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“We Put A Shell Around The Central World To Contain This Atmosphere”

October 8, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Added to my list of interesting things that will likely never happen is engineer Ken Roy’s plan for a type of terraforming without actually changing a planet’s atmosphere. He wants to use “shells” to create enclosed cities–biospheres of a sort in outer space. From Miriam Kramer at Space.com:

“Roy’s terraforming vision hinges upon what he calls ‘shell worlds.’ Upon arrival at an ideal planet, humans would literally encase the alien world inside of a protective shell made from Kevlar, dirt and steel.

‘We have a central world. We put an atmosphere on it,’ Roy said. We can have the ‘composition, temperature, pressure of our choosing. Let’s assume we want ‘Earth-normal,’ and we put a shell around the central world to contain this atmosphere. The atmosphere then exists between the shell and the central world. The outer part of the shell is essentially a vacuum.’

While the planet’s gravity would remain unchanged, the rest of the world could be made very similar to Earth after importing vital materials,”

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“The Very Long-Term Future Is Quite Utopian”

October 8, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Just as good as Russ Roberts’ EconTalk episode with David Epstein is his recent show with economist Tyler Cowen, whose new book, Average Is Over, looks at life in a more-autonomous future. The guest sees the coming years being increasingly meritocratic, though with merit having shifted from those who are great to those who great at interfacing with machines. On that point is an exchange about freestyle chess, in which a human and computer team up to challenge another computer. Cowen points out that the best human players usually don’t fare too well in these competitions, and are often outdone by lesser players who are superior at knowing when to trust their non-human partner. Cowen guesses at future population distribution in the U.S. and how cities will change, and explains why he thinks income inequality is rising at the same time that crime rates are falling. He’s optimistic about life in 50-70 years, but believes the next few decades will be a painful mix of positives and negatives. 

I doubt we’ll ever really be a meritocracy. Even if we were, the idea that a small number of us, 15% or so, will flourish and have tremendous advantages and the rest will be second-class citizens with very nice toys and tools, just makes me sad. Even if it means that we’re wealthier in the aggregate, I still feel depressed about it. Beautiful cities where no poor people can afford to live doesn’t sound Utopian to me. Listen here.

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“[We Will Be] Sending Robots Into Space To Read The Sequence Of Alien Life Forms And Replicate Them Back On Earth”

October 7, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Craig Venter who says outlandish things and makes them seem possible–like here and here–thinks we’ll soon be able to print alien life forms. From the Telegraph:

“Dr Craig Venter, who helped map the human genome, created the world’s first synthetic lifeform, using chemicals and inserting DNA into the cell of a bacteria.

He believes scientists will soon be to do the same, designing basic organisms to include features useful in farming or medicine, as well as sending robots into space to read the sequence of alien life forms and replicate them back on Earth.

Writing in his latest book, Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life, he says: “In years to come it will be increasingly possible to create a wide variety of [synthetic] cells from computer-designed software.'”

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“Atlas Is An Anthropomorphic Robot”

October 7, 2013 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

From your friends at Boston Dynamics, with warmest regards: “Atlas is an anthropomorphic robot designed to operate on rough terrain. The video shows Atlas balancing as it walks on rocky terrain and when pushed from the side.”

“We Wanted To Find Out What It Takes To Make A Vehicle Move Itself”

October 7, 2013 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Mercedes Benz’ S 500 Intelligent Drive autonomous vehicle goes on a long-distance trip.

“The GOP’s Strategic Failure Has Grown Out Of Its Intellectual Insularity”

October 7, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

More than a decade ago, before everyone could disappear into their own channel, their own tube, I argued that I thought personalization was dangerous. Perhaps inevitable with cable TV and the Internet providing endless channels, but a bad thing for a democracy. The beauty of the heterogeneous is that you’re exposed to other arguments than your own, and even if you’re not moved by them, you at least understand how the other half lives. For too many people in this country, that appears to no longer be true.

I mentioned last week that I thought GOP insularity was at least partly behind the government shutdown. More on the topic from New York‘s ever-excellent Jonathan Chait:

“One of the causes of the economic and Constitutional crisis unleashed by House Republicans is their utter failure to grasp how Democrats would perceive their behavior. Conservative reporter Byron York perceptively, and alarmingly, describes a discussion with an influential Republican, who explains that the GOP stumbled into the shutdown war without a plan and repeatedly expected Democrats to bail them out by capitulating, only to be shocked when they refused. The GOP’s strategic failure has grown out of its intellectual insularity (or, to reprise a once-hot term, epistemic closure) leaving them so unaware of the principles motivating the other side that they couldn’t anticipate the Democrats’ obvious response.

‘I would liken this a little bit to Gettysburg,’ York’s source explained, ‘where a Confederate unit went looking for shoes and stumbled into Union cavalry, and all of a sudden found itself embroiled in battle on a battlefield it didn’t intend to be on, and everybody just kept feeding troops into it.’ An even more apt, and more recent, analogy might be Iraq, when Republican war planners expected a suspicious Muslim culture to greet their troops with sweets and flowers.

If you reside within the conservative news bubble, you probably had no idea before this crisis what the Democratic position on the debt ceiling and the shutdown is. You still probably have no idea now.”

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“Would We Soon Be Able To Choose To Live Forever?”

October 7, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Future shock in the present tense, Singularity University in Mountain View, California, is a Moore’s Law-loving educational institution and business incubator that may be expensive folly or the future–or perhaps a little of both. Eric Benson of Buzzfeed graduated from Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis’ school, which promises abundant energy, the end of illness and even immortality, and filed a report. The opening:

“It was the final night of classes at Singularity University’s March 2013 Executive Program, and we, the students, had been given a valedictory assignment: Predict the future.

For the past six days, the 63 of us had been immersed in lectures on the nearly limitless potential of artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, and bioinformatics, and now the moment had arrived for us to figure out what we really believed and ponder the big questions. Was a transhuman future — the Singularity — really only three decades away, as SU’s chancellor and co-founder Ray Kurzweil had prophesied? Were we really on the brink of a cure for all viruses and an era of radical energy abundance? Would we soon be able to choose to live forever? How many glasses of wine would it take until our group of entrepreneurs, executives, and hippie mystics got impatient and just resolved to build a time machine?

Inside Singularity University’s airy classroom on the campus of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, the SU staff distributed about 50 sheets of paper, many bearing newspaper headlines from this radical but not-too-distant future. (A future that, shockingly, still included a print newspaper industry.) We were instructed to break up into small groups to decide when in the next 20 years these world-changing milestones would come to pass.

‘LIFE EXPECTANCY REACHES 150 IN AMERICA’ blared the first headline. I stared at it incredulously. Life expectancy in the United States was currently 79. For the life expectancy to hit 150, that would mean… I started to do some back-of-the-napkin calculations. One of my fellow classmates, the 66-year-old chairman of an international law firm, was quicker to formulate his answer. ‘According to a gerontologist in England, the first person to live to 1,000 has already been born,’ he told us. ‘I’m not sure I believe that, but everyone thinks that the first person to live to 150 has already been born. I’d even say the first person to live to 200 has been born.’ The other five of us nodded our heads. We collectively decided that U.S. life expectancy would reach 150 within the next 10 to 15 years.”

 

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“I Started My Life As A Machine, Quite Young”

October 6, 2013 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Atlanta-based voice actor Susan Bennett is apparently the sound behind Siri, though Apple is too secretive about it to confirm. Bennett has previous similar experience, having been the voice of the first ATM machine. Oddly, she recorded the Siri sounds in 2005 with no idea what they’d be used for.

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“Such Fears Have Prompted Both Ford And General Motors…To Discuss Publicly Whether Their Future Might Be As ‘Mobility Providers'”

October 6, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

At this moment, the cycle has turned against automakers, if in a small but scary way. It’s not that demand will dry up, but what if urbanization, shifting attention to technology and mass transit reduces that sector’s prominence in the coming decades? How can those companies repurpose? From “Transport: Freed From the Wheel,” by Robert Wright in the Financial Times:

“Few believe the evidence points to an imminent divorce between America’s still heavily car-dependent cities and the motor car. But a frosty estrangement is a possibility, says Michael Tamor, a senior executive handling sustainability questions for Ford, the second-biggest US carmaker.

Such fears have prompted both Ford and General Motors, the biggest American carmaker, to discuss publicly whether their future might be as ‘mobility providers.’ This could mean leasing cars for short periods or making electric bikes rather than just building and selling cars.

‘We’re trying to predict where things are going to go,’ Mr Tamor says. ‘Whether or not the automobile remains viable [in future cities], it doesn’t mean it will remain the most favoured transportation mode.’

Mr Fischer recognises that cars will remain vital – hence his support for a $1.4bn bridge across the Ohio River. But within the city itself the priority is to make neighbourhoods more ‘bikeable’ and ‘walkable.’

‘There’s a lot of experimentation going on,’ he says.”

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“The Impact Has Been Not Only Economic But Also Cultural”

October 6, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Fred Vogelstein’s New York Times Magazine article about the iPhone coming to the market in 2007, a succinct description of Apple’s slippery place in mobile computing in the years since:

“[Andy] Grignon knew the iPhone unveiling was not an ordinary product announcement, but no one could have anticipated what a seminal moment it would become. In the span of seven years, the iPhone and its iPad progeny have become among the most important innovations in Silicon Valley’s history. They transformed the stodgy cellphone industry. They provided a platform for a new and hugely profitable software industry — mobile apps, which have generated more than $10 billion in revenue since they began selling in 2008. And they have upended the multibillion-dollar personal-computer industry. If you include iPad sales with those for desktops and laptops, Apple is now the largest P.C. maker in the world. Around 200 million iPhones and iPads were sold last year, or more than twice the number of cars sold worldwide.

The impact has been not only economic but also cultural. Apple’s innovations have set off an entire rethinking of how humans interact with machines. It’s not simply that we use our fingers now instead of a mouse. Smartphones, in particular, have become extensions of our brains. They have fundamentally changed the way people receive and process information. Ponder the individual impacts of the book, the newspaper, the telephone, the radio, the tape recorder, the camera, the video camera, the compass, the television, the VCR and the DVD, the personal computer, the cellphone, the video game and the iPod. The smartphone is all those things, and it fits in your pocket. Its technology is changing the way we learn in school, the way doctors treat patients, the way we travel and explore. Entertainment and media are accessed and experienced in entirely new ways.

And yet Apple today is under siege. From the moment in late 2007 that Google unveiled Android — and its own plan to dominate the world of mobile phones and other mobile devices — Google hasn’t just tried to compete with the iPhone; it has succeeded in competing with the iPhone. Android has exploded in popularity since it took hold in 2010. Its share of the global smartphone market is approaching 80 percent, while Apple’s has fallen below 20 percent. A similar trend is under way with iPads: in 2010 the iPad had about 90 percent of the tablet market; now more than 60 percent of the tablets sold run Android.

What worries Apple fans most of all is not knowing where the company is headed. “

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“The Nature Or Nurture Question Has Always Been A Fallacy”

October 6, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene, is the subject of an excellent EconTalk interview by Russ Roberts. Among other things, he provides solid evidence to undermine the 10,000-hour mishegas, and explains why competitive female runners seem to be getting slower and Tibetan monks living at high altitudes don’t make for great marathoners as Kenyan athletes do. Listen here.

 

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“Presidential Systems Veered Ultimately Toward Collapse Everywhere They Were Tried”

October 6, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Not only do the branches of government in America serve as checks and balances, but different parties empowered in different wings keep us from moving too fast in any direction. But what if that keeps us from moving at all? The American system only works if there isn’t pure partisanship, if politics makes strange bedfellows. The opening of “The Shutdown Prophet,” Jonathan Chait’s customarily excellent analysis in New York:

“In a merciful twist of fate, Juan Linz did not quite live to see his prophecy of the demise of American democracy borne out. Linz, the Spanish political scientist who died last week, argued that the presidential system, with its separate elections for legislature and chief executive, was inherently unstable. In a famous 1990 essay, Linz observed, ‘All such systems are based on dual democratic legitimacy: No democratic principle exists to resolve disputes between the executive and the legislature about which of the two actually represents the will of the people.’ Presidential systems veered ultimately toward collapse everywhere they were tried, as legislators and executives vied for supremacy. There was only one notable exception: the United States of America. 

Linz attributed our puzzling, anomalous stability to “the uniquely diffuse character of American political parties.” The Republicans had loads of moderates, and conservative whites in the South still clung to the Democratic Party. At the time he wrote that, the two parties were already sorting themselves into more ideologically pure versions, leaving us where we stand today: with one racially and economically polyglot party of center-left technocracy and one ethnically homogenous reactionary party. The latter is currently attempting to impose its program by threat upon the former. The events in Washington have given us a peek into the Linzian nightmare.

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Old Print Article: “Witch Loose In Orange,” New York Times (1905)

October 6, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"

“He succeeded in convincing the awestruck onlookers that he had pulled a large wad of hair out of the girl’s mouth.”

The heart wants what the heart wants, but the mind doesn’t readily make itself up. So we can accomplish anything, even catching or spreading illnesses that don’t actually exist, if only we believe. Some true believers were profiled in the August 8, 1905 New York Times. The story:

“Orange–The Italian colony in Orange is all stirred up to-day. The residents of that section have an idea that a witch is loose and playing hob with the belles of the settlement. Two girls have been under the ‘spell.’ They are Clementina Carnizzo, seventeen years old, and Rosina Russo, nineteen years old, both of 11 Hurlbut Street. Drs. Frederico Loungo, John H. Bradshaw, and Giovanni Megaro, who have attended them, all diagnose the cases as hysterical convulsions.

The Carnizzo girl was the first to be ‘stricken.’ She was under treatment for a month. Then a ‘witch doctor’ was summoned to treat the case. He was successful to the extent of $30. By a deft sleight of hand trick he succeeded in convincing the awestruck onlookers that he had pulled a large wad of hair out of the girl’s mouth. The feat gave the girl’s friends much satisfaction, and the girl seemed relieved. Apparently the malady is communicable, for the Russo girl, who is a chum of Clementina, became ill with hysteria and convulsions a few days ago. The ‘witch doctor’ duplicated his interesting treatment with the aid of $30 and a wad of hair, and there was an improvement in that case, too.  

"Then Clementina started to bark like a dog."

“It was decided that she had a ‘dog devil.'”

Then Clementina started to bark like a dog, and it was decided that she had a ‘dog devil.’ The Rev. Father Romanelli, rector of the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, was called in. Father Romanelli has ordered the ‘devil’ to get out, and it is believed that the evil spirit is packing up now, for the girls had a good night’s sleep last night, after having had one or two convulsions, and to-day they seemed much better.

Dr. Loungo says the cases are simply examples of hysteria, and the communication from one girl to the other is merely a phase of hysterical contagion common in emotional people. The response to the treatment of the ‘witch doctor’ was due to suggestion by him coupled with seemingly tangible proof.

Nevertheless, the Italians take the matter very seriously, and it would not surprise the doctors if there were an epidemic of the cases for a while.”

 

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“He Wanted The Company To Be The Ethical Company”

October 6, 2013 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Two John DeLorean videos made at the time of his fall from grace. The first is a 1984 report on the sad remains of the car company that barely was. The second, from the following year, sees the automaker appear on some sort of local San Francisco gabfest. The female co-host seems as if she would be most comfortable interviewing a poltergeist or homeowners who believe their walls are bleeding. DeLorean all but calls her a simpleton (if politely).

 

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“The Nanofabricators Are Going To Allow You To Live Anywhere You Like”

October 4, 2013 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In 1973, Radio Times asked British science historian James Burke to predict life twenty years into the future. He did a pretty good job of it. Here’s a new BBC report in which he tries to guess what the world will be like in 2100. Watch here. 

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“The Humanoid Machine Can Now Negotiate A Rocky Walkway With Relative Ease”

October 4, 2013 in Politics, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

An update on Alpha Dog (LS3), the canine-ish robot from Boston Dynamics and DARPA which is being field-tested on the cracked earth of Twentynine Palms, California, and snowy grounds of Boston. They are your servants, for now. From Endgadget: “The humanoid machine can now negotiate a rocky walkway with relative ease, adding another party trick to its already impressive repertoire.”

“[President Obama] Had Placed Her Residence Under Electronic Surveillance, Which Was Being Fed Live To All National News Outlets”

October 4, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

To two great article’s this year about paranoid mental illness inside the surveillance state–Mike Jay’s and Andrew Marantz’s— comes this sad punctuation mark: Miram Carey, who was killed in Capitol Hill yesterday, believed she was being monitored by her own government. And she was, and well all are. And the government in turn is being watched. The prevailing culture feeds delusions, which often aren’t completely delusional–just a scary riff on the truth. It’s not that sick people are “visionaries” or “misunderstood.” No, they’re sick, but so are aspects of the society they’re responding to. It’s not that spying has just begun, but the technology has progressed. We’re new, we’re improved. From Susan Donaldson James at ABC News:

“ABC News’ sources revealed that Carey had started to show signs of mental illness around September 2012, and had a history of delusions and irrational behavior.

She reportedly told the father of her child and 54-year-old boyfriend at the time that she was the ‘prophet of Stamford’ and that President Obama had placed the city on lockdown and had placed her residence under electronic surveillance, which was being fed live to all national news outlets.

Carey told a social worker she had postpartum depression, but Galynker said that postpartum psychosis looks nothing like postpartum depression. Postpartum psychosis is associated with paranoia and delusions, said Galynker.

‘[Her] main symptoms were not depression but were paranoia and delusions,’ he said. ‘But it is all unclear because no one has looked at her medical records. What we have seen is close to a year of psychotic episodes and hospitalizations and [encounters] with police.'”

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“I Think It Reminds Us That There Really Are Hazards In The Space Business”

October 3, 2013 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Buzz Aldrin, a great astronaut, sure, but more complex than just stoicism stuffed into a spacesuit, guest reviews Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity for the Hollywood Reporter. An excerpt:

“I was so extravagantly impressed by the portrayal of the reality of zero gravity. Going through the space station was done just the way that I’ve seen people do it in reality. The spinning is going to happen — maybe not quite that vigorous — but certainly we’ve been fortunate that people haven’t been in those situations yet. I think it reminds us that there really are hazards in the space business, especially in activities outside the spacecraft.

I was happy to see someone moving around the spacecraft the way George Clooney was. It really points out the degree of confusion and bumping into people, and when the tether gets caught, you’re going to be pulled — I think the simulation of the dynamics was remarkable.

We were probably not as lighthearted as Clooney and Sandra Bullock. We didn’t tell too many jokes when people were in some position of jeopardy outside the spacecraft, but I think that’s the humanity coming through in the characters. This movie gave great clarity to looking down and seeing the features of Earth … but there weren’t enough clouds, and maybe there was too precise a delineation from space.”

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“Robots, Unlike Humans, Are Not Consumers”

October 3, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From “Avoiding Our Dystopian Robot Future” at the Philosopher’s Beard, a passage that speculates on how an autonomous society that’s also a capitalist one might reconcile itself:

“The first dystopian threat has been well analysed by lots of people (eg, eg, eg). At present our political economy provides individuals with purchasing power claims on goods and services mainly through the labour market. That is, most people provide for themselves (and their dependents) by finding a job that pays enough to afford to buy what they need for a basic standard of living, and at least some of what they want as well. Government welfare policy is mainly oriented to supporting this central labour market mechanism, for example by providing public education for people to improve their employability, and social insurance nets for the disabled and temporarily unemployed.  

The problem that robots pose is that they may make this labour market obsolete by causing ‘technological unemployment’ for humans. If robots can not only perform mechanical tasks more quickly, accurately, and tirelessly than humans (the problem the Luddites confronted), but also cognitive tasks (like exam grading, driving, legal discovery, etc) then what will humans have left to sell on the labour market? Our birthright – the ability to use our bodies and minds to create things that others find valuable – will be worthless. Yet people will still need food, shelter, and the rest. How will they get it? 

Robots will revolutionise the supply side of the economy, resulting in much cheaper goods and services. Yet the economic gains of this efficiency will not be split between labour (wages) and capital (profits), since robots don’t need to be paid. Thus the owners of capital – the owners of the machines – will end up with an increasingly large share of whatever income the economy generates. (The ratio under capitalism 1.0 has historically been about 2/3 labour, 1/3 capital.) The pessimistic conclusion is that the society of the future would be characterised by an unimaginable abundance that only a very few can afford to buy.

Yet perhaps that scenario is not so likely. Not only can one expect the political mobilisation of the 99% objecting to their economic disenfranchisement. There is also a contradiction in the capitalists’ own position. For robots, unlike humans, are not consumers. That is part of what makes them so cheap to use in producing goods and services. Yet at the aggregate level that is a big problem. If no one (except the handful of capitalists, software designers, and hangers on) can afford to buy what you’re selling, then it hardly matters how cheaply you can produce it. Such an economy will be relatively small (‘depressed’) despite its enormous potential, and thus the capitalists as a class will be poorer than they might be. 

Given the convergence of the interests of both capitalists and ordinary citizens, it seems reasonable to expect that some kind of accommodation can be reached to transform the political economy to cope with the end of human labour. Specifically, governments will have to reorient themselves from supporting citizens’ opportunity for waged labour to providing them with a direct rights claim on economic purchasing power (like pensions). Income is now redistributed from capitalists to ordinary citizens through the labour market. In future it will have to be redistributed through another mechanism, whether that be direct corporate taxation or perhaps some system of universal share ownership. That would be a radically different political economy than we have had for the last couple of hundred years. Call it Capitalism 2.0.”•

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Rod Serling, 1964:

“The Real Problem With Ebooks Is That They’re More ‘E’ Than Book”

October 3, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Have you smelled any good books lately?

The worst argument against ebooks is the sensory one, that dead trees are more pleasing. That you miss how the paper and binding smell. You shouldn’t have been smelling your books anyhow. That’s disgusting. But there are some good points to be made against the digitization of books, in terms of privacy, memory and economics. For some thoughts in the latter category, here’s the opening of Art Brodsky’s new Wired article:

“This is not one of those rants about missing the texture, touch, colors, whatever of paper contrasted with the sterility of reading on a tablet. No, the real abomination of ebooks is often overlooked: Some are so ingrained in the product itself that they are hiding in plain sight, while others are well concealed beneath layers of commerce and government.

The real problem with ebooks is that they’re more ‘e’ than book, so an entirely different set of rules govern what someone — from an individual to a library — can and can’t do with them compared to physical books, especially when it comes to pricing.

The collusion of large ebook distributors in pricing has been a public issue for a while, but we need to talk more about how they are priced differently to consumers and to libraries. That’s how ebooks contribute to the ever-growing divide between the literary haves and have-nots.”

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Old Print Article: “Confessions Of A Body-Snatcher,” New York Times (1878)

October 3, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"I've bought meat of this man many a time, and now I'll sell him for meat."

“I’ve bought meat of this man many a time, and now I’ll sell him for meat.”

Demand invites supply. Case in point: Medical schools need bodies for students to work on, so a trade arose in the nineteenth century that put grave robbers in cahoots with medical colleges. Shovel-ready entrepreneurs scanned local papers for death notices, headed to cemeteries, usually with doctors in tow, and welcomed back the recently departed. Sometimes the bodies of particularly wealthy citizens would be ransomed, but the corpses would usually just be sold for a couple of bucks to universities. An inside look at an Ohio operation in this strange “recycling” business appeared in the November 18, 1878 New York Times. The story:

“Cleveland–Joiner, the wretch who has been in all the recent grave robbing jobs in this section, continues to divulge the secrets of the trade. He pretends to be very contrite over what he has done, and ready to make amends by exposing his companions in guilt. His last story related to Mr. J.E. French, a son of the old gentleman who was ruthlessly torn from his grave, in Willoughby, on Sept. 16. The robbers watch the newspapers, and when death notices of persons thought to be available occur, the graves are visited and a resurrection takes place. In August last a young man fell over a ledge in Geauga County and broke his neck. The fact was published, and the night after the funeral Minor and Joiner repaired to Chardon, 30 miles distant, where the burial had taken place, with the intention of obtaining the body. As usual, the doctor was sought, who told them that the grave was watched by two men with shot-guns. This was unpleasant, but the robbers thought the doctor might be deceiving them with the intention of obtaining the body himself. They accordingly sought another doctor, who confirmed the story, and so they abandoned the scheme and returned. At Chester Cross Roads, in the same county, two robbers from this city were assisted by the Doctor and a medical student of that village. They went to get the body of an old lady who was very fleshy, and who had died of apoplexy. The coffin was reached and broken open without accident, and a hook fastened in the neck. Four men tugged and pulled in vain at the prize, but were unable to move it. They were in despair, when a happy thought struck them. Taking the reins from the harness and hitching the horse to the hook, the body was successfully brought to the surface. Another pull and the body was safely sacked and loaded. Another visit was made to Hampden, in this county, and this time the robbers were assisted by two doctors and a medical student. They did what Joiner calls a good night’s work, obtaining three bodies in a short time. One of these was that of a butcher, and as his body was sacked the home doctor remarked: ‘I’ve bought meat of this man many a time, and now I’ll sell him for meat.’ Some time after this the body of a young lady was stolen from the cemetery at Leroy, Lake County. After digging a certain distance they found water. This had to be bailed from the coffin before the body could be taken out. The corpse was found to be somewhat swollen but made a good subject. Mr. French, who is quite wealthy, expressed his determination to follow up this gang and will prosecute in every case. Dr. Carlisle, who is said to have assisted in the Willoughby job, has been indicted in the Lake County Court for disturbing the grave. The best counsel in this part of the State has been engaged on both sides, and important revelations will doubtless come out. The trial is set down for Thursday next.”

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“The Baby Had Learned To Talk”

October 3, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In Felix Salmon’s critique of Dave Eggers’ new novel, he writes glowingly of “It Knows,” Daniel Soar’s 2011 London Review of Books piece about three volumes regarding Google and the place of the Plex in our world. (Or is it our place in the Plex’s world?) A passage about the late GOOG-411 service:

“Levy tells the story of a new recruit with a long managerial background who asked Google’s senior vice-president of engineering, Alan Eustace, what systems Google had in place to improve its products. ‘He expected to hear about quality assurance teams and focus groups’ – the sort of set-up he was used to. ‘Instead Eustace explained that Google’s brain was like a baby’s, an omnivorous sponge that was always getting smarter from the information it soaked up.’ Like a baby, Google uses what it hears to learn about the workings of human language. The large number of people who search for ‘pictures of dogs’ and also ‘pictures of puppies’ tells Google that ‘puppy’ and ‘dog’ mean similar things, yet it also knows that people searching for ‘hot dogs’ get cross if they’re given instructions for ‘boiling puppies’. If Google misunderstands you, and delivers the wrong results, the fact that you’ll go back and rephrase your query, explaining what you mean, will help it get it right next time. Every search for information is itself a piece of information Google can learn from.

By 2007, Google knew enough about the structure of queries to be able to release a US-only directory inquiry service called GOOG-411. You dialled 1-800-4664-411 and spoke your question to the robot operator, which parsed it and spoke you back the top eight results, while offering to connect your call. It was free, nifty and widely used, especially because – unprecedentedly for a company that had never spent much on marketing – Google chose to promote it on billboards across California and New York State. People thought it was weird that Google was paying to advertise a product it couldn’t possibly make money from, but by then Google had become known for doing weird and pleasing things. In 2004, it launched Gmail with what was for the time an insanely large quota of free storage – 1GB, five hundred times more than its competitors. But in that case it was making money from the ads that appeared alongside your emails. What was it getting with GOOG-411? It soon became clear that what it was getting were demands for pizza spoken in every accent in the continental United States, along with questions about plumbers in Detroit and countless variations on the pronunciations of ‘Schenectady’, ‘Okefenokee’ and ‘Boca Raton’. GOOG-411, a Google researcher later wrote, was a phoneme-gathering operation, a way of improving voice recognition technology through massive data collection.

Three years later, the service was dropped, but by then Google had launched its Android operating system and had released into the wild an improved search-by-voice service that didn’t require a phone call. You tapped the little microphone icon on your phone’s screen – it was later extended to Blackberries and iPhones – and your speech was transmitted via the mobile internet to Google servers, where it was interpreted using the advanced techniques the GOOG-411 exercise had enabled. The baby had learned to talk. Now that Android phones are being activated at a rate of more than half a million a day,​4 Google suddenly has a vast and growing repository of spoken words, in every language on earth, and a much more powerful learning machine.”

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“Streamlined As A Plane Is This Unique Creation”

October 2, 2013 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

When I was putting up the post about the Waterland boat-car hybrid, it reminded of another odd vehicle, the Davis three-wheel sedan which was produced by a short-lived California company in 1947-48. The automobile was nicknamed “Baby.” I may have put up this video before, but here it is just in case.

“With Autonomous Cars, Infrastructure Enters The Realm Of Science Fiction”

October 2, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of Terry Bennett’s new Wired opinion piece about the smart infrastructure that will be needed to handle interconnected, autonomous cars:

“Much has been written about the era of connected cars, especially as excitement grows around announcements that besides Google, Audi, Nissan, Tesla, Mercedes Benz, and others are planning to make commercially available self-driving cars, too.

The discussions range from the ethics of autonomous cars to every latest announcement around the technology involved in Google’s own self-driving car project — from wearables to manufacturing. But there’s a danger to these one-dimensional discussions: We can’t rely on the technology inside the car alone.

We need to think about what’s outside, too — a smart, interconnect infrastructure for our roadways.

It’s moving from thinking only about traffic lights, signs, and crosswalk lights to adding intelligence into pavement, utilities, and the like. This will require changes in how we think about business models, job functions, and more. Because our existing roadways aren’t inert objects: They’re dynamic systems comprised of the interplay between cars and traffic signals, as well as repaving and restriping.

With autonomous cars, infrastructure enters the realm of science fiction.”

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“I Saw An Enormous Statue Of Myself, Lying In The Desert, Mouth Open As If I Were Dead. I Entered My Mouth.”

October 2, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The impetus for change in 1969’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice comes from two of the titular characters attending guerrilla psychological workshops at the Esalen Institute at Big Sur. Two years prior, Leo Litwak, the novelist, journalist and book reviewer, brought his considerable writing skills to the alternative-therapy retreat for a New York Times Magazine story. A section from “Joy Is the Prize” in which the author is awakened to a repressed memory from WWII:

I never anticipated the effect of these revelations, as one after another of these strangers expressed his grief and was eased. I woke up one night and felt as if everything were changed. I felt as if I were about to weep. The following morning the feeling was even more intense. 

Brigitte and I walked down to the cliff edge. We lay beneath a tree. She could see that I was close to weeping. I told her that I’d been thinking about my numbness, which I had traced to the war. I tried to keep the tears down. I felt vulnerable and unguarded. I felt that I was about to lose all my secrets and I was ready to let them go. Not being guarded, I had no need to put anyone down, and I felt what it was to be unarmed. I could look anyone in the eyes and my eyes were open. 

That night I said to Daniel: “Why do you keep diverting us with your intellectual arguments? I see suffering in your eyes. You give me a glimpse of it, then you turn it off. Your eyes go dead and the intellectual stuff bores me. I feel that’s part of your strategy.”

Schutz suggested that the two of us sit in the center of the room and talk to each other. I told Daniel I was close to surrender. I wanted to let go. I felt near to my grief. I wanted to release it and be purged. Daniel asked about my marriage and my work. Just when he hit a nerve, bringing me near the release I wanted, he began to speculate on the tragedy of the human condition. I told him: “You’re letting me off and I don’t want to be left off.”

Schutz asked if I would be willing to take a fantasy trip.

It was later afternoon and the room was already dark. I lay down, Schutz beside me, and the group gathered around. I closed my eyes. Schutz asked me to imagine myself very tiny and to imagine that tiny self entering my own body. He wanted me to describe the trip.

I saw an enormous statue of myself, lying in the desert, mouth open as if I were dead. I entered my mouth. I climbed down my gullet, entering it as if it were a manhole. I climbed into my chest cavity. Schutz asked me what I saw. “It’s empty,” I said. “There’s nothing here.” I was totally absorbed by the effort to visualize entering myself and lost all sense of the group. I told Schutz there was no heart in my body. Suddenly, I felt tremendous pressure in my chest, as if tears were going to explode. He told me to go to the vicinity of the heart and report what I saw. There, on a ledge of the chest wall, near where the heart should have been, I saw a baby buggy. He asked me to look into it. I didn’t want to, because I feared I might weep, but I looked, and I saw a doll. He asked me to touch it. I was relieved to discover that it was only a doll. Schutz asked me if I could bring a heart into my body. And suddenly there it was, a heart sheathed in slime, hung with blood vessels. And that heart broke me up. I felt my chest convulse. I exploded. I burst into tears.

I recognized the heart. The incident had occurred more than 20 years before and had left me cold.•

 

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