New Science Scares

NewScientist usually is a good read for the latest forays, adventures, and mis-adventures into the boffin developments in science. Two recent stories that made me pause, wonder, and frown are these below, which I feel are worth the time to read:

Humanity gobbles a quarter of nature's resources:

Almost a quarter of nature’s resources are now being gobbled up by a single species – humans.

People appropriate 24% of the Earth’s production capacity that would otherwise have gone to nature, according to figures for the year 2000, the most recent available.

The result is a gradual depletion of species and habitats as we take more of their resources for ourselves. And things could get even worse, they say, if we grow more plants like palm oil and rapeseed for biofuels to ease our reliance on fossil fuels.

Plague of bioweapons accidents afflicts the US:

Deadly germs may be more likely to be spread due to a biodefence lab accident than a biological attack by terrorists.

Plague, anthrax, Rocky Mountain spotted fever - these are among the bioweapons some experts fear could be used in a germ warfare attack against the US. But the public has had near-misses with those diseases and others over the past five years, ironically because of accidents in labs that were working to defend against bioterrorists. Even worse, they may be only the tip of an iceberg.

The revelations come from Ed Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a biosafety pressure group based in Austin, Texas, US, who after persistent requests got the minutes of university biosafety committees using the US Freedom of Information Act. The minutes are accessible to the public by law. There are now 20,000 people at 400 sites around the US working with putative bioweapons germs, says Hammond, 10 times more than before the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Some scientists have warned for years that more people handling dangerous germs are a recipe for accidents.

-

Self-transformation is the essence of humanity

Philosopher Ray Tallis recently wrote an article called 'Enhancing Humanity' that discusses how many of the high-tech changes have not so far come about as change takes a slower pace rather than sudden cyborgian transformations:

Of course, people are worried about more invasive innovations; in particular, the direct transformation of the human body. And this is where the gradualness of change is important, because as individuals we have a track record of coping with such changes without falling apart or losing our sense of self entirely. After all, we have all been engaged all our lives in creating a stable sense of our identity out of whatever is thrown at us. This idea is worth dwelling on.

And that the evolution of the human species is about continual change and working upon our self-redefinitions...

We assimilate these changes into an evolving and continuous sense of our own identity…
Yes, we shall change; but the essence of human identity lies in this continuing self-redefinition. And if we remember that our identity and our freedom lie in the intersection between our impersonal but unique bodies and our personal individual memories and shared cultural awareness, it is difficult to worry about the erosion of either our identity or our freedom by technological advance.

Tallis is more sober on this acccount, yet ultimately does believe that 'the distinctive genius of humanity is to establish an identity which lies at an ever-increasing distance from our organic nature...in the expression of human possibility in ever-advancing technology'.

The question that concerns us is indeed the 'Time' factor, as the long-term 'organic' evolution may no longer be an option if technological advance out-strips our evolutionary mindfulness of how to control such advances for our betterment... now the age-old argument...

CoExistence

Yes, it has been a little while since words/images last graced this e-page: my physical self has been engaged in a little roaming... then coming back to my physical abode I encountered this lovely little video space: it's called 'Co-Existence', and well-worth 2 minutes of your time. To celebrate the beauty of our world amidst the barbarity.

It is so easy to focus on the disruptions, the chaotic occurances and breakdowns, rather than the small yet moving moments where the human Spirit can shine through.

How we manage our moments is our testing time...

The Complete Global Information Grid

Our future is uncertain - that is our good news. It should remain open to possibilities, triumphs, and our evolution Forward.

Yet there are 'those' who don't seem to like it that way; they prefer to make certain these uncertainties - in other words, to contain the unknowable. 'Their' answer is a complete 'Global Information Grid' that offers real-time surveillance and movement-monitoring. I don't wish to present too much of such agendas here, yet I thought this video was well-worth watching - see how some 'envision' the militarised future. This video below uses only those words and extracts taken directly from published material - I know, I've read some of the reports featured. It's similar to a bad video-game...

DARPA’s iXo Artificial Intelligence Control Grid:

In the year 2014....

I know I'm probably a little behind here in these videos yet I recommend the EPIC 2014 (and updated EPIC 2015) videos that look at the future of the online media, especially in terms of Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, with references to increased citizen participation and personalised services - visit the EPIC 2014 site.

Also - on top of this! - another highly recommended video along similar lines: the newly released 'Prometeus - The Media Revolution' - watch below.



What a treat!

Space is the place for the next race...

Space is heating up - literally... so much so that there is just too much to say on this subject. As technology pushes for greater networking capacity for sensoring the environment, Space is the 'high ground' from which to monitor and control terrestrial movements. The containment of the physical body - as a way to manipulate biological-neural messages to the mind/thoughts - is a future scenario being played out with military forecasts. Of course, this is only the material side of events, yet the increased acceleration in many of these projects seems to suggest that disruptive shifts are on the horizon that need to be handled - each in our Way.

Here's a brief piece called The Missile Shield and the Race for Space Awareness that mentions:

Terrestrial radars need to be complemented by satellites to keep track of missile launches across the planet (so called “boost phase interceptors”, see “Missile defense, satellites and politics“, The Space Review) to ensure complete space awareness. The Chinese Space Agency tested an anti-satellite missile earlier this year (See “Pentagon says China’s anti-satellite test posed a threat to nations”, AP). The move towards a hot space war could be imminent. The official press release was the only information given from Chinese authorities. The secrecy surrounding space capabilities was recently challenged by French authorities when they discovered 20-30 unregistered US surveillance satellites. (See “French says ‘non’ to U.S. Disclosure of Secret Satellites”, Space.com).

Yet we should also consider the environmental monitoring benefits from the 'high ground' - BBCNews reports that The European Space Agency (Esa) has ordered the first bespoke spacecraft in its new global monitoring programme:

Sentinel 1 is the first Earth observation satellite to be built for the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) project. Esa plans to launch five Sentinel spacecraft to track changes in the land, oceans, weather and climate. A 229m euro (£155m) contract for the design and development of Sentinel 1 was signed at the Paris Air Show....

...The satellite's capability for rapid mapping will be vital after natural disasters, when emergency services need to identify quickly whether roads still exist and villages are still intact. It will also watch over the marine environment, mapping oil spills and changes in sea ice.

Read the full story at 'Contract signed on Earth observer'

On the Future of Civilizations

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku talks about the future of intelligent life in this YouTube video:



Some of what he has to say is quite interesting, despite what I feel to be his erroneous understanding of the manifestation of highly advanced intelligences. Yet well worth the few minutes it takes to listen.

Thanks to the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

Existential Risks

Part of the evolutionary process concerns development with risk; both human-created risks and more cosmic risks that are beyond the bounds of human hands. AI commentator Eliezer Yudkowsky has written quite extensively on these, and two pdf essays - “Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment of Global Risks” and “Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk“ - can be found on The Singularity Institute Blog post titled 'Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Biases, and Global Risk'.

In this post there is an extract from his conclusion of 'Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment of Global Risks':

In addition to standard biases, I have personally observed what look like harmful modes of thinking specific to existential risks. The Spanish flu of 1918 killed 25-50 million people. World War II killed 60 million people. 10^7 is the order of the largest catastrophes in humanity’s written history. Substantially larger numbers, such as 500 million deaths, and especially qualitatively different scenarios such as the extinction of the entire human species, seem to trigger a different mode of thinking - enter into a “separate magisterium”. People who would never dream of hurting a child hear of an existential risk, and say, “Well, maybe the human species doesn’t really deserve to survive.

With large numbers it's easy to think of survival as meaning death to many - yet the future is about much, much more: what's at stake is the conscious part of a very cosmic experiment...

Our Material Flesh may become our Cyborg-Prison

Last week I gave a talk at the SensorNet 2007 conference - an event that dealt with Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which are "key emerging technologies with a broad range of applications in various fields, including chemical processing, environmental monitoring, healthcare, robotics, military and emergency services". My talk was called 'Sensoring Social Futures: Technologies of Social Communications, Cognition & Securities' and dealt with the social aspects of the sensor technologies as appropriated for consumer and civil use. The keynotes address was given by Kevin Warwick and was ttiled 'Thought Communication – Networks for the Future'.

On the 14th of March 2002 a one hundred electrode array was surgically implanted into the median nerve fibres of Kevin Warwick's left arm in order to use his neural system as an interface. This is all 'cyborgian stuff' - yet the point I wanted to make...

During his talk Kevin said, quite casually, that ever since the 'Madeline' case had come high profile, he's been receiving at least 100 emails every day from mothers who are asking him to tell them how to get their young children/babies implanted with a chip so they can be continually tracked. And that's just the mothers who know of his research...

...Further, Kevin said that the issue of 'children chipping' was already high on the agenda with those who are responsible for these things. Kevin is supportive of the idea - I disagree on this. I am no Luddite, yet high-profile public cases have nearly always been hijacked for public policy agendas by manipulating 'fear-creep'.

Each step is only a small step, yet many steps together make a bridge. A bridge to where - a next generation of chipped children? I've listened to, observed, read, been in the same room as, etc, so many of these hardware 'tech' scientists; and all too often I see a person fascinated with overcoming a technical problem; with delivering solutions, struggling with a concept to make it realisable - this is the 'job' of such scientific-minded individuals. In many cases this posturing can be applauded for it often leads to beneficial innovations. Yet the other side is that many such interesting minds shut out 'the wider picture' - the humanity, the evolving Spirit, the evolution of our 'human' consciousness.

This is not about achieving a technical breakthrough - it is about learning how to accomodate the evolving Spirit in its journey through the material world. Our material flesh may become our cyborg-prison if our wider heritage is not brought into the picture...

Moon-based observatories

Following on from recent 'space themes' and news - there has been a recent call for an international effort to develop and deploy monitoring stations on the moon for the study of terrestrial climate change:

Global climate change is driven by an imbalance between incoming energy from the sun and outgoing energy from Earth. Without understanding the climate system's inputs and outputs—its so-called energy budget—it is impossible to tease out the relative contributions of natural and human-induced influences and to predict future climate, Huang said...

...Huang's study demonstrated that signals from the energy budget of Earth's climate system are detectable on the moon and can be useful in monitoring and predicting climate change.

So bases on the moon: not a new idea yet at least this is supposedly for good intentions - monitoring climate change - rather than species colonisation, or others...

Read more here

THE GUARDIANS

Chapter 8 of The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth discusses the need to use space to protect civilization and the planet. In this extract science scholar and historian William E. Burrows writes that:

The issue is about increasing planetary protection to ensure that no matter what happens, gradually or suddenly, civilization has the means to evade annihilation and survive. The overwhelming majority of boats do not run into emergencies and sink, but no boat owner in his or her right mind would put to sea without a fire extinguisher, a lifeboat, and insurance. Similarly, most homes do not burn down, but those who live in them safeguard precious papers and other things in safe deposit boxes.

That being the case, it is time for responsible individuals and groups everywhere to take Earth for the ship it is and begin a fundamental, evolutionary, strategy to maximize its chances for survival. It is time to come up with a very long term plan because the multiple dangers and the means of salvation are coinciding.

This chapter - available online - is worth a read...

-

Times of Transformation

These are indeed times of incredible change - often this transformative period in cosmic-Earth history is not taken seriously enough... perhaps our species will struggle through the transition without sensing it or experiencing it. This wake-up reminder comes from Thomas Berry:

The changes presently taking place in human and earthly affairs are beyond any parallel with historical change or cultural modification as these have occurred in the past. This is not like the transition from the classical period to the medieval period of from the medieval to the modern period. This change reaches far beyond the civilizational process itself, beyond even the human process, into the biosystems and even the geological structures of the Earth itsel

Berry talks of the Ecozoic period as a transition into integral community:


The Ecozoic is the period when human conduct will be guided by the ideal of an integral earth community, a period when humans will be present upon the Earth in a mutually enhancing manner... The first principle of the Ecozoic era is recognizing that the Universe is primarily a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. This is especially true of the planet Earth. Every being has its own place and its own proper role in the functioning of the planet, its own presentation of itself that might be identified as its voice

More can be read here

Let us be reminded that 'the very purpose of the planet Earth seems to be to exhibit a culminating celebratory mode of expression, something to justify the emergent galaxies, the supernova explosions wherein the elements were formed, the shaping of the solar system, the emergence of this privileged planet'

Perhaps time to embrace the creative spirit in us all?

A Future of Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR)

The issue of Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) is something which I have returned to various times. Again, it is in the UK news.

Recently there was a news report here in Britain whereby 'specialists' were recommending parents not to let their children place a laptop computer onto their laps whilst working. The Telegraph in their article 'Warning on wi-fi health risk to children' talk of:

Children should not place computers on their laps while they are using wireless internet connections because of potential health risks, according to a leading Government adviser. A leading Government adviser warns of potential health risks to children using laptops with wireless internet connections.

Professor Lawrie Challis, who heads the committee on mobile phone safety research, called yesterday for pupils to be monitored amid mounting public concern over emissions from wi-fi networks. He is concerned that few studies have been carried out into the level of exposure in classrooms and believes that if health problems do emerge they are likely to be more serious in children.

Also, next week the well-known and reputable UK documentary program - BBC's 'Panorama' - are doing a broadcast on the possible dangers of mobile phones and EMR.

In the UK we also have the problem/issue of TETRA - which is a radio-mast network set-up throughout the UK to provide communications for the emergency services, especially the police force. And there have already been concerns about this network, which is out of the reach of civil authorities since it deals with security communications of 'national interest'.

This pdf report is worth reading - Confidential Report on TETRA Strictly for the Police Federation of England and Wales

And - TETRA pictures

Also - TETRA: A Critical Overview into the death of Officer Neil Dring

A free online book called: ELECTROMAGNETISM & LIFE by Robert O. Becker and Andrew A. Marino

We need to perhaps think more seriously about protecting ourselves - a Firewall of the Body + Mind

Preparing for an alien invasion?!

Here we go - another book that puts military confrontation as the answer to all possible future 'unknowns'.

This book gives a strategic defense and warfare analysis of dealing with non-human contact: An Introduction to Planetary Defense: A Study of Modern Warfare Applied to Extra-Terrestrial Invasion by Travis S. Taylor et al.

Book description

"This book describes a serious look at defending the planet in the event of an extra-terrestrial invasion. Travis Taylor, et al, have written the definitive book on the defense of earth against a potential alien incursion. Whatever your beliefs on the subject...the book also serves as an important primer on the potential future of warfare on every level. It is tightly grounded in current day realities of war and extrapolates thoughtfully but closely about future potentials. It should be on the reading list of anyone who is serious about national security and the future of war."

And what if such 'entities' are already here, playing poker deals with our ineffectual leaders? Or perhaps the future is one of cooperation not based on fear and paranoia?

Opening the UK UFO files

Well, first it was the French and now the English are soon to follow. In a matter of weeks the British MoD will open its UFO files to the public (Read - 'MoD opens its files on UFO sightings to public'):

The documents due for release are witness reports of apparent UFO sightings, many by civil pilots and military personnel. Most were simply collected and filed by a small, secret unit within defence intelligence called DI55. A few are thought to have been investigated further by the military, but the details have never been made public. There are 24 files due for release, each containing 200-300 reports of sightings, plus internal MoD briefings and correspondence.

However, this is usually a combination of wanting to appease public pressure by releasing only what the public have reported in the first place rather than the detailed MoD findings and secrets on this subject. After all, a secret is still a secret!

Or, as some are already suspecting, it is part of a global acclimatisation program for readying the general public into acceptance of the UFO presence for more gradual public disclosure. Whatever the reason, you can be fairly sure that nothing of importance will be released without official sanction - and most probably not in these upcoming files...

Still, its a start.

Beyond Terror

Here's an interesting read - and can be done in a couple of hours - a very concise yet one of the best summaries currently depicting the geo-political situation/mess.

The Oxford Research Group has published “Beyond Terror: The Truth About the Real Threats to Our World”. The report focus on the disproportionate attention given to terrorism compared to the imminent threat from environmental degradation, competition over resources, “marginalisation of the majority world” and global militarisation. Some facts:

In 2001 in the US alone the number of Americans killed from the following:

Malnutrition - 3, 500
HIV/Aids - 14, 000
Pneumonia - 62, 000
Heart disease - 700, 000+
Suicide - 30, 000+
Traffic accidents - 42, 000+
Fire-arms related - 30, 000
Homicides - 20, 000+

International terrorism - around 2, 500

If you don't wish to buy the hard copy for £3.99 from Amazon.uk - then read the entire report for free - here.

The future is female

Now here comes a welcome report - finally, a well-respected researcher and thinker - the futurist Ian Pearson (who is a futurologist for British Telecom) predicts that 'The future is female' in saying that culture is shifting from an information economy towards a 'care economy' that is more suited to feminine traits and capacities:

We have had the industrial age, we have had the information economy. But now for something different: "the care economy", predicts BT's Ian Pearson. And, says Mr Pearson assuredly, women - not men - are best suited for this shift.

After years of so called soft skills - such as communication - being sidelined, they will now play centre-stage. "People will have to focus on being people, using their emotional skills," asserts Mr Pearson - with male confidence.

And, he insists, women are instinctively good at this.

Well, not that this is new, yet the public acknowledgment will help...

Back to the Real World

Back from the travels, into the 'real world' of technics, machines, and white noise... reminding that:

Whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine, and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. It is not that I do not know of such things; I am ashamed to use them.

Chuang tzu

And I sit back to begin more research reading - I open this page:

Nanotech, biotech, artificial intelligence, smart cards, embedded chips, smart dust, fragmentation of humans into consumer, patient, voter, worker roles for sorting by government and corporation: all of these together spell the end of the human in ways we can't entirely grasp, much less control. Are we human? Are we bionic free agents? Are we cogs in the machine?

What do you want?
What do you love?

Do you love? Welcome to the Machine

An interesting report just in is that the BBC plan 'A to Z'-of-mankind Web site that they say will be a definitive guide to mankind:

The Dictionary of Man (www.dictionaryofman.com) and an eight-part television series aim to document every human society currently existing, the BBC said on its Web site. Geldof said the Web site would create the largest living record of DVDs, books, films, photographs, art, and documented and personal accounts from people in every group in society.

"This will be an A-to-Z of mankind," Geldof said during the launch of the project this week. "It will catalog the world we live in now, the people who share this planet, the way we live and the way we adapt to face common and different challenges."

The Web site will also include social networking technology so that individuals can trace their clan, tribe or family.

Ah, it seems all is well then... and we'll be documented before the end... a toast!

The Future is Coming Sooner Than You Think - But is it all Good?

Some news just coming out on various 'future' scenarios, here in the UK and in the US.

In the UK:'Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips. A grim vision of the future' is a piece from the Guardian that discusses a new 90 page MoD report that tries to picture the next 30 years and the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces. It includes an "analysis of the key risks and shocks" by Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head of the MoD's Development, Concepts & Doctrine Centre. For example it predicts the following:

Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls. "Flashmobs" - groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups...

...By 2035, an implantable "information chip" could be wired directly to the brain. A growing pervasiveness of information communications technology will enable states, terrorists or criminals, to mobilise "flashmobs", challenging security forces to match this potential agility coupled with an ability to concentrate forces quickly in a small area.

Now, something from the US. Nanotechnology: The Future is Coming Sooner Than You Think" is the title of a report [PDF] published this month by Representative Jim Saxton (R-NJ), Ranking Member of the Joint Economic Committee, United States Congress. What is surprising is that perhaps for the first time high-ranking political figures are discussing the implications of the 'Singularity', once dismissed as science-fiction. Some extracts state:

Dramatic breakthroughs will occur in diverse areas such as medicine, communications, computing, energy, and robotics. These changes will generate large amounts of wealth and force wrenching changes in existing markets and institutions...

...If technology continues to advance at exponential rates, what happens after 2020? Technology is likely to continue, but at this stage some observers forecast a period at which scientific advances aggressively assume their own momentum and accelerate at unprecedented levels, enabling products that today seem like science fiction. Beyond the Singularity, human society is incomparably different from what it is today. Several assumptions seem to drive predictions of a Singularity. The first is that continued material demands and competitive pressures will continue to drive technology forward. Second, at some point artificial intelligence advances to a point where computers enhance and accelerate scientific discovery and technological change. In other words, intelligent machines start to produce discoveries that are too complex for humans. Finally, there is an assumption that solutions to most of today’s problems including material scarcity, human health, and environmental degradation can be solved by technology, if not by us, then by the computers we eventually develop.

The pdf of the military report can be downloaded here

Some information here to digest... as ever, the focus I stress is upon a future we wish for ourselves and that means we maintain, sustain, and expand positive spiritual mindfulness. Let's remember that technology can be an aide to human evolution, yet the main catalyst is the consciousness that manifests through the individual...through our thoughts and deeds...

I shall be away for the next 12 days...wandering like a troubadour, or hobbling like a hobo... Blessings

THE ALLIES OF HUMANITY

In recent years there has been a move towards 'Disclosure' of the interaction between non-terrestrial intelligences and people on earth. There are now organisations established to develop the politics - or 'Exopolitics' - of this liaison and the implications in managing such affairs. I would suggest looking at two of these organisations:

Exopolitics.com and Exopolitics.org

Another organisation worth looking into is the The Society for The Greater Community Way of Knowledge:

This organisation is the channel for the Allies of Humanity books, the first of which can be downloaded as pdf from here - I quote:

THE ALLIES OF HUMANITY is being presented to prepare people for a whole new reality that is largely hidden and unrecognized in the world today. It provides a new perspective that empowers people to face the greatest challenge and opportunity that we as a race have ever encountered. The Allies' material contains a number of critical if not alarming statements about the growing intervention and integration of extraterrestrials into the human race and about the aliens' activities and hidden agenda. Instead of providing "hard" evidence about the reality of alien visitation to our world, which is already well documented in many other fine books and research journals on the subject, the Allies material, as it is known, addresses the dramatic and far-reaching implications of this phenomenon.

The source of this information describe themselves as physical beings from other worlds who have gathered in our solar system near the earth for the purpose of observing the communications and activities of those alien races who are here in our world interfering in human affairs. The source refer to themselves as the "Allies of Humanity." The Allies' stated purpose is to alert us to the risks of emerging into a Greater Community of intelligent life and to assist us in successfully crossing this great threshold in such a way that human freedom and self-determination can be preserved.

A 10-Point Summary of the Allies Message is available as pdf here

--