I love the world

1. I almost lost all composure at work today. Why? The universe is far funnier than I could have imagined. First The Onion publishes this article, then THE NEXT FUCKING day this expose about obscene Japanese games comes out in the Belfast Telegraph. The article mentions that an MP is going to go before parliament with the issue, do you think he might demand... an apology from Japan?
2. I want a subscription to the Atlantic someday, they've really had some great articles. This is a shining example of someone thinking long term. Even if he's proved wrong it's important that people think about the consequences of actions and events.
3. In the same vein this article talks about lessons from the past (Japan's in particular). Both a sense of history and of consequences are crucial to living in a sustainable world.
4. Sweden deploys some interesting ships
5. Dream on Frum, I suspect the current Republican leadership still thinks they can "beat" Obama by attacking everything he does. It'll take a few more serious defeats for them to change their minds (unless Obama really screws up in an uncharacteristic way).

Interesting but not sure about long term consequences

I've heard about this before, and I'm skeptical for exactly the reasons discussed here. I just worry that having millions of them would effect climate in unanticipated ways.

So it goes...

Today I'm declaring a day of blog silence to commemorate both a sad and a happy event.

The Pope (in the most Discordian sense of the word), Bruce Sterling, of the Viridian Design Movement has declared the movement a (qualified) success and as such has ended it.

Why should this matter to you? If you look around you, you may realize that Viridians have attained some important wins in their drive to create a sustainable culture. A certain brand of environmental aesthetic has become chic, the victory of Obama (and the people he brings with him) has brought Viridian allies to power in the US, and the massive increase of immaterial consumables was one of the most important goals and profound insights of the movement.

I do think this matters more to me (and a small number of philosophical technologists) more than the vast majority of people to might read this blog. However when I read the introductory manifesto (written in 1998, and yes it is meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, that's his style) and the final note (written today) I find it a moving mental bookend of the last 10 years.

The goals of the movement are nowhere near complete, but as Joseph Campbell might have said, we've managed to change the metaphor (btw I only include myself as a believer, I didn't actually do much of with anybody outside the people I've met personally) .

Scary Map

This new map of underground aquifers around the world seemed really cool until I read the sentence "So far, the organisation has identified 273 trans-boundary aquifers...". Think of how much tension and how many wars that could lead to if the world water situation doesn't get better. I've said before that the only reason you don't here more about the Great Water Panic of the 21st Century is that the Great Energy Panic of the 20th-21st Centuries gets more press. I'll be keeping an eye on water developments as time goes on...

KK

I really admire KK, I like the way he thinks about the future (no coincidence that he's super involved with the Long Now Foundation, another favorite of mine).

Here are two neat things from him

1. An essay on the connection between technological progress and population.

2. A review of one of my favorite maps: a graphical representation of the ENTIRE American budget.

Futuristic sea "eco-rigs"

This article makes me think of that quote; "the future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed". Japan has been big leader technologically for a while and this is yet another example. This is the kind of project that I wish we were seeing seriously pursued in the US. I see projects all the time like this in the US and you know what the difference is? They're pipe dreams. Plans by architecture post-grads with good media connections, politicians or business moguls trying to get attention by announcing a "forum" or "committee-formation" to discuss some incredible idea that no one will actually pursue. This seems like it might actually have some resources behind it.

Neat Long Term Back Up Post

Long now blog has a post on backing up languages for 10000 years.

I want to go to this bar

So I think having a bar inside an ancient try is really cool. I'd love to have a drink inside a living 6000 year old tree. Take a look

Amazingly cool update on the Antikythera device

I'm so excited!!!!! There's been some further developments in figuring out what the device is and what it does. Go here first (you MUST watch the video) then go here for the Long Now take.

Neat

Cool Long Now seminar about art (I'm interested in the mention of Rodan's Crater and the lightning field), covered by Worldchanging.

The city rising

Check out this long, but interesting, article from TNR on how inner cities may be becoming gentrified. The rise of the city is something I've been keeping an eye since I started listening to Long Now seminars. I think the sustainable way of the future is the way of the city. There are increased dangers to be sure (terrorism, nuclear strikes, epidemics) but my sense is that the potential benefits outweigh them (increased efficiency, decreased transportation costs, increased connectedness). Your thoughts

Who is the "doer" of US foreign policy?

First, read this article

The basic question raised in the post is worth pondering: with all of the development overlapping with military conflict in the 21st century who or what is the appropriate agency to conduct applied foreign policy? The standard answer for a long time was the State Dept and clearly that is no longer the answer. In the past 10 years the military has taken an increasing roll in applying policy on the ground. Why is this an issue? There are many reasons but the first ones that come to mind are:
1. It's bad public relations. I don't care how you spin a big military presences in development projects it ALWAYS looks like we're trying to create an empire.
2. People sign up to the military because they love our country and want to defend it, possibly by by killing shit (an huge oversimplification which I hope you'll forgive me). I don't think those people are necessarily suited to doing good development work.

What should we do? I don't think throwing more money at the State department is the best way to go. The conflicts that loom in the future seem like they'll require a combination of hard military action and follow up development work. I think the best way to go is something like the way Thomas Barnett has advocated.

Summary from wikipedia:

1. In recognition of its dual role, the US military should organize itself according to two functions, the "Leviathan" and the "System Administrator."
   • Leviathan's purpose is employ overwhelming force to end violence quickly. It will take out governments, defend Core countries, and generally do the deterrence work that the US military has been doing since the end of WWII. The Leviathan force is primarily staffed by young aggressive personnel and is overwhelmingly American.
   • The SysAdmin's purpose is to wage peace: peacekeeping, nation building, strengthening weak governments, etc. The SysAdmin force is primarily staffed by older, more experienced personnel, though not entirely (he would put the Marines in SysAdmin as the " Mini-me Leviathan"). The sys Admin force would work best as a Core-wide phenomenon.

Thoughts?

Why The Apocalypse Won't Happen

First read this article

I find my self conflicted about this article. I do think that there are serious issues in the world that could cause an "Apocalypse" but I've increasingly come to believe that we are going to see a vast transition that will neither be as easy as some hope nor as catastrophic as some others fear. We'll see...

Interesting definition of future heros

I'll have to chew over this post from WorldChanging's Alex Steffen for a while. Basically he's talking about a kind of post-apocalyptic missionary. Huh (*mental gears start moving*), maybe I'll have something more interesting to say about this when I've thought about it more.

I'm So Impressed

Wow, I just finished reading Freeman Dyson's book review and KK's intellectual riff on it. My first feeling is just....wow. Part of me thinks that I should just stop writing and pondering long term thinking 'cus these guys are waaay smarter than me. I won't bother to summarize their posts other than to say that they cover long term thinking and environmental trends, they're fairly dense posts, and that I think they are profoundly insightful. I don't think I have my own riff on them yet I have to chew over their ideas for a while (like....um...years). Anyways, I'll leave you with my favorite piece from KK's post.

"But while progress runs on exponential curves, our individual lives proceed in a linear fashion. We live day by day by day. While we might think time flies as we age, it really trickles out steadily. Today will always be more valuable than some day in the future, in large part because we have no guarantee we’ll get that extra day. Ditto for civilizations. In linear time, the future is a loss. But because human minds and societies can improve things over time, and compound that improvement in virtuous circles, the future in this dimension is a gain. Therefore long-term thinking entails the confluence of the linear and the exponential. The linear march of our time intersects the cascading rise and fall of numerous self-amplifying exponential forces. Generations, too, proceed in a linear sequence. They advance steadily one after another while pushed by the compounding cycles of exponential change.

Balancing that point where the linear crosses the exponential is what long-term thinking should be about. For each generation and for each issue that equation of intersection will be different. Sometimes the immediate needs of the now will dominate, and the discount rate will favor the present. For example, the chronic use of childhood vaccines and antibiotics may prove to have long-term downsides, but their value to present generations is so great that we agree to send the cost to the future. Descending generations will have to pay the price — or to solve the problem by inventing better medicines using exponentially better knowledge and resources. Other times future generations will be so enhanced by the later exponential growth begun in a small immediate gain that we raise the discount rate. For example the yield in educating girls in any society is so great, so amplified and compounded in so many ways, over so many generations, that it is worth an awful lot to pay its costs now — even stiff costs in the face of cultural resistance and low immediate yields. Here the cost point is shifted to the present.

A timeline of where we expect these cost/benefit/risk-thresholds to fall in each sector of our civilization, or a field map of places we can see where our linear lives cross exponential change — either would be very handy to have."