The above article helped to solidify a few ideas I had been working on into something more or less coherent.  But when I started properly joining the dots, the realisation they led to disturbed a little.  We all know the world is changing, and this change is being led largely by changes in the Internet, technology, etc, as well as cultural and political forces.  But mostly the Internet right now.  Specifically in the way we use it, and the way it is becoming a place for us to live as social animals.

Ten years ago the Internet was a very different place.  You went to a web page to look at it, and to get information from it.  That was all.  Maybe you bought something. These days we go to websites to use them – there are things we can do on them, and in some places we can leave a lasting mark.  Some of them, like Facebook, are becoming a lot more than just a service or a playground.  They’re becoming places where we extend ourselves.

Here’s a map of all Facebook accounts and the connections between them:

Click to Embiggen

Our personalities, and social reaches, are expanding.  Never before have you been able to tell something to hundreds of people you know all in one go, for free.  To show your family pictures of your vacation you used to have to email them all to everyone – now you can just share them. With this comes online honesty – children used to be at risk in online chat rooms where anonymity ruled.  Now anonymity is a scarce, and widely mistrusted, online commodity.

As our online presence becomes more social and more connected it becomes easier for us to communicate to a wide audience, and to socialize much more widely.  In case you don’t know the numbers, it’s taken Facebook six years to grow from a small college network to 550 million users worldwide.  That’s a twelfth of the planet, connected by a single network, and run by a single company that knows more about each and every member than most parents know about their own kids.

I’m not going to preach about monopolies or Big Brother.  Far from it.  This is how the world is changing, and if you think it’s going fast now, just wait. As I explained in the article 5 Technologies That Will Lead to the Singularity, computing power is growing at an increasing rate.  Lagging only slightly behind that is what we can do with all that power.

The exponential growth of computing power available, comparing it to various animals.

I’d like to stress that what we’re seeing is only the beginning.  Zuckerberg seems to think so as well. There are limitations, but these will be overcome.  Facebook, and what it represents, is just an embryonic form of what it will become.  Before I get onto my actual point, this quote:

We are running our social lives over the Internet, an infrastructure that was not designed for that purpose, and we must be aware of the distortions it creates or we will be distorted by them.

I mentioned previously that Facebook knew a lot about us.  That means a lot of money, in the hands of good or evil. Facebook does it’s best to use it only in ways that are not harmful or invasive, and hopefully in ways that at worst will see us spend a few bucks or waste a few hours (a day, in the case of those who play Farmville). Sometimes they get it wrong, but we’ve turned out to be pretty forgiving. What it also means is that people have a new way to sell us things, and we are eating that shit up.

We’re not just buying the shit.  We’re picking it up with our hands and smearing it all over the place.  Most people don’t like ads, or pass them on, but some people do.  Some ads, like the Old Spice commercials, are hilarious and make you want to share them.  We tell our friends about them, quote them, turn them into memes.  That’s fine, but we will need to develop the same kind of immunity to it as we have against detergent ads soon, or we’ll end up like Idiocracy with fewer dick jokes.

Pictured: Dick Joke

Hell, I know I wanted to go out and buy some Old Spice after watching that guy.  But big advertising companies aren’t the only ones who are using this new media as a sales platform.  Individual professionals, entrepreneurs and the garden-variety soap-box loons you thought were normal people before you friended them are doing it too.

This is Samantha Laura Kaye, a girl I knew in University who went on to work in hair and makeup styling, and do a little bit of modeling and promoting from what I can tell.  She’s doing a damn fine job of it, as well.  In a short time her website’s undergone an impressive overhaul, and every few days I hear about a new hair serum or a mobile massage parlor on Facebook.

Now, her website isn’t everyone’s taste – especially if you’re not into makeup, fashion photo shoots, hairstyles, or scantily-clad models playing prison rules soccer while showing gratuitous underboob (sigh… here).  My point is she’s using the channels most of us use to make our friends’ profile pictures say I heart cock to promote her business, and sell herself as a personality on the side.

Now, this handsome devil is Craig Vine, another casual acquaintance of mine.  He also has a blog, The Bloody Cabaggatory. But Craig isn’t selling stuff.  He is making money from the ads on the side, but it’s mostly for his own and his audiences’ entertainment.  But what happens on his blog isn’t important.  What is important is that he uses things like Facebook, Twitter, and a whole host of social media services most of us don’t use, to distribute his writings.

He’s pushing an agenda.  As scattered and off-sides as it is, he’s selling a personality too.  But the people with blogs aren’t the only ones who are selling stuff through Facebook, because you’re doing it too.

Being socially successful, it seems to me, is the end result of coming out on top in the majority of a series of transactions. I’m not trying to sound like a sociopath here, but think about it. Some people just play well with others, and others want them around.  Some of it might be the genetic lottery, but I know a lot of unattractive people who have a lot of friends.

It’s the nub of my little theory here that social success means playing your cards right, making the most of what you’ve got in terms of looks, personality and phallic humour to win friends and influence people.  It’s not directly related to selling, but when you communicate more with a lot of people because you want to, and you have an engaging personality, you are going to thrive. Being able to sell your personality like a product, on any level, is a good skill to have.

But Facebook has its own rules. As the third largest country on Earth by population, it already has guidelines and famous faux-pas like you can find on sites like failbook.com: Don’t have an open divorce on Facebook.  Don’t put your sex life on Facebook, or anywhere near it if you have more than one sex life.  Learn how it works before you post lurid details about your latest conquest all over your best friend’s wall, and for God’s sake, stop clicking on these:

These are a lot like the things we call ‘manners’ or common sense, but are totally alien to someone who has never used Facebook. They were not a part of our culture in our parents’ generation, but they are in it now, and to our children it will be hard to imagine a world where that wasn’t the case.

Being able to communicate yourself well, make people laugh or command an audience, socially or for business, have always been valuable skills. With the growth both in size and complexity of our online lives, they will become more vital than ever.  When a good portion of your connection with humanity is shared data, you better make yours as good as it can be.

There is no escape, except at a high cost.  You can say that you don’t want to use Facebook for anything but sending the odd message.  You can ignore Farmville and all the links people post and invitations they send you.  But there’ll come a subtle point where non-involvement edges you out of the network you rely on.  If you’ve ever kept yourself out of the loop for a while, you tend to fade away from the group’s consciousness.  You don’t call them, they won’t call you.

The same goes for social media.  We have a choice: participate, and get used to the idea that large portions of your previously private life are now in the public domain, or skip out and risk alienation. Those aren’t the extremes yet, but I already see a world in which virtual interactions hold just as much weight as those in real life.  And I think it’ll be here before we have either the technology or the maturity to pull it off.

The point being: what I feel is not important. At least not to you. Even you with the exceedingly long nipples, well done, by the way, for making it out of the house – I’m proud of you. You could feed babies on the other side of the room. But, the Internet, and social media specifically are designed in such a way that your opinions, your pictures, your links, your everything are given centre stage. The paradox is that there are millions and millions of centre stages and the only member of the audience is a rather shiny mirror with a giant gold frame.

Some of you might have seen a documentary called Century of the Self, by Adam Curtis. This posits the theory that the idea of a self was not crystallised in human minds prior to the early twentieth century, where Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, used psychological techniques to further consumerism and influence people. For a very brief overview at Wikipedia, click this collection of linky letters. For a little more of an in-depth look, dive straight into this blue pool of linkage (The BBC’s page for Century of the Self). And, what with the wonders of free information, why not let your mouse hover over and chomp up these letters, which will allow you to download the entire documentary, for free. Don’t complain if you burn up your Internet.

Please bear in mind that my takeout from the documentary is almost as simplified as the plot to Twilight. So don’t kill me, or troll me, or start a flame war, or whatever it is that the Internet kids are doing now.

What we are seeing now, manifesting in the Internet is the evolution of this idea of the self. If or when you watch the documentary, you will see how the public had to be given this idea of the self. And then, they had to be taught that only by buying things, they could define who they were in relation to other people. The Century of the Self tells us that prior to this, humans only ever consumed what they needed. Am I guilty for owning 30 pairs of shoes. Yes. I am.

The Internet has evolved to meet this idea of the self and push it further than we could imagine. People celebrate themselves for no other reason than they are themselves. This doesn’t make sense to me. While one should certainly be happy with one’s self (I am happy with myself sometimes two, three times a day), I still don’t understand people’s need to blab so much. To literally cut themselves open and let it all pour out. I don’t like having your smelly, emo guts all over me, thank you very much. Perhaps because the Internet is so much more anonymous and there are less consequences than there are in real life, people are happier to air their dirty laundry without fear of recourse or someone looking at them funny with that slight sneer as if there’s a strange smell afoot.

Think of facebook status updates. I have seen more post-break-up wars of words than I care to count. And no one realises just how silly and childish they are. The same goes with overly emo status updates. No one cares that you’re upset, that you’re over it, that you quit or that you give up. Mentioning your dear Pep-pep that just died means nothing. Does your emotion only become validated when it is seen in a public forum? If there was no Internet would you have to run around in the streets with a sign around your neck (complete with an unhappy face, just to let people know for sure that you’re upset)? Or (and this is something that irritates me more than people trying to justify to me why Twilight has any merit whatsoever) are people just doing the old emotional fishing? This can take the form of fishing for compliments or fishing for sympathy. Either way it’s pretty lame. As soon as people fish for compliments or sympathy around me, I tend to ignore their pleas quick-smart.

I think it’s the assumption that your emotions, your insides, are worthy of public consumption that frightens me. I define myself (on the Intertubes and to a large extent in real life) by what I create, by what content I put forward. It doesn’t matter that I was the youngest person to reach the South Pole wearing only underpants and green nipple tassels, or that I entered the Winter Olympics for the antique pipe-smoking and typewriter abuse events and won gold at both (and had to get a really bad tattoo to let you all know that I was there). What matters is the content that I produce.

I define my value by what I can create. What I can bring into being from nothingness. My selfish hopes and dreams have nothing to do with any of you. You can ask me and if I feel like it, I might share some things with you, but I hope I will never overshare my personal life. It’s really not that interesting. And neither is yours. Even if you’re quirky and zany. And you know what? Even being kooky is not enough. What I’m interested in is your responses to things, big things, not the way your best friend’s ex-girlfriend totally likes you but you’re not sure if you should do her or not because bla bla bla bla, I’m sorry I couldn’t read any more of your self-serving blog because I was stabbing an oyster fork into my eyes.

I don’t even like oysters and I wear glasses. You can imagine the amount of effort needed to just undertake such an action.

Dear readers. There is a difference between blogging and writing. I am not a blogger. The democratisation of the Internet has been its biggest boon and its biggest bugbear. The idea that information and content can be created and shared by anyone is still one of the most exciting things I’ve ever come across. Just thinking about twitter makes my brain wet, when I consider what a thrilling, dynamic conversation it can be. It can also be a whole lot of emotional whining, or mind-vomit, don’t get me wrong. This democratisation has allowed anyone to start a blog, a place where they can share their talent with the world (if they have any). Or they can share pictures. If that’s their thing. I’m generally about as visual as Stevie Wonder. But please kids, stick to your talents. The piss-stained sepia look does not make your photos more arty, even if you’re pouting as best you can, sticking your neck out so that your double chin doesn’t show and standing with the biggest group of friends you can find, to prove how cool you are. Ditto black and white. Black and white photos should be left to the professionals. Or dogs.

You can become righteously indignant. Tell me I’m no better than you. That I’m a bastard for slapping the sunburn that is your personality. I’m just as boring as you are. I just recognise that I am. And anything I share in a public sphere I try to make interesting. Especially if it’s actually about me.

Yours (in parentheses),
Paul White

So what is fusion?  Fusion is the primary means of producing energy at use in the universe.  It is the reaction that powers stars, and is the original source of all of the energy we use every day. Currently the cleanest, cheapest and most efficient source of energy we have is nuclear fission.  It’s unpopular, but it’s the best.  Allow me to explain the difference between fission and fusion.

Nuclear Fission happens when you take a heavy atom, like Uranium, and split it.  Splitting it produces two by-products (which are rather toxic), and a lot of energy. This energy is then used to heat water to produce steam, and the steam powers turbines which in turn generate electricity.

Nuclear Fission

Fusion, on the other hand, is when you take two light elements and slam them together.  When they join, they give off the excess energy they don’t need in order to remain stable, and this can then be used to heat water, etc.  The difference is that the by-product is substantially less harmful: it is Helium or water vapour (depending on the type of reaction used).

A Fusion Reaction

Fusion has come into the media spotlight lately because a group of scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California are attempting to brew up some fusion using the biggest, most bad-ass laser ever created.  They will use this laser to create what can best be described as a small star on the surface of the earth.

The concept is simple: take deuterium and tritium (two versions of Hydrogen that are heavier than the regular stuff), and bombard it with this giant laser.  The massive influx of energy will hopefully force the nuclei of the two substances to combine, producing a controllable fusion reaction.

Tritium-Deuterium Fuel

The emphasis here is on ‘controllable’ – fusion has been available to us in the form of nuclear weapons for over half a century, but these are runaway reactions that simply liberate massive amounts of energy in a rather destructive way.  Controllable fusion is the containment of this reaction in such a way that its energy can be harnessed.

Allow me to take a break here to read you some comments from the bottom of that site, because I really want to dispel some myths about this:

QuantumG says: “omgzz isnt that like kinda dangerus…I mean do we really want a star right next to us…it will be really hot n burn us all havent you people ever seen the sun…I mean i dont think teh scientists are as smart as they think they are or they woulda thoght of that…..2012 is near…”

This comment was added in jest, but it mirrors a lot of the doomsayers on that comment thread.  Their concerns are as follows:

• The ‘star’ will go supernova and kill us all
• The star will burn everything and kill us all
• The star will form a black hole like the Large Hadron Collider, and kill us all

And they are all bullshit.  The reaction will be the size of a ‘BB pellet’, and in the worst case scenario it will expire in a puff of smoke and radioactive particles.

The major concern, of course, is that it will take more energy to produce the reaction than we will get from it.  And it almost certainly will.  But it’s a stepping stone towards something much, much greater.  Unfortunately, this is not the view of a lot of people, most notably some of the projects funders.

Thomas Cochran, a senior scientist and nuclear physicist at the Naturaldeu Resources Defense Council, said:

“The world needs to employ existing fixes for climate change rather than looking for a technological silver bullet that will prove to be too expensive for commercial energy production anyway… If you want to do [research and development] to alleviate climate change, you have to have technologies that can be brought online soon.”

In my opinion, this view is extremely narrow minded.  As I pointed out in my article ‘5 Technologies That Will Lead to the Singularity‘ controllable fusion will be a major breakthrough for humanity – practically an end to our energy woes.  This will probably lead to massive reduction in living costs, and production costs for basic goods and consumer items.  It may even lead to an overhaul of the world’s financial system, as much of our need for wealth comes from fact that we trade it for energy.

Unfortunately, this kind of development is being quietly resisted by one of the biggest political forces in the world: the oil industry.  If humanity has the ability to create nearly limitless energy from what is essentially broken up seawater, the world’s demand for fossil fuels will drop dramatically (not altogether – electric cars still suck).  This will hurt the pockets of a lot of rich people, who wield a lot of power.

The attitude that fusion is a fruitless endeavor or a pipe dream is troubling.  A valid point in the face of climate change and the need for renewable energy, but hardly a reason to give up the quest entirely. It will be a long time in coming – possibly many decades – before the first fusion power plants come online.  But when they do, it will herald the start of cultural and technological change on a scale that will make the Industrial Revolution seem like the move from briefs to boxers.

Unfortunately the budgets for fusion experiments are small, and funding drops every year as people get worried about the credit crisis and the environment, etc. This is the opposite of what should be happening.  We should be pouring all available resources into this massively important goal, so that our children will be able to reap the benefits of living in a world not bound by its own supply of dirty coal energy, and free from the spectre of a warming planet.

An often overlooked but excellent feature of Gmail has a great application for consumer protection: the ability to allow you to track which company sells on your personal details. Firstly, I’ll explain how the feature works:

Firstly, Gmail email addresses are only based on the alpha-numeric characters only (ie numbers and letters). Anything else is discarded. So, if you own john.smith@gmail.com, you also own johnsmith@gmail.com, j.o.h.n-smith@gmail.com and so forth, and these will automatically come in to your usual inbox if mail is sent to them. Additionally, anything you include after a “+” sign at the end of the username is also ignored. So, in  something like john.smith+extrainfo@gmail.com, the whole “+extrainfo” is ignored.

Therefore, what this feature allows is for you to create “unique” addresses at the companies you do business with, at the same time allowing the emails to come back into your usual inbox. This will allow you to track which companies have sold your email address. For example, say you sign up to your bank with the email address “john.smith+bank@gmail.com”. Then you know that if you are contacted by another company that sends you a mail to “john.smith+bank@gmail.com” that it was your bank that initially sold on your details. Then you can challenge them on this, especially if you asked them not to share your details with third parties.

A simple feature, but one that has great implications in the fight against the illegal selling of your personal data.

Much has been said about the features that the iPad does not have and I agree – I can’t quite understand why you’d want an oversized iPod Touch unless you’re a granny with poor eyesight. Hewlett-Packard also agrees, as their 30 second promotional video for their Slate tablet PC points out all the features the Slate has (or rather may have) that the iPad does not.

Slate: Nice Roc

Apple has responded – finally – by announcing that the iPhone OS 4.0 will finally provide users with a much sought after multitasking feature. While this is a good step forward, it is not true multitasking in the sense that the user has full control over what applications run. Missing from the array of allowed multitasking applications are anything to do with Instant Messaging or Micro Blogging. Like Twitter. And the upgrade will only be available in the third quarter of 2010.

This is where the Slate may succeed – assuming HP actually set a release date for the device. Engadget recently obtained a slide, apparently leaked from HP directly, containing the specifications for the Slate, and how it compares to the iPad. Notably, the slate has a faster processor, a proper operating system (Windows 7 with an HP enhanced touch user interface), 1080p video playback and two cameras – one front facing for video conferencing and one rear facing for photo’s. Where it loses is in battery life – 5 hours is only half that of the iPad’s – and display size.

This may all end up being idle speculation, and the Slate could be cumbersome and useless, particularly if HP do not get Windows 7 to work well with a touch interface. Though if all that HP has achieved is to scare Apple into including multitasking then I suppose that’s something.

My only question relates back to the first paragraph, and it’s a question market analysts also pose: have these companies actually done research to see if there is a viable long term market for tablet PCs? They have some way to go before I’ll hand over a ton of my hard earned cash.

You have probably seen this type of graph before.  It shows the availability of computing power against time:

It's Science

This illustrates one important truth: we are heading for a ‘vanishing point’ – the point where we have access to infinite information, and infinite understanding and control over the natural world.  This point in our development is referred to by futurists and sci-fi geeks alike as ‘The Singularity’. (There is an excellent article on The Singularity here, if you’re interested)

The Singularity is the point at which a civilization advances beyond the point where all the constraints we have struggled with since we stopped flinging poop suddenly vanish. It is the infinite abundance of energy, resources, computing power, knowledge, and the absolute control of matter.  Or to put it another way:

It seems plausible that with technology we can, in the fairly near future, create (or become) creatures who surpass humans in every intellectual and creative dimension. Events beyond this event – call it the Technological Singularity – are as unimaginable to us as opera is to a flatworm.

- I can’t find the author of this quote

Some say that at this point it will make more sense to ‘upload’ ourselves into a giant computer system, because our physical bodies and brains will only be a hindrance to attaining personal and cultural maturity – or ‘Omega Comprehension’ as Sci Fi author Peter F. Hamilton put it.  It is the point where we realise our true and final potential as a species, and possibly move on to something greater than physical existence.

A lot of people think The Singularity is very close – something we will see within our lifetimes.  A lot of people put it as close as 2050, and that’s pretty exciting.  But we have a lot of steps to take, technologically and socially, before we are mature enough as a species to evolve along with our capability.

Fortunately, five of the technologies that will take us there are already (or nearly) available to us.  In some sort of order involving importance and futuristic-ness, they are:

#5 Genetic Engineering

We live in an age of genetically-modified foods, and arguments about designer babies.  Genetic engineering is upon us, and you can cry ‘slippery slope’ and ‘playing God’, but it ain’t going away.  As I mentioned in the article about the Widening Beauty Gap, it is only a matter of time before genetic engineering is socially acceptable and widely available.

This will have a massive impact on our society.  We already live longer than our ancestors, and don’t even worry about illnesses which would have wiped out cities a century ago. Genetic engineering and a greater understanding of cell biology will make things like cancer, HIV and Aids, heart disease and Alzheimer’s about as scary as smallpox.

We will all be prettier, and I believe that lifespans well in excess of a century will become the norm within fifty years, mostly because of genetic engineering.

The Down Side?

Our population is already exploding at an unsustainable rate. We all know that it has doubled in the blink of an eye, and this is in no small part due to advances in medicine.  Doubling the lifespan of everyone on the planet would have catastrophic consequences in terms of overcrowding, resource and food shortages, etc.  A solution to this will have to be found, or we will face widespread famine and war on a scale we can’t even imagine now.

#4 Nanotechnology & Metamaterials

This is some exciting stuff.  A while ago scientists figured out that you could take single atoms of carbon and string them together in a type of rope to make carbon nanotubes.  These tubes are Superman’s hair, only a thousand times thinner.  Then some bright spark worked out how to write IBM using single silicon atoms.

Since then and in-between there have been some incredible advances in making incredibly tiny structures.  We can already make glass that makes water bounce off it (no more windscreen wipers) and make cameras so small they can be swallowed like a pill.  This is only the beginning.

Nanotechnology, when it becomes feasible and abundant, will revolutionize our society like nothing ever has.  The industrial revolution and the Renaissance will look like municipal bye-elections by comparison. Imagine total control of matter, the stuff of the universe – true alchemy.  Turning lead into gold will be a child’s trick.  We will be able to take chunks of base metal ore, shove them into factories teeming with nanomachines, and wait for our space station to pop out the other end.

There is no theoretical reason why we cannot do this.  Once we are able to control and alter matter at an atomic level we will be able to do anything imaginable with it.  The only limit will be an availability of raw materials.

Metamaterials are an exciting new class of substances with many weird properties.  They gain these properties not by virtue of what they are, but by how the particles are arranged.  These arrangements allow metamaterials to seemingly break the laws of physics in some interesting ways.  We already have liquids you can walk on, ferrofluids (video below) which are metallic fluids that respond to magnetic fields, and a God-damned real-life invisibility cloak.

The Down Side

Coupled with the next two on the list, we end up with some nasty Terminator situations.  Those aside, however, there really aren’t any downsides to nanotechnology.  Unless, like me, you were scared shitless by Alistair Reynold’s Century Rain.

#3 Quantum Computing

The D-Wave Quantum Computer

Quantum computing is like normal computing, except a million times more complicated to explain.  The average person’s grasp of quantum mechanics and computing theory is zero (rightly so) and mine is little better, but I will try to begin with quantum mechanics in a nutshell:

Classic physics defines everything as having properties – mass, speed, direction, and position in time and space – and it assumes those to be absolute, otherwise nothing works (please don’t blast me if you know better – I’m sure it’s a lot more complicated).  Quantum physics on the other hand accepts that a particle does not exist at a specific point, but rather in a ‘zone of probability’.

That means you can find it at any point in that zone at any time. Not just one or the other, but technically at all points it exists, just with a different probability of actually being there.

Quantum computing attempts to make use of the tiny changes in the quantum state of particles, and use these changes to drive calculations.  A normal computer works by flipping a switch to denote on or off – a one or a zero, or a ‘bit’.  Using some clever manipulation of math and linguistics, you can then combine a bunch of bits to store a message or do a sum.  In a quantum computer, one particle can have (if I’m correct) up to six possible positions, meaning that more calculations can be done at the same time.

But there’s more: That’s only with one particle.  Using a whole bunch of them, the power of the computer increases exponentially, until eventually you have a computer capable of calculating Pi to the last decimal, or something.  It can also make use of a principle called ‘probabilistic computing’, which is basically a computer that guesses pretty close instead of working out exactly (when getting an answer fast is more important than getting the answer eventually), but it does it faster than a shart sneaks up on you.

To put it in perspective: it took a huge pile of graphics processors over a day to render a single second of the movie Avatar.  It is difficult to say how long it would take using a sophisticated quantum computer, but my guess is that a human would see it as nearly instant.  Going the standard route in computing, we could probably never attain that kind of speed.

The Down Side

As with nanotechnology, there isn’t an obvious down side to near-infinite computing power.  It will solve a lot of problems we have right now that are solely limited by how fast our machines can crunch numbers.  The down side will probably come in with the next technology.

#2 Artificial Intelligence

Don’t be fooled – we already have machines that can learn, make decisions, get moody, get high and make art, and convince us that they are human by being better at it than we are.  Trillions of dollars are being poured into AI research all over the world, and some exciting stuff is happening.

The major advances are in Simulated Neural Nets – computers that not only work like a brain, but are built like one too.  Our brains have billions of neurons, and trillions of synapses, all of which form an intricate net that somehow begets consciousness.  Right now that ‘some how’ is the biggest thing between us and the T1000.

Researchers at IBM have already built a cat-like brain.  (this is the link to the article debunking IBM’s ‘Cat Brain’ claim, but it is still very interesting reading).  Or rather, a part of a cat’s brain.  It’s capable of learning its environment, and is growing smarter and smarter every day.  It is limited by how many neurons and synapses it has – about 1% of those found in the human brain – but the cool thing is that if it needs more, they can just bolt on some extras!

Research proposals are already underway to build a brain with the same structure, number of neurons and number of connections as the human brain.  If any one thing brings us closer to the Singularity, it might be this.

The Down Side

This one is obvious:

Apart from sentient killer robots, there is one more thing that is perhaps even more worrying. Computers that are smarter than us and can think will, inevitably, attain their own Singularity.  What’s more, they will be a lot closer to it than we were when we started.  Whatever that will look like, it probably won’t work out well for us fleshies.

#1 Controllable Fusion

Finally we come to the holy grail.  There is one problem will all of the above technologies: they will inevitably require a lot of energy.  That’s energy we don’t have.  It is highly likely that we will exhaust our planet’s natural energy reserves – at least the way we extract and use them – before we find another planet to rape.  That’s where fusion comes in.

Fusion is not a myth out of The Saint – it’s real and it happens all over the places.  It occurs in nature, in stars, and lately in our laboratories.  But only in a crude form.  When you split an atom, all its guts spill out and a lot of energy is released.  But when you smash two atoms together – Hydrogen atoms, for example – they join, and release the energy they don’t need, which is a lot more.

Unlike nuclear fission which produces radioactive waste as a by-product, the end result of a fusion reaction is Helium or water, depending on what you use for fuel.  Neither of these are too bad.

The person who creates a way to sustain a fusion reaction and extract its power will contribute more to the development of mankind than any human ever has, or ever will.  They will also probably get laid more than anyone else ever has. It is the single most important thing our civilization can strive for, and it absolutely must be achieved at all costs.

Limitless, free energy will set us free. Combined with nanotechnology’s gift of control over matter, we will no longer have to compete for resources – something we have fought and died for since we can remember.  Our species as a whole will suddenly have no reason to continue most of their wars, and we will truly be able to begin eradicating world poverty and hunger.

If that sounds like a pipe dream, think of it this way: if anything we need, from food to automobiles, can be made in an unmanned factory from raw materials, and cost nothing, there will be no need to have a job (and few available anyway) unless you wanted to make or build or grow things for the simple pleasure of it.  The concept of being “wealthier” than someone will lose all meaning, because everyone will have free access to anything they want, and as much of it as they want (legislation permitting).  The only thing we could possibly run out of is time.

The Down Side:

None whatsoever.

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Norman Conquest

It has since emerged that there are a couple of CCTV cameras that caught glimpses of the flying rock, and as the friendly reader-loving bloggers we are, we have acquired both of them for y’all.

A highly reputable newspaper from the United Kingdom, The Telegraph, reported, “The meteor was spotted by dozens people as it passed over Johannesburg and Pretoria in Kauteng province on Saturday”. Wow, they are going to have trouble getting there journos to soccer games next year.

Eye witnesses recount seeing a “big green ball of fire”, that “came out of the blue” and “There was sudden flash. Like an orange stripe in the sky, followed by a very bright explosion where the sky lit up as if it was daytime”. Seems like it was quite a colourful night.

They really are quite incredible clips Enjoy.

The northern parts of South Africa were treated to an incredible sight on Saturday night as a meteor lit up the night sky “like daylight”. The Meteor is believed to have made impact with Earth somewhere around Botswana

It has since emerged that there are a couple of CCTV cameras that caught glimpses of the flying rock, and as the friendly reader-loving bloggers we are, we have acquired both of them for y'all.

A highly reputable newspaper from the United Kingdom, The Telegraph, reported, “The meteor was spotted by dozens people as it passed over Johannesburg and Pretoria in Kauteng province on Saturday”. Wow, they are going to have trouble getting there journos to soccer games next year.

Eye witnesses recount seeing a “big green ball of fire”, that “came out of the blue” and “There was sudden flash. Like an orange stripe in the sky, followed by a very bright explosion where the sky lit up as if it was daytime”. Seems like it was quite a colourful night.

Enjoy.

At about 10pm on 20 November (GMT +2) the CERN team issued a twitter update (I know, I know) to say that “We have captured it! First circulating beam of 2009!”  And the thing is still around. Soon, hopefully, the team will begin to collide beams, and that will be a momentous occasion in the history of human technology.  For the first time we have the means to understand what’s really at the bottom of everything.

(Click for a large gallery of awesome LHC images)

From the wikipedia article:

It is expected that it will address the most fundamental questions of physics, which seem to block further progress in understanding the deepest laws of nature.

Allow me to explain.  The Large Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator in Europe.  Particle accelerators stream beams of protons (the large, positively-charged components of an atom) around a giant ring, surrounded by various measuring instruments.  This one is the biggest yet, at 27 kilometers long.  The idea is that when two opposing beams hit each other, each travelling at nearly the speed of light, the magic will happen.

Specifically, that magic is that the protons will bust apart and let us see what is inside.  They have all sorts of gizmos set up to see what comes out,  but what they’re really interested in seeing is something they’ve only dreamed of up until now: the Higgs Boson.  This is pretty much the smallest component of an atom, and we have a name for it only because we’re pretty sure it must exist.

The big deal about this thing, glamorized as ‘The God Particle’ in a Dan Brown book, is that seeing what it’s like will help to explain the origin of mass in the universe.

It will literally tell us why we are here.

It is the most fundamental question we can answer, and we will hopefully see it answered in our lifetime. And the implications of this answer for physics and technology will be earth-shattering.

The Large Hadron Collider was ludicrously expensive though, and has been plagued by troubles from day one.  In September 2008 they successfully circulated a beam, but then things broke.  In a scary way.  Liquid Helium, used to cool the thing down enough, climbed up the walls and literally ate shit. Then a bird dropped a goddamn baguette into an open grid, and shut the thing down for a few more months. I am not making this up.

However, despite some rocky progress and a serious paper suggesting that the universe may be so abhorrent to the Higgs boson being isolated that the little bugger travels back through time upon creation to damage the LHC, the machine is now up and running.

Ignorant Bleeding Heart Concerns:

There have been some people complaining that the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is going to blow up the planet or get us all sucked into a black hole or something.  The funny thing is, there is potential that really really tiny black holes could be formed. But as the article says, I wouldn’t worry about it.

However, if you are in fact concerned, there is a website where you can check for certain whether or not the Large Hadron Collider has destroyed the world yet: http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/. Stay safe.

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Norman Conquest

In what at first looks like a serious attempt to burn money, NASA has shot a bunch of microscopic worms up into space on the latest space shuttle mission:

In actual fact, these worms represent a seriously cool bit of science, that shows remarkable foresight on NASA’s part.

The Telegraph reports:

The worms were on board when the Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched from Cape Canaveral on Monday

The unexpected astronauts will help experts in human physiology at the University of Nottingham understand more about what triggers the body to build and lose muscle.

The worms are bound for the Japanese Experiment Module ”Kibo” on the International Space Station (ISS) where they will experience the same weightless conditions which can cause dramatic muscle loss in astronauts.

The Kibo lab makes use of the weightless conditions in orbit for the study of biomedicine and material sciences.

The worms are used by Dr Nathaniel Szewczyk, from the university’s Institute of Clinical Research in Derby, to study the signals that control muscle protein degradation.

He uses the microscopic worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), because they are the perfect substitute for studying long term changes in human physiology – suffering from muscle loss under many of the same conditions that people do.

Muscle loss, or muscle atrophy, is one of the major health concerns for astronauts.

But this has much bigger implications than just stopping astronauts from getting sick.  The idea is that this research will help to improve treatments for the bedridden and sufferers of degenerate muscle diseases.  That’s right now.  In the future, this kind of research could lead to a way to prolong human life, or to keep us healthy while we mission across the stars.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty excited about the worms right now.

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Norman Conquest

Around five years ago the Mozilla Foundation decided to start a project that would be open to all contributors, in an attempt to break the massive market share enjoyed by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser.

Since then they have produced Mozilla Firefox, one of the world’s leading browsers, and have continually been ahead of Microsoft and many competitors in bringing innovative browsing to the web.

The Daily Discharge would like to thank The Mozilla Foundation and all of the coders who have worked on the Firefox project over the last half a decade, for their efforts to make the web a place for people, not websites and companies.

Thanks to Daniel Neville for alerting us to this important anniversary!

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Norman Conquest