Archive for July, 2007
Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Love?
Back about twenty years or so ago, during the middle of the Urban Cowboy craze, Barbara Mandrell and George Jones had a song called, I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.
I’ve been humming that a lot lately.
The phenomenon kinda snuck up on me, to tell the truth, since I avoid television (with the exception of a couple shows featuring teleporting geeks or mystical islands) like the plague. It’s not snobbery as much as it is a mistrust of the networks’ fact-gathering and their renewed reliance on reality and game shows which too closely resembles television during my boyhood in the 50s.
I knew, for example, that The Sopranos had gone off the air with a whimper, rather than a bang. That was the subject of much water-cooler conversation for a bit. I wasn’t however, prepared for what was going to replace that conversation….
A TV show about polygamy. Oh crap.
Now I am sure that virtually all of my readers in Urbanagora know that I’ve been a believer in polyamory in one form or another since the mid-1970s. [If you're a new reader, you can get the surprisingly mundane details if you go back to the January 2007 archives and read through them--I did a four-part series talking about it.] I’ve been with the family that kitten and I started since 1984.
For the first season of the program, I had studiously avoided it, since I knew that many of the people from the FLDS sects that they were portraying were fairly unpleasant. Kitten and Elderwife were insistent on the subject of watching it, to the point that we actually subscribed to HBO in order to do so. I learned from the two of them that the family involved had been a member of one of the sects, but was currently trying to live independently from the compound where they had been raised.
By the end of the first season, I was starting to get an occasional look from co-workers (at least the ones who had run into me and the three wives at the Station Theatre). At the beginning of the second season, people I knew just a bit finally got the nerve to bend close to me and say, in a guarded whisper, “So, what do you think of Big Love?”
So, the purpose of this piece today is to answer the question publicly so that no one has to ask me again:
I like it.
When I was up in Northern Illinois tending to my mother last week, we spent the night at a motel with HBO. I was bored to death with none of my other diversions present, so I watched an episode with kitten. (Over the last year, I had occasionally peeked in from the ManCave so that I could at least identify the husband and get an idea of the three wives’ order.) This, however, was watching it with intent–I was interested in how the characters related to each other.
It got a surprising number of things right. The ability of the wives to lean on each other when there was a problem, the rotating of sleep/date nights, and the pride in Bill’s eyes when he looks at his family are all familiar parts of my life. Occasionally, a line would be spoken by one of the wives and I’d turn to kitten and just chuckle, since I had heard it myself in the past week. I was also very familiar with the need to keep our way of life very, very quiet to stay out of trouble.
The were, of course, major differences, also. We don’t have the “Mormon mafia” breathing down our necks, and we have a husband so we’re not polygynists like the characters, but more general polyamorists. The Holy Spirit didn’t guide my selection of second and third wives. A show about my family’s life would not win any awards or many viewers on HBO unless it was written by Roseanne Barr.
Afterwards, I got to wondering about the show. Why now? Why has this show suddenly picked up in popularity? Why, as my Sicilian co-worker said about The Sopranos, is “someone making a show about what they think my life is like?” Are all of the 5.5 million viewers suddenly my long-lost friends?
I think it’s about gay marriage. I know that both of the writers are gay, and that one of them is a lawyer. Kitten tells me that their aim is to show that “any group of people should be able to get married legally” by making the polygamists in the show so sympathetic. I tend to agree.
Over the past thirty years, I’ve had a lot of opposition from gay rights advocates when I promoted polygamy at radical events. I think that I’ve finally figured out why, though. What a lot of the gay marriage advocates want has been to extend their relationships into the mainstream, gaining the benefits afforded for so long to straight couples. What I’ve been advocating instead is establishing a new mainstream in which the individual polygamist (whether they be polygynist, polyandrist or line marriage) families have so much of an advantage (by their very nature) over a two-person marriage that they don’t need any benefits.
Personally, in the interim, I don’t have any problems with gays getting the benefits, as long as they realize that they’ll be gone when the libertarians finally win. *chuckle*
So, there you have it–what I think of the show. You don’t have to ask me now, just nod and smile as I walk by with that extra little spring in my step.
Oh, and no, I don’t need Viagra–and neither does Sean.
With apologies to Barbara and George:
I remember kitten marryin’ me and
our Sean even when it weren’t in style.
I remember cuddling with my Cheron
at the movies and how Elderwife was really wild.
I was Poly, when Poly wasn’t cool.
I was Poly, from my hat down to my shoes.
I still act, and look the same
What you see ain’t nothin’ new
I was Poly, when Poly wasn’t cool
Tom
Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Love?
Back about twenty years or so ago, during the middle of the Urban Cowboy craze, Barbara Mandrell and George Jones had a song called, I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.
I’ve been humming that a lot lately.
The phenomenon kinda snuck up on me, to tell the truth, since I avoid television (with the exception of a couple shows featuring teleporting geeks or mystical islands) like the plague. It’s not snobbery as much as it is a mistrust of the networks’ fact-gathering and their renewed reliance on reality and game shows which too closely resembles television during my boyhood in the 50s.
I knew, for example, that The Sopranos had gone off the air with a whimper, rather than a bang. That was the subject of much water-cooler conversation for a bit. I wasn’t however, prepared for what was going to replace that conversation….
A TV show about polygamy. Oh crap.
Now I am sure that virtually all of my readers in Urbanagora know that I’ve been a believer in polyamory in one form or another since the mid-1970s. [If you're a new reader, you can get the surprisingly mundane details if you go back to the January 2007 archives and read through them--I did a four-part series talking about it.] I’ve been with the family that kitten and I started since 1984.
For the first season of the program, I had studiously avoided it, since I knew that many of the people from the FLDS sects that they were portraying were fairly unpleasant. Kitten and Elderwife were insistent on the subject of watching it, to the point that we actually subscribed to HBO in order to do so. I learned from the two of them that the family involved had been a member of one of the sects, but was currently trying to live independently from the compound where they had been raised.
By the end of the first season, I was starting to get an occasional look from co-workers (at least the ones who had run into me and the three wives at the Station Theatre). At the beginning of the second season, people I knew just a bit finally got the nerve to bend close to me and say, in a guarded whisper, “So, what do you think of Big Love?”
So, the purpose of this piece today is to answer the question publicly so that no one has to ask me again:
I like it.
When I was up in Northern Illinois tending to my mother last week, we spent the night at a motel with HBO. I was bored to death with none of my other diversions present, so I watched an episode with kitten. (Over the last year, I had occasionally peeked in from the ManCave so that I could at least identify the husband and get an idea of the three wives’ order.) This, however, was watching it with intent–I was interested in how the characters related to each other.
It got a surprising number of things right. The ability of the wives to lean on each other when there was a problem, the rotating of sleep/date nights, and the pride in Bill’s eyes when he looks at his family are all familiar parts of my life. Occasionally, a line would be spoken by one of the wives and I’d turn to kitten and just chuckle, since I had heard it myself in the past week. I was also very familiar with the need to keep our way of life very, very quiet to stay out of trouble.
The were, of course, major differences, also. We don’t have the “Mormon mafia” breathing down our necks, and we have a husband so we’re not polygynists like the characters, but more general polyamorists. The Holy Spirit didn’t guide my selection of second and third wives. A show about my family’s life would not win any awards or many viewers on HBO unless it was written by Roseanne Barr.
Afterwards, I got to wondering about the show. Why now? Why has this show suddenly picked up in popularity? Why, as my Sicilian co-worker said about The Sopranos, is “someone making a show about what they think my life is like?” Are all of the 5.5 million viewers suddenly my long-lost friends?
I think it’s about gay marriage. I know that both of the writers are gay, and that one of them is a lawyer. Kitten tells me that their aim is to show that “any group of people should be able to get married legally” by making the polygamists in the show so sympathetic. I tend to agree.
Over the past thirty years, I’ve had a lot of opposition from gay rights advocates when I promoted polygamy at radical events. I think that I’ve finally figured out why, though. What a lot of the gay marriage advocates want has been to extend their relationships into the mainstream, gaining the benefits afforded for so long to straight couples. What I’ve been advocating instead is establishing a new mainstream in which the individual polygamist (whether they be polygynist, polyandrist or line marriage) families have so much of an advantage (by their very nature) over a two-person marriage that they don’t need any benefits.
Personally, in the interim, I don’t have any problems with gays getting the benefits, as long as they realize that they’ll be gone when the libertarians finally win. *chuckle*
So, there you have it–what I think of the show. You don’t have to ask me now, just nod and smile as I walk by with that extra little spring in my step.
Oh, and no, I don’t need Viagra–and neither does Sean.
With apologies to Barbara and George:
I remember kitten marryin’ me and
our Sean even when it weren’t in style.
I remember cuddling with my Cheron
at the movies and how Elderwife was really wild.
I was Poly, when Poly wasn’t cool.
I was Poly, from my hat down to my shoes.
I still act, and look the same
What you see ain’t nothin’ new
I was Poly, when Poly wasn’t cool
Tom
Kinda Cool
This is only slightly related to what Tom was talking about in the previous post, but he made me think of this video I saw posted at Volokh a while ago. I kind of wish I was friends with the guy doing the presentation. It’s about 7 minutes long:
Skateboarding Into the Singularity #2–The Fork in the Road
When I was replying to Hanno’s recent post about the pathetic turn-out of Republican front-runners, I off-handedly mentioned that I didn’t expect the United States to exist in its current form twenty years from now.
Prescott asked me (against his better judgment, it seems) to please elucidate on that statement of mine, so this piece is in reply to his request.
It all comes down to information storage and dissemination, it seems. The Internet is a big part of yesterday’s future, and Moore’s Law is still in its geometric phase for the cost of collecting, storing and retrieving data.
Surfers were recently shocked to see street-level shots of their houses in San Francisco instantly accessible on Google Maps. At the time of writing, there are cars loaded with equipment spreading out across the country to extend this information to, eventually I imagine, every address in the USA.
This is not the end, but the beginning of the recording of every second of everyone’s life within the datawebs of the ‘Net. As this Materials Today article shows, carbon films can be used to increase storage for bits of data to the quantum level. Very soon, zeroes and ones could be represented by atoms of Carbon-12 and Carbon-13 within a crystalline diamond lattice.
What does this mean? Not only will the collected knowledge of humanity be available through the Open Library Project and Project Gutenberg, but every lifetime word and facial expression of someone running for office from the 1st District of a given state will be on file and available for download. Our lives are about to be referenced and cross-indexed.
There will be available instant information on any subject that has interest to an individual or an organization, whether it be the floor plans of an engineering building at a university or the necessary genes to splice from botulism into e. coli to turn the latter into a WMD.
Add to this the instant communication possible from devices like the iPhone, or even mere laptops in widly wifi’d areas, and groups would be able to instantly coordinate actions by members.
An early forerunner of this happened in the last two months with the Immigration Bill before the US Senate. Senior members of both political parties, the President, the Wall Street Journal and most of the Industrial complex of the United States had united to push through legislation in a traditionally underhanded manner.
This time it was different, though. Bloggers and other politically active internet dwellers used informants within the Senate staffs to find vulnerable Senators and pressure them into voting in ways that would insure the defeat of the Bill. Let me make an analogy for this, since the impact and precident for this event cannot be understated:
Normal means of influencing members of Congress involve faxes and phone calls to their offices. Thinking of this in historical military terms, this is the equivalent of WW2 bombers attacking a German ball-bearing factory and missing most of the time. What happened with the ‘Net’s involvement this time was the equivalent of a laser-guided bomb used in 21st Century warfare.
Information that was gathered by individuals on the ground was transmitted instantly to those who could take advantage of it and precision-targeting of communications was setup for the legislators who would be vulnerable. The bill went down to defeat, despite the efforts of the old 20th Century power-blocs.
There’s a darker side to this, however. Did you ever think hard about why 9/11 happened? For God’s sake, the hijackers used box-cutters. They succeeded because they understood the vulnerablities of the system and how best to take advantage of it with the element of surprise.
Folks, if every bit of data on everything is available, it will include ways of subverting the systems to cause events that will make 9/11 look like a Sunday picnic. Very shortly, the continued existence of civilization is going to depend on the good-will of script-kiddies.
So, now that we’ve got the technical background for this demonstrated, here’s the gist of my argument:
The current power structure cannot abide with this quantity of information available to the general public. The amount of control that the government and the military-industrial complex currently wishes (for good or ill), is impossible to sustain when the means of subverting that control is available to any intelligent person with a simple mouse-click.
Nobody gives up control lightly.
There are two paths emerging from this fork. The first I call the China model, the second the Rational Anarchist model.
The power-blocs that currently exist within our country will fight the diffusion of power with every ounce of their being. They even have a model to use as an example–the Chinese. The Chinese are attempting, with some moderate success, to completely control citizens’ access to information on the Internet. They’re doing this by government control of web browsers and severe prosecution of anyone caught violating government protocols for allowable content. While there is still a bit of doubt about the final outcome, it is undeniable that search program creators have been cooperating with this censorship and many citizens have been denied information that they could use to challenge the present power structure.
In order for this to happen in the United States, the First Amendment (as it applies to online information) would have to, for all practical purposes, be set aside by either legislation or judicial writ. The struggle will be fierce with ‘Net folks using the kind of tactics I outlined above from the Immigration bill…
unless there’s a WMD incident.
In a situation where such an incident occurs, the government can use it to push Patriot Act-style restrictions onto the Internet. It is quite likely in that case that a frightened public would back such restrictions and be willing to forgo freedom of information in exchange for perceived security.
If there is not such an incident in the next decade, the game is over for the current power structure. The empowerment of the individual citizen will accelerate, giving the citizens the ability to self-educate, create new professions from scratch, trade goods and money without them being taxable and circumvent even the most rudimentary methods of police enforcement.
For all practical purposes, the Federal, and to a lesser extent, State and City governments will find themselves as ineffectual as they have been in their current attempts to keep the southern border of the US closed and process thousands of new US passports. Government and major corporate bureaucracies, since they are traditionally conservative about adopting new technologies and paradigms, will find themselves lagging behind at a time where even being a year or two out of date will render them powerless.
The current state will diminish to a point where all that it will be able to do is a bit of interstate commerce, keep the road infrastructure going and defend itself against other nations. All of the rest of the power will be in the hands of “Interest Clubs.”
In either case, the nation that we know will be gone, Prescott. I do not know which fork we’ll actually end up on, since, to a large extent it depends on the success of irrational individuals’ plots. Britain seems to be going the way of the former, but their history of free speech is not as firmly entrenched as ours.
Living on the second path would be exhilarating, but ultimately more dangerous than our present situation. I would find a trade war between Animal-rights activists and Second Life members to be interesting, however, especially when it escalated to tactical nukes.
Tom
Teach for America Revisited
Although I never announced it on here, after writing a column back in the spring about the merits of joining Teach for America that seemed to indicate I was actually going to put my money where my mouth was, I chose to decline their offer to teach in the D.C. metro area public school system. Unlike most people who turn down prestigious opportunities, I rejected TFA’s offer without any alternative offer on the table, and now I’m scrambling for a job.
Do I regret my decision? Not at all. I think back to the 2-3 different instances during my post-acceptance discernment when I confidently strode to the computer and put my cursor above the “Accept” button, thinking I was ready to commit to TFA, and it freaks me out. I had virtually all of my friends, my boyfriend, my U of I mentor, and my sister in one corner, consistently urging me to join TFA. In the other corner sat Augur, one or two other friends, and my parents. They were not convinced that the actual experience of teaching was something that I truly believed was right for me, regardless of the inevitable personal growth I would encounter along the way or the obvious pleasure I would take in trying to help an underprivileged group of people. Augur was convinced that there were more fitting ways to apply my talents while trying to serve the public, the 1-2 other friends were just really blunt about the fact that I did not seem like the TFA type, and my parents wanted to make sure that I was doing what I wanted to do, not what the Teach for America recruitment team suggested I do.
In the end, I agreed more with Group B. Some of my biggest “Do TFA!” cheerleaders later admitted that they were most interested in hearing all of my amazing classroom horror stories or living vicariously through my hands-on, down-and-dirty work while they did their death marches through law school. I’m pretty glad I was able to recognize some of this for what it was while it was actually happening; otherwise, Group A may have triumphed. To me, it would have been a major disservice to the kids I was supposed to be serving had I chosen to accept two years with TFA for the wrong reasons: because it was the first–and still the only–post-college job offer I had received, because a lot of people I loved happened to love the idea of me doing it, because I really only loved the idea of me doing it, or because I wanted to be able to add it to my resume. If I were to do it primarily for any of these reasons, I think it would have shown in the lack of passion for my work, and that wasn’t fair to anyone.
But that’s just me. Except that it’s not.
It’s actually the thought process of a good chunk of ambitious college seniors who apply, but right or wrong, many of them still go through the two years and have a positive impact on the lives of their students. As far as having a positive impact on the academic performance of those same students–as compared to non-TFA teachers–the debate rages on, with many education professors throughout the country siding with the TFA skeptics.
While I was in the middle of deciding what to do and after I declined, I was in touch with a reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education. She was working a big story about Teach for America, and I got the impression that unlike most coverage I’ve seen of TFA, it wasn’t going to be solely flattering. As an ambivalent applicant and then as a confident decliner, I was obviously a desirable source for her article, and I agreed to serve as one when she asked.
The article was published last month, and you can access it here. It’s a fairly good read if you’re interested in the TFA debate, and I would say it’s reasonable in both its criticism and its praise for the organization. Since a few people have brought TFA up in various posts–Augur and Billy have, I think, and J. Prescott called it worthless or something once–I thought some of you might want to check it out and discuss.
The Uninspiring Republican Field
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything and Billy has just simply begged me to (and offered me all manner of favors) so I’ve decided to post once again. Today’s topic of interest in the field of 2008 Republican presidential hopefuls. All I can say is: Really? IS THAT REALLY THE BEST THEY’VE GOT!? Let’s do a rundown, shall we?
Rudy Giuliani
Giuliani is a “new brand” of Republican. Pro-life, pro gun control and pretty pro government in general. He’s very socially liberal, but appears willing to compromise his beliefs for votes. Some people call him a pseud0-Democrat, but ever since I heard him in a debate I’ve been singularly unimpressed. My favorite Giuliani moment was when Ron Paul humbly suggested that perhaps the United States is reviled and hated because we interfere in other countries’ politics and kill their people, Giuliani retorted with something along the lines of “No, it’s because they hate freedom!” to a roar of applause. I knew then that the Republican party was irrevocably doomed for the ‘08 election cycle. Oh and a large minority of Americans would not vote for a guy who’s been married three times. Dressing up like a pretty lady probably doesn’t help him either.
Mitt Romney
Romney’s an interesting cat. He, like Giuliani is sort of a “new brand” of Republican. He’s socially liberal (although rapidly trying to backpedal on just about all of his former positions), economically conservative, and he’s got the presidential look. His major liability is that a good number of Americans wouldn’t vote for a Mormon. So if the base can swallow Mormonism and a less than perfect record on social issues, Romney would be a good pick. If the base wants pretty, he’s also their Ken.
John McCain
What can be said about the Arizona senator? He’s managed to piss off so many people that his campaign is sinking faster than the Titanic. He was once the presumed presidential nominee for 2008. Republicans always pick the guy who waits his turn like a good boy, but McCain is getting the shaft. His strong pushes for government accountability and to limit the influence of big money on elections as well as his less than perfect conservative track record have raised the ire of just about every segment of the Republican base except the Billy Joe Mills types. Add to this the fact that Americans don’t like old people, it’s pretty safe to write his candidacy off.
Fred Thompson
A lot of moderate conservatives love Fred Thompson. I mean c’mon, he played a lawyer on TV! What good Republican doesn’t love lawyers and TV (read Hollywood). He’s also been a lobbyist (we love the beltway culture) and apparently a lackluster senator. Many tell me that he’s John McCain without the baggage, but I think he’s going to run into trouble for his lobbying career and late entry into the field. But at least he’s conservative.
Newt Gingrich
The leader of the so-called Republican Revolution of 1994. Newt Gingrich curiously sat on the sidelines during the impeachment proceedings of then president Bill Clinton. Well, it’s not so curious, he’s also been married three times and was doing the no no bad thing with a staffer at the time. Gingrich is a hardcore conservative on most issues though. Unfortunately he’s not the most deft politician as evidenced by his taking the blame for the government shutdown of 1996 when Clinton made him look like a petulant child who was throwing a tantrum over not getting his spending cuts (despite the fact that it was Clinton who shut the government down). He’s still a force to be reckoned with, but hasn’t taken any serious steps toward a presidential bid as of yet.
Ron Paul
Ron Paul’s a funny guy. People I know on the hill call him “Dr. No” because they say he votes no on almost every single piece of legislation and the Republicans don’t count on him in anything really. That, and the fact that he has little appeal outside of the hardcore libertarian wing of the party, means that his candidacy is not exactly soaring on the updrafts. I have to give him credit for being honest and more realistic than the other candidates especially on national security matters.
There are several other candidates that are to the right of all of these gentlemen, but the right seems to be somewhat dormant in this year’s selection process and this post is getting too long, so I’ll just stop the list here. The only hope Republicans have in 08 is that their relatively moderate candidate field will attract centrist voters, but the primaries will likely get really ugly because each of the major candidates has a good deal of baggage that people aren’t going to want to have on their candidate. It looks like 2008 will be a good year for Democrats…
Prescott, You Nervous Yet?
I was perusing the New York Times this afternoon and came across this:
What Will That Pesky Putin Do Next?
The continued self-weakening of the United States by diverting the strength of its military and economy in hopes of an imperial hegemony in the Middle East has combined with hubris in Eastern Europe to escalate tensions.
We’re rapidly losing the progress that we made following the breakup of the Soviet Union in relations with a people that could have been our friends.
Damn shame.
Tom
Skateboarding Into the Singularity #1–The Sound of Kittens’ Wings
I don’t usually find the inspiration for writing articles about the future of mankind in The New York Review of Books. Imagine my surprise, then, when I came upon an article entitled Our Biotech Future written by Freeman Dyson.
I’m not going to summarize the points that Dyson made in the article, since he is considerably more eloquent than I will ever hope to be. I do, however, want to talk a bit about the implications of a half-century of biotechnological revolution.
I am going to posit, as Dyson does, that we’re about to enter a period in the advancement of biotechnology that mirrors the computer one that I have experienced during my lifetime. For the purposes of this discussion, let us assume that the year 2005, when 92% of the Human Genome was mapped, has approximate equivalence to the year 1947, when Bardeen et al. invented the transistor.
Moore’s Law states that the amount of computing power per dollar doubles at the approximate rate of once per 18-24 months (the slope has changed slightly over the last half century due to speed of hardware components.)
The result of this advancement is obvious everywhere. The computer with which I am writing this has twice the power of the Cray that was housed on the north side of the campus in 1980. Small cellular phones have access to the internet, can take photographs and serve as location devices. My Hyundai has more artificial intelligence than the Apollo 13 lander.
Less obvious are the social results of that accelerated technology. Teen-agers who leave for college are no longer separated from their parents, being able to ask them for advice twenty-four hours per day, even from the interior of crowded, annoyed movie theatres. In Britain, one is photographed on the average of 34 separate times per day. Privacy, as it was once understood, no longer exists. The Internet has a photographic memory–even the scores of Advanced Squad Leader games that I played fifteen years ago are on the public record.
Of course, I’m stating the obvious. All of you know on a gut-level about these things, since you are immersed in them every day. Those of you who are in the legal profession are looking at the controversies over “intellectual property” and Congress, reeling from the defeat of the immigration bill by an inflamed, networked populace, is looking into the question of whether or not music broadcasters on the ‘Net are the equivalent of those over the airwaves.
Biology is another matter, however. We’ve touched on the subject once or twice here in Urbanagora–specifically on the implications of male homosexuality being a pre-determined trait and the ability to improve our children–designer babies, so to speak.
So, assuming that the cost of any given biotech procedure and product is reduced by a factor of four every three years, what does the next fifty years look like?
1) Implications of cheap genomic testing
The Celera effort cost about $300 million dollars to sequence the first human genome. If Moore’s Law is applied to this number, we could approximate the year 2023 or so for a $1000 personal genome kit. With this kit, not just a trained professional, but an average citizen, would be able to find his propensity to genetic diseases, the most likely form of cancer from which he would die, and the most facile kind of talents for which his brain would be designed.
A pre-born child’s DNA at an extremely early gestation could be determined. It seems not outside the realm of probabilty that birth-control technology could be tweaked to chemically analyze the DNA of a fertilized egg and prevent implantation of ones that are not desirable for the parents. This may seem like a stretch to some, but keep in mind that at present 80% of the preborn who test positive for Down’s Syndrome are aborted.
It could begin very innocently, with predisposition to breast cancer eliminated, juvenile diabetes next, all the while improving the human race, so to speak. It then is not so large a jump, perhaps then, to Maxihet(tm), which would guarantee a straight male child to the loving parents that wanted one.
Living in a world where the generation born after 2022 is entirely above average (like those lucky children in Lake Woebegone) is just the beginning. With privacy a privilege of the last century, imagine a world where everyone has access to your genome. In a 2026 version of a singles bar, potential dates could look over the biological data of the stunning blonde projected over her image onto their contacts and realize that she has a 35% probability of gaining over 40 pounds by the time she reaches 50.
2) Becoming one with the Planet
Or, in this case, the planet being one with us.
Dyson talks a lot in his article about a post-Darwinian world where, once again like the beginning of life, genes are freely shared.
Let’s talk a bit about furry fandom.
There are a group of people who identify strongly with anthropomorphic animals. They write fiction about themselves in these forms, attend parties where they dress up in costume (some of them having sex in those personas).
Currently, there a few individuals who have taken this to an extreme. Stalking Cat is probably the most famous example. In parallel, the sports community is in the middle of a controversy about allowing Oscar Pistorius, who runs on steel blades attached to his ankles to compete with “normal” runners.
What will be the changes wrought to society when one can, with a cheap kit containing retroviruses, physically alter onesself? The current legal controversies over transgendered individuals are complicated enough. You lawyers in the audience need to get ready to find some precedents that will cover trans-specied individuals.
3) Life Extension
Last weekend, I cautioned some folks that they needed to take care of themselves, for they are likely to be able to live as long as they wish if they’re careful.
Human beings are programmed to die. This programming could very well be hacked by expert users, and hacked very, very soon.
If you think that the Social Security System is in trouble now…..think about it when the number of people eligible for the program exceeds the number paying into it by an order of magnitude or more.
All current law, economics, social sciences and religons assume that people will die, and in a time less than a century. Extreme longevity will overthrow EVERY assumption that underlies our society–at the very least, it will be as big a change in human life and philosophy as the development of agriculture or cities.
4) Thou Art God
Well, perhaps not in terms of the ruler of the Universe, but in terms of being the creator of life.
Dyson talks about kits being available to children to be able to splice and design new DNA and their winning prizes for the most attractive new lizard or dinosaur.
In 1947, there were only a few individuals who could program a computer. The idea that one would end up being able to work with a hundred creative individuals to invent a shared imaginary world like World of Warcraft (in which four million people are adventuring at the time that you read this) would have been as alien as the ideas that I have been discussing in the paragraphs above.
At the moment, there are about as many individuals who can program biological systems as there were computer programmers in 1947. Some of them work just down the street from me. If there’s a Moore’s Law relationship on the horizon for biology, by 2060 or so, humanity will be able to create any life form out of flesh that they can imagine.
And, in my own way, I can picture it….
You see, everytime I go to an art show at a science-fiction or fantasy convention, there’s an entire section of the exhibit that’s devoted to paintings of cats with various forms of wings. Sturgeon’s Law applies, of course, so many of the works are pretty bad. Others, though, capture the dichotomic beauty of pouncing, gliding, dancing felines.
I take quite a bit of comfort knowing that it is more than a little likely that as mankind skateboards into the Singularity, it’ll be accompanied by the mewling and swooping of batches of calico, Siamese and tuxedo winged kittens.
“Like ‘em? Made ‘em myself–Heathkit!”
Tom
Skateboarding Into the Singularity #1–The Sound of Kittens’ Wings
I don’t usually find the inspiration for writing articles about the future of mankind in The New York Review of Books. Imagine my surprise, then, when I came upon an article entitled Our Biotech Future written by Freeman Dyson.
I’m not going to summarize the points that Dyson made in the article, since he is considerably more eloquent than I will ever hope to be. I do, however, want to talk a bit about the implications of a half-century of biotechnological revolution.
I am going to posit, as Dyson does, that we’re about to enter a period in the advancement of biotechnology that mirrors the computer one that I have experienced during my lifetime. For the purposes of this discussion, let us assume that the year 2005, when 92% of the Human Genome was mapped, has approximate equivalence to the year 1947, when Bardeen et al. invented the transistor.
Moore’s Law states that the amount of computing power per dollar doubles at the approximate rate of once per 18-24 months (the slope has changed slightly over the last half century due to speed of hardware components.)
The result of this advancement is obvious everywhere. The computer with which I am writing this has twice the power of the Cray that was housed on the north side of the campus in 1980. Small cellular phones have access to the internet, can take photographs and serve as location devices. My Hyundai has more artificial intelligence than the Apollo 13 lander.
Less obvious are the social results of that accelerated technology. Teen-agers who leave for college are no longer separated from their parents, being able to ask them for advice twenty-four hours per day, even from the interior of crowded, annoyed movie theatres. In Britain, one is photographed on the average of 34 separate times per day. Privacy, as it was once understood, no longer exists. The Internet has a photographic memory–even the scores of Advanced Squad Leader games that I played fifteen years ago are on the public record.
Of course, I’m stating the obvious. All of you know on a gut-level about these things, since you are immersed in them every day. Those of you who are in the legal profession are looking at the controversies over “intellectual property” and Congress, reeling from the defeat of the immigration bill by an inflamed, networked populace, is looking into the question of whether or not music broadcasters on the ‘Net are the equivalent of those over the airwaves.
Biology is another matter, however. We’ve touched on the subject once or twice here in Urbanagora–specifically on the implications of male homosexuality being a pre-determined trait and the ability to improve our children–designer babies, so to speak.
So, assuming that the cost of any given biotech procedure and product is reduced by a factor of four every three years, what does the next fifty years look like?
1) Implications of cheap genomic testing
The Celera effort cost about $300 million dollars to sequence the first human genome. If Moore’s Law is applied to this number, we could approximate the year 2023 or so for a $1000 personal genome kit. With this kit, not just a trained professional, but an average citizen, would be able to find his propensity to genetic diseases, the most likely form of cancer from which he would die, and the most facile kind of talents for which his brain would be designed.
A pre-born child’s DNA at an extremely early gestation could be determined. It seems not outside the realm of probabilty that birth-control technology could be tweaked to chemically analyze the DNA of a fertilized egg and prevent implantation of ones that are not desirable for the parents. This may seem like a stretch to some, but keep in mind that at present 80% of the preborn who test positive for Down’s Syndrome are aborted.
It could begin very innocently, with predisposition to breast cancer eliminated, juvenile diabetes next, all the while improving the human race, so to speak. It then is not so large a jump, perhaps then, to Maxihet(tm), which would guarantee a straight male child to the loving parents that wanted one.
Living in a world where the generation born after 2022 is entirely above average (like those lucky children in Lake Woebegone) is just the beginning. With privacy a privilege of the last century, imagine a world where everyone has access to your genome. In a 2026 version of a singles bar, potential dates could look over the biological data of the stunning blonde projected over her image onto their contacts and realize that she has a 35% probability of gaining over 40 pounds by the time she reaches 50.
2) Becoming one with the Planet
Or, in this case, the planet being one with us.
Dyson talks a lot in his article about a post-Darwinian world where, once again like the beginning of life, genes are freely shared.
Let’s talk a bit about furry fandom.
There are a group of people who identify strongly with anthropomorphic animals. They write fiction about themselves in these forms, attend parties where they dress up in costume (some of them having sex in those personas).
Currently, there a few individuals who have taken this to an extreme. Stalking Cat is probably the most famous example. In parallel, the sports community is in the middle of a controversy about allowing Oscar Pistorius, who runs on steel blades attached to his ankles to compete with “normal” runners.
What will be the changes wrought to society when one can, with a cheap kit containing retroviruses, physically alter onesself? The current legal controversies over transgendered individuals are complicated enough. You lawyers in the audience need to get ready to find some precedents that will cover trans-specied individuals.
3) Life Extension
Last weekend, I cautioned some folks that they needed to take care of themselves, for they are likely to be able to live as long as they wish if they’re careful.
Human beings are programmed to die. This programming could very well be hacked by expert users, and hacked very, very soon.
If you think that the Social Security System is in trouble now…..think about it when the number of people eligible for the program exceeds the number paying into it by an order of magnitude or more.
All current law, economics, social sciences and religons assume that people will die, and in a time less than a century. Extreme longevity will overthrow EVERY assumption that underlies our society–at the very least, it will be as big a change in human life and philosophy as the development of agriculture or cities.
4) Thou Art God
Well, perhaps not in terms of the ruler of the Universe, but in terms of being the creator of life.
Dyson talks about kits being available to children to be able to splice and design new DNA and their winning prizes for the most attractive new lizard or dinosaur.
In 1947, there were only a few individuals who could program a computer. The idea that one would end up being able to work with a hundred creative individuals to invent a shared imaginary world like World of Warcraft (in which four million people are adventuring at the time that you read this) would have been as alien as the ideas that I have been discussing in the paragraphs above.
At the moment, there are about as many individuals who can program biological systems as there were computer programmers in 1947. Some of them work just down the street from me. If there’s a Moore’s Law relationship on the horizon for biology, by 2060 or so, humanity will be able to create any life form out of flesh that they can imagine.
And, in my own way, I can picture it….
You see, everytime I go to an art show at a science-fiction or fantasy convention, there’s an entire section of the exhibit that’s devoted to paintings of cats with various forms of wings. Sturgeon’s Law applies, of course, so many of the works are pretty bad. Others, though, capture the dichotomic beauty of pouncing, gliding, dancing felines.
I take quite a bit of comfort knowing that it is more than a little likely that as mankind skateboards into the Singularity, it’ll be accompanied by the mewling and swooping of batches of calico, Siamese and tuxedo winged kittens.
“Like ‘em? Made ‘em myself–Heathkit!”
Tom
Skateboarding Into the Singularity #1–The Sound of Kittens’ Wings
I don’t usually find the inspiration for writing articles about the future of mankind in The New York Review of Books. Imagine my surprise, then, when I came upon an article entitled Our Biotech Future written by Freeman Dyson.
I’m not going to summarize the points that Dyson made in the article, since he is considerably more eloquent than I will ever hope to be. I do, however, want to talk a bit about the implications of a half-century of biotechnological revolution.
I am going to posit, as Dyson does, that we’re about to enter a period in the advancement of biotechnology that mirrors the computer one that I have experienced during my lifetime. For the purposes of this discussion, let us assume that the year 2005, when 92% of the Human Genome was mapped, has approximate equivalence to the year 1947, when Bardeen et al. invented the transistor.
Moore’s Law states that the amount of computing power per dollar doubles at the approximate rate of once per 18-24 months (the slope has changed slightly over the last half century due to speed of hardware components.)
The result of this advancement is obvious everywhere. The computer with which I am writing this has twice the power of the Cray that was housed on the north side of the campus in 1980. Small cellular phones have access to the internet, can take photographs and serve as location devices. My Hyundai has more artificial intelligence than the Apollo 13 lander.
Less obvious are the social results of that accelerated technology. Teen-agers who leave for college are no longer separated from their parents, being able to ask them for advice twenty-four hours per day, even from the interior of crowded, annoyed movie theatres. In Britain, one is photographed on the average of 34 separate times per day. Privacy, as it was once understood, no longer exists. The Internet has a photographic memory–even the scores of Advanced Squad Leader games that I played fifteen years ago are on the public record.
Of course, I’m stating the obvious. All of you know on a gut-level about these things, since you are immersed in them every day. Those of you who are in the legal profession are looking at the controversies over “intellectual property” and Congress, reeling from the defeat of the immigration bill by an inflamed, networked populace, is looking into the question of whether or not music broadcasters on the ‘Net are the equivalent of those over the airwaves.
Biology is another matter, however. We’ve touched on the subject once or twice here in Urbanagora–specifically on the implications of male homosexuality being a pre-determined trait and the ability to improve our children–designer babies, so to speak.
So, assuming that the cost of any given biotech procedure and product is reduced by a factor of four every three years, what does the next fifty years look like?
1) Implications of cheap genomic testing
The Celera effort cost about $300 million dollars to sequence the first human genome. If Moore’s Law is applied to this number, we could approximate the year 2023 or so for a $1000 personal genome kit. With this kit, not just a trained professional, but an average citizen, would be able to find his propensity to genetic diseases, the most likely form of cancer from which he would die, and the most facile kind of talents for which his brain would be designed.
A pre-born child’s DNA at an extremely early gestation could be determined. It seems not outside the realm of probabilty that birth-control technology could be tweaked to chemically analyze the DNA of a fertilized egg and prevent implantation of ones that are not desirable for the parents. This may seem like a stretch to some, but keep in mind that at present 80% of the preborn who test positive for Down’s Syndrome are aborted.
It could begin very innocently, with predisposition to breast cancer eliminated, juvenile diabetes next, all the while improving the human race, so to speak. It then is not so large a jump, perhaps then, to Maxihet(tm), which would guarantee a straight male child to the loving parents that wanted one.
Living in a world where the generation born after 2022 is entirely above average (like those lucky children in Lake Woebegone) is just the beginning. With privacy a privilege of the last century, imagine a world where everyone has access to your genome. In a 2026 version of a singles bar, potential dates could look over the biological data of the stunning blonde projected over her image onto their contacts and realize that she has a 35% probability of gaining over 40 pounds by the time she reaches 50.
2) Becoming one with the Planet
Or, in this case, the planet being one with us.
Dyson talks a lot in his article about a post-Darwinian world where, once again like the beginning of life, genes are freely shared.
Let’s talk a bit about furry fandom.
There are a group of people who identify strongly with anthropomorphic animals. They write fiction about themselves in these forms, attend parties where they dress up in costume (some of them having sex in those personas).
Currently, there a few individuals who have taken this to an extreme. Stalking Cat is probably the most famous example. In parallel, the sports community is in the middle of a controversy about allowing Oscar Pistorius, who runs on steel blades attached to his ankles to compete with “normal” runners.
What will be the changes wrought to society when one can, with a cheap kit containing retroviruses, physically alter onesself? The current legal controversies over transgendered individuals are complicated enough. You lawyers in the audience need to get ready to find some precedents that will cover trans-specied individuals.
3) Life Extension
Last weekend, I cautioned some folks that they needed to take care of themselves, for they are likely to be able to live as long as they wish if they’re careful.
Human beings are programmed to die. This programming could very well be hacked by expert users, and hacked very, very soon.
If you think that the Social Security System is in trouble now…..think about it when the number of people eligible for the program exceeds the number paying into it by an order of magnitude or more.
All current law, economics, social sciences and religons assume that people will die, and in a time less than a century. Extreme longevity will overthrow EVERY assumption that underlies our society–at the very least, it will be as big a change in human life and philosophy as the development of agriculture or cities.
4) Thou Art God
Well, perhaps not in terms of the ruler of the Universe, but in terms of being the creator of life.
Dyson talks about kits being available to children to be able to splice and design new DNA and their winning prizes for the most attractive new lizard or dinosaur.
In 1947, there were only a few individuals who could program a computer. The idea that one would end up being able to work with a hundred creative individuals to invent a shared imaginary world like World of Warcraft (in which four million people are adventuring at the time that you read this) would have been as alien as the ideas that I have been discussing in the paragraphs above.
At the moment, there are about as many individuals who can program biological systems as there were computer programmers in 1947. Some of them work just down the street from me. If there’s a Moore’s Law relationship on the horizon for biology, by 2060 or so, humanity will be able to create any life form out of flesh that they can imagine.
And, in my own way, I can picture it….
You see, everytime I go to an art show at a science-fiction or fantasy convention, there’s an entire section of the exhibit that’s devoted to paintings of cats with various forms of wings. Sturgeon’s Law applies, of course, so many of the works are pretty bad. Others, though, capture the dichotomic beauty of pouncing, gliding, dancing felines.
I take quite a bit of comfort knowing that it is more than a little likely that as mankind skateboards into the Singularity, it’ll be accompanied by the mewling and swooping of batches of calico, Siamese and tuxedo winged kittens.
“Like ‘em? Made ‘em myself–Heathkit!”
Tom