Time to Check Out Some Good Music from 2024

After Melissa showed me how I can use our Amazon Prime to get Alexa to play commercially-uninterrupted music on my phone, I've been using most of 2024 so far focusing on my favorite acts, like Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, the Who, Regina Spektor, Seals and Crofts, Electric Light Orchestra, Yes, Rush, and Metric...just to name a few.  Should I decide to focus on one artist or group, I can now pretty much listen to their entire discography this way...very convenient.  But one consequence of this great opportunity has been that I haven't exactly been keeping up with music of 2024, that is, songs that will mark this year for me in my memory.  So, it's still July with a lot of time left in '24, and I think I'll check out the new albums released so far by artists I like...should be interesting.  It's worked well for me in the past this way...in 2023 I discovered my favorite songs for that year this way, including my "Song of the Year" for 2023: Oil by Gorillaz.  Time to look for some more musical magic!

Just Finished Reading Scary Smart by Mo Gawdat

Scary Smart, long title Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World is a 2021 book by Mo Gawdat, a former Google X business executive at that AI-development section of Google with a background in engineering.  When I think of artificial intelligence combined with the word "scary", I recall movies like The Terminator, The Matrix and the old 1970 TV movie Colossus: The Forbin Project, all depicting a future nightmare scenario where super-intelligent computers have concluded that humanity at best is inferior and extraneous...and at worse an evil affliction on the planet that must be controlled or eradicated.  I believe that these stories greatly contribute to the public's increasing concerns about the meteoric rise of this technology in today's real world, and about what direction it will take in the near future, good or bad.  In our dog-eat-dog cutthroat competitive capitalist business environment, the clear message is that you'd better jump into AI as quickly and deeply as possible, else you will be left in the dust and perish.  Gawdat recognizes all this, and hence I felt while I was reading his book that he and I had at least a good deal of common ground in spite of our highly divergent personal and academic backgrounds.  He considers humanity's investment in artificial intelligence too far gone to reverse.  It is here to stay and, with the recent development of quantum computing, increasing its power and development more than exponentially, its intelligence will soon far, far exceed that of humans.  Gawdat believes the world will be irreversibly transformed in the next thirty years or so, so much that he posits a word picture projected ahead that far: he and the reader are out in some isolated natural scenario camping...are we rejoicing at the great new world AI has created for us or are we desperately in retreat, hiding from it?  His thesis in Scary Smart is that now is the time that people can affect the future benevolent (or malevolent) nature of artificial intelligence by instilling in it a more positive representation of what humanity is instead of the more negative, hypercompetitive, bellicose and cruel image we've engendered of ourselves over our history and how we have been using AI so far.  Gawdat is pushing a new creed of happiness, politeness, grace and generosity in dealing with artificial intelligence, which learns with every single interaction.  Even though he feels that we're destined for some future difficult times with artificial intelligence, which he likens to a sentient life force, a change in our attitudes toward ourselves where mutual happiness is the higher aim can steer it away from the nightmare science fiction scenario featured in old movies and toward the fulfillment of the many hopes for us that it brings.  I sympathize with Mo Gawdat's views but given my own experience with human nature over the course of my 67-year existence on Earth, I tend to think that his suggestions are probably just as impractical as reversing AI.  Still, I liked and recommend his book: check it out and get back to me..

Quote of the Week...from Lenny Kravitz

We're getting so pulled in by computers and technology, and our kids have their face in computers all day. The human relationship is being diminished by this.                 ---Lenny Kravitz

Lenny Kravitz is an American solo rock artist who I've always considered as one of the most musically talented in the profession.  His singles hit Fly Away was my personal top favorite song for the year 1998, and he shined portraying Katniss' stylist Cinna in the movies The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.  Although I like his music and acting, I'd like to focus on Lenny's above quote.  Sixty-six years old now, I grew up and spent my early adult years free of the then-fledgling digital revolution, whereas it's the only thing that younger generations know of in life.  Fifty years ago, people would be astonished at a picture of a typical city street of today with half the people quizzically staring down at their hands as if in a trance.  When I went with my then-eighteen-year-old son Will to his college in Jacksonville fifteen years ago, we went to see what the main library looked like...the tables were full of students, without books, eyes glued in on their laptop computers.  Whatever happened to that "cognitive reverie" of hanging out at the stacks there, surrounded by books, which is what I used to do as a student?  And the video games...don't get me going with that.  Of course, I, too, have my head in computers all day as well...especially considering my "smart" phone.  And it's not all bad, don't get me wrong: I'm taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity to write this free blog for anyone (in a free country) in the world to read!  Kids do get outside and play and interact...at least some of them.  But computers have this instant feedback and reinforcement trait that can be addicting.  In generations past, children had their heads in books...with mine it was television all the time...and now with the young it's computers.  I wonder what the snare will be a couple of generations from now.  There is one glaring difference between computers and TV/books: people...not just young...find their personal validation through social media and the Internet, and that makes it much more likely that they can be manipulated by the ones pulling the strings on the other side, often hidden...

Quote of the Week...from Jonathan Frakes

I always enjoyed going into the holodeck.                             ---Jonathan Frakes

You may recognize Jonathan Frakes...who just turned 70 today...by his most famous role as Commander William Riker on the sci-fi classic series Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I checked out his quotes and settled on the above one because...well...it was intriguing.  I wonder if Frakes says he likes going into the "holodeck", which is just a part of the filming set, because it stimulates his imagination, or does he really regard it as a holodeck, in which just about any kind of setting or environment programmable into the ship's computer system can be reproduced.  I like the concept of holodeck myself, although I do remember an episode of the series in which the programming went haywire and the supposedly harmless gangsters it generated suddenly became lethal.  Imagination is a great thing, but I'd like a device that more vividly portrays different exotic environments and approximates various kinds of experiences.  I had expected that virtual reality with its funny helmet/masks would be more developed than it is right now...God knows that the demand for something like this among the population has to be very high.  One of my all-time favorite book series is the four-volume science fiction classic Otherland by Tad Williams...it takes virtual reality technology to its proper ends.  What I'd like from a holodeck or sophisticated VR device is to simply be able to travel to different places and walk around...no game or role playing here, just approximating the travel experience without the burdens of expense, danger and red tape.  Of course, sitting at a French café this way I wouldn't expect to be able to savor my drink or meal.  And how does one reproduce effects like temperature, wind, touch or smell without intrusively applying probes to one's body?  Still, I think it would be awesome to reproduce a surround-experience even with some of the more problematic areas omitted.  I think Frakes' meaning about liking the holodeck was that it was a little like going down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland...you're never quite sure what's going to happen next...  

Personal Development Podcaster's Take on Technology Addiction

On one of his Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, life coach Rob Dial discussed how to get ahead of everyone else...quickly. It's not so complicated: while the population in general is becoming more and more dependent on their digital technology like smartphones, television and innovations like virtual reality and the Metaverse, he's decided to take a different path, trading in the time and effort put into entertainment for education and action...in the real world.  Dial maintains that studies show that (not necessarily a good lead-in line) people over the past few decades have much shorter attention spans, and he attributes this to their excessive use of media and digital devices.  For himself, he says that being around his cellphone too much makes him less focused and more anxious, and deliberately puts it away in another room when he has other things planned to do.  Dial is not opposed to using smartphones, social media, Netflix or other manifestations of the modern digital era per se, but the question becomes, who is the master, yourself or the technology to which he claims many are addicted.  Where do I stand on all this?  I agree with Rob Dial's suggestion that we all read and learn more instead...yet I use my Android both as a Kindle device and an audiobook.  YouTube in itself is an incredible teaching device...I recently saved a "load" of money replacing a simple worn-out part in my dryer by following a video on that platform.  Still, I admit that while I'm not anywhere near as attached to Facebook, Twitter or other social media sites as many others I know (as well as probably Dial himself), I do tend to engage in some game playing on it...but not all that much when I think about it. Still, I can see how folks can become addicted to all this stuff...being 65 with a lifetime of sitting in front of a TV set, I think that's probably the closest I come to being "addicted" to a form of technology...and yet in recent times I've become more discriminating in what I watch, often switching to a music channel or just turning the confounded thing off. On the other hand, as I related in my recent Saturday article, I get a big kick out of watching sports on TV...that ain't changing.  My big problem with people stuck on their devices is that they tend to be on them while driving, and that poses a direct danger to myself and my loved ones...not to mention that it makes me skittish about ever again riding a bicycle outside my neighborhood when in bygone years I used to bike all over the place...

Some Interesting Newspaper Articles from October, 1956

Here are four articles that caught my attention as I was skimming through the archives of The Miami News, a mainline, established newspaper, covering the dates October 4th through 6th, 1956...64 years ago.  It's interesting to see how people saw the future back then, as well as being treated to many assumptions they made about the ways society should be structured.  With each article I first wrote the main point of interest to me, followed by my own commentary.  Yes, these were real articles...

ENSLAVEMENT OF MEN AS ROBOTS PREDICTED...JUST PLUG 'EM IN (10/4/56)

In the article: Curtiss R. Schafer, project engineer for the Norden-Ketay Corp., of Milford Conn., said research in the science of "biocontrol" has shown that the conversion of human beings into electronically-controlled robots is possible.

Yes, I believe Schafer's revelation that "whole nations might be enslaved by tiny radios implanted into the brains of infants to prevent them from thinking as individuals" is feasible: I saw, with my own eyes, the archvillain Plankton do this sort of thing in the first SpongeBob SquarePants movie!  But seriously, aren't a lot of people in our own day and age voluntarily allowing themselves to be enslaved by their own smartphones and social media? This was a United Press article...

RADICAL CARS STILL FAR IN FUTURE...STEERING LEVERS AND ATOMIC ENGINES COMING (10/4/56)

In the article: According to F. C. Reith, vice-president of the Ford Motor Co. and general manager of the Mercury division, "Gas turbine engines are 5 to 10 years away, while atom-powered cars are at least 15 to 20 years in the future."

Although gas turbine technology has been extensively used with other forms of transportation, it hasn't yet taken a strong hold with passenger cars...although lately research and development is going on concerning its use with hybrid electric cars.  As for atomic cars...ha, ha, ha...this shows the overly rosy assessment folks were giving this energy source at the time: after all, the first running nuclear reactor began operations just the previous year.  Mike Davis, Miami News staff, wrote the article...

DUMB GUYS HELD BETTER AS DRIVERS (10/5/56)

In the article: Quoting Arthur L. Berlin, chairman of the driver education program in San Leandro's (California) schools: "The man who drives while thinking of his business is a poor driver, while the man with low mental ability won't be thinking about much of anything."

This is the kind of silly article I would have expected from a rag like the National Enquirer, not a reputable, serious newspaper like the Miami News...yet it was released under the auspices of the Associated Press. The article's premise is asinine: just because someone's thought processes function at a "lower" level than another's doesn't mean that they can't be just as distracted by their own less-significant thoughts while driving...

STOP THE SHOUTS FOR EQUAL RIGHTS...A WOMAN'S VOICE (10/6/56)

In the article: From Dorothy Roe's syndicated women's advice column, agreeing with Florence Anderson, a Chicago mechanical design engineer: For instance, if you want a raise...don't start complaining about how you can't afford a new pair of nylons, have to go without lunches and haven't had your hair done in three weeks...Instead tell [the boss] how fortunate you are to have such a brilliant and understanding employer, who understands the necessity of keeping up appearances in the business world. Tell him how you'd hate to work for an old fogy who didn't appreciate the importance of such things as hairdos and nylons.  

From today's more enlightened vantage point about equal rights for women, this article seems overly patriarchal and patronizing.  But it was serious advice when it was written and would have been uncontroversial within the accepted norms of the time.  I expect to see more articles like this one from the old newspapers... 

Well, I guess it's time for me to go back to the archives for some more treasures...

A Great Information Chasm Cuts Right Through My Life

At age 64 I belong to the historically unique group of people who have one foot of their lives squarely within the digital era and one foot squarely outside it...right now there are a lot of us, but like the almost extinct group of folks who experienced World War II, there will be a time when we're all gone and everyone alive will have the span of their chronological lives covered by computer technology and the Internet.  How does my life in this respect differ from my younger friends and the generations preceding me?  Let me explain about this great information chasm...

A few days ago I subscribed to an online service displaying old newspapers from years gone by, as they appeared in print.  Among these papers was the local Ft. Lauderdale rag, and it covered the years I went to school there and a few thereafter.  Just browsing through them I would occasionally see a picture or article with a familiar name from school...one who made repeat appearances was Jim, whom I knew very well for 11 years from the 2nd through 12th grades as we were in the same year in school and grew up living close to each other.  I already knew he had tragically passed away from complications relating to cancer in 1998 and that he had developed a penchant and talent for poetry in his adult life.  On the tribute website for him was mention of a book containing some of his poems.  I went to Amazon and Google and there is not a trace of its title and very little if anything about this remarkable man.  Yet he only left this Earth 22 years ago, but it might as well have been 220 since his work was largely done before mass digitalization revolutionized communications.  Contrast that with this blog of mine, a daily journal of general interests begun in 2007: you can easily find it on a Google search, but only because it's on this side of the great digital divide.  And that's what I'm discovering with my perusals of the old newspapers: these people I went to school with and closely knew...some in friendship and regrettably some in enmity...seemed to have suddenly just fallen off the planet.  The advent of Facebook did perform a service in that several "resurfaced" from the anonymity that assimilation into the masses and the march of the years had placed them under, and I respectfully recognize that probably many people wish to remain there.  Ol' Jimbo, I'm confident, would have loved the opportunities that social media gives us today to reconnect...but the information chasm has now left his significant voice largely and sadly on the other side...

People in my generation, like me, can develop an ongoing digital history of ourselves but it only naturally extends to the edges of the advent of digitalization...to go beyond further back in time requires special efforts such as digitalization of old pictures and, in my case, taking advantage of old newspapers online and blogging while recounting old memories.  Life is now openly being reported and recorded on a daily basis...and it all remains in the great digital cloud...while life before this era, as it retreats further and further into the past, becomes exponentially more of a mystery shrouded in uncertainty with its evidence stored away in boxes in dusty rooms.  I wonder whether at some point, probably later this century, people will look back at the transformation of the 20th into the 21st century as a kind of cliff beyond which information drastically drops off.  Maybe today is the time to try to salvage some of it while some of us who were there can remember it.  I like the successful efforts to digitalize old music recorded before CDs, but with literature we're way, way behind on reaching the same level of progress.  I wonder if anyone knows where I can get a copy of Arrival: One or Only?...

Quote of the Week...from Prince

 Technology is cool, but you've got to use it as opposed to letting it use you.          ---Prince

A few weeks ago I wrote that I was about to embark on a project whereby I would listen to each and every one of Prince's 39 studio albums he released from 1978 to his tragic, untimely death in 2016...so far I've covered 16 and can confidently state that there's not a bad album among them.  Now as with every other musical act I like, some tracks are better than others, and a few I'd just as soon avoid in the future.  But once you know where the artist is coming from then it's easier to embrace his music and flow with it.  Prince tended to go for an upbeat sound, danceable and fun...and oftentimes very, very funny: I always leave a Prince album feeling pretty doggone good although the lyrics can be over the top in places. So the dude was clearly inspired and professional with his craft, and I thought checking out some of his quotes was in order: the above one was in sync with my own feelings on the subject, so I chose it...

I believe that Prince's meaning with his quote centered around how recording can be enhanced and made easier in the studio with the ever burgeoning digital technology that enables just about any kind of sound to become available and minutely edited, but since I'm not a musical recording artist like he was I see it more in terms of my own experiences.  Take cell phones, for example.  It's clear that having a phone with me when I leave my house...especially while driving...adds a big element of security as I can call for help should anything go wrong.  The problem is the corresponding feeling of insecurity when I'm separated from it, yet I've lived most of my life with telephones hardwired to the wall at home.  The same goes for the incredible braking and warning technology embedded with newer models of cars: drivers have these added features of security but when they find themselves behind the wheels of an earlier model then will they feel like it's much more dangerous...and even possibly forget that the car they're driving won't compensate for their dependence on the later models' protection systems?  And I've written a bit recently about the dangers of letting social media get the best of its users...I certainly use it myself but I don't live there.  Companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, and Microsoft want us to derive so much meaning from their products that we become dependent on them and feel incomplete when we go for any substantial length of time without accessing them.  I used to go running with my smartphone in my hand while listening to music from it...lately, though, I've found it personally liberating to just get out there on the road and leave the phone and even my MP3 player at home.  Maybe it would be a good idea for each of us to schedule time away from our little gadgets and reacquaint ourselves with the world as it really is.  I like the new technology and appreciate its uses the more because I vividly remember a time when it wasn't available...that to me is an advantage I have over younger people who have always had it and may not be as adaptable when it's absent...

Quote of the Week...from Albert Einstein

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?   
                                                                 ---Albert Einstein

Not being a research scientist myself, this is one of those articles in which my relative ignorance of the field is bound to shine through...so please bear with me.  But in today's world of massive public denial of science in the contexts of the ongoing pandemic, climate change, pop medicine...to mention just three areas...I feel it's important to note that the idea of "pure" science out there somewhere with only the motive of laying out the "truth" for us is not in itself "purely true".   Anyone with an eye on history knows of the Manhattan Project during World War II in which leading physicists and other physical scientists collaborated with engineers and the military to develop the fist workable atomic bomb...in other words, highly focused, agenda-driven research.  Although I still have in my mind the picture of the altruistic scientist driven only by his or her desire to learn the deep truths about the reality we live in, I have over the years learned that this is mostly a fantasy while the overwhelming number of scientists engaged in research are doing so at the behest of agenda-driven organizations, be they the military, businesses, non-profits...each group with its own goals that it wants the scientists working for it to advance. Even at a public university, scientists need to go outside their offices and laboratories and continually beseech monied interests to fund their research projects...this naturally in turn directs exactly what will be their research projects and how far their research will go.  The problem with all this is that although research for specific areas that have direct military, business or social applications can be very useful and important, it still is determined not by science itself but rather by the society's institutions.  So when people hear in the news that scientists support this or that take on an issue, those who would disagree with their conclusions often question the motives of those scientists...and sometimes this complaint, in my opinion, is legitimate.  The scientific method and pure science research are ideals that should be promoted...but the ones with the money to sustain that research have their own ideas about what kind of research it should be.  Back to Einstein's quote, having a definite, clear result in mind when doing research in itself implies that the researcher has already reached a conclusion before even beginning.  This may help to solve specific problems and publicly promote agendas but I don't see it going far to expand our fundamental understanding of the universe.  But I get it: research costs money, and if I had money why should I give it to somebody who plans to study an area that doesn't coincide with my own interests?  My only response to this question is that our government should be more generous with its own research funding with the grants not necessarily directed at areas with its own interests in mind...

Quote of the Week...from Isaac Asimov

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.                                                        ---Isaac Asimov

I'm not sure when Isaac Asimov penned the above quote, but I do know that he died in 1992...28 years ago.  And yet today, with science denial running rampant in our society on a number of fronts, it couldn't ring truer.  We have so much information now at our nearly instant disposal, and it's portable: you can carry and access it on your smartphone anywhere you go...yet I don't think that people are any more knowledgeable about the issues that affect them and our country this election season than they were when there was no such thing as the Internet.  With this very recent innovation connecting the world over, are people kinder and more gracious and empathetic toward one another than before?  Doesn't seem so to me, looks like many of us are stubbornly digging ourselves deeply in our preconceived mindsets and closing up to anything that might challenge them...no, our "wisdom" is definitely not keeping up with the science.  I wonder what Asimov, were he alive today (he'd be 100), would think about the nonsense going on around us and the way people rationalize their own behavior in the face of facts to the contrary.  I'm guessing that he wouldn't be surprised, not one little bit...

"The Conversation" Post-Debate Reveals Surveillance Society

Being at work Tuesday evening, I missed most of the Democratic Party presidential campaign debate, broadcast on CNN.  There were six candidates on stage, including senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, both competing for the support of the party's more leftist progressive wing.  From what I did hear at the end after I got home, each candidate seemed to express their positions and philosophies pretty well and were able to adequately answer the questions posed to them.  Apparently, though, earlier on there was some kind of squabble between Warren and Sanders...following the debate, with the candidates still onstage congratulating each other, the two seemed to be engaged in a hushed argument, obviously not intended for others to hear.  Initially unaware of the ongoing spat, one of the other contestants, Tom Steyer, approached them and was seen momentarily taken aback at the quarrel.  Later on CNN he was asked what they were talking about and he responded by saying that he didn't hear it...a most diplomatic position when in all likelihood he did hear their conversation.  Yesterday the news buzz wasn't about the actual content of the debate itself but that very brief disagreement between the two senators.  And yesterday morning while I was waiting for the Senate to begin its proceedings on C-Span2, I watched CNN play an audio-enhanced recording of what they said, which eerily brought to me memories of an old 1974 movie starring Gene Hackman...

In The Conversation, Gene Hackman portrays a techno-geek who is known in his trade as an expert on bugging and surveillance.  A powerful business magnate, suspecting infidelity on the part of his young wife, hires him to spy on her and bring to him evidence of what she is up to.  Much of the movie revolves around a conversation he picks up...from his electronically souped-up van...between her and her suspected lover in an urban public park.  The movie explores how he is able to filter out extraneous noise and enhance that conversation, giving the clear impression that nothing is private anymore and that anyone who can afford it can spy on anyone else...the movie's ending clearly places an exclamation point on that notion.  Tuesday night following the debate, the CNN analysts did not as yet have access to the conversation between Warren and Sanders...only after a day of technical processing on somebody's part did they receive the audio.  Now of course the two senators weren't really having a private discussion since they were front and center on the national stage, but it wasn't meant for outside ears nevertheless.  Steyer was right in refusing to discuss what they said...unfortunately, CNN has revealed the depths to which they will go to push a story, in the process also demonstrating the utter lack of privacy or discretion left in our society...

Weekly Short Story: The Waveries by Fredric Brown

I have read The Waveries, a 1945 science fiction short story by Fredric Brown, a number of times.  Its ramifications are especially important in our digital era...but perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.  Since the rest of this article will probably give away the story, I suggest you first read it for yourself...it's now in the public domain, so you can read it online...just click on the following link: [you-books].  I also recommend the book From These Ashes, which is the collected short science fiction of this terrific author whose works I have enjoyed since I was about twelve and began reading his stories from a couple of cheap old paperbacks my father had.  But back to The Waveries...

Back in 1945 there was no internet, and computers were a project in the early stages of development.  But electricity and radio had been around for decades, and society had dramatically transformed itself wherever in the world they had taken hold.  It's a funny thing about us humans: whenever a great new innovation comes into existence, like the telephone, radio, automobile, airplane, television, computers, smart phones, the internet, and so on, we marvel at it in the very beginning but then very quickly adapt ourselves to its use to the point where it is taken for granted as being an absolute necessity.  When The Waveries came out 73 years ago there was no internet or smart phone and computers were in their primitive, fledgling stage of development.  But they still had radio and electricity (and automotive travel, which depends on electricity).  If they were suddenly gone, we're talking about a major stepdown in our civilization, right?  Fredric Brown comes to a different conclusion as an exotic form of interstellar life that feeds on radio waves and electricity is attracted by signals coming from Earth and descends upon the planet, causing no direct harm to our life forms but putting a permanent end, first to radio transmissions and then anything depending on electronics or electricity...even lightning from storms gets eaten up by these strange entities.  How the author portrays humanity reacting to this apparent calamity seems counterintuitive, but I kind of liked it anyway.  Do we really need all this "stuff" that keeps coming out, or are these "needs" artificial creations of our consumer-based society that marginalizes those who either refuse or are unable to keep up with the trends?  I strongly suspect that the latter is closer to the truth...

Quote of the Week....from Martin Luther King, Jr.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.                                                               ---Martin Luther King, Jr.

When I read this quote by Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday is this coming Monday, it struck me as having a profound meaning on different levels.  I'm not sure exactly what he was thinking about when he made this comment, but I can see some its ramifications.  Look at the advance in technology over the past two centuries: a higher standard of living on one hand, but at great cost to the environment on the other.  Or how it seems that progress in science and engineering tends to be applied by the military in its never-ending campaign to be able to wage war in a more deadly fashion.  But there's even more to Dr. King's statement when you consider how society wraps itself around innovations to the point where being deprived of them becomes a matter of social injustice...

We live in an exciting age as we note, in just a few years, how much medicine and information technology have progressed.  I just read a novel set in 1989 where the protagonist is struggling to get to a pay phone to make an important call...only 29 years ago.  Now having a cell phone seems like a necessity rather than a convenience or luxury...we've integrated this innovation into our society to the point where those not possessing one are at a marked disadvantage in their lives.  The same goes for the great advances in medicine, both in its important preventative practices and in diagnosing and treating diverse ailments and injuries.  But this progress carries with it a steep price tag, and the way health care is meted out...at least in this country, even if Obamacare stays in effect...puts those in less favorable economic situations in potentially fatal circumstances should they become seriously ill or injured even when the technology and medicine exist to save them.  And the blessing of the Internet, which almost instantly connects the world with us, has all sorts of problems, including criminal fraud, the enabling of terrorism, international hacking to interfere with elections, and many others.  When I went back to college to take some history courses just 15 years ago, there was the Internet, but the classes were still primarily book-based.  By the time my son entered college six years later, owning a laptop and having Internet access had become absolute requirements.  Those in our society without computers and Internet service are being left behind, not just because these products are intrinsically indispensable, but also because our social institutions are increasingly mandating their use...

When I described "progress", I was discussing technological progress.  But Martin Luther King, Jr. may have also been thinking of progressive social movements as well.  Progress in any form is change, and when change happens, it causes instability.  And that can be very unsettling to many people and cause them to lash back...even when that change is clearly for the better...

Weekly Short Story: Rainbird by R.A. Lafferty

The 1961 short story Rainbird, by R.A. Lafferty, is one of those quintessential time traveling tales that hit the reader with the obligatory built-in paradox whenever the idea of going back in time is explored.  I first read it a few years ago and came across it again while thumbing through the science fiction anthology Against Tomorrow (ed. by Robert Hoskins, Fawcett Books, 1979).  "Rainbird" in the story is the last name of a Yankee inventor born in the late eighteenth century whose innovations dramatically accelerate the advance of technology well beyond what we know from history...for example, wiring up Philadelphia for electricity by 1799, nuclear fission by 1813, desalinization of seawater by 1817, and later working on Venus to clean up its atmosphere and make it habitable, to mention just a few of the "goodies". Pretty impressive stuff, right? So why aren't we celebrating today the genius of Mr. Higgston Rainbird? Well, turns out that among his more advanced inventions is a "retrogressor" (i.e. time machine)...and that changes everything "forever"...

I guess I could go on about time travel paradoxes, but instead I'd like to make a couple of comments on the idea of human advancement through the growth of science and technology.  First of all, the idea that a single individual by means of just tinkering around could by himself come up with all the complexities of modern technology is absurd...I remember that great old PBS science series Connections, hosted by James Burke, that revealed how our innovations are almost always composites of several earlier innovations that often come together in accidental, happenstance fashion.  When there is credit given to the inventor of a new process or product, almost always he or she is simply building on top of an already-established mountain of progress that others had earlier contributed to, often with no idea of their future applications.  My second comment is about how people living in a relatively technologically-advanced society will treat themselves as being more advanced than others who live in more primitive surroundings...even though the overwhelming majority of them are only users of the improved technology and are in no way responsible for creating it...

Check out Rainbird if you can find it; unfortunately, it apparently isn't in the public domain so I cannot put a link to it here for you to read...

3-D and Virtual Reality Technology Needs Development and Promotion

I was watching the Star Wars movie series this weekend on the TNT channel.  In Attack of the Clones, Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi has been given a tip as to the location of a star system in which the inhabitants thrive on creating clone armies...for the highest bidder.  But when he goes to the great star library to discover its identity, he only sees empty space where its coordinates are...someone had surreptitiously deleted its memory from the records.  Then Obi-Wan goes to the Jedi temple where Yoda projects a three-dimensional star map around them.  And once again I was reminded about the lagging state of our virtual reality technology...

We don't live on Flatland, but rather in a three-dimensional, spatial environment...so why do we get all our communications either through one-dimensional language or two-dimensional flat pictures?  I remember as a kid loving to look through the View-Master and experiencing at least a semblance of three-dimensional immersion in what I was seeing...where is the improvement over that during the past fifty-plus years?  Why watch a sports event in only two dimensions when cameras can be set up around the competition from strategic vantage points and coordinate together, giving the virtual viewer a truer, spatial sense of what is really going on?  I go outside and see all these stars in the sky, and there is an illusion of them all being projected, side-by-side, against a black background.  Yet I know that some are relatively close to us while others are hundreds...sometimes thousands...of light-years away.  I would much rather have a three-dimensional star map, like in Star Wars, where I could walk among the star projections and more truly appreciate their spatial relationships with each other.  And why can't cinematic art finally take the plunge into virtual movies instead of those occasional tacky 3-D flicks with the silly glasses...what are they afraid of?

I am currently rereading one of my all-time favorite science fiction novel series: Otherland by Tad Williams.  It vividly paints the picture of a well-developed virtual reality technology a hundred years into the future, and I can't help but feel envy for the fictional characters in it who experience the wonders of alternate realities.  But in decrying the lack of three-dimensional visual technology, I'm also complaining about the lack of that level of general communications about our real world...after all, we're not flatlanders...

Weekly Short Story: Presposterous by Fredric Brown

Preposterous is a 1954 short story...a short, short story...by Frederic Brown, whom I've previously reviewed for his short story The Weapon.  It doesn't quite fill up a page...but it doesn't have to, for the message here doesn't take very many words to express.  A father is berating the mother for having tolerated their son's reading of trashy pulp science fiction magazines.  Why, this material just puts crazy, impossible ideas in children's minds and then what are they good for?  After finishing his brief tirade, dad leaves for work...and the piercing irony of his complaints sets in...

Humanity has the quality of being very adaptable: people tend to quickly adjust themselves to whatever circumstances they find themselves in.  On one end, poverty and suffering becomes normal...but on the other so does great wealth...just look at the reality TV shows full of folks surrounded by riches...but who are utterly unappreciative of their material blessings and constantly bicker with each other.  And with innovations that improve the quality of our lives, such as smartphones, the Internet, and drastically improved medical knowledge and procedures, it takes very little time for them to be treated as simply the status quo and not things to be marveled at. For example, by the time that Apollo 13, the moonshot that was aborted in transit due to an explosion in the Service Module, was launched, the population was already so jaded with this third moon venture only nine months after the first one that television networks wouldn't even cover it in prime time...

You might think that with all of the tools we have been given to improve our lives that our attitudes toward each other would also respond in kind...but I see the same old entrenched arrogance, grievances, and prejudice coming out of people's mouths and on social media...another innovation also widely taken for granted.  But what does this have to do with Frederic Brown's story Preposterous?  Its final short...but packed...paragraph lays out a different future human scenario...but with the same old type of complacent, unimaginative, and unappreciative (but adaptable) people the world is loaded with today...

I own the book From These Ashes, which is a collection of all of Frederic Brown's short science fiction (he also wrote in the mystery genre)...some stories like Preposterous and The Weapon have profound messages, some are primarily escapist entertainment...and some are just plain silly.  You might find this story on the Internet, but I'm not sure whether the copyright is still in effect and if any such websites are on the up and up...

Just Finished Reading Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn

Fallen Angels is a 1991 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn...none of whose works I had read before.  Its premise is intriguing: at some time in the not-too-distant future, society has turned its back on scientific and technological advancement in favor of pro-green environmental extremism and pseudoscience.  In the process, the space program is abandoned...literally: there are two space stations stuck out there in Earth orbit, with no ability to land and resupply.  Meanwhile, with a man-made ice age quickly advancing over the land, the "aliens", as they are now derisively called, become the scapegoats as they send ships from time to time into the atmosphere to "scoop" needed nitrogen from the air.  On one such mission, Alex and Gordon, both conditioned to living in the free-fall zero gravity of space, are shot down by a missile from the ground and crash land on the advancing ice glacier, somewhere in North Dakota.  An underground science fiction fan club..."underground" because interest in science and technology is now considered antisocial and psychologically aberrant...undertakes a rescue operation.  So a whole cast of characters gets introduced as well as those from the various factions of government vying against one another to be the ones capturing the "alien enemy".  The rest of the story traces the quest to find a way to return Alex and Gordon safely to their home in space, but its main theme is a discussion of the merits and shortfalls of different viewpoints concerning how science and technology have affected our environment...with the authors' prevailing judgment coming down in favor of pollution and global warming.  For, you see, their contention is that Earth has been in an ice age for millennia and the only thing that has been holding back the glacier advance has been humanity's development of fire, agriculture, and civilization...thereby causing a heating effect and impeding the ice.  An intriguing idea, I might say...but it's easy to be right when you're writing a book of fiction and, presto, there are the advancing ice sheets after man-made pollution has been thoroughly eliminated.  But I happen to live in the real world, and the ice around the poles is in fast retreat, not advance...

Although some of the assumptions expressed in Fallen Angels sound dubious to me, I greatly appreciated how they paid tribute to the great science fiction writers of the past...names like Theodore Sturgeon, Cordwainer Smith, Clifford Simak, Isaac Asimov, and Ray Bradbury, to mention just a few.  I also liked how Gordon would speak things sometimes half in Russian...after all, the space station is a joint Russian-American project.  And the idea of society "helping" those who hold what it sees as deviant opinions by confining and drugging them is not all that far off from being real: watch the movie A Beautiful Mind to get a hint of what I'm talking about.  But let's not take this all too seriously, and just about every story has its own built-in flaws: if their authors didn't publish them until they were perfect, we'd never have anything to read...

Quote of the Week...from Mohandas Gandhi

There is more to life than increasing its speed.    ---Mohandas Gandhi

Although the life of Mohandas Gandhi tragically ended in 1948 at the hands of an assassin, this quote of his is ever-so pertinent to today's world in the early 21st century.  Of course, in his day technology had already made incredible advances over the previous century with the advent of radio and the telephone in the field of communications and of the railway system, automobiles, and airplanes in the field of transportation.  But now, with television...be it cable, satellite, or streaming, cell phones with their applications, and the Internet with its social media, the speed and portability with which we can use these products has entered new frontiers.  In spite of this increase of the access and quickness of things, though, people at large don't seem to be any happier than they were when I was little and we only had one phone in our house and a TV that got four channels in a heavily metropolitan area...and of course a typewriter instead of a computer.  The fact is, as humans, we are very adept at adapting to new circumstances, quickly turning amazing new innovations into the norm.  Look at how quickly folks back in 1969 got used to people standing on the moon...by early the next year most had already lost interest...

Along with this trend toward accelerating our lives, I see an ever-decreasing attention span in people in general.  If you want to get a point across to someone nowadays, better do it quickly and with a lot of punch...right, Mr. President-Elect, the Twitter King?  I know that there is a lot of concern about the loss of personal privacy in this age of high-level digital data storage and transfer, but there is a concern, going in the diametrically opposite direction, that as individuals we are being diminished, devalued, and worst of all, ignored...

Although I grew up already knowing and expecting television, radio, automotive transportation, and the phone to be an integral part of my life, I do have the perspective of realizing that there is more to it all than having the fastest gadget in my possession.  There are still 24 hours in a day, so yes, it's nice to be able to speed up some things...but only if that means I have more free time left over to slow down the rest of my life and enjoy it...       

Asimov Misses Kindle's Advent by Some 26,000 Years

Sometimes I am amazed at how on-target science fiction writers from the past have been able to predict future developments in technology...and sometimes I'm just as amazed when they are terribly far off-the-mark.  Take, for example, the late Isaac Asimov's 1982 novel Foundation's Edge.  It is set some 26 thousand years into the future, when faster-than-light space travel (through "hyperspace") has been available for humanity for almost all of that time...and nuclear technology has developed on a "micro" scale.  The story's main characters of councilman Golan Trevize and historian Janov Pelorat are about to embark in space on a ship that is mentally driven, with their quest being the rediscovery of the planet Earth.  Pelorat is a rather stuffy old academician, and he wants to take his materials with him on the trip.  In italics, I have provided a short excerpt from the book at this point:

Golan Trevize asked Professor Pelorat, "Are you ready?"

"With this I am", Pelorat said and held up a square wafer about twenty centimeters to the side and encased in a jacket of silvery plastic.  Trevize was suddenly aware that Pelorat had been holding it since they had left his home, shifting it from hand to hand and never putting it down, even when they had stopped for a quick breakfast.

"What's that, Professor?"

"My library.  It's indexed by subject matter and origin and I've gotten it all into one wafer.  If you think this ship is a marvel, how about this wafer?  A whole library!  Everything I have collected!  Wonderful!  Wonderful!"

The "wafer"? I don't know how you would call it, but to me it's nothing less than a Kindle, which came out in 2007...only 25 years after the publication of Foundation's Edge.  Yet the good professor compares its level of technology favorable to the hyperspace-capable spaceship...something that in our own present minds has to be thought of as next-to-impossible.  I don't think that Isaac Asimov, not to mention other science fiction futurist writers of his era, understood the upcoming information technology revolution and how quickly and pervasively it would affect the world.  On the other hand, almost all of them had humankind traveling widely in space by our time and establishing settlements on the moon and other planets...

Not Keeping Up Well With Innovations

For a birthday present this year, I received a new Dell laptop computer. This is actually the first laptop I have ever owned, although my wife Melissa has had one for several years and won a notebook in a raffle drawing a couple of years ago. For many years, I have been writing blog articles out on my relatively much-more-primitive AlphaSmart portable work processor (which runs for months on end on three AA batteries, so maybe being primitive has its advantages). But I can only see four short lines of writing at a time on it, and I wanted to write with a full page in front of me. Plus, I wanted more ready access to the Internet. Hence, the new laptop. Still, in a world of notebooks, tablet computers, Kindles/Nooks/Etc., iPhones and Androids, I am far, far behind in "keeping up". Shoot, I still use a Blackberry phone, for crying out loud, although my patience with it has worn quite thin.

No, the simple fact of the matter is that, when it comes to technological innovations of the kind currently sweeping our society, I am far behind others. Still, I manage to keep some contact with the trends. It's important to always keep in mind, though, that many people have NO personal computers or Internet access at their disposal and are completely cut off from this now-pervasive aspect of our society. Among them is my 85-year old father, who has bitterly complained to me on a number of occasions how he will be watching a news story on an interesting topic, only to be cut off when the announcer says to go their website for further information. Or how about all those commercials that presume the viewers have computers readily at their disposal..