it’s a job creation machine, if you do it right. The combination between human beings and robots to add additional jobs rather than destroy them.”•

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“We Continue To Cling To A Model That Doesn’t Support This Kind Of Revolutionary Progress”

April 15, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Reconciling free-market capitalism and a highly automated society is one of the great challenges we’re likely to face in the near future. In a Medium essay, Sean Lester doesn’t believe reconciliation is possible. An excerpt:

To summarize, we’re automating the SHIT out of work right now with simple AI and robotics. With technological progress being exponential as it is (stop thinking linearly you dufus) robots you MAY hear about as being wacky and impractical and expensive today will be cheaper, faster, and better than your average human tomorrow. With AI advancements, even creative work is at risk (as the above video will explain). Even outside the more sci-fi sounding stuff, there’s a growing trend for companies with a fraction of the employees of their competition rivaling and crushing them. The examples thrown around a lot are the handful of people at Instagram today versus the many thousands of yesterday’s Kodak — or the Ubers and Lyfts rivaling taxi companies and other forms of public transport.

Which is dumb as hell. Work is being eliminated because corporations want to cut costs, not because they want a future where humans don’t have to get up and go to pointless jobs every day for diminishing wages only to not be able to cover their expenses or pay off their college loans. However, what worries me is that in the face of overwhelming evidence that we’re eliminating work on a very short timeline (shorter than the average person imagines or is prepared for) the conversation is never “We did it fellas. Time to pack up, we finally killed work!” No, that isn’t what people are saying. People are saying, “WHAT ABOUT THE JOBS!?” because we continue to cling to a model that doesn’t support this kind of revolutionary progress. The fact I can’t start writing an article that criticizes this failing of capitalism at all without fearing knee-jerk reactions by dogmatic capitalists is the problem. We can’t even begin having a conversation about it, because to propose a criticism of a thing is similar to saying “Hey tribe, I’m in THIS tribe now, fuck you!” This isn’t about being on this side or that side, though. This is about looking objectively at the reality standing in front of us and confronting it honestly.•

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“We Tend To Be Ethical Only When Our Survival, And That Of Those We Care About, Is Not At Stake”

April 14, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

I’m sure reading moral philosopher Peter Singer’s classic book Practical Ethics played some role in my giving up eating and wearing animals. In a new Reddit AMA, which is tied to the publication of his latest title, The Most Good You Can Do, Singer assesses the correct responses to various ethical challenges. A few exchanges below.

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Question:

What are your thoughts on a universal basic income?

Peter Singer:

Nice idea, but it would need to be truly universal, i.e. I’d like to see everyone in the world have a guaranteed minimum that would mean that no one was unable to buy enough food to live. Unfortunately, I can’t see this being implemented in the near future, so in The Most Good You Can Do I focus on action that is cost-effective and practical right now.

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Question:

Do you think that it’s wrong to buy lamb and beef that has come from sheep and cattle that have lived non-factory farmed lives outdoors in fields? It’s seems to me that the lives of such animals are worth living, i.e. that the world is better off for containing such animals than not, and therefore (from an animal welfare perspective at least) it is good and right to buy lamb and beef from these sources; this would not preclude simultaneously compaigning for improved treatment of these animals. Do you agree?

Peter Singer:

The lives of sheep and cows kept on grass rather than in feedlots may be worth living, but unfortunately these ruminants produce a lot of methane (essentially, belching and farting) and so make a big contribution to climate change. Despite the myth of this being “natural” grass-fed beef and lamb, on the scale on which we are producing it, is simply not sustainable.

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Question:

In an interview you did with Tyler Cowen back when you wrote The Life You Can Save, you were asked what you think about immigration as an anti-poverty tool. At the time you said you need to think about it more. It seems to me that allowing more immigration may be the most effective political change we can make toward reducing poverty, so I’m curious if you’ve spent more time on that question since then and have an opinion on it?

Peter Singer:

Yes, I’ve thought about it some more, and looked at some of the arguments in favor of Open Borders. To me, though, the problem is that any political party that advocated this would lose the next election, and that election contest would probably bring out all the racist elements in society in a very nasty way. So until people in affluent nations are much more accepting of large-scale immigration than they are now, in any country that I am familiar with, I don’t think a large increase in immigrants from developing nations is feasible.

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Question:

I recently completed my PhD in philosophy, but throughout grad school, I have become completely disillusioned with academic philosophy (no jobs, prestige-obsessed, intimidating/arrogant people, etc.). But I love philosophy very dearly, and I’ve been told I stand a decent chance at getting a postdoc. If you weren’t doing what you do now, what do you think you’d be doing? And do you think you’d have any regrets?

Peter Singer:

I suppose I might be a political activist of some kind. Back in Australia in the ’90s, I was a political candidate for the Greens. I didn’t get elected, but support for the Greens has grown since then, and Green candidates have won the Senate seat for which I stood. I’m not sorry that I lost, because it was after that that I was offered the position at Princeton that has enabled me to have a lot more influence in discussions of the issues raised both in Animal Liberation and in The Most Good You Can Do but I often wonder what my life would have been like if I’d won. (Incidentally, Australia has proportional voting for the Senate, so it’s not the case that I could have helped the worse candidate get elected, as Ralph Nader’s candidacy did in the 2000 presidential election between Bush and Gore. I would not stand as a minor party candidate under those circumstances.)

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Question:

What would you consider to be the greatest danger to a more ethical future?

Peter Singer:

We tend to be ethical only when our survival, and that of those we care about, is not at stake. One of the big present dangers to our present level of security is climate change, which could create a chaotic world with hundreds of millions of people who are unable to feed themselves, and become climate refugees, causing a chaotic world.

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Question:

Would you rather save the life of 1 horse-size duck or 100 duck-size horses?

Peter Singer: 

An effective altruist would always prefer to save 100 lives rather than just one.•

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“To Maintain The Right To Be Tax-Exempt, Religions Must Fulfill Certain Requirements”

April 14, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Alex Gibney details the backlash he, Lawrence Wright and others have faced from the Church of Scientology over the book and film versions of Going Clear and questions the organization’s tax-exempt status. An excerpt:

The church maintains that its activities are protected by the 1st Amendment as religious practices. Partially on that basis, the church convinced the Internal Revenue Service in 1993 that Scientology should be tax-exempt and that all donations to the church should be tax-deductible. (The film shows that the church’s method of “convincing” the IRS featured lawsuits and vilification of its agents.)

In the past, critics of the church have called for its tax exemption to be revoked because it is not a “real religion.” I agree that tax-exemption isn’t merited, but not for that reason. The Church of Scientology has a distinct belief system which, despite its somewhat strange cosmology — mocked by the TV show “South Park” and many others — is not essentially more strange than, say, the idea of a virgin birth. Scientologists are entitled to believe what they want to believe. And the IRS website makes it clear that anyone is entitled to start a religion at any time without seeking IRS permission. To maintain the right to be tax-exempt, however, religions must fulfill certain requirements for charitable organizations. For example, they may not “serve the private interests of any individual” and/or “the organization’s purposes and activities may not be illegal or violate fundamental public policy.”

On these points alone, it is hard to see why Americans should subsidize Scientology through its tax-exemption.•

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“Until 2008, Cubans Were Banned From Buying Their Own Computers”

April 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Computers, let alone smartphones, are anything but ubiquitous in Cuba, so it would seem Airbnb would have an impossible task setting up shop. Not so. There was a preexisting infrastructure the company tapped into once the embargo was lifted. From Sarah Kessler at Fast Company:

Airbnb had previously blocked would-be Cuban hosts from listing on its site. Now, it was about to become legal for them to do so.

The hurdles were not small: In 2011, the country’s National Statistics Office and theInternational Telecommunication Union estimated that about 22% of Cubans have Internet access, but that included people who only had access to a government-controlled Intranet. Until 2008, Cubans were banned from buying their own computers. Meanwhile, having a bank account is uncommon. “It’s not just that people prefer cash,” says [Baruch Professor Ted] Henken, “It’s almost the only way. People don’t trust anything else, at least not yet.”

Thankfully for Airbnb, however, it didn’t have to start from scratch. It simply tapped into an existing network of middlemen.

The company partnered with a handful of what it describes as “Internet cafes for hosting” that were already facilitating bookings online. These small businesses already had connections with most of the homes for rent on the island, and already charged them a fee for management services. Now they will handle Airbnb listings. Even for hosts who have bank accounts, Airbnb needs to work with intermediaries to deposit funds into their accounts. For the many hosts without access to bank accounts, it partnered with third parties who, in some cases, will deliver cash to their doorsteps (Henken says Airbnb is likely using an established money transfer service to handle payments to unbanked hosts, Airbnb declined specify who’s providing the service for them). All of these are informal partnerships.

Airbnb taught these middlemen how to use the website, and helped them add information. “Maybe they didn’t have high-quality photographs in their homes,” Airbnb’s [Molly] Turner says. “Maybe their availability was written on paper and not kept online anywhere. Our team did a lot of work behind the scenes talking to hosts and making sure that the information was up to date and current.”•

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“Imagine A World Where Whole Epochs Will Pass, Cultures Rise And Fall, Between A Telephone Call And A Reply”

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

I’ve just started reading Imagined Worlds, the 1997 Freeman Dyson entry in the Jerusalem-Harvard Lecture series. It’s something of a summation speech of Dyson’s remarkable–and sometimes perplexing–career, even though he is thankfully still with us and still thinking. If you’re vaguely familiar, it’s the book with the tag line “Imagine a world where whole epochs will pass, cultures rise and fall, between a telephone call and a reply.” Telephone calls, remember those?

I mention it because Imagined Worlds is one of the 76 choices Stewart Brand included on his 2014 Brainpickings reading list of books to “sustain and rebuild humanity.” The first 20 choices:

  1. Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by David R. Montgomery
  2. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
  3. The Odyssey by Homer translated by Robert Fagles
  4. The Iliad by Homer translated by Robert Fagles
  5. The Memory of the World: The Treasures That Record Our History from 1700 BC to the Present Day by UNESCO
  6. The History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor
  7. The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories edited by Robert B. Strassler
  8. The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War edited by Robert B. Strassler
  9. The Complete Greek Tragedies, Volumes 1-4 edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore
  10. The Prince by Machiavelli, translated by George Bull, published by Folio Society
  11. The Nature of Things by Lucretius
  12. The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World by Peter Schwartz
  13. The Way Life Works: The Science Lover’s Illustrated Guide to How Life Grows, Develops, Reproduces, and Gets Along by Mahlon Hoagland and Bert Dodson
  14. Venice, A Maritime Republic by Frederic Chapin Lane
  15. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages by Harold Bloom
  16. The Map Book by Peter Barber
  17. Conceptual Physics by Paul G. Hewitt
  18. The Encyclopedia of Earth: A Complete Visual Guide by Michael Allaby and Dr. Robert Coenraads
  19. The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
  20. Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon

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“Such Findings Challenge Many Of The Pervasive Ideas About What Drives Radical Beliefs”

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

Radicals, be that terrorists or any manner of zealots, may be driven as much by mental illness as ideology. Are the kids signing up for the life of ISIS much different than the confused, damaged minions who roomed on a ranch with Manson? Young, troubled minds are open to such dangers. At New Scientist, epidemiologist Kamaldeep Bhui writes about radicalization as a mental health issue. An excerpt:

Research in the US following the 9/11 attacks suggested that having sympathies for terrorist acts and violent protest is a sign that people are susceptible to future radicalising influences. We took that as our starting point and assessed these kinds of sympathies in men and women of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin living in the UK.

We found that these views were uncommon – they were held by just 2.5 per cent of our sample – and were unrelated to poverty, political engagement, or experience of discrimination and adversity. However, we did find a correlation between extremist sympathies and being young, in full-time education, relative social isolation, and having a tendency towards depressive symptoms.

In contrast, we found that being born outside the UK, general ill health or having large social networks were all associated with moderate views. We also found that women were as likely as men to hold extreme sympathies, although the association with depression was stronger in men. Frequency of religious worship and attending a place of worship were not correlated with extremist leanings.

Such findings challenge many of the pervasive ideas about what drives radical beliefs, including the notion that religious orthodoxy fuels extremism.•

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“Something Dark Is Forming On The Horizon”

April 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Capitalism is good except when it’s bad–and vice versa. It’s the best machinery we’ve come up with to grow wealthier in the aggregate, and it’s still quite a shitstorm. 2008 was only the most recent reminder. Will political tumult caused by technological employment force it to be seriously moderated? In a Spiegel interview conducted by Romain Leick, Marxist jokester Slavoj Žižek sees gathering clouds in the Western political structure-democracy, namely–but he probably always does. The opening:

Spiegel:

Mr. Žižek, the financial and economic crisis showed just how vulnerable the free market system can be. You have made it your task to examine the contradictions of contemporary capitalism. Are you anticipating a new revolution?

Slavoj Žižek: 

Unfortunately not.

Spiegel:

But you would like to experience one? Are you still a communist?

Slavoj Žižek: 

Many consider me to be a crazy Marxist who’s waiting for the end of time. I may be a very eccentric, but I’m not a madman. I am a communist for lack of something better, out of despair over the situation in Europe. Six months ago, I was in South Korea to gave talks on the crisis in global capitalism, the usual you know, bla bla bla. Then the audience started to laugh and said: What are you talking about? Just look at us — China, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam — we’re doing very well economically. So who is that has slipped into crisis? It’s you in Western Europe — or, more precisely, in parts of Western Europe.

Spiegel:

Well, it’s not quite as simple as that.

Slavoj Žižek: 

Still, there’s some truth to it. Why do we Europeans feel that our unfortunate situation is a full-fledged crisis? I think what we are feeling is not a question of yes or no to capitalism, but that of the future of our Western democracy. Something dark is forming on the horizon and the first wind storms have already reached us.•

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“Digital Technology Could Have A Greater Impact Than Anything That Has Come Before”

April 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In their Matter essay, “Our Transparent Future,” Daniel C. Dennett and Deb Roy examine transparency from an evolutionary perspective and guess where this new normal (abnormal?) is taking us. When the Internet of Things is the thing, when drones and such shrink to the head of a pin, transparency will be the rule, almost everything knowable and leakable, which is a blessing and curse. And you’ll hardly hear the monitoring. It will flow like electricity through a wire, so quiet. The opening:

More than half a billion years ago a spectacularly creative burst of biological innovation called the Cambrian explosion occurred. In a geologic “instant” of several million years, organisms developed strikingly new body shapes, new organs, and new predation strategies and defenses against them. Evolutionary biologists disagree about what triggered this prodigious wave of novelty, but a particularly compelling hypothesis, advanced by University of Oxford zoologist Andrew Parker, is that light was the trigger. Parker proposes that around 543 million years ago, the chemistry of the shallow oceans and the atmosphere suddenly changed to become much more transparent. At the time, all animal life was confined to the oceans, and as soon as the daylight flooded in, eyesight became the best trick in the sea. As eyes rapidly evolved, so did the behaviors and equipment that responded to them.

Whereas before all perception was proximal — by contact or by sensed differences in chemical concentration or pressure waves — now animals could identify and track things at a distance. Predators could home in on their prey; prey could see the predators coming and take evasive action. Locomotion is a slow and stupid business until you have eyes to guide you, and eyes are useless if you cannot engage in locomotion, so perception and action evolved together in an arms race. This arms race drove much of the basic diversification of the tree of life we have today.

Parker’s hypothesis about the Cambrian explosion provides an excellent parallel for understanding a new, seemingly unrelated phenomenon: the spread of digital technology. Although advances in communications technology have transformed our world many times in the past — the invention of writing signaled the end of prehistory; the printing press sent waves of change through all the major institutions of society — digital technology could have a greater impact than anything that has come before. It will enhance the powers of some individuals and organizations while subverting the powers of others, creating both opportunities and risks that could scarcely have been imagined a generation ago.•

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“Why Should Anybody Doubt China’s Ability To Grow Quickly For Years?”

April 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

China’s economic boom has been like nothing the world has ever seen, and that financial might will continue translating into political capital. But is the country headed for a painful correction similar to the one experienced by Japan in the 1990s? Perhaps, and that doesn’t even take into consideration a gigantic older population that will need to be supported as modernization increases lifespan. From Martin Wolf at Financial Times:

…why should anybody doubt China’s ability to grow quickly for years?

The first reason is that growing very quickly is rather like riding a bicycle: it goes well so long as speed is maintained. Once it slows, however, a bicycle starts to wobble. This is why managing deceleration is so hard. The second reason is crucial: the Chinese economy is highly unbalanced. Slowing an unbalanced economy is particularly hard.

A salient aspect of the unbalanced economy is the high savings rate and thus its reliance on investment as a source of demand. Yet, as the economy slows, the demand for investment is likely to fall more than proportionately. The reason is that past investment was done on the assumption of annual growth at 10 per cent. With growth substantially slower, excess capacity will be chronic. What do people do when they have excess capacity? They stop investing. That is also why China’s government needs to keep growth up: if it fails to do so, investment might collapse, with devastating effects.

That is not all. The combination of a debt overhang with a slowing economy is particularly damaging. Yet that is what the credit-fuelled, property-related investment boom has created. As growth slows so would the ability to service debt, even if underlying investments might ultimately be profitable. This decline in debt-servicing capacity would generate a “balance-sheet recession” in demand. That would add to the adjustment to investment outlined above. This combination is what laid the Japanese economy low in the 1990s.

If the Chinese economy is to shift into its new normal on a stable and sustainable basis, it has to avoid any such collapse.•

“Jaffar Doesn’t Come Off As Some Sort Of Evil Dictator’s Demon Spawn”

April 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Idi Amin, peckish Ugandan dictator, was a barbaric monster and also a dad. One son, Jaffar Amin, a colorful character and something of a revisionist, is profiled by Justin Rohrlich in Foreign Policy. An excerpt:

Jaffar, now 48, lives in Kampala with his wife and six kids. A prolific Facebooker, he regularly posts pictures of his family, including his father, along with anecdotes, reminiscences, and the odd complaint about the current state of Uganda.

I’ve always been interested in the private lives of dictators, and a couple of years ago, after a quick search, I landed on Jaffar’s profile. I sent him a friend request, along with a note asking if he’d be willing to share his story with me for an article. I expected a polite “No thanks.” But Jaffar responded right away, agreeing to forward along “generic” answers to questions he has either been asked over the years, or ones he assumed he would be asked.

What he sent was anything but generic. One afternoon in August 2013, I looked at my inbox to find dozens and dozens of pages littered with almost stream-of-consciousness reminiscences about life with his father. It took a while to make sense of it all — some of it seemed to be notes for a future book, some of it taken from a talk Jaffar had given, and some of it consisted of large, disjointed blocks of text pasted directly into the email.

Jaffar doesn’t come off as some sort of evil dictator’s demon spawn, but rather as an everyday guy living in the suburbs. He spent 11 years working as a manager for DHL. These days, he picks up commercial voiceover gigs when he can — his dulcet tones have urged people to visit the Kampala showroom of a South Korean furniture company called Hwansung, to tune in to 88.2 FM, and to fly Qatar Airways.

Though I wouldn’t describe the two of us as “friends,” Jaffar and I have spoken on the phone a handful of times to discuss our possible collaboration. After about a year, Jaffar’s emails started coming with signoffs like, “God bless you and your family.” He recently wrote to me, “I owe you a wealth of thanks for bringing out the human side of my parent.”

At the same time, Jaffar has also obviously grown somewhat weary of discussing the past. Early on, when I asked one too many follow-up questions, Jaffar replied, “You could be a run-of-the-mill blogger for all I [know], for I have always only given Interviews to the Established Media Houses so consider this my last correspondence with you[,] take the gift or simply trash it or bin it as we Anglophones are fond of expressing.”

It was far from our last exchange.•

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“The Scariest Thing Is That We Don’t Know What The Scariest Thing Is”

April 7, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

With the Internet, for the first time we truly stepped inside the machine–and vice versa.

The Internet of Things will heighten the process, as we’ll be tracked and quantified like never before, a process which holds great promise and threat. The catch: You won’t be able to opt out. From Danny Bradbury at the Guardian:

Whenever someone introduces a pervasive new technology, someone else gets worried about it. With many already worried about surveillance issues, it’s no wonder that nightmare privacy scenarios surrounding the IoT have been popping up.

“The scariest thing is that we don’t know what the scariest thing is,” said Geoff Webb, senior director of solution strategy at identity and access management firm NetIQ.

The problem with the IoT is that no one quite knows what it’s going to look like. It’s a continuum that things like Amazon’s Dash, connected cars and smart meters usher us along, rather than a state that we suddenly enter. No one really understood how the internet was going to affect things, and the impact of the IoT will probably be more pervasive, rolling out over time, but affecting us more immediately and in more profound ways.

One thing we can predict is that an internet of sensors and other devices could generate a vast ocean of information about our activities.

“People can pull that information together in ways that are very difficult to predict,” said NetIQ’s Webb.

Some rental car firms now include sensors in the vehicles that warn drivers if they are driving too recklessly, based on how quickly and volatile its movements are. Some services are using phone services to do the same. He worries that people might be denied car insurance, for example, based on sensors like these delivering data to interested parties.

“The capacity to correlate information is going to change all of those interactions,” worries Webb. “I lose power over a great deal of my life when there’s a massive amount of information over me that I don’t have control over.”

What about other breaches, though, that may be more difficult to avoid, or are simply invisible? Could your utility’s smart meter – or your Google Nest device – know when you arrive and leave at your home based on energy usage patterns? When your smart bathroom scale beams data to a cloud-based health service, could that data be used by a health insurance provider?•

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“The Entire Population Of America Could Fit Into Texas With More Than An Acre For Each Household To Enjoy”

April 7, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I read once that if the population density of Brooklyn was applied to the whole of America, we’d be able to fit everyone into New Hampshire. Now, New Hampshire would most likely become a real sty, but it shows how inefficiently we’re using our land.

I don’t think any of us want rampant and unrelenting building in every nook of each neighborhood, but it’s clear that U.S. home prices are jacked up artificially by overaggressive zoning laws. There has to be a middle ground. From an :

BUY land, advised Mark Twain; they’re not making it any more. In fact, land is not really scarce: the entire population of America could fit into Texas with more than an acre for each household to enjoy. What drives prices skyward is a collision between rampant demand and limited supply in the great metropolises like London, Mumbai and New York. In the past ten years real prices in Hong Kong have risen by 150%. Residential property in Mayfair, in central London, can go for as much as £55,000 ($82,000) per square metre. A square mile of Manhattan residential property costs $16.5 billion.

Even in these great cities the scarcity is artificial. Regulatory limits on the height and density of buildings constrain supply and inflate prices. A recent analysis by academics at the London School of Economics estimates that land-use regulations in the West End of London inflate the price of office space by about 800%; in Milan and Paris the rules push up prices by around 300%. Most of the enormous value captured by landowners exists because it is well-nigh impossible to build new offices to compete those profits away.

The costs of this misfiring property market are huge, mainly because of their effects on individuals. High housing prices force workers towards cheaper but less productive places. According to one study, employment in the Bay Area around San Francisco would be about five times larger than it is but for tight limits on construction.•

“When You Have A Safety Net In Place, People Will Take More Risks”

April 7, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots, is interviewed by Marguerite McNeal at Wired about the specter of technological unemployment. The story is labeled as “Sponsored Content” and seems to have been paid for by Nokia. Advertorial, I suppose. The ugh side of the media landscape. 

At any rate, Ford answers a question about the role social safety nets will play if we’re all out of work and out of luck. What will the highly ambitious do in such a new world order? It’s similar to the McAfee solution. The exchange:

Question:

So in the all-automated economy, what will ambitious 20-somethings choose to do with their lives and careers?

Martin Ford:

My proposed solution is to have some kind of a guaranteed income that incentivizes education. We don’t want people to get halfway through high school and say, ‘Well if I drop out I’m still going to get the same income as everyone else.’

Then I believe that a guaranteed income would actually result in more entrepreneurship. A lot of people would start businesses just as they do today. The problem with these types of businesses you can start online today is it’s hard to put enough together to generate a middle-class income.

If people had an income floor, and if the incentives were such that on top of that they could do other things and still keep that extra money, without having it all taxed away, then I think a lot of people would pursue those opportunities.

There’s a phenomenon called the Peltzman Effect, based on research from an economist at the University of Chicago who studied auto accidents. He found that when you introduce more safety features like seat belts into cars, the number of fatalities and injuries doesn’t drop. The reason is that people compensate for it. When you have a safety net in place, people will take more risks. That probably is true of the economic arena as well.

People say that having a guaranteed income will turn everyone into a slacker and destroy the economy. I think the opposite might be true, that it might push us toward more entrepreneurship and more risk-taking.•

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“A Simple Way To Forecast The Future Is To Look At What Rich People Have Today”

April 7, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

To be an early adopter in technology, you sometimes need to have as much money as vision. As Andrew McAfee notes in his latest Financial Times blog post, if you want to see how the 99% will soon live, just take a look at the 1%. No, the majority won’t soon have more money (less, probably), but the coveted goods and services of the privileged will soon probably become accessible to almost all.

Of course, the cheapening of these lifestyle choices, a further Walmartization of our economy, isn’t good for Labor. McAfee offers a remedy, if not a new one. An excerpt:

Of the many things I’ve learnt from Google’s chief economist Hal Varian, perhaps my favourite is his elegant and thrifty approach to prediction. “A simple way to forecast the future,” he says, “is to look at what rich people have today.” This works. Applying this method a few years ago would have led one to foresee the rise of Uber and the spread of smartphones around the world, to take just two examples.

Hal’s point is that tech progress quite quickly makes initially expensive things — both goods and services — cheaper, and so hastens their spread. Which is why this progress is the best economic news on the planet (I wish there were stiffer competition for that title these days).

So what do the rich have today that will soon spread widely? A recent article in the online magazine Matter probably holds a clue. Lauren Smiley’s “The Shut-In Economy” details the parade of delivery people and service providers that show up each evening at the apartment complexes that house San Francisco’s tech elite. Smiley writes that “Outside my building there’s always a phalanx of befuddled delivery guys… Inside, the place is stuffed with the goodies they bring.”•

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“We Must Consider Interactions Between Intelligent Robots Themselves”

April 7, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’m pretty sure the NFL will be an all-robot league one day. Blocks getting knocked off minus the concussion-related litigation. But what if the machines grow intelligent and hire lawyers? Who am I kidding? They’ll be the clients and the lawyers.

In a Scientific American piece, Hutan Ashrafian isn’t only concerned about conscious machines extincting us but also how we will treat them and how they’ll treat each other. An excerpt:

Academic and fictional analyses of AIs tend to focus on human–robot interactions, asking questions such as: would robots make our lives easier? Would they be dangerous? And could they ever pose a threat to humankind?

These questions ignore one crucial point. We must consider interactions between intelligent robots themselves and the effect that these exchanges may have on their human creators. For example, if we were to allow sentient machines to commit injustices on one another—even if these ‘crimes’ did not have a direct impact on human welfare—this might reflect poorly on our own humanity. Such philosophical deliberations have paved the way for the concept of ‘machine rights.’ …

Animals that exhibit thinking behaviour are already afforded rights and protection, and civilized society shows contempt for animal fights that are set up for human entertainment. It follows that sentient machines that are potentially much more intelligent than animals should not be made to fight for entertainment.

Of course, military robots are already being deployed in conflicts. But outside legitimate warfare, forcing AIs and robots into conflict, or mistreating them, would be detrimental to humankind’s moral, ethical and psychological well-being.•

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“We Demonize People, But Everybody Has A Mother”

March 27, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Ramsey Clark, now there’s a person. Some people aren’t, but he is. A former U.S. Attorney General and a million other things, Clark just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. He answered questions in full paragraphs. Imagine that. An exchange about the JFK assassination and one about LBJ.

_____________________________

Question:

My question pertains to your involvement in White House politics in the 1960’s and your familiarity with the assassination of President Kennedy: Who do you think orchestrated the assassination?

Ramsey Clark:

I remember thinking for years I’ll never be happy again after President Kennedy’s assassination.

Because the single act of a deranged person – being my interpretation, that only a deranged person would do it – could make you unhappy, then you’re making a fool of yourself for life. There are things to be done, you know? Including having a good time. Enjoying life.

And if you let it get you down, it’s your own fault.

But i remember I used to have to drive home from the Department of Justice. And I’d go down, over Memorial Bridge. And we worked late at night. And I’d see the Eternal Flame up there… and it nearly always pulled me down a little bit.

But it was reinforcing my determination to carry on.

It’s bad enough he got killed. But if it also got down the people nearest to him – then you became part of the problem, not the solution, yourself.

Well, there’s something in the nature of things that… makes us want to find some vast evil power that’s responsible for things that hurt us so badly.

But that’s very deceptive.

That happens, but life doesn’t work that way.

And you know, I went through it with President Kennedy, and with Bob Kennedy. I used to see the mother of the man that killed Bob Kennedy – she’d be there every morning I went in. There’d be times that I would be going in daily for weeks, ‘cuz somebody was in prison there, and his mother was always there. Every morning i went in, she was there. She was there waiting, because she’d get there, and wait, and wait. Perhaps she’d still be there when we left. Particularly if it was a trial morning.

We had a major trial in San Francisco, where you could see the prisoner in the morning, and then at the trial in a couple of hours.

Not often, but if there was something important to talk about, they’d bring him over and have him talk in the Courthouse. They brought Sirhan Sirhan over, in a helicopter, from the Federal prison on San Francisco bay, and landed on the roof as I recall. I’m not quite sure about that. But they brought him right to the courthouse by helicopter. But i’d see his mother nearly every time you got in there, if she wasn’t already visiting with her son. She was visiting him every day.

Which is another piece of evidence that we’re all human.

We demonize people, but everybody has a mother.

And nearly all those mothers love whomever happens to be their child.

That’s the way the world is. One of the better things about the world.

_____________________________

Question:

What was Lyndon Johnson like?

Ramsey Clark:

Well, he was first and foremost a driven person.

Enormous store of energy. Worked all the time.

7 days a week, he was always working, always thinking ’bout his work. This was during his presidency.

I had the unfortunate position of being the liaison between Vice President Johnson and Attorney General Kennedy, because they didn’t like each other. So when they had communication between them, it went through me.

Which was an uncomfortable position to be in, but it was a service, haha! Communication was important, and neither of them felt like conducting it face-to-face.

But it certainly toned it down, and got the word through. It took a lot of my time. I spent better of it, but it was worth it.

Well, Johnson’s principal characteristic was he had enormous drive. And he worked ALL the time. He was thinking about work all the time.

He’d call at 3 o’clock in the morning and say “WHAT!? you’re asleep!?”

And you’d say Yes, you woke me up!

His job was 7 days a week, and probably close to 16, 18 hours a day.

But he loved it, hehe!

And it made a difference. It wasn’t good for family, perhaps, although what you find is that you make a lot better use of the time together when you don’t have much time together. So he and the girls and Ladybird were a very tight little family.

And very natural. I remember one night I was sitting there, about 8:30, and Lucy, the younger daughter, came in – it was a week night, and she was probably still in high school I think, probably a senior. And she had something she wanted to talk to him about. And so she started to go back to the door, and he said “You go back now finish your homework and go to bed.” And she said “No, I’m going out.” And he said “No, you’re not going out.” And she said “Daddy, it doesn’t work that way, I’m going out.”

That was an exact quote. “Daddy, it doesn’t work that way.” Haha!

I don’t think there’s many people in the world who would’ve talked to him like that, but his daughter would, haha!

Between a father and a daughter, it didn’t work that way. She didn’t elaborate on it, just said “Daddy, it doesn’t work that way.”

Course, they loved each other, but she went out on her date.•

_____________________________

LBJ ordering pants:

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“There Are Also Important Risks, And Humanity’s Extinction Is Only The Most Radical”

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

Weak AI and Strong AI (or Narrow AI and Artificial General Intelligence, if you prefer) can both help and hurt us, if on a different order of magnitude. The former can mow our lawns, disrupt the gardening industry and perhaps run down a cricket that you or I would have swerved from (though you and I haven’t been angels to the creatures, either). The latter is probably necessary if we are to avoid human extinction–although it may cause the same. In her Slate essay “Striking the Balance on Artificial Intelligence,” philosopher and neuroscientist Cecilia Tilli calmly assesses the situation. An excerpt:

The benefits of narrow A.I. systems are clear: They free up time by automatically completing tasks that are time-consuming for humans. They are not completely autonomous, but many require only minimal human intervention—the better the system, the less we need to do. A.I.s can also do other useful things that humans can’t, like proving certain mathematical theorems or uncovering hidden patterns in data.

Like other technologies, however, current A.I. systems can cause harm if they fail or are badly designed. They can also be dangerous if they are intentionally misused (e.g., a driverless car carrying bombs or a drone carrying drugs). There are also legal and ethical concerns that need to be addressed as narrow A.I. becomes smarter: Who is liable for damages caused by autonomous cars? Should armed drones be allowed total autonomy?

Special consideration must be given to economic risks. The automation of jobs is on the rise. According to a study by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne (who are my colleagues at the University of Oxford), 47 percent of current U.S. jobs have a high probability of being automated by 2050, and a further 23 percent have a medium risk. Although the consequences are uncertain, some fear that increased job automation will lead to increased unemployment and inequality.

Given the already widespread use of narrow A.I., it’s easy to imagine the benefits of strong A.I. (also known as artificial general intelligence, or AGI). AGI should allow us to further automate work, amplify our ability to perform difficult tasks, and maybe even replace humans in some fields. (Think of what a fully autonomous, artificial surgeon could achieve.) More importantly, strong A.I. may help us finally solve long-standing problems—even deeply entrenched challenges like eradicating poverty and disease.  

But there are also important risks, and humanity’s extinction is only the most radical. More intermediate risks include general societal problems due to lack of work, extreme wealth inequality, and unbalanced global power.

Given even the remote possibility of such catastrophic outcomes, why are some people so unwilling to consider them? Why do people’s attitudes toward AGI risk vary so widely? The main reason is that two forecasts get confused. One concerns the possibility of achieving AGI in the foreseeable future; the other concerns its possible benefits. These are two different scenarios, but many people confuse them: “This is not happening any time soon” becomes “AGI presents no risks.”

In contrast, for many of us AGI is an actual possibility within the next 100 years. In that case, unless we prepare ourselves for the challenge, AGI could present serious difficulties for humanity, the most extreme being extinction. Again, these worries might just be precautionary: We don’t know when AGI is coming and what its impact will be. But that’s why we need to investigate the matter: Assuming that nothing bad will happen is just negligent wishful thinking.•

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“It Faces A Rise In The Power Resources Of Many Others — Both States And Non-State Actors”

March 26, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

A little more from Joseph Nye, author of Is the American Century Over?, who takes a largely sanguine view of our path forward, arguing that the U.S. still has great assets while acknowledging that it will no longer be lonely at the top. From Nye in the Financial Times:

A century is generally the limit for a human organism but countries are social constructs. Rome did not collapse until more than three centuries after it reached its apogee of power in 117AD. After American independence in 1776 Horace Walpole, the British politician, lamented that his nation had been reduced to the level of Sardinia, just as Britain was about to enter the industrial revolution that powered its second century as a global power.

Any effort at assessing American power in the coming decades should take into account how many earlier efforts have been wide of the mark. It is chastening to remember how wildly exaggerated US estimates of Soviet power in the 1970s and of Japanese power in the 1980s were. Today some see the Chinese as 10ft tall and proclaim this “the Chinese century”.

China’s size and relatively rapid economic growth will bring it closer to the US in terms of its power resources in the next few decades. But this does not necessarily mean it will surpass the US in military, economic and soft power.

Even if China suffers no big domestic political setback, many projections are simple linear extrapolations of growth rates that are likely to slow in the future. Moreover, economic projections are one dimensional. They ignore US military and soft power advantages, such as the desire of students around the world to attend US universities. They also overlook China’s geopolitical dis­advantages in the Asian balance of power, compared with America’s relations with Europe, Japan and India, which are likely to remain more favourable.

It is not impossible that a challenger such as China, Europe, Russia, India or Brazil will surpass the US in the first half of this century but it is but not likely. …

The real problem is not that it will be overtaken by China or another contender but rather that it faces a rise in the power resources of many others — both states and non-state actors such as transnational corporations, terrorist groups and cyber criminals.•

 

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“SaviOne’s Only On-Screen Facial Feature Is A Pair Of Blinking Eyes”

March 25, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Weak AI is going to roll in quietly, just a little hum to hypnotize us while the jobs disappear. The dream of the human-free labor force, a long-held one, is finally making strides. The robot butler is here, and you’ve been served. Grab what you can on the way out.

From “Bring on the Boring Robots,” Erik Sofge’s Popular Science piece about the mundane nature of the new machines, their gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun:

Compared to the usual subjects of robotics coverage—assassin drones, driverless cars, Amazon’s still-completely-hopeless delivery bot program—there’s nothing particularly titillating about an autonomous courier rolling quietly through hotel corridors, looking more like a small, mobile ATM than the “butler bot” that it’s sometimes described as. Is it interesting that it can weave through foot traffic without, as many other self-navigating bots do, grinding to a halt until the area is completely clear of humans? Is it cool that it can share an elevator with people, accomplishing the not-insignificant task of navigating in extremely close-quarters without bumping into or obstructing guests? Yes and yes, but only for people with an outsize interest in the nuts and bolts of robotics.

For everyone else, what’s interesting about SaviOne—and the upcoming Relay—is that they’re exactly as boring as robots should be, if they’re going to effectively populate the greater human world. Courier bots already ferry items around hospitals, though with less agility and understated charm as Savioke’s machines (SaviOne’s only on-screen facial feature is a pair of blinking eyes). The future of ubiquitous robotics isn’t in hyper-capable androids, but in specialized, good-enough systems that scurry about their narrowly-defined jobs.

Which isn’t to say that [Savioke CEO Steve] Cousins is thinking small. Hotels are obviously a huge market, and other environments could benefit from outsourcing the point-to-point delivery of small items to a mobile machine. Savioke is looking at nursing homes and offices, and banks have already expressed interest in Relay. Years from now, when fantasies of dishwasher-loading automatons are still fully out of reach, and self-driving cars are still relegated to HOV-style lanes in sunny California, we’ll have long since learned to ignore the swarms of hard-working, single-minded robots buzzing around underfoot. Boring is a matter of perspective.•

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