Archive for November, 2007

A hat-tip to Augur for pointing me to this site:

Watch me go to lunch at 11:30am.

Now, imagine millions of these scattered across the country, inside and out, recording 24/7, user pointed, multi-taskable, almost invisible and easily searchable by Google and you’ve got what 2016 is very likely to be like. Play with the zoom for a bit–I go to lunch in the big building with the clock tower in top center of the FoV.

Tom

Back in July of this year at the Heinlein Centennial, I watched with delight as Jeanne Robinson was finally given the opportunity to work with dance in free fall. I expect that her flight on December 30th of this year will enable her to incorporate real experiences, both physical and emotional, into the framework of the Stardance Movie project.

She was kind enough to give an interview to us at Urbanagora about her flight and movie:

TET: Twenty years ago, you were scheduled to fly on the space shuttle. What kind of training and preparation would you have had to make for that flight?

JR: I never got close enough to my departure date to find out in any detail. After the first civilian was killed, the program ended.

TET: For this flight, how are you and your dancer, Kathleen McDonagh, preparing, physically and mentally?

JR: We’re preparing on many levels. I’m not only working closely with Kathleen, but also with producer/co-director, James Sposto, who’ll be filming Kathleen during our flight. Before designing Kathleen’s short movement sequence, I’ve had to familiarize myself with every aspect of the environment we’ll be working in. Several people from Zero-G Corporation have been assisting us. Their help has informed the shape of the choreography and the direction of the shoot. For example, we’ll be positioned in front of the bulkhead of the first of three sections. Each section holds up to 10 passengers. It’s likely we’ll be sharing our section with a few other passengers.

Despite all of our prep, the three of us remain keenly cognizant of the fact that anything can happen during our flight. In an instant we may have to adapt our plans, and improvise. For example we’ve been told the average duration of the 15 parabolic arcs is 25 to 30 seconds. But I’ve watched footage of a flight whose arcs only averaged 16 to 18 seconds.

TET: Will you actually be doing motion-capture photography during the flight, or merely getting the “feel” of free-fall? In either case, what actions will you be performing up there?

JR: Our plans don’t include motion-capture photography. Kathleen and I plan on simply experiencing the kinesthetics of microgravity — enjoying the feel, for the first several arcs. The experience will inform the choreography I’ve been imagining and writing about for years. But since no sequence can exceed 20-30 seconds, and some may be as short as 16 seconds, we’re quite limited in what we can accomplish. We hope to do more, but we are prepared to settle for “getting the feel” and capturing some shots and short sequences with a HiDef video camera. This footage will be used to help model the animation and fx for the final film, and the footage will be useful for publicity and fund-raising.

TET: The flight itself–are you just doing this one on December 30th? How long will you actually be in free-fall? Is this the same plane that was used for Stephen Hawking?

JR: This will be our one and only flight (until serious funding kicks in); we were given a single pair of free seats, and they cost thousands, and James purchased an additional seat. We will fly a total of 15 parabolic arcs—three of them at 1/3 gee, and 1/6, with the rest at zero-g. And each arc can vary from 15-35 seconds, depending on the weather, among other things. I don’t know if this will be the same plane Sir Stephen flew, but we’re flying with the same company, Zero-G Corporation.

TET: How do you plan to integrate the experience of this flight into your movie?

JR: We’ll have to wait and see what fate gives us. As I said, I’m prepared to settle for some promotional images, and hoping to make some actual choreographic discoveries and shooting decisions. If we’re lucky, we’ll get some fabulous footage to edit into a short film. Fingers crossed!

TET: On your film’s sponsorship page you talk about how “the Stardance Experience combines artistic and humanistic themes with the backdrop of science.” In my case, you’re preaching to the choir, but for the rest of Urbanagora’s readership–Why is this important?

JR: If mankind does not go to space (and soon!) it will die, sooner or later. But we won’t go there if it doesn’t seem like a human place: to draw us, it’s going to need art and culture, to help us express it, and to inform how we’re going to shape it together. Dance is the art form best suited to space conditions (and language-free), and film is the medium presently best suited to get that news to the general public. We need to show them that space is not only a place for test pilots and scientists. It’s really the next frontier — the next challenge for us to overcome in our evolutionary path upward.

TET: A lot of the financing so far for your film’s been coming from individual investors. Do you think that the publicity from your flight is likely to open more corporate and agency doors?

JR: I certainly hope so. More and more, these days, the smart money has its eyes on the stars. There are about to be trillions of dollars made in orbit….and the people who go there to work or to play will need entertainment and aesthetics. One such effort is being master-minded by business entrepreneur, Robert Bigelow. His eight-year-old company, Bigelow Aerospace, is busy designing inflatable space habitats. He is trying to make low-earth-orbit destinations a necessity — the fulfillment of a life-long dream of getting humanity into space. He’s my kind of guy. I like the way he dreams. Check out the article about his effort in the November 2007 issue of WIRED.

TET: You’ve talked a lot in the past about your Buddhism and how it is an integral part of your life. Dancing in space has to be considered a truly transcendental experience. How does it relate to your faith and spirituality?

JR: I became a Buddhist at 25 when I read Suzuki Roshi’s book, ZEN MIND, BEGINNER’S MIND. As an artist I had learned to tolerate ambiguity, or not-knowing, in order to be open to the creative spirit. Reading Roshi’s teachings on “beginner’s mind” aligned with my wholehearted intention to approach my work freshly every day, in an effort to communicate an ultimately indescribable and unknowable mystery. Becoming a Buddhist reaffirmed what I already knew: the best way for me to serve the world was to integrate my visual insights into the physical act of making dances — a potentially mystical language beyond the reach of words.

Much like Zen itself, dancing in space has no boundaries…..no limits……no up or down. I hope that space’s unique conditions will help create art that leads toward human transcendence, that evolves us beyond what we’ve already seen, and that accelerates the process that forms art in the first place.

To hang in the center of the universe, surrounded by limitless space, is to arrive at the gateway to primordial knowledge. Stardance is a direct invitation to dream, dance, evolve and exemplify the best in humanity.

TET: After your flight, I’m sure that there’ll be a great deal to discuss. May we talk again on this subject early next year?

JR: By all means. Immediately after we return home, we’ll be busy collaborating on a press release about the experience to send it out with still images, and at least a little raw footage. If we’re lucky enough to get some fabulous footage of Kathleen, Jim and I will work on editing together a video presentation for investors and sponsors.

TET: Thanks a lot, Jeanne. Say hello to Spider for us.

I certainly want to repeat that thanks from all of us here at the blog. We’ll be watching the papers, the Internet and your press releases for the full story at the end of next month.

For those who would like to read Spider and Jeanne’s SF books that introduced the concept of zero-gravity dance for the first time, they’re available from amazon.com in plenty of time for Christmas shopping. They’re well worth the price–I still cry at the end of the first one, even after all these years.

Tom

I had another Guiness-fueled profound thought last night while watching my beloved Illini get their asses handed to them by Dookie. So here it is. Robin Hood. When I was a kid I loved Robin Hood. I loved all of it, the Errol Flynn movie, the Disney movie, the books, and the stories. My cousin and I lurked in the Sherwood Forest of my Grandma’s back yard with home-made bows and arrows. Lucky we didn’t put an eye out. Read more…

This is funny, original, and not even a little bit politically correct. Enjoy.

The alternate-history genre of science-fiction has been popular at least since the days of the pulps and Murray Leinster’s Sideways in Time. At the very least, it’s a great deal of fun to ask “what if.” At its best, it is thought-provoking and teaches us a great deal about the forces that have shaped our world.

There are several schools of thought about history. Some scholars believe that men are made by the times in which they live, and therefore even small changes in history would produce far different results. Others espouse the “great man” theory of history and feel that a Napoleon or Julius Caesar would have been important whether France was a kingdom or empire and whether Romans spoke Latin or Greek.

I personally feel that the flow of history is a lot like an engineering system. There are connections that have a tendency to push deviating history back towards what exists in our world. The defeat of Germany in World War One, for instance, would have a tendency to cause resentment against the victors no matter if Communist Russia came into being or not. There are also connections that are very dependent on a chain of events. Immediately before the battle of Antietam of the Civil War, a set of Lee’s battle plans, wrapped around three cigars, fell into the hands of the Union. Because of this accident, the South lost an opportunity to deliver a telling blow to the North which may have ended with Lincoln’s defeat in the 1864 election.

1864–The Union Sundered

We’ll start with this alternate first. Because the cigars were never found, Dixie’s 1862 invasion of the North reached clear into Pennsylvania and flanked Washington DC from the Maryland side. The Capital was captured and burned, the Union government then moved to Philadelphia. The war went badly enough that Lincoln was defeated in the 1864 election by McClellan.

This alternate has been described several times, most notably by Harry Turtledove in the novel series beginning with How Few Remain. Of all of the alternates that I’ll be discussing here, it’ll probably result in the most familiar world technologically.

An independent Confederacy allied with the French and British would mean that there would be four potentially hostile nations on the North American continent. The Union would be surrounded by Canada on the north and Dixie to the south, but would still be transcontinental. (The transcontinental railroad was finished in our history only three years after the end of the war.) The Confederacy would find itself without access to the Pacific Ocean, setting the stage for a Mexican-Confederate War to enable a railroad across the continent south of California.

The amount of resentment that would be present in a losing Union is not to be underestimated, either. It would, in my opinion, rival that of Germany during the 1930s against the victorious Allies. The stage, therefore, would be set for repeat engagements, perhaps one per generation for a century or more. Interestingly enough, this would in all likelihood give us a rate of technological advancement that would rival our own world, since much of the technological progress in the 20th Century can be traced to military needs.

To say that the prospects for the Southern blacks in this scenario would be dismal is putting it very mildly. Even if de jure slavery ended soon after the war, a strictly American version of apartheid would be set up in its place. People of color of any kind would be a rarity in the North, although it is likely that immigrants from European nations would still be welcomed to fill the opening West.

It is likely that the North would be desperately searching for allies, being surrounded by hostile forces on either side. One leader who expressed admiration for the Union side in the Civil War was Otto von Bismarck of Prussia. Since his nation and the soon to be unified Germany needed counterweights to the British and French power in Europe, the newly industrialized North would fill the bill remarkably well.

So, what we would end up here is a set of world wars in the 20th Century with the Union, Germany and Mexico versus Britain, France and the Confederacy. Russia in this case could sit it out and wait for one side to show weakness, or come in on the side of its allies in our world.

The New World could quite possibly be uninhabitable by 2000 due to a nuclear exchange between the two fratricidal nations in North America.

1792–Constitution never ratified

In this alternate, the squabbling colonies never agree to a republican form of government and remain as independent entities.

What I believe would then transpire would be an English-speaking version of Central America. The various European powers would begin vying for position, especially since the French Revolution would occur on schedule. The individual states would be prone to border skirmishes, often bringing in various Native tribes as allies.

The fate of the individual colonies would probably range from Georgia ending up as a Banana Republic to New York, Massachusetts and Virginia being moderately successful small democracies. The rest would be somewhere in between.

It is likely in this case that the British and French would be fighting in the middle of the continent by the middle of the 19th Century. The early 19th Century rebellions in South American would still occur, but would be brutally smashed by the Spanish and Portuguese because of lack of a Monroe Doctrine deterring large scale European intervention. It is quite possible that the Russians would colonize Alaska and the West Coast, coming clear down into California. San Francisco in this world would be called Novyi Odessa.

Japan would not be opened to the West by gunboat diplomacy, so I imagine it would not come out on its own until as much as a generation later. It would therefore lag technologically to the extent that it would not be a major economic force until at least the late 20th Century, similar to China in our world.

It is likely that the more powerful France and England in this world would dominate Central Europe, so a united Germany and Italy are considerably less likely.

How important is the United States to the rest of the world politically?

To tell the truth, to the Old World before the 20th Century, not much. Prior to the Spanish-American War, American interests were linked closely to the fate of the Western Hemisphere alone. Therefore, in most of these alternates, the Arabic World, Africa, and the Far East aren’t changed at all, except by the ways in which the events on the American continent change the opportunities of the European powers. It is likely, though, that anything that delays the United States moving Westward would probably allow the Native Americans to recover from the virgin field epidemics of the 16th Century and use the steadily improving weather as the Little Ice Age ended to regain enough military and political power to be a force that needed to be handled with negotiation and treaty, rather than genocide. The changing power structure in Europe, meanwhile, leads to the next alternate, which I find the most interesting of all…..

1776–They all hang together–The American Revolution is Crushed

This is interesting, first of all, because of the effect that it would have on the spread of liberal and revolutionary thought in both Europe and South America. Without an American Revolution, it is likely that the French revolution would never have occurred. However, all is not sunshine and roses.

There’s still the matter of a certain Corsican corporal, that I believe would be as ambitious under a King as he was under a revolutionary government. This is further complicated by the one-third of the American colonists who are still actively pursuing a guerilla war against the British.

Upshot? The Napoleonic Wars occur on schedule, but the British lose. The British dominance of the seas is ended. Without the political pressure of a British-Russian alliance, Napoleon decides to make the best of it and stops his ambitions with Poland and doesn’t invade Russia in 1812. The French Empire runs from the North Sea through North Africa and from the Pyrenees to the Vistula and lasts for well over a century. Since the French intelligencia were not killed by the Revolution, the Enlightenment comes a generation later, but is closely watched by the Imperial authorities to make sure that it doesn’t get too extreme. Marxism is very unlikely in this alternate.

Interesting side effects: The British aren’t able to eliminate the slave trade, so Africans continue to be moved to the New World for an additional two generations. India and the Far East are dominated by French and allied traders, rather than British.

The New World is French-dominated. It is possible that both Canada and the colonies become French possessions, depending on how fast the French Empire industrializes. By the end of the 20th Century, we’ve got a Francophone world in which the Asians are just begining to regain their freedom. The English-speaking world is more or less a footnote to history.

1588–Spanish Armada succeeds–England never colonizes America

I call this the Church Triumphant scenario. The Reformation is crushed and Spain and France begin the 17th Century in firm control of Europe. The German states are subjugated, but never undergo the trauma that is the Thirty Years’ War.

The Spanish and French take North America by storm. A wave of colonists and conquerers move from both north and south in a manner reminiscent of the Arab wars of conquest. “Convert or die,” the soldiers say. Unfortunately, even conversion does not save the lives of many natives who are worked to death by their new masters. As they die, their places are taken by hordes of African slaves brought over to toil in the noblemen’s fields.

The victorious nations use the resources of the New World to finish their wars of conquest. By 1700, there are no Protestant nations left as Sweden becomes the last to fall. The Turks are moved from the gates of Vienna to the Bosporus by 1800 and Russia comes back to the One True and Catholic Church by 1850 or so. By the mid-20th Century, the Christian nations are in the midst of a war with the Arabs over the oil-producing lands of the Middle East.

Lots of wars in this alternate, therefore tech level similar to ours. No Enlightenment at all. Religions often work best when there is a powerful opposing religion to act as a counterweight. Without Protestantism, there would have not been an effective brake on the political ambitions of the Church and I fear that the rich temptation of the New World would be enough to corrupt It.

No Eastern Seaboard, therefore no English colonies

In this scenario, there is no land between the St. Lawrence and Florida until one gets to the foothills of the Appalachians. There are no protected ports, therefore the English and Dutch are crowded out early and look for colonies elsewhere.

Without a foothold on the coast, colonization is much more difficult. The French from the north and the Spanish from the south are forced to move slowly since they are still diverting resources to deal with the British and Dutch in Europe. With the extra time and Spanish horses, the Plains Tribes are able to recover their population as the weather improves. By 1800 or so, there are two or three independent Native nations in the Central Plains.

In this world, all of the European powers are weakened and less able to wage war. Therefore, the industrial revolution does not begin until after 1850 or so. Slavery lasts a bit longer due to the need for muscle-power in agriculture. There is no English domination of the colonial world, it’s divided up evenly between the British, the Dutch, French and Spanish.

I can see this as a gentler world by the late 20th Century. Without a few dominant world powers, there are a lot of brushfire wars but no world wars. Technological change occurred more slowly and was more evenly divided between the first, second and third worlds. This might not be a bad place to live, especially if you’re not white.

No New World at all, just ocean

This is very interesting. Let’s say that the weather patterns are the same as in our world. (This isn’t likely, but without that assumption, the world is way too different to even consider–without the Gulf Stream, Europe wouldn’t have emerged from the Ice Age until the Early Medieval Warm Period.)

Let’s also say that the history of the Old World is the same until 1492. In many ways, this is the reverse of the 1588 scenario. Without the gold brought from the New World, the Catholic nations of Europe are much less powerful. Therefore, the Reformation is much more successful. Europe and the Old World come to be heavily influenced by British, Dutch and Swedish fleets.

This could lead to very interesting philosophical developments. Rather than the Enlightenment, I can see the Empowerment. Imagine Capitalism being as deeply psychotic as Marxism and seen as the way in which the world will be perfected. The poor, disadvantaged and weak are in their benighted state due to a higher plan.

Interestingly enough, I can see slavery ending in this world prior to the middle of the 18th Century simply due to a lack of need for them. The Triangular Trade routes don’t exist and all of the commerce moves around the horn of Africa. Africa would take the place of the New World in this scenario. It would be slower and tougher, but eventually the jungles would be conquered and the resources taken.

Rather than coal mines, I can see the digging of the Suez Canal in the mid to late 1700s being the source of the steam engines powering the Industrial Revolution. Asia would be subjugated early and often. It is actually possible that the West would conquer China in this alternate.

If the Ring of Fire still exists, there would probably be a chain of islands where the Rockies and Andes are in our world. With the distances as far from Europe and Asia as they are, I can see a Polynesian state coming into existence by the mid-19th Century. It is possible that they could evolve into a sort of Super-Japan in the century following that. The stage could be set for a completely naval world war as the superpowers take sides to divide up the offshore resources of the mid-Ocean lands.

Summary

For the most part, I believe that the United States has provided many things to the world over the last two hundred plus years. Initially, it and the entire New World provided resources to power the empires of Europe. Then, it provided an example of how the liberal thought of the Enlightenment could produce a nation of free Europeans. It used its power to defend other nations that also sought liberty in its hemisphere. As time progressed, it became a counter-weight to political ambitions of other world powers and eventually, after the Industrial Revolution, came to dominate the world’s economy. In short, it became the only nation capable of inventing the Internet and giving it away.

While this was occuring, it sometimes faltered and took the easy way, rather than the moral way. However, within it still lies the seeds of the revolution that will take mankind to its next evolutionary step.

Tom