Well, That's Interesting: Claytronics

One of my daughters is 'way ahead of me. I've started to write quite a few stories, she's finished so many that I've lost count.

Which is fine by me: her example may get me fired up to actually finish one of my bright ideas.

Years ago, I jotted down a few notes about a nifty far-future technology: material that could form itself into many different shapes. It's not a particularly new idea. The heavy in one of the Terminator was 'living metal.' Extremely mutable creatures and devices are an old gimmick in science fiction - including a sort of assassin robot that disguises itself as a section of floor to let an unsuspecting guard walk over it. Just like in Terminator 2: where the scene is such a close match to the old story that I have to assume that it's a tribute.

I'd give title and author of the story - but, despite cudgeling my mind: I can't recall. Mars is involved, as I recall - but that doesn't narrow the field by much.

With my luck, I'll remember at 3:00 a.m. and get jerked awake by the part of my brain that was in 'search' mode.

Wrenching myself back on-topic.

My contribution to the notion of mutable technology, if I'd gotten past the note-making stage, would have been using it for control interfaces. The idea was to have a slab of material that could be, as needed, a keyboard, a control yoke, tuning knobs, whatever.

Which I assumed - this was around the turn of the century - would be a hundred or so years out.

So, Tuesday, I read about claytronics:

• "Programmable Matter: Today, Robotic Origami; Tomorrow, Claytronics"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (June 29, 2010)

Among the applications for this still-in-the-concept-stage technology: control systems.

I really doubt that it'll take a century to get claytronics ready for consumer tech.

A decade, maybe.

This is hardly an original thought: but one of the challenges for creators of speculative fiction is to imagine 'future technology' that won't be available in department stores in a year or two.

Well, That's Interesting: Synthetic Signaling Cascades and Living Spaceships

"Living spaceships" is something out of science fiction.

It's also something that's appeared on the horizon of materials technology:

"Synthetic Signals Could Foster Unprecedented Life Forms"
Tech News, Discovery News (July 1, 2010)

"A rush of adrenaline or pain of a burn seem simple enough, but both are the result of complex chemical interactions known as signaling cascades.

"Vital to all life on Earth, scientists are taking the first steps towards a synthetic signaling cascades. The research has powerful implications for how life on Earth could have developed, what life on other planets could look like and lead to stronger materials that can respond to their environmental intelligently.

" 'The machines that we use to travel in space and go to the bottom of the ocean -- to go places where biological organisms can't go -- are complex but also rather simple in that they are dumb pieces of metal stuck together with rivets and glue,' said Jonathan Nitschke, a scientist at the University of Cambridge and the co-author of a recent paper in the journal Nature Chemistry...."

"...The European scientists created a simple mimic of these complex systems with a molecule shaped like DNA. Instead of nucleotides at their center, however, the new molecules had a core made from copper.

"By studying these new, DNA-like molecules, scientists could learn about how life on Earth or other planets might have began or evolved. It could also lead to the creation of new, intelligent materials, which could become stronger or weaker depending on their surroundings with no input from a human controller...."

Don't get too excited about machines adjusting themselves "with no input from a human controller."

Centrifugal governors have managed power output of steam engines since 1788, when James Watt applied a windmill control technology to a steam engine. ("James Watt Biography," World of Physics Biography, via Bookrags) Good thing, too: because human beings aren't particularly good at keeping machines running exactly at a given rate. Centrifugal governors are.

Granted, DNA-like molecules with a copper core instead of nucleotides are a few steps removed from James Watt's day: but the principle of using technology to maintain desired conditions in a system is nothing particularly new.

[Information] Power to the People!

---

Prologue

Science fiction/speculative fiction writers often write about how they think science and/or technology will affect the human condition. Their expectations have run from overly-optimistic Utopias to the more currently-fashionable variations of 'and we're all gonna die.'

Generally, writers seem to realize that when technology changes, society changes. Sometimes it changes a lot.

We're going through a period where information technology is upsetting the status quo I've been familiar with. Personally, I like that - for reasons you'll probably see as you read this post.

If you read this post. It's a whole lot easier to go somewhere else on the Internet, than it was to find another article in a magazine.

Like I said, things are changing.

---

I've discussed the effect of technology - particularly information technology - on culture and society fairly often in another blog. Let's remember that "information technology" can, in principle, include quite a few data storage-and-retrieval methods:

"...I think there may have been something to the notion that people who live in small towns are, well, clueless commoners. In England, it would have been folks who didn't live within walking distance of London - were isolated, ignorant villiens, with an awareness that extended as far as the village church and manor house and no farther.

"Then Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg introduced that dangerous, divisive technology we call movable type: and the world changed. Documents could be mass-produced and distributed as fast as a mounted courier could travel. Reading changed from a professional specialty to a basic skill. And those villiens had a source of information about the rest of the world.
..."
(Another War-on-Terror Blog (April 12, 2010))

Quite a few printing technologies had been in use before Gutenberg put movable type on the map. What set the new technology apart was the speed and (relative) ease with which written information could be taken from a manuscript, mass-produced, and distributed.

And, intellectual property laws being what they were then (practically non-existent), if one copy of a printed work arrived in a town with a printer - and the printer thought people would buy more copies - there would soon be as many copies of that work as there were people willing to pay the printer.

'Going viral' is a new phrase - but documents have been 'going viral' for centuries.

Technology and Freedom

"...America is a free country. When I was growing up, I learned that individual freedom was important. Since then, I've learned that one of the remarkable freedoms that Americans enjoy is the right to own and operate dangerous technologies and substances. These include

• Guns
• Substances like
  • LP gas
  • Ammonium nitrate¹
  • Anhydrous ammonia¹
• Printing presses
• Fax machines
• Computers

What all these have in common is that they give whoever possesses them, and knows how to use them, considerable individual power....

Computers, Dangerous?

I put the printing press and the fax machine in my list, because they are, in their own way, at least as dangerous as any gun.

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but the Printing Press is Deadly

Martin Luther's 95 Theses might have have been discussed in Wittenberg, and maybe surrounding towns, and stopped there: if some incendiarist hadn't gotten his hands on them, printed copies, and distributed the things. The wars that followed would probably have happened anyway...."
(Another War-on-Terror Blog (June 27, 2008))

Technology, Freedom and Economics

There was an economic side to movable type, too. Before Gutenberg and company, every book was a hand-crafted item, made by specialized craftsmen and skilled professionals. Last year I made some wildly optimistic estimates about how fast a scribe could work, together with some other information, and made the educated guess that the value of a pre-Gutenberg Bible in Europe would have been around $3,725 USD. (A Catholic Citizen in America (January 27, 2009))

Feudal Europe didn't have American dollars, of course: but that's the sort of material and labor that would have been involved. These days, the sort of Bible I use sells for around $9.00 USD. ($8.20, plus shipping and handling).

That's around 0.25% of $3,725, by the way.

Technology, Freedom, Economics and Culture

Maybe you've heard about how 'those people' locked up Bibles - to keep people from reading them, of course. Actually, there was security around almost any book: those things were as expensive as computers are now.

And less accessible. A few specialists knew how to read and write, but most folks were illiterate - because they needed to know how to read about as much as most people today need to know how to use ZPL.

After movable type made written material available to people who weren't major landholders, an increasing number of people learned to read.

By now, the ability to read and write is pretty close to being a basic and necessary a skill in many parts of the world. Maybe 'most parts of the world.'

Which means that people - all over - are much more likely to know about what's going on in other parts of the world.

Upsetting the Applecart

Change can be hard on people who don't like it - or don't understand it. Particularly if they won't learn to adjust.

I think part of what we're seeing in American culture now is vaguely parallel to what happened in Europe a few centuries back.

Around the end of Europe's feudal period, landholders had gotten used to a politico-economic system that depended on a network of personal obligations. Feudalism had worked for centuries. We might have a sort of 'feudalism 2.0' now, if the knights, barons, and kings had understood this newfangled idea called "money" a bit better.

Oversimplifying - a lot - the old landholders of Europe failed to get involved with new, money-based, commercial enterprises. It took generations, and several major revolutions, but eventually the aristocracy of Europe changed from a driving force in European civilization to a colorful tourist attraction.

Remember, I said that's an oversimplification.

That was then. This is now.

America doesn't have barons or knights - it's illegal, or was up until a few years ago. We do, however, have traditional information gatekeepers.

"Information Gatekeepers?" What's That?

The way I use the term, "an 'information gatekeeper' is someone who controls access to information." (Another War-on-Terror Blog (August 14, 2009))

Pretty obvious, huh?

America's traditional information gatekeepers include:

• Newspaper editors
• Teachers and organizations of teachers
• Leaders of colleges and universities
• Entertainment industry executives
• Publishers of books and magazines

That's a 'short list,' of course.

Those folks were in a relatively comfortable position for much of the 20th century.

Although schools and colleges were spread across America, the 'important' ones like Harvard and Yale were in the northeast. Not far from many of America's more prestigious publishing houses and the city where America's 'newspaper of record' had its home.

The entertainment industry was a bit less centralized. New York City retained its position as the premier center for stage productions, but Los Angeles emerged as a center for newer media like motion pictures and television.

The result, I think, was that back in the days where ABC, CBS, NBC, and - a bit later - PBS were it as far as television was concerned, a relatively small number of people had a great deal of control over what the rest of us saw, heard and read. I don't think it was planned, exactly. And that's definitely another topic.

Then along came cable television. That was terribly 'divisive,' we were warned. Americans wouldn't all be watching shows from the same manageable selection of networks.

Then along came the Internet. And the Web. And blogs, like the one you're reading.

By now, published authors aren't limited to those persons deemed worthy by America's 'better' sort.

Just about any crazy son of an Irishman can get published.

Like me.

Can't say that I'm sorry about that.

Vaguely-related posts:

• "HAL 9000, Skynet, and C3PO"
  (January 26, 2010)
• "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come"
  (August 25, 2009)
• "The Threat of Dangerous New Technologies: It's Not All That New"
  (August 23, 2009)
• "What is an Information Gatekeeper?"
  Another War-on-Terror Blog (August 14, 2009)
• " '...Into the Future...' - Excerpt; Attitude; Comment and Theme"
  (July 3, 2009)

Artificially Enhanced Human Beings: That's So 20th Century

Many GEICO commercials play with a disconnect between the (once) popular notion that "cavemen" were "primitive" - and what we've been learning about people who lived before some maniac got the bright idea of planting seeds and waiting for them to grow.



For example, about 800,000 years ago people in one place, at least, lived in a place with a distinct kitchen. Granted, it didn't have a GE Energy Star Dishwasher: but the residence had areas for specific functions like food preparation.

The people who lived there most likely looked a bit like the fellow in that picture. We call folks like him Homo Erectus, and around 1,000,000 years ago our ancestors almost certainly looked a bit like that.

I'm not bothered by the idea - but then, I've seen old family photos. I look a bit like my ancestors: but not quite. For example, on the Campbell side, we lost the characteristic 'wry mouth' several generations back.

Change happens.

The more we learn about our distant ancestors, the more like us they seem - in my opinion. As I wrote in another blog, about that stone age kitchen:

"...But - human? Pretty much like me, basically? I don't see why I shouldn't think so. Their brains were between half and two thirds as massive as ours, on average, but that archeological dig shows that they may have thought more-or-less the same way we do.

That artist's impression doesn't look 'human?' I'm not so sure. You're not likely to see that expression in people's photos today, outside supermarket tabloids, but think of him saying something like, "you want three rocks? You carry one!"

Or, "whaddaya mean, they only come in green or gray?!"..."
(Apathetic Lemming of the North)

Eugenics: It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time

For decades after World War II ended, the idea of replacing most of us with superior human beings was 'well known' to have been the work of those nasty German Nazis.

Since by then many people seemed to realize that they weren't on the 'preferred' list, improving the race wasn't a very popular concept. In fact, if you were around then, or your parents were, your skin may have crawled when you read "Nazis" and "improving the race."

It hasn't always been that way.

Right up until the national socialist party in Germany started 'improving' the human race - arguably, until places like Auschwitz and Dachau hit the news - applying modern science and Victorian ideals to weed out inferior classes and pep up the race seemed like a really good idea.

At least among well-bred, educated Englishmen and their cousins in America.

Science fiction written before WWII had quite a number of examples of what the new-and-improved human race would be like:

"...Over all, John comes across as a sort of socialist version of the Nietzschean ideal with a couple of the rougher edges rubbed off. In other words, human morality has no call on him, but he occasionally feels mild guilt. This is supposed to indicate his superior moral plane, but he comes across more as an odious, amoral little tick. Stapledon assumes that human superiority over lesser animals is quantitative rather than qualitative. In other words, we enjoy our position over the animals because we have more of some quantity called intelligence rather than some unique quality; be it sentience, self-awareness, or an immortal soul.

"Or to be blunt about it, morality is something shared between the strong and denied to the weak.

"Because of this, Stapledon's supermen are allowed to rob from, seduce, exploit, manipulate, dispossess, and even murder 'lesser' people when they get in the way of the supermen's plans due to the higher moral need to advance the interests of the master race. This sort of an argument has an unfortunate track record and Stapledon could just get away with this in the '30s. In less than ten years, however, a certain group of would-be supermen put such ideas into practice and the world is still trying to wash the taste out of its mouth...."
(Tales of Future Past > Future Man > "Odd John")

'It Can't Happen Here?' Don't be Too Sure

The word "eugenics" still hasn't quite regained the panache it had before the forties: but the idea is back. Phrases like "quality of life" are used: but the same old approach of eliminating the unfit is there. Except now it's for 'benevolent' reasons.

I don't think killing people who don't live up to some standard of physical perfection is a good idea. But then, I'm one of those defective products of conception that aren't living a quality lifestyle. Being used in a medical experiment didn't help - but that's another story. (A Catholic Citizen in America (February 3, 2009))

Defective or not, on the whole I prefer being alive to the alternative.

What's With All the Quotes?

I've started using David S. Zondy's Tales of Future Past website as a reference and resource. Partly because he's done a marvelous job of bringing together vintage science fiction virtual memorabilia and ideas. Partly because he seems to see the world in roughly the same way I do.

I don't want to shock anyone, but I think that the physical world is real, not an illusion; that God exists; that some things are moral and others aren't; and that people have souls. And I want to write speculative fiction?!

Back to Mr. Zondy and making supermen. He wrote an uncharacteristically serious few paragraphs about eugenics:

"...One of the obvious ways of producing your superman is one that was taken so seriously in the last century that it was actually tried. Ever since the basic ideas of Darwin and the mechanism of genetics were understood, the idea popped into the mind of Sir Francis Galton that what can be done to dogs and pigeons can be done to men, so if you want to create Homo Superior, why not simply breed human beings selectively?

"This wasn't just idle speculation, he was dead serious and many a philanthropist, scholar, scientist, businessman, and politician became determined advocates of improving the lot of the human race by making sure that the 'best' of the breed intermarried while the sick, feeble-minded, and generally undesirable were prevented from reproducing...."

"...Needless to say, Auschwitz and the Nuremburg trials put paid to the Eugenics movement and gave the world a very stern lesson of what happens when you stop seeing people as children of God and more as laboratory animals.

"What is even more frightening is that we have been so slow in learning our lesson and so quick to forget it. We've made great strides in medicine, particularly in genetic research, but in doing so we have reached the point where we are in danger of doing far more harm than good. If not to our bodies, then to our souls. Our society is tampering with things such as contraceptives, fertility drugs, genetic engineering, selective abortion, infant euthanasia, in vitro fertilisation, designer babies, and artificial insemination with so little real discussion of the ethics of what we're doing that we face a very real risk of one day turning 'round and discovering that we are not becoming genetic supermen, but moral monsters...."
(Tales of Future Past > Future Man > "Eugenics")

The Importance of [Not] Being Earnest

Stories where the author has a Point To Make and hits readers over the head with it are as likely to stir my stomach as my heart. Dreadfully earnest stories happen so often that Television Tropes & Idioms has a whole page about being "Anvilicious."

Not that I think there should be no message in a story. Even if it's as basic as 'don't mess with the big guy's wife until you're sure he's dead.' Homer's Odysseus / Ulysses wouldn't have had quite as exciting an ending, if the war hero hadn't cleaned house at the end in a style worthy of Arnold Schwarzenegger's action heroes.

And, as another page in Television Tropes & Idioms puts it: "Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped." Think Aesop's Fables.

The trick, I think, is finding a balance. How? Having somebody else read the story isn't the daftest approach.

I may drop a few anvils as I go along: but I'll try to be careful about it. Apart from artistic and aesthetic considerations, I don't think it's generally the best way to make a point.

Mutants, Cyborgs and Meddling With God's Handiwork

I think Mr. Zondy is right on at least one point: particularly with the sort of power that people have these days, we should think about the ethics of what we do: not just whether or not we feel like doing it.

On the other hand, I don't have a problem with Man Tampering With Nature. In my view, that's what we do, just by being human. We've come a long way from weaving cloth and knapping hide scrapers: but we were messing with 'the natural order of things' long before we started selecting which seeds to use for the next crop.

Isn't It Different With People?

Even if I didn't feel like it, I'd have to be concerned with cruelty to animals. It's in the rules (A Catholic Citizen in America (August 17, 2009))

I'm even more concerned with cruelty to people. I don't think people should be bought, sold, or killed - even if it's for personal profit or convenience. And the way I view the world, the stakes go up when the person is helpless. But I'm getting off-topic.

What About Cyborgs: Those Inhuman Amalgams of Man and Machine?

Don't expect me to be too upset about mixing a human being's original equipment and artificial add-ons and replacements. I'm focusing on the monitor right now with clip-on lenses, My hands and wrists have been surgically altered, quite a few of my teeth have metal parts, I've got two metal hip sockets, and my belly's got plastic mesh in it. Even my brain's been altered, chemically, to clear up some glitches.

And I'm okay with that: I haven't messed with anything that was working smothly in the first place. What's been done to me since about age four has been better described as "repairing" than "tampering."

These models who get surgically altered to match some current fashion: that's dubious, in my view.

It's Just Starting to Get Interesting

I've read that Intel has announced a neural interface, due for release around 2020. (Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 2, 2009)) Some of the obvious applications for that sort of technology is people who've suffered brain injuries from stroke or accidents. That, I think, is a very promising development.

The technology will, of course, be misused. People misuse things sometimes. We've killed each other with rocks. My guess is that somebody's going to use those brain chips in ways that'll make what happened at Auschwitz look like a Sunday social. You think we've got problems with malware now?!

But that doesn't make rocks bad: or brain chips. We've cobbled together rules for how to use rocks, and I'm pretty sure we can do the same with brain chips.

We may not be quite the same as we were when we learned how to knap flint: But I don't think we've gotten any stupider.

If At First You Don't Succeed - - -

As a rule, I think persistence is a good idea. But like just about every other human characteristic, it can be misapplied.

The national socialist party's efforts to clean up their gene pool and make room for a master race had unpleasant consequences. I don't think anybody's going to try that approach again.

But the idea of 'perfecting' humanity is so appealing to many, I don't think it'll go away. I'm also pretty sure that someone's going to try again. And again, and again.

The more spectacular blowouts, like what happened in Germany around the 1940s, may put a moratorium on most efforts for a few decades. But too many people are too convinced that humanity would be so much better - if only 'improvements' were made - that I think we're likely going to see superman projects now and again for the foreseeable future.

Some of what I've read about - like making repairs at the genetic level to eradicate conditions like leukemia - seem to make sense. How they should be implemented: that's where things get interesting.

Meanwhile, superman factories and people who think they've evolved beyond good and evil will provide a writer of speculative fiction a warehouse of material.

Some of which I've already used:

• "Birthright"
  (February 19, 2010)

Vaguely-related posts:

• "Etched Ostrich Eggs and Being Human"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (March 3, 2010)
• "Homo Erectus, Kitchens, and Human (Pre)History"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 21, 2009)
• "Next-Generation Prosthetic Hand - and Intel Says Direct Neural Interface Brain Chips by 2020"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 2, 2009)
• "Tofu Turkeys, Genetically Altered Foods, and the Evil Eye"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (November 14, 2009)
• "Hard Science Fiction, Cultural Blinders and Laban's Sheep"
  (October 29, 2009)
• "Animals: Yeah, the Catholic Church has Rules About Them, Too"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (August 17, 2009)
• "Dinosaurs, Mutant Chickens, Evolution, and Faith in God"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (June 29, 2009)
• "Medical Ethics and Human Experimentation: Why I Take it Personally"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (February 3, 2009)
• "Human Clones Possible: Don't Worry, They're Just for Parts and Research"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (February 2, 2009)

Epic Scale and Painting the Floor

I've got more of the "artistic temperament" in me than I like to admit. There are days when I quite simply don't feel like being creative. At all.

Today was one of those days.

But, my schedule said that I'd be writing this post: which meant that I had to come up with something, anything, today. I don't like deadlines, but they have their uses.

'Star Trek Syndrome', Cordwainer Smith, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis

Don't get me wrong: I was a great fan of Star Trek in the sixties. And I've enjoyed watching those movies and series of the franchise which I had means, motive and opportunity to see.

But the original Star Trek suffered from an affliction that's endemic to the various science fiction/speculative fiction/fantasy genres. Since Star Trek is a pretty big landmark on the American cultural landscape, at least, I'll pick on that venerable series and call this condition the "Star Trek Syndrome."

It's where stories with a setting 'in the future' are written with a general idea of what "the future" is like: but filling in details as the stories are done.

It can be done: and Star Trek was enormously successful. But I think that approach has intellectual landmines set under some of the well-traveled paths.

The original Star Trek series was set at some point in the future: they settled down to somewhere around 200 years. No problems there, as far as the technology was concerned. Not as far as I'm concerned.

Future Tech

Now, faster-than-light spaceships, transporters, sentient (and occasionally downright temperamental) computers? If the series had been set 20 years from now, I'd have felt my willing suspension of disbelief stretched to the breaking point. Beyond, if there wasn't some really good explanation: like a bunch of MIT students on break, stumbling on a spaceship that had crash-landed with most of the equipment in working order.

I've heard that the Romans reverse-engineered what for them was alien technology - a Phoenician ship - from a wreck they found. Ancient Romans were never really at home on the sea, and hadn't developed shipbuilding skills. They were, however, top-notch engineers: and with most of a working model to start with, they could fill in the blanks.

Future Astropolitics

Even as a teenager, though, I started wondering about the timeline of the United Federation of Planets. 200 years is a long time: but the implication in Star Trek was that we'd gone from living on one planet to having interstellar settlements and a political entity which included these grown colonies (and had members that weren't human).

In under two centuries. Well under two centuries.

That's fast work. Really fast work.

I think that a case can be made that a bunch of seriously ADHD humans barged into an existing interstellar community, decided it'd be great if everybody started living in peace, harmony and the human way - and got the United Federation of Planets going before older and wiser heads realized what had hit them.

But I'm getting off-topic. Nothing new there.

Cordwainer Smith, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S.Lewis

All writers, I think, are 'subcreators' to some extent. That is, they create a fictional world in which their characters act. The world of some stories are barely indistinguishable from present or past reality: the chief differences are the presence of the characters.

Even science fiction/speculative fiction/fantasy stories don't have to involve a great deal of work on the fictional world. There's quite a lot of off-the-shelf material.

• Science Fiction
  • Ray guns
  • Space ships
    • With optional antigravity
  • Aliens that act like funny-looking human beings
  • Toxic waste that turns people into zombies
• Fantasy
  • Swords
  • Horses
  • Flashy magic
  • Petty kingdoms
  • An economy that sounds feudal
    • Even if it isn't

Using any or all of these conventions doesn't make a story bad. Look at Robert Asprin's "Myth Adventures" novels: but then, he seems to have done some intense - and funny - analysis of fantasy's shopworn cliches.

Or take C.S. Lewis's Narnia stories. They're set in a fantasy world, and the seven of them add up to a tale that's epic in scope. But I think Lewis concentrated on the characters and plots - not on creating a heavily-detailed, internally-consistent, fully-formed subcreation. And they're good, solid stories, in my opinion.

The Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkien, I think, is more of a complete world than Narnia, with a more fully-developed history and set of interrelationships.

Then there's the universe of Cordwainer Smith. Particularly as it grew, it became more like the complexly-patterned world of Tolkien, than the slightly more generic land of Lewis's Narnia stories.

I like the work of all three. But I'm aiming at something closer to Tolkien or Smith, in terms of setting. What I actually accomplish - that's another matter.

Think, Plan, Then Write?

Comparing my productivity to that of #3 daughter, I may not be approaching this the right way. She's got a small but loyal fan base for her stories - which add up to a massive work - and has been making up the setting as she goes.

She's been doing what I'd call speculative fiction stories - with the same sort of issues when it comes to setting that I've got. But she's written quite a few stories. My output is - zilch, when it comes to something finished.

Like I said, I may be on the wrong track.

Or, not.

Like today.

Plan First, Then Varnish the Floor

In my youth, a stock cartoon situation was someone who had painted himself into the corner of the room - with nowhere to go. Some were funny, and all depended on the occasional lack of foresight that people exhibit.

Today, since my creative energies were nowhere to be found and my muse was on furlough, I decided to do a little research and review. I have a timeline for a particular setting that I'm rather fond of, I'd done some work on it late last year, and again this month: and it was time to go back and do a little checking.

Good thing I did.

I changed the names of several Chinese dynasties that don't exist yet (and probably never will - except in this 'future history'): for the better, I think.

Then, I took a look at the timeline I had for the future history as a whole, the voyage of one particular ship, and the transportation technology I'd assigned to this setting.

And found that I'd painted myself into a corner.

The times simply wouldn't work.

The Butler Couldn't Have Done It

It's like a ill-conceived old-fashioned mystery, where the master detective unmasks Jukes, the butler, as the murderer of Lord Thriply.

Just one problem: the author had demonstrated that Jukes had been several miles away, and couldn't have had an accomplice.

Dashing fine story, full of suspense and pathos, but the facts just don't fit together.

The Colony That Wasn't There Yet

I've got Our Heroes visiting a colorful, slightly exotic and - I hope - interesting world in one of the stories. A world where something like a quarter million people live. They're descendants of - well, that'll wait.

The point is, when I checked out the timeline: the original settlers would have arrived 10, maybe 20 years before the story starts.

They couldn't possibly have gotten to where they were - a small but thriving culture - in that length of time. Never mind the technology. The way I figure it, they'd need something like 200 years to grow from about a thousand people to a quarter million, building maybe a dozen settlements along the way.

If I'd already published something, I could have faked it - invoking some sort of technobabble as a solution.

As it is, I just shoved the story's date ahead by a couple centuries.

And, in the process of making the development of my 'space drive' - if not plausible, then internally consistent - I discovered another set of 'the butler couldn't have done it' situations.

That was good news, really, since I got an idea (born of desperation) for making a particular conflict into more than just one more 'space battle' built around 19th and 20th-century military technology that's been renamed.

It's late, and I need sleep.

Vaguely-related posts:

• "A Sense of Scale and Science Fiction Writers"
  (August 17, 2009)
• " 'The Future, Far as Human Eye Could See'" - Hollerith Cards and Anachronisms"
  (August 2, 2009)
• "Hard Science: It's Not Necessarily a Limitation"
  (July 25, 2009)
• "Getting Details Right: The Vast, Huge, and Very Large City Of The Future"
  (June 25, 2009)

Yearning for Paper Cuts, Dust, and Frustration?

One of today's posts for another blog, "Data-Driven Art: For an 'Overwhelmed' 'Hive Mind???'," Apathetic Lemming of the North (January 27, 2010), could have been posted here.

Which is the reason for that link.

It's about an interactive digital art exhibition in England. Quite imaginative, and looks like fun. The reason given for putting it on, though, was - interesting:

"...'Decode is about demystifying the black art or magic of digital while showing that this work can be poetic, emotional and poignant,' show co-curator Shane R.J. Walter told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. Walter, creative director for the OneDotZero digital arts site, said the exhibition pieces 'highlight issues in our everyday lives such as the overabundance of information and how we deal with this through data visualization.' The Decode artists, he writes, 'use code as a material to work with just as sculptors work with clay.'..."

My reaction, copied from that other post:

• "Overwhelmed?"
• "Hive mind?"
• "Demystifying the"
  • "Black art"
  • "Magic of digital?"
  • "Overabundance of information?"

I'm pretty obviously not on the same page as the creative director for OneDotZero, or the people he's trying to help.

From my point of view, it's only since an ISP brought internet connectivity to Sauk Centre, around 1997, that I've been able to get information in adequate amounts, at an acceptable speed.

There's something of a thrill of the chase involved, tracking down data among the stacks of a library. But I'm glad I don't have to pull out drawer after drawer of a card catalog, riffling through the cards; and then track down the book: Hoping that it hasn't been checked out or - worse - stolen.

No, I do not yearn for the good old days of dust and paper cuts.

But it's pretty obvious that not everybody sees things the same way.

Related posts:

• "Data-Driven Art: For an 'Overwhelmed' 'Hive Mind???'"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (January 27, 2010)
• "HAL 9000, Skynet, and C3PO"
  (January 26, 2010)

HAL 9000, Skynet, and C-3PO

I started writing a post for this blog yesterday. The first three words were "horses aren't human." That should have warned me. But I went on writing - and ended by posting it in another blog. ("Space Aliens and Killer Monster Robots - From Outer Space; or Pittsburgh," Apathetic Lemming of the North (January 25, 2010))

I want to take another crack at some of the ideas from that post. I've got more time to work with today, so this post may be briefer.¹ Or, not.

Anyway, I'm cutting out the discussion of space aliens: the squishy kind, at least.

Robots From Outer Space

The 'Menace of the Monster Killer Robots From Pittsburgh' thing (the author does not use that phrase) started with a valid point made in the article.

The first space aliens we meet may be machines.

That's likely enough. If there were Martians, their first contact with humanity would be one of the landers we've sent. Thinking machines, even a world of "robots" isn't a particularly new idea. ("Men Martians and Machines," Eric Frank Russell (1955), for example - and that built on established conventions)

The idea that humanity's first encounter with extraterrestrial intelligence may involve robots from another planet is a valid point. I think the author of "What Will Aliens Really Look Like?," Space.com (July 16, 2009) was right in discussing the possibility of machine intelligence in the article

On the other hand, here's how the author - SETI Institute's Senior Astronomer, Seth Shostak - leads into his discussion of machines as people.

"...Well, using our own experience as a guide, consider a human development that seems likely to take place sometime in the 21st century: we'll invent machine intelligence. Some futurists figure this dismaying development will take place before 2050. Maybe it will take twice that long. It doesn't matter. By 2100, our descendants will note that this was the century in which we spawned our successors...."
(Space.com)

I don't know how old Seth Shostak, the SETI Institute's Senior Astronomer, is. If he's even close to my age, he really should know better.

Repeating the last sentence in that paragraph:

"By 2100, our descendants will note that this was the century in which we spawned our successors."

Artificial Intelligence is (Still) Just Around the Corner

I remember when "2001: A Space Odyssey" hit the silver screen. The year was 1968. Even then, the HAL 9000 computer was a science fiction staple: an intelligent, sentient, self-aware computer. Who was insane. Homicidally so.

Tasks like designing a computer that actually thinks on its own, or a visual system that handles information in real time the way a human being's visual cortex does, seemed fairly straightforward.

Until scientists and technicians tried making one.

42 years later, we've got dancing robots and a robot that solves soduku puzzles.

But I'm no more concerned that the next desktop computer I buy will enslave me, than I think it's likely that Google is planting subliminal commands in that plain white background of theirs. (Now that would make a story!)


Ooooh! Scary! Or, not.

Now I read that we'll have devices like the HAL 9000 computer and C-3PO in fifty years. Or so.

And that they'll take over.

A Person Can Learn a Lot From the Movies

I'm quite sure that the SETI Institute's Senior Astronomer didn't learn astronomy from watching the movies. On the other hand, it looks like he grew up in the American culture. Western culture, anyway. And assimilated at least some of its beliefs and attitudes.

Optimism hasn't been fashionable for quite a while now.

Why Mention the Movies?

English-language motion pictures have been a major part of American culture for generations. Whether they shape the culture, or the culture shapes them, or both, is a debatable point.

Either way, I think movies are a pretty good indicator for what the culture was like when they were made: for everything from haircuts to attitudes and assumptions.

I've learned that people feared biological warfare and killer bees. And that the bees were likely to make a nuclear reactor explode. Even if we survived that, we'd probably be a handful of desperate survivors in an apocalyptic post-nuclear-holocaust wasteland, beset by monster frogs and/or mutants.

Or be stuck in a high-end resort and have to shoot it out with a robot gunslinger.

It wasn't all doom and gloom in the movies, of course. There was "Star Wars" in 1977: but that was merely escapist entertainment. Not serious at all. And "Hell Comes to Frogtown" was? Never mind. I don't think anyone took that one seriously.

The message from the movies - including movies with a message - has been that the future, if any, is bleak. Also that computers, robots - just about anything invented after maybe 1930 - is dangerous and malevolent.

Here's a short list of what's been on the minds of America, in the movies:

• "2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
  • A big black artifact and
    • Ape-men
    • Spaceships
  • Insane computer kills crewmates
  • One of my favorite films
  • Not much of a plot
    • But the sets were well-thought-out
      • Up to that time, a rarity in science fiction films
• "Colossus: The Forbin Project" (1970)
  • Massive supercomputer is built
  • Takes over the world
  • Somewhat plausible, given a willing suspension of disbelief
• "Westworld" (1974)
  • Killer robots
    • A whole resort full of killer robots
  • Moderately well-thought-out, in my opinion
• "Logan's Run" (1976)
  • A nice, neat, orderly society
    • Where life is groovy
      • Until you hit 30
      • Then you die
    • Well, you can't have everything
  • Then a crazed cop kills the master computer
• "Star Wars" (1977)
  • Princess
  • Comedy-relief robots
    • C-3PO, human-cyborg relations
    • R2-D2, astromech droid
  • Blasters
  • Spaceships
  • Light sabers
  • Evil emperor
  • Farm kid
  • Wizard
• "The Terminator" (1984)
  • Evil computer mastermind
  • Determined killer cyborg
  • Threat of nuclear apocalypse
• "The Matrix" (1999)
  • Humanity makes an artificial intelligence
    • That takes over the world

These movies were drawing on a venerable tradition that included "Robot Monster" (1953) and "The Phantom Creeps" (1939).²

Back to the topic at hand.

HAL 9000, Skynet, and The Matrix

Remember the Luddites? They were a charming lot of 19th English workmen who broke machines. Give me a running start, and I'll use my college education to show them as downtrodden workers striving heroically to maintain their livelihoods.

I'll grant that they were under a lot of stress. And stressed-out people can do odd things. Luddites made such an impression that "Luddite" now means "any opponent of technological progress". (Princeton's WordNet)

It's hard to not see Luddite feelings in the way technology is perceived these days.

I mean to say: "By 2100, our descendants will note that this was the century in which we spawned our successors."

Sure: Colossus took over the world, with a little help; HAL killed all but one astronaut on the Discovery; and Skynet was a really scary mastermind in the Terminator movies.

The premise of "The Matrix" may not be all that daft: that an artificial intelligence took over the world, and kept human beings alive because we make pretty good batteries.

Don't get me wrong: I've not putting down any of these movies. 2001 and Star Wars are favorites of mine. Anyway, I don't object to entertainment on principle.

But I try to make distinctions between what makes for a good story, and what's plausible. And AI that takes over the world - or wants to - seems a little far-fetched. Worse, from a writer's point of view, malevolent artificial intelligence is showing at least as much wear and tear as post-nuclear-apocalypse settings. In my opinion.

I suppose the "familiarity breeds contempt" principle applies here. I've been working with computers for over two decades now. The iron idiots can be frustrating, fascinating, and fast. But a threat? Not really.

It might be different, if artificial intelligence hadn't been 'just around the corner' for the last four decades: and if the existing artificial intelligence, like language translation tools, was more - intelligent.

What's So Strange About Cyborgs?

Maybe I don't have the culturally-appropriate fear and dread of machine intelligence because I'm not entirely human. Sort of.

• A few of my teeth are still original equipment
  • But a fair portion of what I chew with is artificial
• There's metal and plastic where my hip joints used to be
• A plastic mesh held my belly together after some work was done in there
  • It's still in place
• I'm focusing on my computer's monitor with a clip-on set of lenses.

All of that's nothing unusual at all. Now.

Which is my point. I look as human as my ancestors, a thousand years back: providing I take my glasses off and keep my mouth closed. But important parts of me are machinery of one sort or another.

Even my brain's been altered, chemically.

I was diagnosed with major depression a few years ago. Thanks to medication, I don't have to constantly fight the controls to think clearly - for the first time in over 45 years.

And I have no problem with that.

My distant ancestors, some of them, might have been freaked out to learn what has been done to me: but I like being able to walk without pain, see clearly, chew my food and have the insides of my abdomen stay where they belong - inside. I see the artificial parts of me as repairs and enhancements.

Certainly not as being "taken over" by machinery.

I'm not a cyborg. Not in the sense of "a human being whose body has been taken over in whole or in part by electromechanical devices" (Princeton's WordNet) But partly artificial? Yes.

And, these days, there's nothing unusual about that. Think of all the people with pacemakers in their chests.

Intel says it's coming out with brain chips and neural interfaces in about ten years. I believe them. This isn't "artificial intelligence," by the way, not unless you think human beings with artificial parts aren't human any more.

When those brain chips hit the market, and people with missing limbs control their prosthetics (and, I trust, get feedback) through their own nervous system, they'll be cyborgs. So will stroke victims whose damaged or destroyed circuits are replaced with artificial ones.

Scary? Maybe. So is the thought of driving without my glasses on.

I don't think technology is bad, by itself. What we do with it, that's something else:

Will Brain Implants Be Misused?

"What is that, a trick question? Of course they'll be misused. People misuse things. People have killed other people with rocks. That doesn't make the rocks bad.

"Direct neural interfaces are a new technology, and there'll almost certainly be an awkward period while we learn how to use them, and set up rules so that everybody's more-or-less on the same page about how they should be used.

"But, I'm looking forward to the things...."
(Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 2, 2009))

I don't think that Science and Technology (capitalized, of course) will Solve All Our Problems. But I'm not afraid of science and technology.

Artificial Intelligence, C3PO and Fido

Another reason I'm not worried about 'spawning our successors' is that we've already done something like develop artificial intelligence.

You've heard the saying: 'Dogs are man's best friend.' With a few psychotic exceptions, there's something to it. Dogs, as a rule, at least the ones I've known, like human beings.

Wolves? Not so much. A (very) few people have kept wolves as pets. It helps that wolves are pack animals. I'll be back to that idea.

We recently discovered that dogs are mutant wolves. Something happened. probably over a hundred thousand years ago, to the genes of a few wolves. Their offspring weren't as bright as your average wolf. And they just simply doted on human beings.

Coincidence? Maybe. But I doubt it.

Sure, people were "primitive" back then. White lab coats, test tubes, and electron microscopes wouldn't be invented for maybe 5,000 generations. Even so, it's hard for me to imagine that a breed of stupid wolves that love human beings 'just happened' to pop into existence and start following my ancestors around.

I think we made dogs. "Domesticated," if you prefer.

I also think that it helped - a lot - that wolf packs and human families work (very roughly) the same way. A wolf cub could bond with a human family in very nearly the same way that he or she would have bonded with the pack.

But I think we're the reason dogs are so, well: dog-like. Eager to help. willing to chase things for us. Intensely protective of the family. Not overly bright, maybe: but with humans around they don't need to be.

We won't develop artificial intelligence that's like Fido. We've already got dogs, and they're really good at what they do.

When (or if) we develop artificial intelligence, I think we'll do it for a reason. There will be jobs that can be done better - faster, with fewer errors and greater precision - with AI than with human beings. Flying aircraft and some management jobs come to mind.

And AI takes over the world? I don't think so. Airline pilots and managers won't like it: those who don't recognize the change as an opportunity to learn new skills and explore another facet of human potential.

AI, when (or if) it goes online, will - I think - be more like C3PO than Colossus. And, again I think, be about as likely to attempt world domination as C3PO would be to plot taking over the restored Republic.

There will be problems, of course. There are always problems. Taking dogs as an example: you'd think that an ancient technology like that would have every last bug worked out of it by now. Remember the problem with pit bulls, a decade or so back? I think the problem was more with the owners, and less with the breed: but that's another topic.

When (if) we get 'real' AI, some of the units will act up: at least, I'd be astonished if they didn't. But, on the whole, I don't think humanity will regret developing AI, any more than we (with a few whack exceptions) regret developing agriculture.

Cyborgs? We've been developing that sort of technology, ever since someone started hobbling around on a crutch or peg leg; or strapped on a hook to replace a severed hand. It's a little late to stop, now: and I don't think many would really want to.

But we're not 'losing our humanity.' We're still as human as ever: for good or ill.

Related posts:

• "Science Fiction in the Movies: 'The Satan Bug' to 'The Matrix' "
  (January 26, 2010)
• " 'God Created Man in His Image' wasn't Written by An American"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (January 25, 2010)
• "'All We Want is Peace and Quiet' - Another Look at the Mind of the Alien"
  (December 9, 2009)
• "Beautiful Space Princesses, Almost Certainly Not: Flying Whales, Maybe"
  (December 8, 2009)
• "Next-Generation Prosthetic Hand - and Intel Says Direct Neural Interface Brain Chips by 2020"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 2, 2009)
• "Tofu Turkeys, Genetically Altered Foods, and the Evil Eye"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (November 14, 2009)
• "Hard Science Fiction, Cultural Blinders and Laban's Sheep"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (October 29, 2009)
• "The Sentient Cities are Coming: Park Benches With Attitude Coming"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (October 24, 2009)
• "Timing is Everything"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (October 7, 2009)
• "Good News, Neural Devices Connect Brain, Computers: Bad News, Same Thing"
  (July 11, 2009)
• "- - - 'And We're All Gonna Die!' "
  (June 30, 2009)

More:

• "What Will Aliens Really Look Like?"
  Space.com (July 16, 2009)
• "Futurists Through the Centuries"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (November 1, 2007)
• "Agriculture as a Mistake"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (October 29, 2007)

Background (from Hard Science Fiction, Cultural Blinders and Laban's Sheep," (October 29, 2009)):

• "The Evolution of Wheat - Introduction"
  New Hall Mill
• "Genetics And Evolution Of The Dog"
  NPR (February 13, 2004)
• "Lesson Plans - The Human Role in Dog Evolution"
  National Geographic

---

¹Somebody said "I made this letter very long, because I did not have time to make it shorter." There seems to be a difference of opinion about who said that: Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations," sixteenth edition, says Blaise Pascal. The quote's from Lettres Provinciales [1656-1657], No. 16.

² Tales of Future Past has two decent still photos from "The Phantom Creeps." The movie was a dramatic account of a mad scientist: "With the power of a radioactive meteor he discovered, his invisibility belt, ray gun, and killer robot spiders he plans to conquer the world."

Creativity, Research, and Finding a Cool Name That's Not Been Used

I've been developing technobabble for a few stories. Set about 1,500 years from now, the characters will be using devices that definitely aren't off-the-shelf hardware today.

One of the technologies is a sort of warp drive. Not the Star Trek or Star Wars thing: more like what we might have, if Mexican/Welsh physicist Michael Alcubierre's equations describe something that would actually work. Which, the last I heard, is still a matter of debate.

My guess is that he's on to something. The specifics of his approach to moving a pocket of space-time through the rest of the continuum may not be quite on-target, but it's an idea that's good enough for a story.

A prediction, while I'm thinking of it. Not a particularly startling one, given the nature of humanity. If/when we get to the point where someone's building a prototype warp drive: we'll see a replay of the fuss that's surrounded CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The familiar old 'and we're all gonna die' stuff.

Cool Name: And, Confound it, it's been Used!

Assuming that Alcubierre's warp drive could be built, the thing would require unreasonable amounts of power. The energy requirements are literally astronomical.

For a story, I don't see that as a problem: except that I need to remember that whatever the power source is: it better not be anything that's even close to being developed now.

Think of a story where an airliner gets its power from a pair of oxen turning a wheel, and you see what I'm talking about. Oxen are great sources of energy: but strong as they are, their energy output isn't enough for air travel.

Although - no, I'm going to stay on-topic.

I came up with a dandy name for the power source of warp ships: "cascade generator." It sounds cool, and isn't something that's used now.

Strike that. I did a quick search, and - "cascade generators" are either in development or actually in use in accelerators. Today. ("Travelling wave cascade generator - A new high-voltage source for accelerators," letters to the editor, E M Balabanov et al 1962 J. Nucl. Energy, Part C Plasma Phys. 4 65-67)

The term is also used by a few people who either think they're inventing a sort of perpetual motion machine - or want others to think they are.

Now I have to decide whether to use the term "cascade generator" anyway - or think up something else.

Odds are pretty good that I'll look for an alternative. I really don't want to invoke 21st century technology.

Related post:

• "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come"
  (August 25, 2009)
• "Warp Drive Might Not Be Stable: Physcisists Take Another look at Alcubierre's Work"
  (June 12, 2009)
• "LHC Peril! Large Hadron Collider Black Hole Will Eat Earth!! - or, Not"
  (January 27, 2009)

---

Update (January 21, 2010)

Wikipedia isn't always the most reliable resource. The 'what do you want reality to be' encyclopedia is, though, cleaning up its act: quite a number of articles now have citations. In other words, people and organizations with reputations to lose are listed as sources for facts and opinions. It's an improvement.

Getting back on topic, I looked through the "Topology" page, and ended up with these interesting - and possibly useful for me - words and phrases:

• Hausdorff space
  • Hausdroff generators??
• Clopen set
  • "In topology, a clopen set (or closed-open set, a portmanteau word) in a topological space is a set which is both open and closed."
    (Wikipedia: Clopen set)
  • I like it

Hard Science Fiction, Cultural Blinders and Laban's Sheep

Reading an anthology of hard sf - science fiction which the author and readers perceive as involving known science and rational extrapolations of what's known - I've come to the tentative conclusion that hard sf is written by and for city folks.

Beware Cultural Blinders

The collection is "The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF", edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (1994). I'm up to page 166 of 990, so what I've read can't reasonably be taken as representative of the entire volume - let alone the entire 'hard sf' sub-genre.

On the other hand, what I've read contains two examples of 'hard sf' writers who may not be aware of one of the most important practical applications of science to date. "Science," at any rate, as defined as a conscious, deliberate effort to observe phenomena and draw conclusions from the observations.

The two examples come from the 19th and 20th centuries:

• Rappaccini's Daughter
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844)
• Davy Jone's Ambassador
  • Raymond Z. Gallun (1935)

The first seems like a foretaste of today's ruckus over genetically engineered food products:

"...an appearance of artificialness, indicating that there had been such commixture, and, as it were, adultery of various vegetable species, that the production was no longer of God's making, but the monstrous offspring of man's depraved fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty...."

And

"...'My father created it,' answered she, with simplicity.

" 'Created it! created it!' repeated Giovanni. 'What mean you, Beatrice?'

" 'He is a man fearfully acquainted with the secrets of nature,'..."
(Rappicini's Daughter, Hawthorne, page 83 in "Ascent of Wonder")

Hawthorne raises worthwhile ideas in this short story, like whether or not an altered human being is a person. The story is also written in the 19th century style: giant economy-size paragraphs; rococo linguistic ornamentation; and all.

What I'm concerned with in this post is the idea that Rappaccini "created" a plant and "...that the production was no longer of God's making, but the monstrous offspring of man's depraved fancy...."

In the case of Rappaccini's shrub, "depraved" is a pretty good term. Some of the implications, though, of the author's description of the plant aren't, I think, quite so good a match with reality.

I Think Humanity's Pretty Hot Stuff - But Not That Hot

Take "create" for example. For several decades now, I've read articles about scientists "creating" life in the laboratory. "Mars jars" are still around - and being fine-tuned, as we discover more about what early Mars (probably) was like.

I'm impressed - and very interested - in research into how life, and the cosmos, got started. I'm not so impressed by scientists "creating" life, though. It's like the fellow in a story who had a talk with God, about humanity getting close to being as powerful as God. They were walking next to a stream. God pointed out that He'd created the first man from clay, and asked the man if he could do that.¹ The man said, "sure," leaned over and scooped up some clay. "Oh, no," God said: "You have to make your own clay."

The point is that people work with what we find. We're creative, certainly,² but we have to start with something. Everything we "create" is made by re-arranging existing parts. We've come a long way, since someone got the idea of setting fire to wood, or weaving string out of plant fibers: but we're still using stuff we find already in existence, made of atoms, subatomic particles, photons, or whatever - all sitting on that spacetime turbulence we call quantum foam.³

Incredible! Colossal! Controlled Evolution!

About 74 years ago Raymond Z. Gallun wrote a story about an explorer who encountered a sophisticated undersea civilization on the floor of the Atlantic. This was no "Atlantis:" the people who lived there were at home under two and a half miles of water, and regarded what they'd learned about the near-vacuum and radiation above them with something between horror and repugnance.

The sea-floor people had technology, but didn't use metal. Their 'robots' were animals they'd bred for specific purposes. As described, the seafloor civilization was impressive. And, of course, portrayed as a triumph of science.

"...Handicapped by the impossibility of fire in their normal environment, the sea folk's advancement had followed another path. Controlled evolution was what it amounted to...."
(Davy Jone's Ambassador, Gallun, page 155 in "Ascent of Wonder")

Remember, that was written in 1935. "The Abyss" wouldn't be written for another 54 years. My hat's off to the author, for imagining a plausible - and quite alien - civilization only a few miles below the shipping lanes.

On the other hand, I got the idea that "controlled evolution" was supposed to be exotic, alien, unfamiliar.

Artificial Life Forms - Like Macaroni Wheat

8,000 - or maybe 10,000 - years ago, someone 'doomed' humanity by planting seeds, protecting the plants that grew, harvesting the next-generation seeds, planting seeds from the best-yielding plants, and eating the rest.

From one point of view, it took us thousands of years to recover.⁴

My guess is that most people don't think of domesticated plants and animals as "artificial." Wheat, domestic chickens, and big, juicy apples have been around for so long that it's easy to assume that they've 'always been there.'

Besides, "technology" is something new and cool, right? Not the sort of thing that those serfs and peasants do. Or, these days, those farmers.

I think I see this sort of mindset, even among people involved in agribusiness. "Subconscious plant selection" is what a short history of wheat's (controlled) evolution called the process of selective breeding about ten thousand years back.

Jacob, Laban, and Applied Genetics

Me? I don't think we're all that much more stupid than people were a dozen millennia back. But I'm not convinced that we're that much smarter, either. Better informed, in some ways: particularly since writing has made it easier for us to preserve large volumes of precise information.

And I don't entirely buy the idea that Jacob's deal with Laban (Genesis 30:31) was based on "simple" people's ideas about animal husbandry. Whatever century Jacob was born in, it was thousands of years after people had started breeding animals. Jacob and Laban (who doesn't come across as the brightest bulb in the bin) lived in a society that had been breeding sheep for a very long time.

When Jacob suggested that he be given sheep with an unusual coat - and the birth rate of that rare breed goes up right after Jacob takes over management of the flock - I have to consider the possibility that Jacob knew more about applied genetics than a 'simple' person might.

Something to Beware of, Something to Use

This may be easier for me, than for many city folks, but I think it's a good idea for a science fiction writer to be aware of the last ten thousand or so years of technological development - including the artificial species we've developed. Make that 'over ten thousand years.' Someone apparently decided that wolves would make good hunting companions around the last time glaciers started retreating.

Remember: just because we've been using it since time out of mind, technology is technology.

The flip side is that there's an enormous pool of tech innovations - and the problems they caused - to draw story ideas from. Or interesting settings.

Related posts:

• "Mars Jars Don't Work - But Zinc Might"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (September 3, 2009)
• "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come"
  (August 25, 2009)
• "Four Millennia of Human Nature: I Think Qoheleth is Right"
  (August 3, 2009)
• "Hard Science: It's Not Necessarily a Limitation"
  (July 25, 2009)
• "- - - 'And We're All Gonna Die!' "
  (June 30, 2009)

Background:

• "The Evolution of Wheat - Introduction"
  New Hall Mill
• "Genetics And Evolution Of The Dog"
  NPR (February 13, 2004)
• "Lesson Plans - The Human Role in Dog Evolution"
  National Geographic

---

¹ Or mud. And, yes: I know that Genesis has two creation narratives. (Starting at Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 2:4)

² It's written that we were made "...in the likeness of God...." (Genesis 5:1-2) I think it'd be a bit surprising, taking that as a starting assumption, if we didn't share - however imperfectly - some of God's attributes, including creativity. That creative nature is expressed physically. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2366) I don't think it's such a stretch to think that our reflection of "creativity" can't include economic and artistic pursuits, too. ("Economic Justice for All:" Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (November 13, 1986) (From www.usccb.org/upload/economic_justice_for_all.pdf), particularly paragraph 15 - on page 3)

³ Humanity may have unlocked the last secret of the cosmos in the mid-20th century: but I doubt it. "Quantum foam" still seems to be a pretty good way of describing what happens at the smallest scale we can observe - currently - but I wouldn't be very surprised if someone fine-tuned that model, just as Einstein and company described phenomena that get observable under conditions that Newton didn't know about.

⁴See "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come " (August 25, 2009), footnote 1.

Nanotech and Keeping Up

Technology is changing rapidly just now. A very cool term, "nanotech," is being used - and misused - quite a lot. I put together a list of posts relating to nanotechnology, for another blog today. Here it is, with the post I created it for included.

I think the post titles give an idea of what gadgets might plausibly be used in stories set in the 'near future.' For anything more than, say fifty to a hundred years out? I don't think I'll be trying to describe how the technology works - just what it does. And, try to make sure it doesn't resemble a clunky version of something being developed this year by some outfit in Japan or Silicone Valley.

From Apathetic Lemming of the North:

• "20 Years of Building Stuff One Atom at a Time"
  (October 2, 2009)
• "ViRob: Tiny 'Robot' Travels Through Body"
  (June 27, 2009)
• "Nanotechnolgy and Electronics: Atom-Sized Transistors ('Nanotronics'??)"
  (February 20, 2009)
• "Slick Idea from MIT: Nanotech Oil Spill Blotter-Upper"
  (July 10, 2008)
• "The Chembots Are Coming"
  (July 1, 2008)
• "Programmable Metallization Cell (PMC): One Terabyte of Data in a Little Package"
  (June 20, 2008)
• "Spiderman Suit: From CGI to R & D"
  (March 31, 2008)
• "Nanosieves: Energy-Efficient Filters"
  (March 5, 2008)
• "It Bends! It Cleans Itself! It's Solar Powered! Meet the Cell Phone of the Future! Maybe"
  (March 3, 2008)
• "Artificial Skin: New Technologies Coming"
  (February 12, 2008)
• "Nanotech Solar Collector: Revolutionary, With a Big Catch"
  (January 16, 2008)
• "Nanobot Designed for Clearing Arteries"
  (November 21, 2007)
• "Nanotech Batteries in Clothing"
  (October 19, 2007)
• "Something New that Water Can Do"
  (October 19, 2007)

By the way, as I pointed out in today's post in the other blog, " 'Nanotechnology' Doesn't Mean 'Kinda Small'."

Food, Agriculture, Technology, and City Folks

Back in 1969, writing a story about how everybody would be starving in the immediate future would have been really, like, relevant.

These days, not so much: but some smart people don't seem to have gotten the memo.

I'm most of the way through a book, copyright 1990, by a fairly well-known science fiction/speculative fiction writer. It's well-written - and, just as important, I like the author's style. I'll probably be 'studying' it, later, to see just how the author achieves the tone and mood. And then adapt techniques I've learned to my own writing.

On the other hand, this author - remember, I like the stories - gets on my nerves now and again.

A Digression - Expectations, Assumptions, and 20-20 Hindsight

It's not the author having "the Soviets" still running Russia - and being a world power - in a fairly distant future.

20-20 hindsight is unfair. That little mix-up the Soviet Union had in Afghanistan, and a 600-kilometer-long chain of protesters demanding freedom (August 23, 1989) didn't make the headlines all that much.

The Soviet Union collapsing in 1991 or 1992 (depending on what milestones you use) probably came as a huge surprise to many people who had never lived in a world without the worker's paradise.

Like I say, 20-20 hindsight is unfair.

Speculative fiction writers don't, I think, 'predict' so much as extrapolate something they see - or think they see. For example, a timeline I'd been playing with involved the "Holy Soviet Empire" being a fairly active force a hundred years from now - I might still use that, as a sort of 'alternate history' story. But I doubt it. ("Holy Soviet"? I'd been watching the durability of the eastern Church in Russia - and what appeared to be an increasing realization that religion wasn't going to be stamped out - and came up with some hokum based vaguely on the Holy Roman Empire.)

Food, Agriculture, Technology, Malthus, and Opportunistic Omnivores

I've run into a description of homo sapiens sapiens that called us opportunistic omnivores. One phrase stuck in my mind: 'the first impulse a human has, seeing something new, is "I wonder what that tastes like?" ' I think there's something to that.

There are a few creatures on Earth that we can't eat because they're poison to us - and more that we can eat, but can't digest, like most parts of a tree. For the most part, however - although we do have dietary preferences, which vary radically from one culture to another - we can get nourishment from just about anything we can arm-wrestle down our throats.¹

The rather more dignified way to put it is that, for most of the time humanity has been on Earth, we've been - ah - hunter-gatherers. There. Doesn't that make it sound better?

That was then, this is now. About 8,000 years ago some maniac had the crazy idea of taking seeds from plants he and his group liked to eat - and not eating them. Instead, he (or maybe she) planted them and took care to see that no other creature got at the plants first.

The idea caught on - and the human race was doomed. (See "Agriculture as a Mistake," Apathetic Lemming of the North (October 29, 2007))

Right now, we're about a thousand times over the 'carrying capacity' of Earth for our species. Like I said, we're doomed.

We can get by, I'm told, for a little over a month without eating - provided we get plenty of water and oxygen - so I figure that right around November 4th or so, 999 out of every 1,000 people will die: all around the world.

I should probably write a book about it. Some dude named Malthus wrote a book about 200 years ago, saying that irresponsible people were having babies faster than farmers could raise food - and we're all gonna die.

He took a lot longer to say that, and used bigger words - but that's the gist of it. And yes, I'm being a trifle unfair to that particular serious thinker.

The point is, this Malthus made quite a name for himself, by pointing out a terrible disaster that would doom humanity.

It hasn't happen, but his followers are still hopeful.

Wait a Minute Here! Let's Have a Reality Check

That 'thousand times over [delicate] Earth's carrying capacity' is a rough approximation - based on data which I haven't quite finished verifying. Statistically speaking, though - I'm right.

Humanity is doomed.

Civilization is going down with the scrubbin' bubbles.

And we're all gonna die.

Well, that last is almost certainly true: Given time, each human being dies. But seriously? I don't see a rapid increase in the rate, any time soon.

You see, that '999 out of a thousand will die' is based on the assumption that we all practice hunting-gathering.

Which we don't.

And haven't, most of us, for almost ten thousand years.

But if we did - and were living as opportunistic omnivores with tools that made us competitive with coyotes and wolves - Earth couldn't possibly support 6,000,000,000 of us. Each family group of us needs too much land.

So - we're doomed?

Not hardly.

News Flash! Human Beings are Clever

I think that people who are convinced that 'we're all gonna die' - from Malthus to a butterfly expert named Paul, to today's crop of doom-criers, have all missed a subtle, but important, point.

Human beings didn't stop being clever in the upper paleolithic.

We've got a long history (and a longer pre-history) of changing the rules.

Like, 'it's dark and cold at night.'

We don't like being in the dark and cold.

We figured out how to make fire.

Sometime after that, we figured out how to put out fires.

I'm not saying it's all beer and skittles - for example, not too long ago we found out why it's not a good idea to turn off the pumps in a nuclear reactor. Remember Chernobyl? Some of the 'fires' we're learning to put out these days are pretty serous.

But I don't think that people are any stupider now, than they were when someone invented string, or Archimedes got credit for inventing a helical water pump.

You Mean, Farmers Don't Look Like That? Well, Sha-Zam!

Reading that (very entertaining) book, I get the feeling that the author has something in common with quite a few of America's self-described best and brightest.

They haven't a clue what a farmer looks like.

I often get the impression that members of congress, and the 'experts' they listen to, have a mental image of what a farmer looks like that - how to I put this - is alternatively accurate.

He's got a slight posture problem: stands and walks with a slouch. Nothing serious, but noticeable. He wears dirty denim bib overalls, sometimes with a frayed straw hat, occasionally wears shoes - and sometimes has a shirt on. A flannel shirt.

He talks funny, and his intelligence is somewhere between that of an average reality-show contestant and a rutabaga.

If you asked America's serious thinkers to describe a 21st-century America farmer - jump-starting their frontal cortex in the process - America's best would probably realize that Joe Farmer doesn't pull the plow himself, or use a horse - and knows how to read and write.

Actually, the hayseed stereotype isn't all that far from the way (some) farmers dressed - in the warmer parts of America - maybe a century ago. And still do, when weather and work demand it. They do, however, wear boots. Farmers work around and in some very big, very powerful, machinery: and they need to keep their feet more than most office workers.

I think one of the problems that 'intelligent, sophisticated' people have is that, like just about everybody else in America these days - they're city folk.

I don't have anything against people who live in a city, or in the residential areas huddled around cities. For economic reasons, most people need to live close to - or in - cities. That's the way it is right now.

It does seem, though, that city folks - even if they've flown between cities - really aren't all that knowledgeable about what it's like outside the metropolitan areas. (See "The Effect of Information Technology and Media Preoocupation with Urban Events on the Relative Sophistication of Urban and Rural Populations ," Another War-on-Terror Blog (April 13, 2008))

The point I'm making is that, despite commonly-held (and, I trust, unconsidered) beliefs in America and quite a number of other places in the world, people don't have to practice agriculture the way we did a thousand years ago.

One of the big, recent, changes was the "green revolution" in the 20th century. If you're not directly or indirectly involved with agribusiness, you probably haven't heard of it. It doesn't fit the 'and we're all gonna die' model - and good news like that hasn't been relevant since sometime in the sixties.

Based on the fossil record and a few thousand years of recorded history, I doubt the "green revolution" is the last gasp of human ingenuity. These days, we may be more likely to build cute dancing robots, than something of more drearily serious merit: but I don't think we're all that much less bright than the people who figured out how to make tools out of flint.

And no: I don't think that 99.9% of humanity will be dead by mid-November.

• "- - - 'And We're All Gonna Die!' "
  (June 30, 2009)
• " 'The Dream' - a Short-Short Story"
  (June 28, 2009)
• "Getting Details Right: The Vast, Huge, and Very Large City Of The Future"
  (June 25, 2009)

---

¹ A vignette.

A diplomat, getting briefed on what to expect from the Terran ambassador, is told: "Whatever you do, don't let the human get hungry!"

Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come

Science / speculative fiction often deals with technology, and how it affects people, culture, and society. Less often, the idea that people affect technology is explored.

I've seen quite a change in attitude towards technology, over the decades. Tales of Future Past, a remarkable collection by David S. Zondy, celebrates the days when:

"...our future was supposed to be a sort of technocratic, atomic-powered, computer-controlled, antiseptic, space-travelling Jerusalem that would at last free us from the curse of Eden and original sin. We expected some how, some way that we would be on the road to being freed from the human condition. We expected a sort of bloodless, benign French Revolution with Hugo Gernsback as our Voltaire and Carl Sagan as our Robespierre. And what did we get? The City of Man with Tivo. The fact is, science fiction and popular science had set the bar so high that only the Second Coming with ray guns would have satisfied...."
(Tales of Future Past)

I watched that view change to the 'and we're all gonna die' belief that technology was evil. Or, for the more up-to-date: polluting; dehumanizing; depersonalizing; and humanity is doomed anyway.

Beware the Demon Technology and Other Silliness

My guess is that some circles still see technology as a sort of secular demon bent on reducing humanity to a deplorable state of ungrooviness, Although the post-apocalyptic future of mutant frogs (Hell Comes to Frogtown) and armored dune buggies has a certain panache, I really don't think it's all that likely.

Humanity somehow survived agriculture.¹ If we can do that, we can take on just about anything.

Although some technologies are more dangerous than others, I don't think that anything human beings mess with is, strictly speaking, safe. That's because of some assumptions I have, about the nature of reality.

• Some people aren't generally
  • Nice
  • Competent
  • Careful
• Technology is most dangerous when it's used by people who are
  • Not nice or
  • Not competent or
  • Not careful or
  • Some combination of the above

I also don't think that any technology makes people do things. Yes: it's easier for people to travel, for example, now that we've got automobiles and airplanes. But people had been traveling for years before the automobile was invented.

People are People, Tools are Tools: There's a Difference

What we do can be done on a larger scale if we've got tools: but it's the human mind directing the tool; not the other way around.

Buck Rogers and the Temple of Doom

Technology can be part of the background, or it could be a central part of the conflict.

Take the early days of the industrial revolution, when people who didn't like the new technology sabotaged it with their wooden shoes. Or, didn't. Makes a good story, though. (Merriam-Webster Inc. has a pretty good discussion of where the word "sabotage" comes from.)

The point is: that's conflict, centering around technology.

A few short references to technology can place a story in history - or quickly establish a setting. Mention blowguns, poison darts, and a dugout canoe, and many (most, I hope) readers will fill in the rest of the setting from their own (more-or-less accurate) knowledge. Talk about a disrupter, shield generators, and a landing pod and you've evoked a very different setting.

Show your readers someone donning a space suit, getting into a dugout canoe, and dodging poison darts on the way to a shield generator - and you've either hooked or confused the reader.

All of which leads into another list of posts. This set deals with inventions: strange; feared; and (in the case of the warp drive) yet-to-come.

Unless otherwise noted, these posts are from Apathetic Lemming of the North.

• "Gamers are Geezers, Apparently: 35, Overweight, and Bummed Out"
  (August 23, 2009)
• "The Threat of Dangerous New Technologies: It's Not All That New"
  (August 23, 2009)
  • Socrates tried to warn us!
• "Asimov's 3 Laws, Real Robots, and Common Sense"
  (August 20, 2009)
• "Good News, Neural Devices Connect Brain, Computers: Bad News, Same Thing"
  (July 11, 2009)
• "Never Heard of the Packing Noodle? There's a Reason"
  (July 1, 2009)
• "Warp Drive Might Not Be Stable: Physcisists Take Another look at Alcubierre's Work"
  (June 12, 2009)
• "Tetris: Invented in Russia (This Time, Chekov's Right)"
  (June 6, 2009)
• "Very Odd Gizmos for the Home"
  (May 16, 2009)
• "Thomas Edison: Inventions by the Bushel"
  (May 12, 2009)
• "Technology, Perceptions of Magic, and the Human Condition"
  (May 8, 2009)
• "Warp Drive: Yes, it May Be Possible; But Don't Hold Your Breath"
  (May 7, 2009)
• "Helicopter Ejection Seats, Detachable Dog Sacks, and Other Weirdness"
  (March 18, 2009)
• "Handwriting's Dying! So are Our Personalities! (According to the BBC)"
  (February 26, 2009)
• "Protesting Against New Technology - the Early Days"
  (February 23, 2009)
• "Why 'Hello,' and Mark Twain About Telephone Conversations"
  (August 20, 2008)
• "Yesterday's Inventions"
  (August 16, 2008)
• "DC Gun Ban, Online Censorship, Individual Rights, and Power to the People"
  Another War-on-Terror Blog² (June 27, 2008)
• "Cure for Cancer and Energy from the Sea? This Might Actually Work"
  (June 16, 2008)
• "Inventor Buried in Pringles Can - No Kidding"
  (June 2, 2008)
• "The Telectroscope: New York - London Live Link"
  (May 23, 2008)
• "May 16, 1960 - Invention of the Laser on That Very Day: Sort of"
  (May 16, 2008)
• " 'Green' Gadgets That Actually Make Sense"
  (May 7, 2008)
• "Cell Phone Technology of the Future: Never Mind, it's Here"
  (April 30, 2008)
• "Better Ideas From America: Really Big Water Balloons"
  (April 13, 2008)
• "A Website Celebrating Very Strange Patents"
  (April 6, 2008)
• "Better Ideas from America: Strap-on Automotive Dog Sack"
  (March 20, 2008)
• "Better Ideas From France: A Car That Runs on Compressed Air"
  (January 24, 2008)
• "Swedish Sauna House"
  (January 2, 2008)
• "EEEK! Guns! Hoplophobia and Foreign Policy"
  Another War-on-Terror Blog² (December 23, 2007)
• "Better Ideas From ... "
  (October 15, 2007)
• "Top 10 Inventions of the Middle Ages - That's Right: Middle Ages"
  (September 22, 2007)
• "Agriculture as a Mistake"
  (October 29, 2007)
• "Don't Know What to Say?"
  (September 19, 2007)
  • Okay: This one's a stretch

And, this decade's 'it's gonna kill us all' invention, CERN's Large Hadron Collector:

• "Physics Student Notes Large Hadron Collider Glitch"
  (March 25, 2009)
• "Anatoli Bugorski and the Proton Ray of Doom "
  (February 7, 2009)
• "LHC Peril! Large Hadron Collider Black Hole Will Eat Earth!! - or, Not"
  (January 27, 2009)
• "CERN's Large Hadron Collider Goes Full Circuit"
  (September 10, 2008)
• "Large Hadron Collider - Tests Still Going Well "
  (August 26, 2008)
• "CERN's Large Hadron Collider: the Proton Beam Failsafe "
  (August 22, 2008)
• "Large Hadron Collider - the Countdown Continues "
  (July 6, 2008)
• "Large Hadron Collider - Huge Research Tool "
  (June 28, 2008)
• "CERN Large Hadron Collider: Photos "
  (March 20, 2008)
• "Photos of Five Cool Research Facilities"
  (January 5, 2008)

---

¹ Agriculture may have been the single most dangerous technology humanity has come up with yet. It took us thousands of years to recover from the devastating effects of its use. ("Agriculture as a Mistake" Apathetic Lemming of the North (October 29, 2007))

² This isn't a perfect world. Sometimes not-nice people do naughty things; and won't stop even when they're asked nicely. Which leads me to this set of thoughts:

• War isn't nice - things get broken and people die
  • This is not good.
• Diplomacy can lead to mutually-acceptable compromise
  • This is good
• War is not nice
  • But sometimes it's better than the alternative

(I value individual freedom, even for people who don't agree with a country's dominant culture. I'll admit to having a rather counter-cultural attitude on this topic: which I discuss in Another War-on-Terror Blog.)

What's pertinent to writing in the science fiction / speculative fiction genre(s) is that 'dangerous' technology isn't

• Always a weapon
• Bad by itself

Think LP gas, computers and movable type. (Discussed in Individual Freedom: a Treasure, Another War-on-Terror Blog (June 27, 2008))