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Not Necessarily Relevant Quote of the Week:
It has taken biologists some 230 years to identify and describe three quarters of a million insects. If there are indeed at least thirty million, as [the Smithsonian Institute] estimates, then, working as they have in the past, insect taxonomists have ten thousand years of employment ahead of them.
— Richard Leakey
Thought for the day:
Does this represent progress, or an embarrassing backwardness?
Do you get the Discovery Channel? If so, tune in Monday night -- TONIGHT! -- at 9pm Eastern and Pacific Time (8pm Central, 7pm Mountain) for a special program called Apocalypse How. I was interviewed extensively for the show and was told that CRN's ideas are featured in it.
If you get a chance to watch the 2-hour show, please tell us what you think about it!
POST-SHOW UPDATE: Well, I was pleased to get as much screen time as I did, but I was not very happy the way my segment was edited. As you might expect, I spent most of the two hours that I was interviewed talking about realistic near-term risks of molecular manufacturing, concentrating mostly on a nanotech arms race.
At the end of that discussion they asked me to say something about grey goo. I did so, reluctantly, but I emphasized that the dangers from non-replicating nano-built weaponry are more imminent, more likely, and maybe more severe. Of course, when they cut the whole thing together, it gave the impression, I think, that grey goo is a far greater threat than CRN judges it to be.
Not Necessarily Relevant Quote of the Week:
Equality...is the result of human organization. We are not born equal.
— Hannah Arendt
A very cool new web magazine just debuted this week. H+ (the 'h' stands for humanity) is on the virtual newsstands, and it's available now for free download.
The above is from an introductory comment by the magazine's editor-in-chief, RU Sirius [yes, actually, I am].
CRN welcomes this addition to the discussion space of trends and technologies that will shape humanity and our possible descendants. In fact, it's likely that I will write a column on nanotech for the magazine, beginning with the next issue.
Happy reading!
You've probably heard the dictum that most people expect too much change in the short term and too little change in the long term. That has been true generally, I think, and it may be why we hear complaints about 'No flying cars yet!' and so on.
But if too many people are looking for short term exaggerated change, and if they aren't fully comprehending the extreme changes that can occur over the long term, I'm also concerned that the middle range is badly underrated and could catch us by surprise.
Let's call the short term from one to five years. It's almost certain we won't have flying cars by then, or a colony on Mars, or a pill we can take to cure all diseases. Of course, we might be well on the way to having online access everywhere all the time, and that could be quite useful, but it's unlikely that people will see anything within the next five years that will knock their socks off.
How about the long term? Let's call that from 50 to 100 years. How much technological, social, and political change should we expect to see in that time frame? Given the vast differences in the world today -- in all three of those realms -- as compared to the lives of people from early in the last century, it seems beyond argument that enormous changes are in store.
By the end of this century, if not before, many millions or even billions of people will spend much of their lives in nearly indistinguishable virtual realities. Fully developed biotechnology and genetic engineering will allow the creation of tailored plants, animals, chimeras, and whole biomes. Advanced nanotechnology, well beyond early generation molecular manufacturing, will completely revolutionize our infrastructures for living, working, traveling, and creating energy on earth and in space.
All of that is dependent, however, on our ability to get safely past the formidable barrier of the mid-range.
What happens during the period from five to twenty years from now is very likely to determine whether the remainder of this century will be one of unparalleled abundance, of devastating war and destruction, of warming-induced ecological collapse and mass deaths, or perhaps some miserable but survivable combination thereof.
We can illustrate the challenge with this simple chart where we see an early period, the near-term, with somewhat evenly matched levels of existential danger and our capacities to adequately manage and avert the worst of those dangers. So far, so good.
Over the long term, our human (and posthuman?) civilizations may be able to acquire enough capacity from growth of technological aids and scientific know-how that we can dependably stay ahead of the greatest dangers.
But it is in that mid-range period, as we rapidly develop powerful new technologies, and as we have to grapple simultaneously with huge new problems -- caused by sea level rise, species depletion, mass human refugee migrations, crop failures and famines, state failures, pandemics, and more -- that is when we will reach the test of whether we are fit enough, mature enough, and wise enough to make the right decisions.
And the time to begin making those decisions is now, not when the barrage of problems is upon us, but today.
A good start would be to make a thorough examination of all the issues raised by exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing. CRN urges every large corporation, every big NGO, and every government body to undertake their own evaluation of the mid-term risks and rewards they may face, especially in the context of advanced nanotechnology, which will have deep and lasting effects on all of us.
After arriving in Rhodes, Greece, on Thursday, October 9, and settling into my hotel room (where I got a brief nap after a long overnight flight from New York), I was taken by bus with a few hundred other attendees to the historic and beautiful Grand Master's Palace.
There we were treated to a lavish celebration to open the 6th annual "Dialogue of Civilizations," organized by the World Public Forum.
Fancy ceremonies completed, we got down to work the next morning. We began with a plenary session in which all three co-founders of the WPF spoke, and then we broke up into several simultaneous panel sessions, each of which lasted a day and a half.
I was assigned to the Energy panel, which was subdivided into consecutive sections on Energy Security, Geo-Economics, and Nanotechnology. There were so many other interesting talks being given in other panel sessions that I was tempted to sneak away from where I was supposed to be and attend them. I didn't, but this is one of those times I really wished to be in several places at once.
My presentation, titled "From Top Down to Bottom Up -- In Technology, Economics, and Geopolitics," seemed to be well-received, but, as usual at these sort of events, it's the contacts and conversations that occur between sessions in the halls that often turn out to be the most productive and valuable. I look forward to continuing and expanding on many of the new relationships I began in Rhodes on behalf of CRN.
On the final day, Sunday, October 12, we gathered again for another plenary session. There, representatives from each of the several panel sessions gave reports on what was covered in their areas, and what plans or recommendations they may have for going forward.
These were the panels that reported:
I'll offer comments on reports from three of the panels:
It probably is not surprising but should be noted that nearly all the panels reported that their discussions were heavily influenced by the current economic crisis. In general, there was much criticism of neoliberalism, and even -- from some of the Russians -- a sense of triumphalism over the apparent failure of U.S. and Western "hegemonic" capitalism. I found that attitude a bit ironic, though, considering that Russia has moved heavily toward its own unfettered version of free-market capitalism. Ah, well...
One final conclusion of my own is that there was too little attention paid to the looming disasters of global warming and climate chaos. All our dialogue over other admittedly important issues may fade into the background when we are confronted with the cataclysm we have triggered and failed to avert.
On that note, let me close with a quote from another participant, Yuri Kanner, Chairman of the European Jewish Forum:
If history teaches us anything, it is that it does not teach us anything.
British journalist Rose George explains why shit can be a dangerous killer and why we should worship the toilet in her new book, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters.
This is from a Salon.com interview:
And after you read it, think about this...
Once nanofactory technology has been developed, it could be used almost immediately to start relieving the lack of sanitation, the need for clean water, the spread of infectious diseases, the paucity of education, and the scourge of poverty. Or, it could be used to make wealthy corporations even wealthier and powerful nations even more powerful.
We think one of the meanings of responsible is to start doing the former before the latter.
In our nanotechnology scenario #8, "Newshound Notebook," composed by members of the CRN Task Force, we write:
24 Jun 2013 - China’s economic growth continues to astound. I just checked with the Hypernet for earlier forecasts, and it turns out that a few years ago (in 2007), people were predicting that China would exceed the U.S. as the world’s #1 economy by around 2025. Now, the common wisdom is that it will happen no later than 2018. Amazing!
Note that this was prepared well before the current economic crisis, which has the U.S. economy taking a serious hit.
However, Stephen Aguilar-Millan, our colleague who writes The Futurist -- a must-read blog for anyone looking ahead -- has performed an interesting analysis that concludes it is highly unlikely for China to surpass the U.S. in GDP at any time before the mid-2020s.
I encourage you to read Stephen's entire article and review his statistics; both very enlightening. He concludes:
We can see that the forecast of 2015 as the point where China’s GDP overtakes America’s GDP is nothing more than a wild dream.
Tonight I am flying from New York to Rhodes, Greece, to attend and participate in the World Public Forum's "Dialogue of Civilizations,"
an annual event that brings together experts, politicians, public and religious dignitaries from all the continents of the world.
I have been asked to deliver a report broadly based on nanotechnology and globalization. The title I have chosen is: "From ‘top down’ to ‘bottom up’ -- in technology, economics, and geopolitics."
Here is the mission of the World Public Forum:
World Public Forum is a deliberative-consultative body that unites various public organizations, members of organs of government, representatives of intellectual, cultural, spiritual, business and political elite from different countries, representatives of various cultural traditions, people that strive for contribution in dialogue among civilizations.
Key objects of the Forum are the following-uniting of efforts of world community for protection of spiritual and cultural values of humankind, organization of the space of constructive dialogue among the main civilizations of the modern world. Activities of the Forum aimed at elaboration, development and spreading of dialogue culture, cultivation of collaboration and understanding spirit in everyday life.
World Public Forum is aimed at the creation of effective and democratic instruments of solving of global problems and realization of evolutionary changes in the structure of modern society.
I look forward to meeting and exchanging ideas with the event’s esteemed participants.
During my travels, I'll try, if possible, to maintain some blogging, but I can't be certain how much time and how much online access I'll have.
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