Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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http://phys.org/news/2012-08-impact-crater-arctic.html

They found yet another reason to build nuclear interceptors to deflect asteroids and comet impact threats.

Sooner or later something is going to hit us. It could be like Tunguska in 1908 and destroy a city instead of a forest in Siberia- or it could be like what hit the Yucatan 65 million years ago.

Except just a little bigger and nothing larger than bacteria will survive. There is nothing written anywhere that says it will not happen tomorrow.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth over spending money on space never seems to cross over to DOD programs where obscene amounts of tax dollars are spent on cold war toys used to fight mountain tribesmen with Kalashnikovs.

For example:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-13/navy-disclo…rrier.html

The completed initial aircraft carrier, the first of three in the $40.2 billion program, is projected to cost at least $11.5 billion.

This essay was posted previously last year and removed and has appeared in abridged form in the European Space Safety online Magazine and can also be found on Yahoo voices.

Several dates are cited as marking the beginning of the space age. Sputnik, October 4th, 1957, Yuri’s day April 12th, 1961, and the first successful V-2 launch by the Nazis on October 3rd, 1942, to name a few. Some prefer December 21st, 1968, when human beings first escaped the Earth’s gravitational field on Apollo 8. When studying the events that allowed man to leave Earth, future historians may agree on a date not generally associated with space flight. July 16th, 1945 was Trinity, the first nuclear weapon test. Stanislaw Ulam, a 36-year-old Polish mathematician who helped build “the gadget”, visited ground zero after the test. Ulam later conceived the idea of propelling a spaceship with atomic bombs. Near the end of his life the eccentric genius stated the idea was his greatest work.

When considering nuclear propulsion, it must be understood that space is not an ocean, though often characterized as one. The distances and conditions are not comparable. While chemical energy has allowed humankind to travel across and above the surface of Earth, the energy required to travel in space is of a different order. Water, in the form of steam, was the agent of change that brought about the industrial revolution. Fossil fuel, burned and transformed by steam into mechanical work, would radically change the world in the span of a century. What is difficult for moderns to understand is not only how limited human capabilities were before steam, but how limited they are in the present in terms of space travel. The psychological limits of human beings limit space journeys to a few years. Chemical propulsion is not capable of taking human beings to the outer solar system and back within those crew limits. The solution is a reaction one million times more powerful. Nuclear energy is to the space age as steam was to the industrial age.

Space is not an ocean and this was the correct lesson drawn by Stanislaw Ulam after that suddenly bright morning in 1945. While metal can barely contain and harness chemical energy, Ulam thought outside that box and accepted nuclear energy could never be contained efficiently by any material. However, nuclear energy could be harnessed to push a spaceship in separate events to the fantastic velocities required for interplanetary travel without any containment problems at all- by using bombs. An uncontained burst of nuclear generated plasma could be withstood by a surface momentarily before the physical matter had time to melt.

Sixty years after Ulam’s stroke of genius, atomic bomb propulsion still has no competition as the only available propulsion system for practical interplanetary travel. This fact is almost completely unknown to the public. The term “ISP”, expressed in seconds, is used in measuring the efficiency of a rocket engine and chemical rockets have low ISP numbers but high thrust. The most efficient rocket engines, such as the space shuttle main engines, with a listed ISP of 453 seconds are also among the most powerful. Atomic bomb propulsion, thanks to the billions of dollars poured into star wars weapons research, would have an ISP exceeding 100,000 seconds. While other propulsion systems that use electricity have similar or higher numbers, the amount of thrust is trivial and requires months or years of continuous operation to develop any significant velocity. Considering space travel as not only a speed and distance problem, but also a time and distance problem, low thrust lengthens any missions to the outer solar system beyond crew limits. The thrust imparted by atomic bombs can in a short period easily accelerate thousands of tons to the comparatively extreme speeds necessary and then coast. Unlike an electric propulsion failure, a few dud bombs need not doom a mission or crew.

Though an incredible use of awesome power, the obstacles to employing bomb propulsion are not technical as some of the best engineers and physicists on the planet evaluated and validated the concept. A cadre of celebrity scientists also endorsed atomic bomb propulsion, including Werner Von Braun, who was present as a Nazi SS officer at the first successful V-2 launch, and as an American citizen at the launch of Apollo 8. Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan were also supporters. The first serious work on bomb propulsion was done by physicist Freeman Dyson and weapon designer Ted Taylor on the top secret project Orion. Dyson’s son, in his book Project Orion, refers to the classified star wars project Casaba Howitzer. This device focused most of the energy of a nuclear explosion in one direction. Ted Taylor’s specialty was small warheads and he designed the Orion bombs, aka “pulse units.” The “unclassified” state of the art in nuclear weapons can direct 80 percent of bomb energy into a slab of propellant, converting this mass into a jet of superheated plasma. A pusher plate would absorb the blast without melting for the fraction of a second it lasts and accelerate the spaceship in steps with each bomb. Perhaps the closest experience to riding in an atomic bomb propelled spaceship would be repeated aircraft carrier catapult launches. Instead of the ocean- space, instead of supersonic fighters- a thousand ton spaceship.

Project Orion was canceled due to nuclear weapon treaties requiring international consent for using any such devices in space. A parallel to the failure of atomic bomb propulsion may be found in an examination of the industrial age. In The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention, author William Rosen theorizes English patent law was the key enabler of the industrial age by allowing inventors to retain and profit from their intellectual property. The atomic bomb originated with a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 from pacifist Albert Einstein- who was afraid the Nazi’s might build one first. With the human race living at the bottom of a deep, damp, and easily contaminated gravity well, atom bombs have never been applied successfully to a peaceful purpose. Stan Ulam, who lost most of his family in the holocaust, held the patent on atomic bomb propulsion. In the space age, nuclear weapon treaties and anti-nuclear activism have had the opposite effect of patent law and prevented atomic bomb propulsion from opening up the solar system to human exploration and colonization. Ironically, the nuclear industry is not safe on Earth- but deep space seems designed for it. There are no contamination or waste hazards, no long-term storage problems.

The problems with space travel are more than just the political barriers to detonating nuclear devices. The space industry is ipso facto a nuclear industry. Not only is nuclear energy the only practical source of propulsion in deep space, nuclear radiation generated by supernova and other celestial sources permeate space outside the protection of the earth’s atmosphere. All astronauts are radiation workers. Most, but sadly not all, space radiation is relatively easy to shield against. Many will argue using atomic bombs for propulsion is unnecessary. The presence of a small percentage of highly damaging and deeply penetrating particles- the heavy nuclei component of galactic cosmic rays makes a super powerful propulsion system mandatory. The tremendous power of atomic bomb propulsion is certainly able to propel the heavily shielded capsules required to protect space travelers. The great mass of shielding makes chemical engines, inefficient nuclear thermal rockets, the low thrust forms of electrical propulsion, and solar sails essentially worthless for human deep space flight. Which is why atomic bomb propulsion is left as the only “off the shelf” viable means of propulsion. For the foreseeable future, high thrust and high ISP to propel heavy shielding to the required velocities is only possible using bombs. The most useful and available form of radiation shielding is water. While space may not be an ocean, it appears human beings will have to take some of the ocean with them to survive.

The water comes before the bombs in human space flight because of the humans. The radiation hazards of long duration human space flight beyond earth orbit are only recently being addressed after decades of space station experience. The reason for this neglect is low earth orbit space stations are shielded from much of the radiation found outside the Earth’s Van Allen belts and magnetic field. An appreciation of the heavy nuclei component of galactic cosmic radiation, as well as solar events, will put multi-year human missions beyond earth orbit on hold indefinitely until a practical shield is available. While vested interests continue to promote inferior or non-existent technology, dismissing the radiation hazards and making promises they cannot keep, radiation scientists studying deep space conditions are skeptical- to say the least.

In the March 2006 issue of Scientific American magazine, Dr. Eugene Parker explained in simple terms survivable deep space travel. In “Shielding Space Travelers”, Parker states, “cosmic rays pose irreducible risks.” The premise of this statement is revealed when the only guaranteed solution to reducing the risk- a shield massing hundreds of tons- is deemed impractical. Active magnetic shields and other schemes are likewise of no use because while they may stop most radiation, the only effective barrier to heavy nuclei is mass and distance. The impracticality of a massive shield is due to first the expense of lifting hundreds of tons of shielding into space from Earth, and secondly propelling this mass around the solar system. Propelling this mass is not a problem if using atomic bombs, however, another problem arises. Even if the bombs could be politically managed, there is still the need to escape Earth’s gravitational field with all that shielding. Bomb propulsion is ideal for deep space but cannot be used in Earth orbit due to the Earth’s magnetic field trapping radioactive fallout that eventually enters the atmosphere. Not only lifting the shielding into orbit but chemically boosting it to a higher escape velocity away from the Earth is thus doubly problematic. Earth is a deep gravity well to climb out of.

The situation changed in March 2010 when NASA reported Mini-SAR radar aboard the Chandrayaan-1 lunar space probe had detected what appeared to be ice deposits at the lunar North Pole. An estimated 600 million tons of ice in sheets a couple meters thick. Moon water would allow a spaceship in lunar orbit to fill an outer hull with the 500+ tons of water required to effectively shield a capsule from heavy nuclei. This would enable an empty spaceship to “travel light” to the Moon and then boost out of lunar orbit using atomic bomb propulsion with a full radiation shield. Parker’s guaranteed but impractical solution had suddenly become practical. Fourteen feet of water equals the protection of the Earth’s air column at an altitude of 18,000 feet above sea level. This would protect astronauts not only from all forms of cosmic radiation but the most intense solar storms and the radiation belts found near the moons of Jupiter. With water and bombs, epic missions of exploration to the asteroid belt and outer planets are entirely possible. The main obstacles are again political, not technical. Bombs work, water works, and the Moon is in range of chemically propelled spacecraft launched from Earth.

There are other challenges to long duration beyond earth orbit human space flight but the solutions have been known for many decades. Zero gravity debilitation causes astronauts to weaken and permanently lose bone and bone marrow mass. The most practical solution, theorized since the early 1930′s, was investigated in 1966 during the Gemini 11 mission. A 100-foot tether experiment with the capsule attached to an Agena booster was successful in generating a small amount of artificial gravity by spinning the two vehicles. Equal masses on the ends of a tether can efficiently generate centrifugal force equal to one gravity. The concept is to “split the ship” when not maneuvering under power so the 500+ tons of shielded capsule is on one end and the rest of the craft of equal mass is reeled out on the other end of a thousand foot or more tether. Looking out through 14 feet of water, the crew of such a spaceship would view a slowly rotating star field. Long duration missions may last close to half a decade and the only option for providing air and water is to use a miniature version of Earth’s ecosystem. Equipment to enable a closed cycle life support system providing years of air and water is now available in the form of plasma reformers and facilitated by tons of water in which to grow algae or genetically modified organisms. With Earth radiation, Earth gravity, and air and water endlessly purified on board, crews can push their psychological limits as many years and as far out into the solar system as the speed of their atomic spaceships allow.

At the time of this writing, in early 2011, the outlook for human space flight is not encouraging. There are zero prospects for funding a long duration beyond earth orbit mission. Using atomic bombs to push minimum spaceship masses of over one thousand tons around the solar system for years at a time would cost as much as several major U.S. department of defense projects combined. Space flight is inherently expensive; there is no cheap. However, there is a completely valid military mission for atomic bomb propelled spaceships. Planetary protection became an issue in 1980 after the Chicxulub impact crater in Mexico was assigned blame for the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Though overshadowed by the cold war, the impact threat remains. Comet and asteroid impacts are also the stuff of Hollywood movies and this is unfortunate in that a grave threat to the survival of life on earth is viewed as fictional entertainment. The impact threat is not science fiction; it is quite real, as the frequent near misses and geologic evidence of repeated extinction events show. Optimized directional bombs used in bomb propulsion could also be employed to deflect comets and asteroids long before they approach Earth.

While the consequences of ignoring the threat of an inevitable tsunami, earthquake, or hurricane are bad, the consequences of ignoring the inevitable comet or asteroid impact are apocalyptic. It is not only random impacts that could strike at any time the human race need guard against. In April of 2010 renowned physicist Stephen Hawking warned of alien civilizations posing a possible threat to humanity. Several large comets purposely crashed into a planet to wipe out the majority of indigenous life and prepare for the introduction of invasive alien species may be a common occurrence in the galaxy. Before readers scoff, they might consider towers brought down by jetliners, the discovery of millions of planets, and other recent unlikely events. It is within our power to defend Earth from the very real threat of an impact, and at this time self-defense is the only valid reason to go into space instead of spending the resources on Earth improving the human condition. Protecting our species from extinction is the penultimate moral high ground above all other calls on public funds. The vast treasure expended by nations threatening each other is not protecting the human race at all. Earth is defenseless. President Ronald Reagan in his 1983 Star Wars speech said, “I call upon the scientific community who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace.” President Barack Obama has expressed a desire to reduce the world nuclear arsenal and converting these weapons to propulsion devices would do so. A powerful force of nuclear powered, propelled, and armed spaceships cannot guarantee Earth will not suffer a catastrophe. The best insurance for our species is to establish, in concert with a spaceship fleet, several independent self-supporting off world colonies in the outer solar system. The first such colony would mark the beginning of a new age.

Time line

1939 (August) Einstein sends letter recommending atomic bomb.

1939 (September) Germany invades Poland, World War 2 begins.

1942 First successful V-2 rocket launch by the Nazis.

1945 Trinity, the first atomic bomb is detonated.

1957 Sputnik achieves orbit using a rocket designed to carry an atomic bomb.

1961 Yuri Gagarin orbits Earth.

1966 Gemini 11 mission demonstrates artificial gravity.

1967 Outer Space Treaty restricts nuclear weapons in space.

1968 Apollo 8 crew escapes Earth’s gravitational field.

1980 Chicxulub impact crater revealed as dinosaur killer.

1983 Ronald Reagan gives Star Wars speech.

2006 Eugene Parker explains survivable deep space travel.

2010 (March) Millions of tons of ice are discovered on the Moon.

2010 (April) Stephen Hawking warns of alien civilization threat.

References

George Dyson, 2002, Project Orion: The True story of the Atomic Spaceship, Henry Holt and Company, LLC

Eugene Parker, March 2006, Shielding Space Travelers, Scientific American Magazine

William Rosen, 2010, The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention, Random House

ENVIRONMENT & BACKGROUND

China is a rising world power with: increasing international economic power; improving military strength; tumultuous social issues. Exiting from the recent global economic and financial crisis, China sees itself strengthening and growing while America (and much of the ‘Western’ world) struggles to recuperate. This recovery disparity has given support to Chinese sentiment suggesting the superiority of Chinese policy and social culture.

China’s newfound (or newly revived) superiority complex has complicated American interaction with the government, where China now appears to be doing everything it can to avoid looking weak and to resist US/Western influence. With China’s rise, incentives for America to pressure democratization, establishment of free market economics, and improvement of human rights have grown in intensity. The US has very direct interests in the ‘Westernization’ of China and China does see benefits to cooperation, however they seem to resist or avert most American challenges to the Sino-status quo.

AVAILABLE OPTIONS

America can become aggressive, passive, apathetic, or cooperative in its relationship with China. The US could seek to dominate China, let China strengthen its own dominance, ‘step out of the picture’, or work with China to grow and develop both countries simultaneously.

It is more likely that the US will work to cooperate with China, perhaps doing so with a passive-aggressive bias that asserts American interests without direct systemic attempts to alter Chinese institutions. China and the US have committed to positive and cooperative relations, however it can be expected that such a commitment will only be honored as long as it serves the interests of both states.

INFLUENCES

Differences over human rights, domestic/foreign policy, democratization, and economic/financial theory and practice will greatly influence how the two states interact. Economically and politically it behooves both states to cooperate in the short and long runs. Also, much of Asia supports and welcomes American presence in the region. As long as the US restrains itself from imperializing the region and overthrowing China’s presence, and as long as China does not attempt to oust America, a relatively stable base that assures permanent presence of both parties in the region can be used to develop further policy on.

America is influenced by its democracy, free market policies, and strong human rights, as well as its desire to impose these principles on other states. The base previously described provides the US with a simple supportive argument; ‘if we’re both going to interact in the same place, we better learn how to interact productively’. The simple presence of such an argument influences America’s decisions as it provides a point China cannot ignore.

The US is very economically interested and invested in the greater Asian region. America will surely seek out policy that improves US — China relations, however it will levy importance on policy that enhances economic efficiency and effectiveness in the region (perhaps at the expense of US — China relations).

Another great influence on America’s decision making process is the power China has in the international system. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China’s ability to veto measures and resolutions greatly affects America’s (perceived) international power. Learning to effectively interact with China would improve international US — Chinese efforts.

FINAL DECISION/RECOMMENDATION

US — Chinese relations should focus around three main points: policy cooperation; healthy economic competition; political and cultural respect.

The US should help China grow as a world power, including it in international issues and decision making processes as well as new and/or existing trade organizations. By helping China to grow it shows America is interested in seeing the country develop rather than restraining it. This will make negotiation easier and will help to keep China from making extremist policy decisions. Cooperation shows desire for mutual progress.

Provision of challenging economic competition motivates economic improvement and progress. China artificially inflates its currency, dramatically boosting its exports. However, China has realized it cannot grow/mature on export economics. The US should focus on aiding China to develop its own domestic market. As China’s economy develops, its growth rate will slow as it begins to peak its international efficiency under current economic conditions. China will not remain a manufacturing economy forever. When export-based economic policy no longer supports the country the way it does now China will have to consider new ways to compete efficiently and effectively, and the best way (and currently only way) to do so is to enact free market economic policies. Establishing and continuing healthy economic competition (with reduction of protectionist barriers) will naturally drive China towards free market economics over time as China becomes dissatisfied with its socioeconomic disparities, low GDP-per capita, lack of economic diversification, and constant threat of unemployment-related unrest.

Henry Kissinger stated, “Lecturing a country with a history of millennia about its need to ‘grow up’ and behave ‘responsibly’ can be needlessly grating”. Including China in important international and regional decision making processes shows respect to Chinese policy makers and culture. China is attempting to assert new power domestically, regionally, and internationally. Though the US is concerned with China’s growing power and influence, America needs to realize the main challenge for China has been to maintain domestic stability while simultaneously maintaing sustainable economic development. By respecting Chinese sovereignty and withholding from direct intervention and overly-aggressive assertion, Chinese policy makers are less likely to become defensive. China is intent on showing the world its strength and capability as an important and powerful international and regional actor. Allowing China to develop respect will give America a long-term edge in policy making. The US does need to constantly voice its stance on human rights, economic development, and democratization, though. Failing to maintain its stance would render the US as weak/defeated in Chinese eyes.

DECISION EXPLANATION/RATIONALE

China does not desire poor relations with the United States. Both the US and China want good, stable relations that maximize the capabilities of the two states to seek their own interests while allowing a degree of economic, political, and social cooperation to exist. However America is the regional hegemon. China seeks to displace America. In seeking to displace America, China will resist American influence.

There is a common Chinese perception that the US is damaged/weakening while China is growing and becoming stronger. China will do anything to prevent itself from appearing weak, influenceable, and without regional/international political, economic, and social clout. Therefore, the US should refrain from attempting to directly influence and intervene in Chinese policy as this will only galvanize Chinese self-inflated power and make current and future cooperation more difficult. China will not accept foreign ideas, suggestions, or demands as this would make it look inferior to and impressionable by foreign states. If the US wants to change China it needs to make China believe itself that US-desired reform is in its best interest.

The US needs to get China to come to democratization, free market capitalism, and associated levels of human rights on its own accord, as US intervention will only make these doctrines less attractive to Chinese policy makers. By cooperating on policy development, continuing economic competition, and respecting Chinese sovereignty (and dignity), the US puts itself in an advantageous long-term relations position.

Read the original post at bmseifert.com.

Every year Médecins Sans Frontières/ Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hold a conference to present scientific research carried out by their teams from different parts of the world. This year’s conference highlighted some of the strategic challenges facing MSF, and challenged some of our conceptions of medical humanitarian aid, and international development in light of groundbreaking digital technologies. We are as Paul Conneally passionately articulated in his keynote speech – Digital Humanitarian – ‘on the cusp of a global health revolution’.

Some of the groundbreaking technologies touched upon included crisis mapping, a technology that is still in its infancy, and the era of big data. The possibilities of how healthcare and humanitarian aid will be transformed by the convergence of ideas and technologies were evident in the poster session; humanitarian technology applications showed refugee camps in Kenya being monitored using satellite imagery and a humanitarian field software kit called joekit. Of the talks demonstrating real world examples, a talk by Isabella Panunzi on teleradiology proved to be immensely inspiring.

Isabella’s talk on her experience of applying teleradiology to improve diagnosis of tuberculosis in Thyolo District Hospital, Malawi showcased humanitarian innovation at its best. X-rays are taken at the Malawi hospital and the images are then sent to radiologists in the USA to interpret the images. As a result teleradiology has reduced critical delays and missed diagnosis of TB. This example of digital humanitarianism symbolises a small fraction of what can be potentially achieved in transforming our world. It opens up new possibilities in the transfer of technology and knowledge to the developing world. It also highlights the need for a different approach to modelling the strategic challenges of medical humanitarian aid and international development, and this is where complexity thinking and science can bring together different parts of problems and solutions to construct true holistic solutions.

A talk by Jonathan Smith, lecturer in Global Health and Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale University, brought together the disciplines of the arts and sciences as he gave an inventive take on using research in the digital age. Visually documenting disease and connecting the ‘emotional component to epidemiological data’ is extremely powerful to create change in global health observed Jonathon, as he showed part of a documentary film he is directing, ‘They Go to Die’, a film about,

four former migrant gold minework­ers in South Africa and Swazi­land who have contracted drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) and HIV while working at the gold mine. When the miners fail to improve their TB status at the mining hospital, they are sent home to rural areas of South Africa often with no continuation of care or means for treatment. This practice is often referred to as “sending them home to die” by leading health officials. The film raises concerns of disease and human rights violations uniquely though the context of life, love, and family; unlike traditional health films, it focuses on relationships and bonding, not death and disease. It is a film of uniting across cultures and paints a portrait of common humanity.

Jonathon is spearheading the Visual Epidemiology Project, a really exciting project ‘that will integrate sensory engagement (film, artistry) with academic discourse’ and ‘produce future academically valid documentaries on other global health issues.’

I feel like picking up a film camera.

Russia’s hastily convened international conference in St. Petersburg next month is being billed as a last-ditch effort at superpower cooperation in defense of Earth against dangers from space.

But it cannot be overlooked that this conference comes in response to the highly controversial NATO anti-ballistic missile deployments in Eastern Europe. These seriously destabilizing, nuclear defenses are pretexted as a defense against a non-nuclear Iran. In reality, the western moves of anti-missile systems into Poland and Romania create a de facto nuclear first-strike capability for NATO, and they vacate a series of Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaties with the Russians that go back forty years.

Deeply distrustful of these new US and NATO nuclear first-strike capabilities, the Russians announced they will not attend NATO’s planned deterrence summit in Chicago this month. Instead, they are testing Western intentions with a proposal for cooperative project for near-space mapping, surveillance, and defense against Earth-crossing asteroids and other dangerous space objects.

The Russians have invited NATO members as well as forward-thinking space powers to a conference in June in Petrograd. The agenda: Planetary defense against incursions by objects from space. It would be a way of making cooperative plowshares from the space technologies of hair-trigger nuclear terror (2 minutes warning, or less, in the case of the Eastern European ABMs).

It’s an offer the US and other space powers should accept.

RMS <em>Titanic</em> Sails
What’s to worry? RMS Titanic departs Southampton.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster in 1912. What better time to think about lifeboats?

One way to start a discussion is with some vintage entertainment. On the centenary weekend of the wreck of the mega-liner, our local movie palace near the Hudson River waterfront ran a triple bill of classic films about maritime disasters: A Night to Remember, Lifeboat, and The Poseidon Adventure. Each one highlights an aspect of the lifeboat problem. They’re useful analogies for thinking about the existential risks of booking a passage on spaceship Earth.

Can’t happen…

A Night to Remember frames the basic social priorities: Should we have lifeboats and who are they for? Just anybody?? When William McQuitty produced his famous 1958 docudrama of the Titanic’s last hours, the answers were blindingly obvious – of course we need lifeboats! They’re for everyone and there should be enough! Where is that moral certainty these days? And whatever happened to the universal technological optimism of 1912? For example, certain Seasteaders guarantee your rights – and presumably a lifeboat seat – only as long as your dues are paid. Libertarians privatize public goods, run them into the ground, squeeze out every dime, move the money offshore, and then dictate budget priorities in their own interest. Malthusians handle the menu planning. And the ship’s captain just might be the neo-feudal Prince Philip, plotting our course back to his Deep Green Eleventh Century.

Tallulah Bankhead in <em>Lifeboat</em>
Think Mink and Don’t Sink: Talulah Bankhead in Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat deals with the problems of being in one. For a very long time – unlike the lucky stiffs on the Titanic, who were picked up in 2 hours. Specifically, it’s about a motley group of passengers thrown together in an open boat with short provisions, no compass, and no certain course. And, oh yes, the skipper is their mortal enemy: The lifeboat is helmed by the U-boat commander who torpedoed their ship. He overawes them with seafaring expertise and boundless energy (thanks to the speed pills in his secret stash) and then lulls them by singing sentimental German lieder. At night, the captain solves his problems of supply and authority by culling the injured passengers while everyone’s asleep. He tells the survivors they’re going to Bermuda. They’re actually headed for a rendezvous with his supply ship – and from there the slow boat to Buchenwald. The point of Lifeboat is simple: What can you do in your life and environment so you never, ever end up in one?

What’s wrong with this picture?

Risk avoidance is the moral of The Poseidon Adventure. A glorious old ocean liner, the Poseidon, is acquired by new owners who plan to scrap it. But these clever operators maximize shareholder value by billing the ship’s final voyage as a New Year’s cruise to Greece. They take on every paying passenger they can find, barter with a band to get free entertainment, and drive the underloaded ship hard and fast into the stormy winter Mediterranean over the protests of the captain and seasick travelers. At this point an undersea earthquake triggers a 90-foot tsunami, and despite ample warnings this monster wave broadsides the top-heavy liner at midnight, during the New Year’s party. First the ball drops. Then the other shoe drops. The result is the ultimate “Bottoms Up!”

And the takeaway of The Poseidon Adventure applies to all of the films and to life in general, not to mention the next few generations on the planet. As David McCollough’s famously concluded in The Johnstown Flood, it can be a fatal assumption ‘that the people who were responsible for your safety will act responsibly.’

You can have a ripping good time watching these old movies. And as futurists, sociologists, planners, catastrophists, humanists or transhumanists, you can conjure with them, too. Icebergs and U-boats have ceased to menace – of cruise ships, I say nothing.

But the same principles of egalitarianism, legitimacy, non-beligerence and prudential planning apply to Earth-crossing asteroids, CERN’s operations and program, Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno manipulations, monetary policy and international finance, and NATO deployments present and future.

Or do they? And if they do, who says so?

Ship beautiful — the Aquitania on her way.

CC BY-NC-ND Clark Matthews and The Lifeboat Foundation

Creative Commons License
Earth’s Titanic Challenges by Clark Matthews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://lifeboat.com.

GatgetBridge is currently just a concept. It might start its life as a discussion forum, later turn into a network or an organisation and hopefully inspire a range of similar activities.

We will soon be able to use technology to make ourselves more intelligent, feel happier or change what motivates us. When the use of such technologies is banned, the nations or individuals who manage to cheat will soon lord it over their more obedient but unfortunately much dimmer fellows. When these technologies are made freely available, a few terrorists and psychopaths will use them to cause major disasters. Societies will have to find ways to spread these mind enhancement treatments quickly among the majority of their citizens, while keeping them from the few who are likely to cause harm. After a few enhancement cycles, the most capable members of such societies will all be “trustworthy” and use their skills to stabilise the system (see “All In The Mind”).

But how can we manage the transition period, the time in which these technologies are powerful enough to be abused but no social structures are yet in place to handle them? It might help to use these technologies for entertainment purposes, so that many people learn about their risks and societies can adapt (see “Should we build a trustworthiness tester for fun”). But ideally, a large, critical and well-connected group of technology users should be part of the development from the start and remain involved in every step.

To do that, these users would have to spend large amounts of money and dedicate considerable manpower. Fortunately, the basic spending and working patterns are in place: People already use a considerable part of their income to buy consumer devices such as mobile phones, tablet computers and PCs and increasingly also accessories such as blood glucose meters, EEG recorders and many others; they also spend a considerable part of their time to get familiar with these devices. Manufacturers and software developers are keen to turn any promising technology into a product and over time this will surely include most mind measuring and mind enhancement technologies. But for some critical technologies this time might be too long. GadgetBridge is there to shorten it as follows:

- GadgetBridge spreads its philosophy — that mind-enhancing technologies are only dangerous when they are allowed to develop in isolation — that spreading these technologies makes a freer world more likely — and that playing with innovative consumer gadgets is therefore not just fun but also serves a good cause.

- Contributors make suggestions for new consumer devices based on the latest brain research and their personal experiences. Many people have innovative ideas but few are in a position to exploit them. Contributors rather donate their ideas that see them wither away or claimed by somebody else.

- All ideas are immediately published and offered free of charge to anyone who wants to use them. Companies select and implement the best options. Users buy their products and gain hands-on experience with the latest mind measurement and mind enhancement technologies. When risks become obvious, concerned users and governments look for ways to cope with them before they get out of hand.

- Once GadgetBridge produces results, it might attract funding from the companies that have benefited or hope to benefit from its services. GadgetBridge might then organise competitions, commission feasibility studies or develop a structure that provides modest rewards to successful contributors.

Your feedback is needed! Please be honest rather than polite: Could GadgetBridge make a difference?

Greetings fellow travelers, please allow me to introduce myself; I’m Mike ‘Cyber Shaman’ Kawitzky, independent film maker and writer from Cape Town, South Africa, one of your media/art contributors/co-conspirators.

It’s a bit daunting posting to such an illustrious board, so let me try to imagine, with you; how to regard the present with nostalgia while looking look forward to the past, knowing that a millisecond away in the future exists thoughts to think; it’s the mode of neural text, reverse causality, non-locality and quantum entanglement, where the traveller is the journey into a world in transition; after 9/11, after the economic meltdown, after the oil spill, after the tsunami, after Fukushima, after 21st Century melancholia upholstered by anti-psychotic drugs help us forget ‘the good old days’; because it’s business as usual for the 1%; the rest continue downhill with no brakes. Can’t wait to see how it all works out.

Please excuse me, my time machine is waiting…
Post cyberpunk and into Transhumanism

Nobody Can Predict the Moment of Revolution

While watching the occupy wall street movement gain momentum and challenge the status quo, we in the transhumanist and technoprogressive community should be taking notes at the differences between this movement and those of the 20th century in direct opposition to some set of conservative policies.

This movement is not in direct opposition to anything. It is however, in opposition to any kind of conservative solutions being recommended to the systemic economic ailments of today. This movement attacks fascism while often improperly referencing the term, it attacks crony capitalism which is culturally vague, and corporatism which is a new word. While an academic or linguist might find them difficult to understand, it is quite simple to judge them as defending themselves as a part of society that is being depleted, as a direct result of our inability to allocate tangible value to them. They are angry. This growing mass of people across the United States is not looking to return to a socio-economic model that influences similar politics of the last century.

Watch the reference video. This is the same group of people (young and old) that are technologically transparent as Peter Singer identifies. They would likely take, but are not looking for traditional jobs, as I and so many others have talked/written about frequently. This vast majority of human potential, while looking at the numbers, can’t be satisfied their odds to compete successfully. Of course, democratic culture has a venue to argue the abstraction of political and even economic rifts in society, but there are none that allow the relatively untrained to argue root causes of the problems preventing their previously comfortable existence.

Movements that aren’t rigidly against some establishment, have a difficult time forming a set of solutions to seek. While the core argument may be “revolting against capitalism”, there is no replacement in site. Having stated that, the Smithian theories aren’t ill prepared; they do however, fail to address the very primitive ability of humans to gauge competition and allocate assets (tangible value); even in a vast market of millions of participants with relatively modest self-interest.

Those opposed, find five congruent contradictions (Ecology, Inequality, Poverty, Property, Systemic Risk) when considering the modern manifestation of what Aristotle, Adam, and Ayn elaborated on in the modern era. These contradictions are not in fact intrinsic to capitalism. They are intrinsic to the animal. In the human pursuit for ecological prudence, egalitarianism, distribution of wealth, shared property, and managed risks; we regularly reject the idea that it is impossible to achieve our goals without our technological extensions…without transparency of information, without distribution of education, without allocation of technologies based on need, as a result of our understandings through transparency. Courting technoprogressivism onto the American political stage may have been a viewed as radical in the last decade, even as its consistent economic recession ensued. But it may not be today, amongst the somewhat informed activists of virtual social networkers and physical street walkers.

In order to be rendered valuable, entities (people in this case) have to be represented well under some agreed upon or legal model. In the case of liberal desperation I think people are willing to consider the potential of living-out the interconnected scenario painted in my voting public or more vividly by Hank Pellissier‘s “representative democracy” in Invent Utopia Now. The transhuman rhetoric based around fundamentally transforming the human condition is not farfetched for the leftist movements of today. One would be naïve to think that tax reform or austerity or redistribution of wealth alone, could cure my aforementioned contradictions. There are no conservative means to remedy the problems of today, only to return to those of the past. Movements like occupy wall street are unlikely to reject transhumanist conversation because of their spiritual or educational or morally conservative roots. Further, we are witnessing an opportunity to empower activist’s discomfort with H+ solutions, to occupy all streets.

Abstract

American history teachers praise the educational value of Billy Joel’s 1980s song ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’. His song is a homage to the 40 years of historical headlines since his birth in 1949.

Which of Joel’s headlines will be considered the most important a millennium from now?

This column discusses five of the most important, and tries to make the case that three of them will become irrelevant, while one will be remembered for as long as the human race exists (one is uncertain). The five contenders are:

The Bomb
The Pill
African Colonies
Television
Moonshot


Article

My previous column concentrated on the Hall Weather Machine[1], with a fairly technocentric focus. In contrast, this column is not technical at all, but considers the premise that if we don’t know our past, then we don’t know what our future will be.

American history teachers praise Billy Joel’s 1980s song ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ for its educational value. His song is a homage to the 40-years of historical headlines since his birth in 1949. Before reading further, go to http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html to hear it and to see the photographs that go with each phrase of the song.

Which of Joel’s headlines do you think will be most important, when considered by people a millennium from now? A thousand years is a long time.

Many of the popular figures Joel mentions from politics, entertainment, and sports have already begun to fade from living memory, so they are easy to dismiss. Similarly, which nation won which war will be remembered only by historians, though the genetic components of descendants affected by those wars will reverberate through the centuries. An interesting exercise would consider the most significant events of the eleventh century. English-speaking historians might mention the Battle of Hastings, but is Britain even a world power any longer? Where are the Byzantine, Ottoman, Toltec, and Holy Roman empires of a thousand years ago?

Note that there may be a difference between what most people 1,000 years from now will consider to be the most important and what may actually be the most important. In this case, just because the empires mentioned above are gone doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t have a significant role in creating our present and our future — we may simply be unconscious of their effect.

I will consider a few possibilities before arguing for one headline that is certain to be remembered, rightfully so, ten thousand years from now — if not longer.


The Bomb

First, most thoughtful people would include the hydrogen-bomb. A few decades ago, almost everyone would have agreed wholeheartedly. At that time, the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction hung heavily over every life in the USSR and the United States (if not the world). With the USSR now gone, and Russia and USA not quite at each others throats, the danger from extinction via a full-out nuclear exchange may be lower. However, the danger of a nuclear attack that kills a few million people is actually more likely.

Up till now, for a nation to become a great power and thereby wield great influence, it needed the level of organization that depended on civilization. No matter how brutal their government or culture — such as Nazi Germany, Communist Soviet Union, or Ancient Rome — their organization depended on efficient education, competent administration, large-scale engineering, and the finer things in life — to motivate at least the elite. Even then, some of the benefit would trickle down as “a rising tide raises all boats”. Competent and educated slaves were a key to Roman Civilization, just as educated bureaucrats were essential to the Nazi and Soviet systems.

Now, however, we are getting into a situation in which atomic weapons give the edge to the stark-raving mad — anyone who is willing to use them. This situation could be most destructive to prosperous, open, humanistic, and civilized nations, because they may be less willing to give up their comfort and freedom to defend against this threat. It appears very likely that within a decade or less, any ragtag collection of pip-squeak lunatics will be able to level the greatest city on Earth, even if it is defended by the world’s strongest army. This is because the advances in nuclear enrichment technology (along with all technology) will make it easier for pip-squeak lunatics to acquire or manufacture nuclear bombs.

That being said, however, it is also true that really advanced technology — specifically privacy-invasive information technology, perhaps in the form of throwaway supercomputers in a massive network of dustcams — might stop the pip-squeak lunatics before they can build and deploy their nuclear bombs.

In addition, another decade of technological development will result in nanobots. By the way, this isn’t just my prediction (the defense of which is a subject of a future column), but also the opinion of inventive dreamers such as Raymond Kurzweil, and of conservative achievers such as Lockheed executives. The development of nanobots means that cellular repair of radiation damage may also become possible (though the problems of controlling trillions of nanobots and of how to detect and repair radiation damage are additional separate and very difficult engineering and biological issues). Michael Flynn examined some of the nuclear strategic issues of this nanotech application in his short story “Washer at the Ford”.[2]

The problem is that there may be a five year window during which our only defense against nuclear-bomb-wielding pip-squeak lunatics will be privacy-invasive information technology, run by the FBI, NSA, and CIA, and their counterparts around the world. Yes, you should be worried, but probably not for the reasons you may think. The danger is not as much that these government agencies may infringe on your rights, but that the very nature of their jobs means that they won’t be able to apply Kranstowitz’s weapon of openness[3] against those who want us dead. To make matters worse, the U.S. intelligence agencies will likely follow the complex laws[3] that protect the privacy of U.S. persons[4] — to the exclusion of catching the nuclear lunatics. This is one reason that FBI, NSA, and CIA directors get new gray hairs every night.

Another problem is that the pip-squeak lunatics will also be able to buy cheap, privacy-invasive information (and other) technologies. Petro-dollars, peasant-made knickknacks, and mining rights have given ethically-challenged individuals in third-world countries astonishing wealth. Many of the world’s richest men live in the world’s poorer countries.[5] They have also learned cruel and clever means by which to keep their peasants down. The question is whether or not they can run the expensive technology they bought with their wealth and power. Buying cheap technology is one thing, but controlling it requires skilled people, and skilled people are more difficult to control. Can the dictators keep a small cadre of trusty elites to run the technology? North Korea and Iran are interesting (and rather scary) test cases at the moment.

Another wild card is that while some dictatorships have become more totalitarian, there comes a point at which the downtrodden peasants (and students, and factory workers, and shopkeepers) don’t have anything to lose but their miserable lives. Meanwhile, totalitarian governments can’t keep up with technology as quickly as free ones can. This is when the system collapses of its own weight, and that is what happened to the USSR. The cell phone, Facebook, and Twitter-fed revolutions in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere also seem to prove this point. Thus far, the Chinese leaders have been smart enough to adapt their economy without adapting their government. The jury is still out as to what will happen to them next (it may not be pretty for us if it ends badly, and there are many ways it can end badly).

Another wild card to consider is that most of the existing nuclear warheads are in the United States, Russia, and China. Americans conveniently forget, but non-Americans are very aware that the United States is (thus far) the only nation that has actually used an atomic bomb to kill people. On the other hand, America doesn’t have highly corrupt officials in charge of our nuclear arsenal (Pakistan), nor is it controlled by a near-dictator (Russia), nor by a totalitarian crazed nut-job (North Korea). In addition, a number of important Japanese leaders have publicly said that that controversial decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the correct one–“It could not be helped.“[6] A similar case might be made for Israel, which is surrounded by overwhelming numbers of Arab nations. Given the tensions in the area, a preemptive strike by Israel seems possible, if not likely. The important question then becomes: Under what grounds, if any, could such usage be justified? Of course, Iranian and other Arab leaders have often called for the total destruction of Israel, and eventually one of them may be willing to try it. On what grounds could they be justified?

Another issue is that once we lose New York or some other major city, Americans will accept any solution — including a totalitarian police state. So will the people of other democratic republics if they lose a major city to nuclear terrorists. But the solution is not necessarily a police state. David Brin has answered the “who guards the guardians” question with a clever answer: “We all do.” Over-simplified, his solution is to kiss most of your privacy goodbye. Either that or kiss your life, your liberty, and property, and your privacy all goodbye. Brin proposes that we should all submit to being on camera most of the time — as long as the camera essentially points both ways so we know who is watching us — i.e. the police, our neighbors, the pervert three blocks away, and our governments will know that we are watching them too. We must all shoulder the responsibility of policing our neighborhoods and our governments. The world will be like big village in which everyone knows everyone else’s business, but it’s OK because we are all accountable for our actions. Given the fact that human beings only behave when held accountable, it is the only real solution.[7]

Some may think it naive to expect that governments would ever allow their citizens to observe them in return for their observing us. On the other hand, between the increasing calls for government transparency, and the fact that even the chief of the IMF can be taken down by an lowly maid (with the help of the rule of law), there is hope. Not only that, but many of us have already given away much of our privacy on Facebook and YouTube. Don’t worry about it. Maybe I’m still a wide-eyed optimist, but look at the fall of the USSR empire. Nobody with two brain cells to rub together could have possibly predicted that it could have been so bloodless.

DARPA will certainly look for technological answers for nuclear bomb-related problems such as the nightmare of screening shipping containers. They will probably find some solutions, but during the critical transition phase towards productive nanosystems, will they be able to make those solutions affordable?

One nanotech solution to stopping nuclear bombs that are hidden in shipping containers is to stop all physical shipping altogether and just trade files over the internet, printing whatever you want on our desktops (BTW, you can build a very large printer in two steps). Our only problem then would be keeping our computer virus detectors up to date so that we don’t print something nasty.

To summarize, if anybody is around 1,000 years from now, then the nuclear bomb will not be considered an important issue.


The Pill

The second historically consequential development in the past 50 years that many people will propose as significant is the contraceptive pill.

Some claim that the Pill is necessary because we have a population problem. When I was in college in the 1970’s, it was “proven” to me, with the aid of computer models, that overpopulation was going to be the reason we were going to have food riots in the United States by 1985. So naturally, I’m as skeptical about overpopulation as I am about the imminent rapture. Everyone probably agrees that overpopulation results when the population exceeds the sustainable carrying capacity of the environment. But what determines that capacity? Technology multiplies it while ignorance, injustice, and war decrease it. On Earth today, there is currently no correlation between standard of living and population density.[8]

That being said, in a closed system, unlimited human population growth could result in a situation worse than simple human extinction. Natural ecosystems have population boom/crash cycles all the time, but other species don’t have access to nuclear bombs and other devices that can obliterate habitats. The overpopulation disaster on Easter Island occurred with a primitive culture. It still has grass, but not much of an ecosystem. Imagine what could have happened with modern technology.

The Pill fundamentally changed the relationship of men and women, the place of children in a family and, on the macro level, population dynamics. The family is the basic building block of society and civilization, not only because it is an economic unit (you don’t pay your spouse to wash the dishes or take out the garbage), but more importantly, because the family critically shapes the next generation. Therefore, a large change in family structures will have far-reaching effects, at least in the “short run” of five to ten generations. However, to steal from Jerry Pournell and Larry Niven: “Think of it as evolution in action.“[9] The people who embrace contraception as a path to “the good life” will (evolutionarily speaking) remove their vote for influencing their future within a few generations. It is true that for humans, memes may carry as much weight as genes, but the same process applies — as long as meme propagation is kept below a critical level, perhaps by co-traveling xenophobic memes. On the other hand, people who don’t have much of their material resources tied up in children may have more time to devote to meme propagation. However, many studies have shown than the people who have the greatest impact on teens and pre-teens are their parents.[10]

One possible result is that a millennium from now, the Pill will be a small blip, as inconsequential as the Shakers, and for essentially similar reasons. Nanotechnology-enabled life extension techniques will extend that blip for a while, but because the prolific pro-natalists will continue having even more children for their longer lives, more pro-natalists will be born to outvote the anti-natalists. This is why the Jewish Knesset now has a significantly higher percentage of Ultra-Orthodox than when it began,[11] why Utah’s government is almost 100% Mormon,[12] and why the Amish are one of the fastest growing minority in the world, with an average of 6.8 children per family.[13]

The opposing trend is controlled by a number of factors. First, the birth rate goes down as women’s educations go up. This occurs partially because practically speaking, it is more difficult to go to school while being married and raising children. More subtly, however, it is because school is an investment in learning a professional trade — it is a different investment than children. In addition, women and men are implicitly and explicitly taught that a better career is more important than raising more children.

The problem isn’t that women are being educated. The problem is that if they are taught something that results in the extinction of our egalitarian, humanistic, and liberal society by one that is misogynistic, xenophobic, and unjust, then something is wrong.

One weapon of the contraceptive culture is the reeducation of the pro-natalist’s children. Proponents of secularization would call this “giving people free access to all information” not “reeducation”. But when Bibles are banned from the classroom, and students are taught in many ways that they are just animals, it seems like imposition of a secular viewpoint. At least they could teach the debate — and at the end of the semester, the students could try to guess the teacher’s bias (if they can’t, then the teacher presented both views with equal force).

There are more than a million home-schooled children in the U.S., up to two-thirds of whom are there primarily because their parents fear the imposition of our government’s ideas on their children.[14] This quiet protest is so feared by governments that parents are prosecuted for doing this, not only in all totalitarian countries but even in some democratic nations.[15] The alternative is that the governments of open, liberal, and secularized nations (that accept contraception) will decide that the vote of the increasing minority is wrong. Could their right to vote be taken away? Of course it can; it has happened before.

A pessimistic view of this possibility of disenfranchisement is also supported by the prevalence of abortion in liberal democracies. Given the accuracy of ultrasound imagery, if we can ignore the right to life for our most innocent and helpless, then how safe is something as meager as the right to vote? Niemöller’s poem about trade unionists, Communists, and Catholics comes to mind.[16] So do the events in ancient Egypt, during the three or four hundred years between the famines that Joseph ameliorated (Genesis 50:22). The Egyptian upper class used contraception[17], and they felt threatened by the increasing numerical growth of the Jews, who had strict injunctions against it.

Is it good for our country that more than a million children are being taught by their parents? What if rebellious parents are teaching strange and dangerous ideas? How do we decide which ideas are dangerous? Do we censor and suppress them? After all, ideas have consequences.

The answer is that there are limits to what parents can do, but very few — if any — on what they teach. The whole point about freedom of religion is that we can believe what we want, as long as we do not destroy society or individuals with our actions. Our constitution was written not to limit individuals, but to put strict limits on government, since it is inherently more powerful.

The temptation to avoid having children is not limited to any particular culture. The reason is simple: raising children is an expensive, risky, and difficult investment. Parents must be willing to give up fancy vacations, luxury cars, time to themselves, a good night’s sleep, stress on their marriage, and many other things, thus weighing against the pro-natalist agenda. However, the culture that teaches that children are a blessing and a worthwhile investment instead of a cost will overcome those that do not — even if it tends to encourage people to be ignorant, misogynist, racist, and illogical (like two polygamist religions that start with the letter “M“[18]).

Cyril M. Kornbluth’s 1951 short story “The Marching Morons” illustrates another potential downside to the anti/pro-natalist issue by portraying a scenario in which selective pressure resulted in smart people breeding themselves out of existence. It also, despite the derogatory title, provides a warning: the originator of the “Final Solution” (placing all the fertile morons onto one-way rockets to nowhere) ends up screaming futilely as he himself is loaded on one of the last rockets. Kornbluth’s main premise seems logical. People are often willing to trade children for the better material things and higher standard of living, and those with more education are more willing to do so. But is the resulting cost to society worth it?

What will happen when productive nanosystems and advanced software lowers the price of goods and services to very low levels? Many other things will happen at the same time, but in a society of economic abundance, the expense of children will drop significantly — and will be limited only by attention span and desire (and possibly expanded by reproductive-enhancing technologies including parthenogenesis and male pregnancy). Is there a gene for liking children? Or is it a meme that is culturally transmitted? Evolution favors both. Of course, evolution may also favor a “Boys from Brazil“[19] scenario (in which numerous clones of a dictator are grown to reinstate his rule). This strategy may be successful as long as the clones survive to adulthood and can reproduce.

While a contraceptive culture is non-sustainable, especially in the face of a competing culture whose population is growing, it must be noted that a pro-natalist culture is also non-sustainable. Isaac Asimov pointed out that even if we could overcome all technological obstacles, any growth rate will eventually result in humanity becoming a big ball of flesh, expanding at the speed of light (BOFESOL, or BOF for short). At a modest 3% rate, we will reach the initial BOF in only 3,584 years. After that, the speed of light will limit growth.

However, the fact that a contraceptive culture is non-sustainable in a significantly shorter term than the pro-natalist one is why it makes sense for governments to support traditional religions in their efforts to maintain traditional morality and fertility. The difficult problem is finding ways to ensure the survival of a culture without it becoming xenophobic. This is difficult to do when we think that we have Absolute Truth and the One True Religion on our side. But then exactly how do we know that our particular set and ordering of values is the objectively correct one? Note that the denial of the existence of any objectively maximum set of values exists is itself a particular set of values. And note also that sustainability and tolerance are also values that, like all values, must be assumed because they cannot be proven.

Given the contradictory evidence and shifting values, it is likely that equilibrium between pro-natalist and contraceptive meme sets can never be reached. Instead, humanity will likely experience benign (and sometimes not-so benign) boom and crash cycles similar to those that natural ecosystems suffer from. Only for us, our cycles will be constrained by opinions and technological capabilities, not by predators.


African Colonies

A third historical event that may be of consequence a thousand years from now is “Belgians in the Congo”. The Belgian regime in the Congo was about as brutal and inhuman as any the Europeans imposed on its colonies. However, the European Empires spread Christianity in Africa — where it remains a fast-growing religion. This African event may be as significant as when the Spanish and Portuguese spread Christianity in Latin America, and will bring about a fundamentally different world than if Africa had gone Islamic, Hindu, or Confucian. Think of Latin American worshiping the Aztec gods with human sacrifice, or the impact on us if it were an Islamic Civilization. We would live in a very different world.

Then again, Africa may still turn Islamic. After all, Islam generally values large families, just like the fast-growing Mormon and Amish religions do. On the other hand, when Muslims become secularized, they reduce the number of their offspring, just like secularized Christians do — hence their accompanying philosophies will suffer the same fate. The result will be that in order to survive in the long term, future generations must be hostile to secularization, and probably hostile to each other’s religious views also (not a pleasant thought, even if they do share many of the same values). Over the next thousand years, in view of the exponential increase in technological power, which viewpoint will win? The answer depends on science, theology, and demographics.

A handful of nominal Christians destroyed the Aztec civilization, not because of their technology (though that helped), but because the Aztec civilization was based on a great and powerful falsehood — that in order for the sun to rise every morning, human blood needed to be shed — thereby earning the hatred of the neighboring tribes whose blood it was that was usually shed. Islam is not as false as the Aztec religion — otherwise it would not have lasted this long. But the jury is still out on whether it can survive the extreme technological advancement that productive nanosystems will bring. Will fanatical Muslims be able to design and build the nanotech equivalent of 747 jets that they can fly into the skyscrapers of their enemies? Or will they just learn how to use it in unexpected and terrorizing ways? Given the high level of technological advancement in the Muslim empire a thousand years ago, the answer seems to be “yes” to both questions. However, Islam’s ultimate rejection of reason is its Achilles heel, and in the past it helped lead to the decline of the Ottoman Empire after its peak in the 1300s. This is because Islam’s idea of Allah’s absolute transcendence is incompatible with the idea that the universe is ordered and knowable. Psychologically, the problem is that if the universe is not ordered and knowable, then why bother learning and doing science? Meanwhile, Hinduism has many competing gods, and this leads (like in ordinary paganism) to its rejection of the logical principle of contradiction — without which science is impossible. Confucianism seems to be more a moral code than a religious one, so it seems that it could be accommodating to technology — but that didn’t seem to help its practitioners develop it before they collided with the West. Similarly with Buddhism. Meanwhile, the decadent West’s deconstructionism and nihilism is gnawing at its parent’s roots, rejecting reason and science as merely tools of power.

It can be claimed that religious views will keep changing and splitting into new orthodoxies. In that case, the result will be an ever-shifting field of populations and sub-populations with none winning out completely over the others. But as far as I can tell, neither Judaism, Catholicism, Buddhism, nor Islam have changed any of their core beliefs in the past few millennia. In contrast, the Mormons have changed a number of their major doctrines, and so have the Protestants. This does not bode well for their long-term survival as a coherent organization, though the Mormons do have their high fertility on their side.

At the moment, the whole world is copying the Christian-rooted West, as many of their scientific elite are educated in Europe and the United States. It is difficult to say to what extent they understand the philosophical underpinnings of science. When their own universities start to educate their elite, their cultural assumptions will probably displace the Judeo-Christian/Greek philosophy of the West. Then what? It depends if science, which is the foundation of technological superiority, is simply a cargo cult that works. My claim is that science will only continue working for more than a generation or two if its underlying assumptions come with it — that the universe is both ordered and knowable.

These Judeo-Christian assumptions are huge — though atheists, agnostics, and (maybe) Muslims and Buddhists should also be able to accept them. However, every scientist still faces the question of why the universe is ordered and knowable (and if you’re not constantly asking the next question, especially the “why” question, then you’re not a very good scientist). The theistic answer of design by creator[20] is not too far away from the assumption of an ordered and knowable universe, and from there, one begins skating very close to the concept that we are made “Imago Dei”–in God’s image. Some people think that there is too much hubris and ego to that belief, but you don’t see dolphins landing on the Moon, or chimpanzees creating great symphonies (or even bad rap).

“Imago Dei” is the most logical conclusion once we can explain why the universe is predictable and knowable. And being made in God’s image has other implications, especially in terms of our role in this universe. Most notably, it promotes the idea of human beings as powerful stewards of creation, as opposed to subservient subjects of Mother Nature, and it will pit Nietzschean Transhumanists and Traditional Catholics against Gaian environmentalists and National Park Rangers.


Television

Writing has been around for thousands of years, while the printing press has been around for almost 600. It would seem that the printing press was the one invention that, more than anything else, enabled the development of all subsequent inventions. Television could be considered an improvement over writing, and given that large amounts of video can be subject to slightly less interpretation than an equal amount of effort writing text, our descendants might get a better, more complete depiction of history than they could get from just text or physical artifacts. However, the television that Joel mentioned was controlled by the big three television networks. This was because the cost to entry was so high (currently from $200,000 to $13 million per episode). So the role of television of the 1960s was similar to the role of books in Medieval Europe, where the cost of a book was equivalent to the yearly salary of a well-educated person). For this reason, Joel’s headline will not be considered significant, though he was close.

He was close because television’s electronic video display offspring, the computer — especially when connected to form the Internet — will certainly be significant. It will be as significant as the nuclear bomb and the Pill combined, if and when Moore’s Law ushers in the Singularity. But Joel was writing a song, not engaging in future studies. We might as well criticize him for not mentioning the coining of the word “nanotechnology”.


Moonshot

A few of Billy Joel’s headlines may be remembered 1,000 years from now, but none mentioned so far will really be significant.

I would go out on a limb and say that other than the scientific and industrial revolutions, the American Constitution, and the virtual abolishment of slavery, little of consequence has happened in the last thousand years. There is, however, one significant event that happened in the 1400s. No, it’s not Spain kicking out the Muslims. It’s not even Admiral Zheng He, Admiral of China’s famed Dragon Fleet, sailing to Africa in the 1420s, though we’re getting warmer. As impressive as they were, Zheng’s voyages did not change the world. What did change the world was the tiny fleet of three ships that returned from the New World to Spain in 1492.

Apollo and Star Trek both pointed to the next and final frontier. It is true that little has happened in the American space program since Apollo, and with the retirement of the 1960s-designed Space Shuttle, even less is expected. This poor showing has occurred because the moon shot, as awe-inspiring as it was, was a political stunt funded for political reasons. The problem is that it didn’t pay for itself, and we therefore have a dismal space program. However, with communication, weather, and GPS satellites, we have a huge space industry. It’s all about the value added.

On the other hand, it’s the governmental space programs that seem to make the initial (and necessary) investments in the basic technology. More importantly, these programs give voice to that which makes us human — “to look at the stars and wonder”.[21]

Realistically, looking at the historical records of Jamestown and Salt Lake City, space development will occur when prosperous upper class families can sell their homes and businesses to buy a one-way ticket and homesteading tools. In today’s money, that would be about one or two million dollars. We have a long way to go to achieve that price break, though it helps that Moore’s Law is exponential.

There have only been a dozen men on the Moon so far, but Neil Armstrong will be remembered far longer than anyone else in this millennium. After the human race has spread throughout the solar system, and after it starts heading for the stars, everyone will remember who took the first small step. The importance of this step will become obvious after the Google Moon prize is won, and after Elon Musk and his imitators demonstrate conclusively that we are no longer in a zero sum game.

That is something to look forward to.

Tihamer Toth-Fejel is Research Engineer at Novii Systems.


Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Andrew Balet, Bill Bogen, Tim Wright, and Ted Reynolds for their significant contributions to this column.

Footnotes

1. Tihamer Toth-Fejel, The Politics and Ethics of the Hall Weather Machine, https://lifeboat.com/blog/2010/09/the-politics-and-ethics-of…er-machine and http://www.nanotech-now.com/columns/?article=486
2. Michael Flynn, Washer at the Ford, Analog, v109 #6 & 7, June & July 1989.
3. Arthur Kantrowitz, The Weapon of Openness, http://www.foresight.org/Updates/Background4.html
4. United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18, 27 July 1993, http://cryptome.org/nsa-ussid18.htm
5. e.g. Mexico, India, Saudia Arabia, and Russia http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_The-Wo…_Rank.html Also, the petro-dollar millionaires in the Mideast http://www.aneki.com/millionaire_density.html
6. There is an interesting discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings…d_Nagasaki
7. David Brin,The Transparent Society, Basic Books (1999). For a quick introduction, see The Transparent Society and Other Articles about Transparency and Privacy, http://www.davidbrin.com/transparent.htm.
8. Tihamer Toth-Fejel, Population Control, Molecular Nanotechnology, and the High Frontier, The Assembler, Volume 5, Number 1 & 2, 1997 http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/9701_05.html#_Toc394339700
9. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Oath of Fealty. New York : Pocket Books, 1982
10. KIDS COUNT Indicator Brief, Reducing the Teen Birth Rate, July 2009. http://www.aecf.org/~/media/Pubs/Initiatives/KIDS%20COUNT/K/…0brief.pdf
11. From a small group of just four members in the 1977 Knesset, they gradually increased their representation to 22 (out of 120) in 1999 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haredi_Judaism). The fertility rate for ultra-Orthodox mothers greatly exceeds that of the Israeli Jewish population at large, averaging 6.5 children per mother in the ultra-Orthodox community compared to 2.6 among Israeli Jews overall (http://www.forward.com/articles/7641/ ).
12. As of mid-2001, the Governor of Utah, and all of its Federal senators, representatives and members of the Supreme Court are all Mormon. http://www.religioustolerance.org/lds_hist1.htm
13. Julia A. Ericksen; Eugene P. Ericksen, John A. Hostetler, Gertrude E. Huntington. “Fertility Patterns and Trends among the Old Order Amish”. Population Studies (33): 255–76 (July 1979).
14. 1.1 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2003. http://nces.ed.gov/nhes/homeschool/
15. HOMESCHOOLING: Prosecution is waged abroad; troubling trends abound in US http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=34699
16. http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/quote-of-the-mome…speak-out/
17. http://www.patentex.com/about_contraception/journey.php
18. I should note that almost all of the people I have personally known from these two religions are trustworthy, intelligent, and a pleasure to meet. Despite what they are taught in their sacred texts.
19. Ira Levin, Boys from Brazil, Dell (1977)
20. There are many question to follow. How did He do it? Why is He masculine? Why did He do it? How do we know? That last question is especially relevant.
21. Guy J. Consolmagno, Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist, McGraw-Hill (2001)