Technology

Technology 2.0, now with extra tech!

You are not intelligently designed… yet…

0
11 months ago
by Damon Kaswell in ,

Human beings still have wisdom teeth. Our spines aren’t very good at standing us up straight. Our recurrent laryngeal nerves make a biologically unnecessary trip down into the thorax before making their way back up our necks. And we’re woefully inefficient food processors, producing far more waste than would be biologically necessary if someone decided to make a human from the ground up.

But… We’re also very, very smart.

Human biological engineering is becoming more and more a science fact, rather than science fiction, and that got me to thinking: What if we could engineer away our own inefficiencies?

Take food, for instance. Imagine you could rework your stomach and intestines to extract far more from what you eat than you currently do, turning your body into a super-efficient calorie-extracting machine. Imagine one meal keeping you sated for a week, after which you would… ahem… excrete whatever tiny amount of matter could not be used as fuel in any way, in the form of one small, hard pellet.

From an environmental and humanitarian standpoint, such a biological change would be of extraordinary benefit. No more starvation, no more squabbling over land resources for growing food… It’s hard to imagine a down side. Overnight, overpopulation concerns are gone, or at least staved off for a day far in the future.

And what about water? Why do we need to urinate at all? If we were more efficient, everything that currently comes out as urine could be included in your weekly excretion. We could stay hydrated on maybe one cup of water every two days. The drain on the world’s waterways could disappear practically over night.

And sleep? What if you could improve your sleep efficiency such that one hour a night was enough? Or even take a pill that negates the need for sleep entirely? Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to spend an extra eight hours a day with their family and friends? Or earn a little extra income with an additional part-time job? Or, to make it more personal, have the time to work on that novel?

I know some people would be horrified at the concept of a human being as thoroughly bioengineered as I’m describing, but why? Is there a downside? If so, what? Sure, I’d miss eating lots, but that’s because I’m biologically wired to crave food. What if I wasn’t?

And how would society change to accommodate a human race that eats once a week, drinks very little water, and hardly ever sleeps? What other changes can you imagine that would make us more efficient?

Social overload

4
1 year ago
by Damon Kaswell in , ,

Well, I just got a Twitter account. I’m @DamonKaswell there, if you’re curious. I know, I swore up and down I wouldn’t, rejecting categorically any service that restricts the length of my thoughts to 140 characters. “Microblogging?” I scoffed. “Pshaw! Reduces attention spans, I’m sure. Makes people even more distractable than they already are. Imbalances the bodily humours, too, I’d wager.”

But I had something of an epiphany. I read a transcript of an interesting Twitter conversation on science and science fiction, and found myself wishing I could have chimed in. Because gosh darn it, I had some things to say on the subject. I wanted to be part of the conversation.

And that’s when it dawned on me. Twitter isn’t a good blogging tool, but it’s an excellent conversation tool. Twitter status updates can be treated as miniature Facebook updates, and for the ADHD set, I’m sure that’s all they are. But those hash tags (#) can turn Twitter into public chat rooms anyone can pop in and contribute to. You’re not going to get the depth of discussion you’ll find from friends on, say, LiveJournal, but you will get morsels from people who are interested in the same topic, friends or not. If you tag a post with #avocadomilkshakes, anyone else in the world who shares your disgusting gustatory interests can chime in.

Of course, this leads me to a new dilemma. I now have a WordPress blog, a LiveJournal account, a Google Buzz account, a Facebook account, and now a Twitter account. It’s getting cumbersome and unwieldy to manage.

After putting some thought into it, I’d like a client or system that allows me to do as follows:

  • Blog: I would like to add posts to my blog. Duh.
  • LiveJournal: I would like to synchronize my blog with LiveJournal.
  • Google Buzz: I’d like to synchronize my blog here as well, but also want to use it to directly post shorter thoughts and status updates that aren’t really suitable for the blog, but are too long for Twitter.
  • Facebook: I’d like my blog to show up as Facebook “notes,” and standalone Google Buzz posts to show up as status updates. What I don’t want is Buzz posts that were created from my blog to show up, which would be unnecessary duplication.
  • Twitter: I want to use this primarily for conversations. It would also be nice to selectively update my Twitter, Buzz, and Facebook statuses simultaneously if I have something short I want to post in all three places.
  • LiveJournal/Facebook/Buzz: It would also be nice to be able to make longer posts for in-depth discussions that don’t show up on my primary blog but do show up in these three locations simultaneously.

Has anyone figured out a system to get all this working with a minimum of fuss? My ideal solution would be a single client application I could write my content in, with checkboxes for where I want it to go. Right now I’m using a hodgepodge of WordPress plugins, Facebook notes syndication, and selective Buzz updates.

For extra credit, it would be very, very nice to be able to synchronize all my friends’ various feeds too, and read them in one feed that de-duplicates the content, so I don’t have to jump around from site to site. But I’m sure that’s a pipe-dream.

Science fiction in the age of science fact

0
1 year ago
by Damon Kaswell in ,

Have you noticed that we live in The Future yet? I have. I realized it while I was on the biofuel-powered mass conveyance machine this morning. Anyway, I looked up from my portable network terminal (on which I was simultaneously reading about vat-grown organs and receiving wireless audio signals) and found myself genuinely considering, for the first time, the possibility that I might someday become functionally immortal.

After all, scientists have already demonstrated that simply by reducing the speed at which DNA structures called “telomeres” shorten, they can make worms live 20% longer. Studies are already under way on telomerase, and other gene therapies that at least theoretically counteract some or all of the effects of aging.

Of course, there are other paths life-extension technology could take. We don’t even have to wait for the day limb replacements get better than the real thing; that day is already here.

I wanted to share these thoughts with someone. I considered using my portable network terminal to engage in instantaneous verbal communication with someone — that someone could very well be anywhere on the planet — but decided against it. Such conversations are a little rude in close quarters such as the conveyance I was sitting in.

So I kept it to myself. However, the towering heights our collective technological genius has reached left me feeling dizzy all day, from the moment I used a magnetized strip embedded in polyvinyl chloride acetate (a credit card) to purchase breakfast, to the moment I decided to use a large-screen portable network terminal to write this essay and simultaneously share it across half a dozen different virtual network locales (websites).

What would our burgeoning sciences look like to species on other worlds (some of which we can now take actual photographs of)? When I visited NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories, I met a man whose job description is basically “drives robots on Mars with his phone.” We must appear to be getting fairly high-tech to the little green men now, if they’re out there.

In some ways, this is something of a bittersweet thought. The science fiction I read when I was a child has been outstripped by a reality I couldn’t have imagined back then. And the pace of improvement keeps increasing. Sometimes I’m afraid any story I write will be obsolete by the time it’s published. Writing fantasy has frankly become easier, because no scientific advancement will ever render stories set in magical worlds any less realistic than they already are.

But… We’ve won. And by “we,” I mean science fiction writers. We’ve dreamed of futures filled with spaceships and robots and computers and everything else for so long, those dreams have affected the reality we live in. Scientists and inventors look to science fiction for inspiration, and find ways to turn it into science fact.

We live in The Future, and it’s goddamn awesome.

Cults of technology

4
1 year ago
by Damon Kaswell in , ,

I’ve been watching the ongoing debacle regarding Apple’s newest iPhone. For the uninitiated, iPhone 4 released on June 24th. It’s a beautiful looking phone. But there have been a few reports of problems with it since its release. A few piddling, negligible, unimportant problems.

Namely, it loses its signal when you hold it.

Now, Apple has responded in several different ways to these reports:

  • This problem doesn’t exist. The iPhone 4 is not plagued with any signal degradation from holding the phone.
  • Even if the problem is real, other phones have it, too. All your past experiences to the contrary, holding any cellphone results in a loss of signal.
  • But the iPhone doesn’t have a signal problem, even though we just said that all cellphones do.
  • And this problem (which, again, doesn’t exist) only happens when you hold your phone wrong.

To normal human beings, this sounds like a defect, whatever Apple says. And it’s especially bizarre for Apple to tell customers who suffer signal degradation that they’re holding the phone incorrectly, when Apple’s advertisements and demonstrations of the iPhone 4 all depict it being held the “wrong” way (otherwise known as the way someone who holds phones in his left hand, like me, would hold a phone). Engadget has a helpful pictorial.

But to my astonishment, there are Apple customers defending the phone and even arguing that this isn’t a problem. People who agree with Apple on the topic, regardless of their own past experiences with other cellphones that — let’s be honest — can in fact be held without dropping calls. This knee-jerk defense of what seems like a serious design flaw has left me scratching my head.

Here are the basics of the problem: The iPhone 4′s antennas are integrated into the body of the phone as thin metallic strips on either side, one for the GSM connection and one for wifi and bluetooth. The rest of the edge is also metallic, but separated from the antennas by thin rubber buffers. When someone holds the phone in the normal phone-holding position with their right hand, there’s no problem. But a left-handed grip bridges the gap between the antenna on the left and the other bit of metal at the bottom. For a lot of people, this results in a loss of signal and dropped calls.

Now, the science fiction writer in me wants to pick this apart. Why do people’s egos get wrapped up in the quality of a piece of technology they’ve purchased? Why defend an obvious flaw, or pretend it doesn’t exist? Why willingly change personal behavior, such as how one holds a phone, to overcome that technology’s shortcomings, without admitting those shortcomings exist? What do they gain?

I can understand partisanship for or against a particular company’s products. But that doesn’t require the complete dismissal of any facts that cast the technology I’ve chosen to use in a negative light. I use Linux rather than Windows, because I find its features more in line with what I need, and the price for equitable features in Windows is too high. I think Linux is simply a better operating system for most tasks.

But that doesn’t mean I regard Linux as the One True Operating System, perfect and error free. It has its problems, one of which is the way application developers for Linux will sometimes put out non-beta software of beta quality (I’m looking at you, Amarok 2 and Audacity 3). I stay with Linux because I find those problems less frustrating than the ones in Windows, but I don’t pretend those problems don’t exist.

So… Technology cultists. People whose senses of ego and self-worth seem to be tied to having made the “right” technology decision, and reject any facts that render their chosen technology less than perfect. I’m trying to wrap my head around it.

There’s got to be a story in there somewhere.

EDIT: I’ve made some adjustments above for clarity, and wanted to promote this really well-crafted analysis, care of [info]dsmoen.

EDIT 2: Well, that was fast. According to the Houston Press blog, there’s now a class-action lawsuit.

Blogging vs. shiny baubles

2
1 year ago
by Damon Kaswell in ,

I have three* social media profiles I use regularly. Chances are, you’re reading this on one of them (as opposed to my personal website at www.damonkaswell.com, where this was originally published). They are:

One of these things is not like the others.

LiveJournal is first and foremost a social blogging tool, designed for long posts and detailed, threaded discussions. It is quite possible to have a days-long — or even weeks-long — conversation on LiveJournal.

Google Buzz is the new kid on the block in social media. It integrates with your GMail account and is sort of like if Twitter was a blogging tool. It’s fine for short “status update” posts, but it has a lot of very nice features for blogging, too, and active discussions float to the top of your buzz feed. I’m finding the clutter-free interface and GMail contact integration to be very nice. It wants to stay out of your way. I have my concerns about Google and how embedded it has become in our lives, but that aside, Buzz does a good job for both quick and longer updates.

LiveJournal and Google Buzz appeal to me as a writer. And then there’s Facebook…

Facebook has some perfunctory blogging tools, but by and large it’s intended for posts not much larger than those on Twitter. With a limit of 420 characters on status updates, and blog posts relegated to a sub-page, Facebook is appealing to the ADHD kid in all of us. There are lots of shiny baubles (“Join a group!” “Support this cause!” “Become a fan!”) and quick, easily digested infotainment bits from our friends (or “friends,” as the case may be).

I don’t blog as much as I used to since joining Facebook. It doesn’t reward long, complicated thoughts and detailed analysis the way LiveJournal and Buzz do. It doesn’t reward content. Rather, it rewards bouncing rapidly from one thing to another. I don’t think using it that way is very good for me.

There are other ways in which Facebook has its uses, so long as you reign in the unproductive and unhealthy hyperactivity it incites. It can be a useful contact manager. It’s a good way to impart brief but useful pieces of information to actual friends and family. It even has some fun games, so long as you avoid FarmVille. It is possible to use Facebook in a way that doesn’t reduce your attention span to that of a gnat.

But it’s not easy. Those shiny baubles are very appealing. They’re designed to be, because the longer you spend on Facebook not doing anything, the longer their advertisers have access to some parts of your brain. Kate Yule has an excellent post on some of the evils of Facebook’s advertising model, and you should read it: http://kateyule.livejournal.com/143713.html. In a nutshell, you are the product.

I’m not sure I entirely agree with her, at least on her decision to close her Facebook account. But I’m tempted enough by the idea that I’m instituting a few new rules for myself and its use:

  1. Clean up my news feed. I want nothing from apps, groups, fan pages, etc., unless it’s from one I actually, actively care about and involves one of my real-world interests, such as writing science fiction. Sorry, this also means purging any individual from my news feed I don’t actually know in some way. I want my news feed to be useful to me, and that means family updates, author updates, real-world friend updates, and very little else.
  2. No advertainment. No FarmVille, PetVille, or any other -Ville of any kind. I have friends who’ve invited me to play those, and they’re fun at first, which they’re designed to be, but there’s no end, no final reward, no “you won” from them. They’re designed to be eternal, and to pester you to log in enough that you’ll consider paying real money for the advantage of not needing to. I’m not talking about the games like Scrabble (which is actually quite fun, and can be a vocabulary expander). I’m talking about the ones that very cleverly manipulate you into caring about them, fussing over them… and eventually spending money on them, for no personal gain whatsoever.
  3. Avoid logging in. There are tools available for retrieving your Facebook feed and notices, and displaying them in a clutter- and distraction-free way. From now on, I will use those, and log directly into the page only when needed for some reason.

After thinking about all this, all the work it will take to strip the clutter from my Facebook page and make it a useful information feed, I find myself wondering what took me so long to reach this point.

EDIT: Credit where credit is due. The inestimable David D. Levine got me thinking about this.

*One might wonder about Twitter. I reject any service that restricts my thoughts to 140 characters. If Facebook gives us ADHD, Twitter gives us ADHD and then feeds us a steady diet of sugar.

The benevolent dictator

5
1 year ago
by Damon Kaswell in ,

This morning, I woke up and listened to a science fiction broadcast I’m subscribed to on Google Reader while getting ready for the DayJeorb. I downloaded it using Google Listen on my Google Android-powered phone. While the broadcast played, I checked my Google Mail and made a couple notes on my Google Calendar.

I have documents on Google Docs. I’m a member of several Google newsgroups. I use Google Maps for all kinds of things, from finding phone numbers (goodbye, environmentally devastating and utterly obsolete phonebooks) to getting directions. And, like damn near everyone else, I use Google to search for things. It’s hard to imagine a day without using any Google services or software whatsoever, unless I’m taking a sabbatical from the internet itself. The big G makes a lot of my daily activities a lot easier.

And they’ve figured out how to operate effectively in an area where Microsoft distinctly lags: Working with, not against, the internet’s inherent openness. Microsoft got where they are today by making nearly every computer a Windows computer, and making it difficult to use anything other than Windows with other Windows computers. But this strategy doesn’t work against a competitor that literally doesn’t care what OS your computer uses, and is hell-bent on making everything you do online platform-agnostic. Want to check Gmail using Linux? Fine! Want to do a Google search using a Mac? OK! Want to manage your Google Reader subscriptions on FreeBSD running the Opera browser in a VirtualBox emulation on Solaris 10? No problem! Want Microsoft to provide internet services that don’t care what OS you’re using? Not a chance.

Google has managed to do this without engaging in any pernicious vendor lock-in. It would take me a matter of minutes to switch every Google service I use to something else. I stay with Google for ease of use, simplicity, and the fact that every Google service talks to every other Google service without any effort on my part, which makes it attractive to keep using them. But by no means am I required to. Google never tries to make me use more of their services than I want to. Despite all their interoperability, they don’t engage in anything resembling Microsoft’s infamous bundling.

In fact, Google keeps their APIs open and makes it surprisingly easy to build third-party applications which can take advantage of just key portions of Google. They seem to recognize the fact that not everyone will want to use everything they offer, and they seem to be fine with that. Microsoft, with its proprietary file formats, proprietary protocols, and closed APIs, is exactly the opposite. This strategy of platform-agnosticism and openness has made Google an internet powerhouse. Lately, everything they touch seems to turn to gold, and they touch everything.

Which is why I’m a little scared of them.

Google wields tremendous power in our lives now, and collects an enormous amount of data from each of us. So far, they don’t seem to be too inclined to use that data for ill. Mostly, they just use it to serve up targeted advertising, which I really don’t mind since I’m using their services for free. I could always switch to pay services, or applications that are installed locally, if it bothered me. And frankly, I think the trend of showing me unobtrusive advertisements for things I’m actually interested in is a good thing (as opposed to the “enhancement” products that invariably flood everyone’s mailboxes). I frequently see ads for sci-fi/fantasy books and movies, writing tools, and so on. Not the kinds of things that are going to bother me.

But of course, Google is by no means perfect, and their motto, “Don’t be evil,” is sadly unenforceable. All that data could easily be abused, Google’s treatment of the copyrights of authors* leaves much to be desired, and the recent Chinese government cyberattacks on Google’s data servers resulted in the company enlisting the aid of the NSA, a move that understandably upset privacy and civil liberties advocates. Any handshaking going on between Google and a quasi-illegal, unregulated organization like the NSA merits serious scrutiny.

So the hordes of Google users must hope the dictator remains a benevolent one, And we should more or less assume the government can — and will — take control of Google’s vast data stores whenever it feels like it. That’s not to say we shouldn’t keep using Google, but we should keep an eye on it. And we should make sure it knows, at all times, that we can take our business elsewhere should that be necessary. After all, the open internet and agnostic services Google has championed have essentially won, which means there are dozens of other providers for every service Google offers, and they’re all ready to jump in and fill the void if Google forgets its motto.

And if you don’t believe that, look it up. You can find them all with Google.

*Resulting in the much-maligned Google book settlement

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