Diane Ackerman

You are currently browsing articles tagged Diane Ackerman.

“Geoengineering Is Meddling On The Grandest Scale”

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

Last month, I missed “The Age of the Anthropocene: Masters of Earth,” philosopher Stephen Cave’s excellent Financial Times piece about numerous recent books which weigh the sustainability of the human race in the face of bulging population and the environmental costs of our cleverness, which made possible the Industrial and Digital Revolutions. A piece about the perils of reengineering humans and geoengineering the environment, which riffs on new works by Diane Ackerman, Ruth DeFries and E.O. Wilson:

Ackerman takes us on a whimsical journey, at times directionless, but at others engaging and profound. Despite her resolute optimism, she is very much aware of the damage we cause, such as on the unlucky island of Guam in the western Pacific. She describes how problems began when a giant African snail, introduced to the island as a food source, spread to attack local crops; the authorities therefore introduced the carnivorous Florida wolfsnail to stop the plague — but the wolfsnail preferred the island’s indigenous snail species, 50 of which have now been made extinct, while their giant African cousin continues to destroy crops and native flora unimpeded.

This parable of incompetent meddling explains why many people profoundly object to the idea of geoengineering — attempting actively to manipulate the climate. Essentially, geoengineering is meddling on the grandest scale, such as spraying sulphur particles into the atmosphere to mimic the cooling effect of a volcanic eruption. It would be the definitive Anthropocene act, either innovating our way out of our problems or — just as likely — blundering into much worse ones.

Mindful of the law of unintended consequences, Wilson is sceptical of, for example, trying to re-engineer the human genome to make us better fitted for the future. Although we are flawed and have made quite a mess for ourselves, he argues that our imperfections and inner contradictions are also the source of the creativity that will lead to solutions. DeFries tells another nice story of incompetent meddling: an attempt in 1957 in the southern US to kill an invasive species of aggressive fire ants by using insecticides. This resulted in the eradication of native ant species, thereby clearing the way for the hardier fire ants to expand. The great naturalist, and ant-man, EO Wilson, described this at the time as the “Vietnam of entomology.” Now, in The Meaning of Human Existence, he gives his own take on the state of our species and the pros and cons of meddling.

Mindful of the law of unintended consequences, Wilson is sceptical of, for example, trying to re-engineer the human genome to make us better fitted for the future. Although we are flawed and have made quite a mess for ourselves, he argues that our imperfections and inner contradictions are also the source of the creativity that will lead to solutions.•

 

Tags: , , ,

“His Focus Is On A Self-Aware Species, Robot Sapiens”

September 28, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Weak AI is going to continue to proliferate throughout the world, its laser focus on narrow tasks improving production and having major economic ramifications good and bad. But what of Strong AI? When will these rough beasts be “born,” their hour come round at last? From Diane Ackerman’s Salon profile of Cornell University roboticist Hod Lipson:

“What’s the next hack for a rambunctious species full of whiz kids with digital dreams? Lipson is fascinated by a different branch of the robotic evolutionary tree than the tireless servant, army of skilled hands, or savant of finicky incisions with which we have become familiar. Over ten million Roomba vacuum cleaners have already sold to homeowners (who sometimes find them being ridden as child or cat chariots). We watch with fascination as robotic sea scouts explore the deep abysses (or sunken ships), and NOAA’s robots glide underwater to monitor the strength of hurricanes. Google’s robotics division owns a medley of firms, including some minting life-size humanoids—because, in public spaces, we’re more likely to ask a cherub-faced robot for info than a touchscreen. Both Apple and Amazon are diving into advanced robotics as well. The military has invested heavily in robots as spies, bionic gear, drones, pack animals, and bomb disposers. Robots already work for us with dedicated precision in factory assembly lines and operating rooms. In cross-cultural studies, the elderly will happily adopt robotic pets and even babies, though they aren’t keen on robot caregivers at the moment.

All of that, to Lipson, is child’s play. His focus is on a self-aware species, Robot sapiens. Our own lineage branched off many times from our apelike ancestors, and so will the flowering, subdividing lineage of robots, which perhaps needs its own Linnaean classification system. The first branch in robot evolution could split between AI and AL—artificial intelligence and artificial life. Lipson stands right at that fork in that road, whose path he’s famous for helping to divine and explore in one of the great digital adventures of our age. It’s the ultimate challenge, in terms of engineering, in terms of creation.

‘At the end of the day,’ he says with a nearly illegible smile, ‘I’m trying to recreate life in a synthetic environment—not necessarily something that will look human. I’m not trying to create a person who will walk out the door and say ‘Hello!’ with all sorts of anthropomorphic features, but rather features that are truly alive given the principles of life—traits and behaviors they have evolved on their own. I don’t want to build something, turn it on, and suddenly it will be alive. I don’t want to program it.'”

Tags: ,

“One Scientist Cured Type I Diabetes In Rats With A Blood-Cell-Size Device Already”

September 15, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Steve Martin and Richard Feynman had a similar idea: Let’s get small. As we can now put the Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin, we’ll eventually place nanobots inside of people to regulate health and cure illnesses, though I will guess it’ll take substantially longer than the boldest projections. From Diane Ackerman’s new book The Human Age, via Delancey Place:

“The nanotechnology world is a wonderland of surfaces unimaginably small, full of weird properties, and invisible to the naked eye, where we’re nonetheless reinventing industry and manufacturing in giddy new ways. Nano can be simply, affordably lifesaving during natural disasters. The 2012 spate of floods in Thailand inspired scientists to whisk silver nanoparticles into a solar-powered water filtration system that can be mounted on a small boat to purify water for drinking from the turbid river it floats on.

In the Namibian desert, inspired by water-condensing bumps on the backs of local beetles, a new breed of water bottle harvests water from the air and refills itself. The bottles will hit the market in 2014, for use by both marathon runners and people in third-world countries where fresh water may be scarce. South African scientists have created water-purifying tea bags. Nano can be as humdrum as the titanium dioxide particles that thicken and whiten Betty Crocker frosting and Jell-O pudding. It can be creepy: pets genetically engineered with firefly or jellyfish protein so that they glow in the dark (fluorescent green cats, mice, fish, monkeys, and dogs have already been created). It can be omnipresent and practical: the army’s newly invented self-cleaning clothes. It can be unexpected, as microchips embedded in Indian snake charmers’ cobras so that they can be identified if they stray into the New Delhi crowds. Or it can dazzle and fill us with hope, as in medicine, where it promises nano-windfalls. …

The futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that ‘by the 2030s we’ll be putting millions of nanobots inside our bodies to augment our immune system, to basically wipe out disease. One scientist cured Type I diabetes in rats with a blood-cell-size device already.”

Tags: , , ,