90 Message 90: From exi@panix.com Mon Jul 26 03:04:35 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA27121; Mon, 26 Jul 93 03:04:13 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA07528; Mon, 26 Jul 93 03:03:50 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by panix.com id AA23761 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for more@usc.edu); Mon, 26 Jul 1993 05:55:17 -0400 Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 05:55:17 -0400 Message-Id: <199307260955.AA23761@panix.com> To: Exi@panix.com From: Exi@panix.com Subject: Extropians Digest X-Extropian-Date: July 26, 373 P.N.O. [09:55:02 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: R Extropians Digest Mon, 26 Jul 93 Volume 93 : Issue 206 Today's Topics: [1 msgs] 133 years old [1 msgs] Another Worry [1 msgs] FWD: Sterling & Gibson on computers & kids. [1 msgs] HEX: share offering [2 msgs] Meta: Moving the List [1 msgs] Natural law and natural rights [1 msgs] Nightly Market Report [1 msgs] The Age of Robots [1 msgs] Weather control [2 msgs] What are big upcoming problems? [1 msgs] Why Rich Folks Work [2 msgs] Administrivia: No admin msg. Approximate Size: 52354 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 15:07:12 -0400 From: pavel@PARK.BU.EDU (Paul Cisek) Subject: Weather control Hans Moravec writes (in his chapter on "The Age of Robots"): >But new work shows that while chaotic >systems are not predictable, they are highly controllable. A >non-chaotic system like a falling boulder is predictable but very hard >to control because it is insensitive to small inputs, including >control attempts. A chaotic system, like a rolling bicycle or the >weather, is unpredictable but controllable because it responds >strongly to small nudges. The trick is to pick, in simulation, from >the myriad possibilities that chaotically diverge from each state, a >sequence that takes the system from its existing condition to a >desired one, and then to steer the real system along that sequence by >a series of small nudges--like keeping a bicycle on a guideline. I don't understand how an unpredictable system can be controllable. We cannot predict the weather because it is so highly dependent upon initial conditions, of which we cannot have complete knowledge. Thus, we cannot predict what effect any given minor change will have upon the final outcome. This includes our own "small nudges", does it not? Or is the suggestion being made that our small tinkerings with local conditions can have predictable outcomes? But in something like weather, is there any useful notion of local, isolated interactions? Now if only we could find all those butterflies... -Paul ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 18:05:55 EDT From: Hans Moravec Subject: Weather control Paul Cisek asks: > >I don't understand how an unpredictable system can be controllable. We cannot >predict the weather because it is so highly dependent upon initial conditions, >of which we cannot have complete knowledge. Thus, we cannot predict what >effect any given minor change will have upon the final outcome. This includes >our own "small nudges", does it not? Or is the suggestion being made that our >small tinkerings with local conditions can have predictable outcomes? But in >something like weather, is there any useful notion of local, isolated >interactions? Chaotic systems are deterministic, and predictable in the very short run. (In the long run exponential amplification of initial conditions wipes out this predictablility). The bicycle is an example of an unpredictable, controllable chaotic system. Small steering nudges have predictable short-term effects, but you won't be able to predict where the bicycle ends up after an hour of travel, because a tiny fraction of a degree initial estimate of heading, or handlebar wobble will amplify to great differences in destination. But you can guide it to a desired destination by a continuing series of small nudges, like any bicyclist. The idea is basically to servo the system along a track through its multimensional configuration space, even though it has a strong tendency to fall off that track if you neglect it for very long. But the more often you nudge it back on track, the smaller the nudges can be. A balancing broom is another example. People are starting to think about designing electronic controls around chaotic points, because the chaos provides amplification. Some experimental fighter aircraft are aerodynamically unstable (hence chaotic: a small deviation from correct angle will amplify to a catastrophic flip), but kept in check by a fast computer control that supplies guiding nudges. By being chaotic, thay are much more maneuverable. (I think the space shuttle is unstable in this way during glide, though the goal there wasn't maneuverability, but something like mass/drag/heating minimization) Many biological systems, like the heart's natural pacemaker, are chaotic, but kept in line by control nudges. --Hans ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 18:05:55 EDT From: Hans Moravec Subject: Weather control Paul Cisek asks: > >I don't understand how an unpredictable system can be controllable. We cannot >predict the weather because it is so highly dependent upon initial conditions, >of which we cannot have complete knowledge. Thus, we cannot predict what >effect any given minor change will have upon the final outcome. This includes >our own "small nudges", does it not? Or is the suggestion being made that our >small tinkerings with local conditions can have predictable outcomes? But in >something like weather, is there any useful notion of local, isolated >interactions? Chaotic systems are deterministic, and predictable in the very short run. (In the long run exponential amplification of initial conditions wipes out this predictablility). The bicycle is an example of an unpredictable, controllable chaotic system. Small steering nudges have predictable short-term effects, but you won't be able to predict where the bicycle ends up after an hour of travel, because a tiny fraction of a degree initial estimate of heading, or handlebar wobble will amplify to great differences in destination. But you can guide it to a desired destination by a continuing series of small nudges, like any bicyclist. The idea is basically to servo the system along a track through its multimensional configuration space, even though it has a strong tendency to fall off that track if you neglect it for very long. But the more often you nudge it back on track, the smaller the nudges can be. A balancing broom is another example. People are starting to think about designing electronic controls around chaotic points, because the chaos provides amplification. Some experimental fighter aircraft are aerodynamically unstable (hence chaotic: a small deviation from correct angle will amplify to a catastrophic flip), but kept in check by a fast computer control that supplies guiding nudges. By being chaotic, thay are much more maneuverable. (I think the space shuttle is unstable in this way during glide, though the goal there wasn't maneuverability, but something like mass/drag/heating minimization) Many biological systems, like the heart's natural pacemaker, are chaotic, but kept in line by control nudges. --Hans ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 18:17:03 GMT From: price@price.demon.co.uk (Michael Clive Price) Subject: Another Worry That well-known American Nick Szabo, says: > I bet a much greater % of us white folks would let Europe > beat us 3-2 than an even 1-1 (but it still might not be a majority). I would be very happy for Europe to beat "us" (or should that have been US?) :-) Your local European, Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 18:09:40 PDT From: Robin Hanson Subject: The Age of Robots Thanks much to Morevac for forwarding his book chapter with the above title. If we study it carefully, I think we can find many interesting conversation topics there. And I do look forward to "the next chapter [wherein] Exes, as we've grown to know and love them, become obsolete." So let me offer a quick review of this chapter, to perhaps spark more discussion. Morevac seems a bit sloppier in his economics and political science than in his physics, as is almost all the SF and futurist community; this is one of the reason I want to go study these subjects. >It took difficult political readjustments to equalize the benefits of >cheaper, more plentiful goods, but gradually laborers' hours were >halved, creating need for more workers, and so bidding up salaries. I'm not sure politics had much to do with equalizing the benefits of the industrial revolution. >If the skills are rare, scarcity encourages high pay and long hours. >Either way, some work excessively while others are jobless--and it >takes slow changes in the social contract and in education to level >the load. Why would someone in high demand work more than they wanted to? >In the next century inexpensive but capable robots will displace human >labor so broadly that the average workday would have to plummet to >practically zero to keep everyone usefully employed. I'm sure everyone could work all day and be "useful". The question is whether they wouldn't rather not work. >There is a problem with this picture. The "service economy" functions >today because many humans willing to buy services work in the primary >industries, and so return money to the service providers, who in turn >use it to buy life's essentials. As the pool of humans in the primary >industries evaporates, the return channel chokes off--efficient, >no-nonsense robots will not engage in frivolous consumption. Ah, but the robot's yes-nonsense owners may so comsume, spending the wages earned by their robot slaves. >It is unlikely that a future majority of service-providing "commoners" >with more free time, communications and democracy than today, would >tolerate being lorded over by a minority of non-working hereditary >capitalists: they would vote to change the system. The trend in the >social democracies has been to equalize income by raising the >standards of the poorest as high as the economy can bear If people take my advice to diversify their labor assets, a large increase in the relative productivity of capital to labor need not result in large wealth inequalities. And I'm not sure the degree of wealth redistribution and socialism is well predicted by the degree of inequality, or by the amount of free time or communications. And I'm sure most folks on this list wouldn't advocate such socialism! >Big cities will lose their economic advantages, and may begin to >evaporate, as individuals, linked to the world by high fidelity >communications and served by personal robots, scatter to areas >offering more elbow room Do people live in cities to work near each other, or to play near each other? Where do most of the idle rich choose to live now? >Humans may be able to live in uncluttered spaces--in ecological >preserves, if they choose--yet have any needed item, perhaps even food >or housing, made on the spot, or delivered from small local >caches--then disassembled back into into raw materials after use. We just had a long thread on whether nanotech production would be local. It wasn't at all clear what the answer is. >Prosperity beyond imagination should eliminate most instinctive >triggers of aggression, We are now prosperous beyond the ancients imaginations, yet aggression continues. >There will be conflicts of interest, and occasional clashes that drive >away or destroy some of the participants, but superintelligent >foresight and flexibly should allow most conflicts to be settled by >mutually beneficial surrenders, compromises, joint ventures or mergers. Is war caused by stupidity, and so will go away as things get smart? It would be nice if that were so, but this is not at all obvious. >The garden of earthly delights will be reserved for the meek, >and those who would eat of the tree of knowledge must be banished. The core of Morevac's vision consists of a split between a peaceful socialist Earth: >it will only be common sense for a population to vote itself income >from taxes on labor-free but superbly productive industries. ... >there is no precedent or motivation for extending suffrage to robots, >... mandating an elaborate analog of Isaac Asimov's three "Laws of >Robotics" in [each robot's] corporate character--perhaps the entire >body of corporate law, with human rights and anti-trust provisions, >and appropriate relative weightings to resolve conflicts. ... >"Police" clauses in the core corporate laws, inducing legal >corporations to collectively suppress outlaws, by withholding services, >or even with force, ... anti-trust provisions that limit collusion >and cause overgrown corporations to divide into competing entities, >since mere human actions will not be very dangerous in a world where >cheap superhuman robots function ... [if] inbuilt laws ... include >clauses limiting the powers they can sell to people. allow earth-bound >humanity to perfect its biology within broad human bounds, ... but to >allow major growth or robotic conversion ... one must renounce legal >standing as a human being, including the right to corporate police >protection, to subsidized income, to vote on tribal and pan-tribal >matters--and to reside on Earth. and a dog-eat-dog scramble in space: >Beyond Earth, ... vigorous growth in every physical and mental >dimension. Freely compounding superintelligence, too dangerous for >Earth, can grow for a very long time before making the barest mark on >the galaxy. ... In remote space, large structures and energies ... >generally operate boldly. ... Residents of the solar system's wild >frontier will be shaped by conditions very different than tame >Earth's. Space divisions of successful companies will retain >terrestrial concerns, but ex-humans and company divisions orphaned by >the failure of their parent firms will face enforced freedom. Like >wilderness explorers of the past, far from civilization, they must >rely on their own resourcefulness. Ex-companies, away from humans and >taxes, will rarely encounter situations that invoke their inbuilt >laws, which will in any case diminish in significance as the divisions >alter themselves without direction from human voters. Ex-humans, from >the start, will be free of any mandatory law. ... Small entities may >be absorbed by larger ones ... Parasites ... will evolve to exploit >the rich ecology. ... The scene may resemble the free-for-all >revealed in microscopic peeks at pond water ... An entity that fails >to keep up with its neighbors is likely to be eaten, its space, >materials, energy and useful thoughts reorganized to serve another's >goals. Such a fate may be routine for humans who dally too long on >slow Earth before going Ex. ... Others may pre-negotiate favorable >absorption terms with established Exes, like graduating seniors >meeting company recruiters--or Faust soliciting bids for his soul. ... >Darwinian selection will remain the final arbiter. Yet, while this might make a nice SF story, space and earth are hardly different enough to justify such distinct political and economic approaches. If folks have the desire and power to enforce socialist and technology-limiting solutions on Earth, why would they not do so in the rest of the solar system? If mandating robot coporation's use of the three laws makes sense on Earth, why not elsewhere? Conversely, if darwinian pressures in space doom slower growing socialism there, why should socialism win on earth? If no mandatory laws can form in space, how can they form on earth? If agression and forced absorption aren't punished in space, why would they be on earth? I suspect Morevac is torn between differing visions of the future, and has chosen to place these different visions in different places. But I think the real future will not equivocate so. Robin Hanson ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 18:22:50 PDT From: Robin Hanson Subject: Why Rich Folks Work I think recent speculation here on future effects of automation reveal some confusion about why and when folks choose leisure over work. If a substantial percentage increase in the amount one works can lead to a similarly substantial percentage increase in the money one has to spend to have more fun in one's free time, then one might well choose to work more, whether rich or poor. On the other hand, if working less won't detract much from one's income, one may well choose to work less. For example, a person who owns many human slaves, each nearly as productive as him/herself, that person may well not want to work at all. And a tribe which can sustain itself picking berries and hunting for two afternoons a week, as in Morevac's description, may well not see much benefit in having twice as many berries. On the other hand, a starving person often sees great leverage from more work. And most people in our modern economy can also substantially increase their income by working more, and so they do, even though they may be far more wealthy than the ancient slave owner. Here is a simple model that says the above more precisely: U = person's utility L = the time they labor T = the total time available to that person P = the products that person can consume K = the capital to help that production ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 18:54:19 -0700 From: tribble@netcom.com (E. Dean Tribble) Subject: Natural law and natural rights Natural law is not the same as physical law: physical laws describe the emergent properties of a physical system that works is reasonably fixed way; natural law attempts to describe ESSes that only emerge because of environmental incentives, not hard physical reality. The incentives that underly this 'natural law' can change subtly, causing a tremendous change in the ESS for the new environment. For instance, there's some threshold level of violence above which a totalitarian regime might be much more effective (most military forces are totalitarian internally). Likewise, changes in technology (human backups, groups minds, etc.), might dramatically change the ESS for interaction among intelligent agents. A friend suggested that theright moral system is the market, and once we have the technology, all agents (bugs, birds, bees, etc.) should be adapted to evolve in that kind of an ecology. This would completely resolve the moral issues of predation (because it's simply not allowed at al). Implementing this will be hard however.... dean ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 18:57:34 -0700 From: tribble@netcom.com (E. Dean Tribble) Subject: Why Rich Folks Work Another reason people might want to 'work' is because they enjoy working. It's only relatively recently that 'work' was considered annoying effort instead of something one did with one's time. If you get enjoyment from being valuable to people, then the fact that you get money for it is simply feedback that people value what you are doing. dean ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 21:36:21 -0500 From: extr@jido.b30.ingr.com (Craig Presson) Subject: 133 years old Walford, in _Maximum Life Span_, nicely disposes of all such unproven stories. Speaking of which, I just returned from a trip to Atlanta (yes, it was hot, even by Alabama standrds!) on which I was able to purchase several Extropian Recommended Reading Books at the Oxford: Walford, _Maximum Life Span_ and _The 120-year diet_ Morgenthaler & Whosis, _Smart Drugs & Nutrients_ (just in time for the sequel); Rucker, _Mind Tools_ A week ago I attended a very interesting meeting (Mensa, no less) with a speaker on gamma ray bursts; and the very next night, Drs. Frank Drake, Frank White, and Bellingham spoke on SETI at UAH, in a forum sponsored by the International Space University and the Planetary Society. I am preparing summaries of both meetings, please don't let me forget. ^ / ------/---- extropy@jido.b30.ingr.com (Freeman Craig Presson) /AS 5/20/373 PNO /ExI 4/373 PNO ** E' and E-choice spoken here ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 22:00:09 -0500 From: extr@jido.b30.ingr.com (Craig Presson) Subject: Meta: Moving the List In <199307241602.AA01075@panix.com>, Harry Shapiro writes: |> Just to update everyone on the new list and our moving plans. |> |> 1) I am planning starting on Aug 9th to move everyone to the |> new software in batches of 30/40 users per day. Any time ... upload me any time ;-) |> This may change Yeah, what won't? |> 2) We will have a new address. It will probally be extropians@extropy.org |> |> Don't use it yet! It is not yet offical - Also if you |> have any suggestions about our "name" let me know. Yes, I suggest we keep it for a __long__ time, it's rather beautiful. ^ / ------/---- extropy@jido.b30.ingr.com (Freeman Craig Presson) /AS 5/20/373 PNO /ExI 4/373 PNO ** E' and E-choice spoken here ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 22:46:36 -0500 From: extr@jido.b30.ingr.com (Craig Presson) Subject: HEX: share offering In <9307232105.AA24608@snark.shearson.com>, Perry E. Metzger writes: |> Hello, all. |> |> As part of my effort to come into compliance with upcoming HEx |> regulations, I am offering approximately 300,000 shares of P via |> private placement to investors. I am willing to negotiate transfers |> for either Thornes or for shares of your own reputation -- exchange |> price and possible other terms to be privately negotiated. |> I will likely be interested, but I'm presently enagaged in a "manual" auction to gauge the value of FCP in "new Thornes". Assuming that I move a reasonable number of shares of FCP at the new rates (split 8:1 and asking from p1 to p2 in increments), I'll make you a stock-swap offer. -- F_cP ... Rapidly approaching Extro-parity ... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 93 00:00:05 EDT From: The Hawthorne Exchange Subject: Nightly Market Report The Hawthorne Exchange - HEx Nightly Market Report For more information on HEx, send email to HEx@sea.east.sun.com with the Subject info. --------------------------------------------------------------- News Summary as of: Sun Jul 25 23:59:01 EDT 1993 Newly Registered Reputations: (None) New Share Issues: (None) Share Splits: Symbol n-for-1 Total Issued FCP 8 80000 --------------------------------------------------------------- Market Summary as of: Sun Jul 25 23:59:01 EDT 1993 Total Shares Symbol Bid Ask Last Issued Outstanding Market Value 1000 .10 .20 .10 10000 2000 200.00 110 - .10 - 10000 - - 150 - .10 - 10000 - - 1E6 - .10 - 10000 - - 1E9 - .10 - 10000 - - 200 - .10 - 10000 - - 80 - .10 - 10000 - - 90 - .20 .10 10000 2000 200.00 ACS - .50 .50 10000 1124 562.00 AI - .50 .20 10000 1000 200.00 ALCOR - 2.00 2.00 10000 2931 5862.00 ALTINST - .10 - 10000 - - ANTO - - - - - - BIOPR - .20 .10 10000 1500 150.00 BLAIR - 30.00 50.00 10000 25 1250.00 CHAITN - .05 - 10000 - - CYPHP .15 .20 - 10000 - - DEREK - .90 1.00 100000 8220 8220.00 DRXLR - 2.00 2.00 10000 2246 4492.00 DVDT - 1.50 .90 10000 3490 3141.00 E - .60 .75 10000 5487 4115.25 ESR - - - - - - EXI .10 1.25 1.25 10000 3000 3750.00 FCP - 1.00 - 80000 4320 - GHG .01 .30 .54 10000 1755 947.70 GOBEL .01 .30 1.00 10000 767 767.00 H - 2.00 2.00 10000 6250 12500.00 HAM - .10 - 10000 - - HEINLN .30 .50 - 10000 - - HEX 100.00 125.00 100.00 10000 3168 316800.00 HFINN 2.00 10.00 10.00 10000 1005 10050.00 IMMFR .50 .80 .80 10000 501 400.80 JFREE - .15 .10 10000 3000 300.00 JPP .25 .40 .25 10000 2510 627.50 LEARY - .20 - 10000 - - LEF - .15 .30 10000 1526 457.80 LEFTY - .15 .30 10000 1951 585.30 LIST .40 .50 .50 10000 5000 2500.00 LP - .15 - 10000 - - LSOFT .58 .60 .58 10000 7050 4089.00 LURKR - .50 - 100000 - - MARCR - - - - - - MED21 - .12 - 10000 - - MLINK - .09 .02 1000000 2602 52.04 MORE 1.50 2.00 1.50 10000 3500 5250.00 MWM .15 .15 1.50 10000 1260 1890.00 N 20.00 25.00 25.00 10000 98 2450.00 NEWTON - .20 - 10000 - - NSS - .10 - 10000 - - OCEAN - .10 - 10000 - - P 20.00 25.00 25.00 1000000 66 1650.00 PETER 1.00 - 1.00 10000000 600 600.00 PLANET - .10 .05 10000 1500 75.00 PPL - .10 - 10000 - - PRICE - 4.00 2.00 10000000 1410 2820.00 R .49 2.80 .99 10000 5100 5049.00 RAND - .15 - 10000 - - RJC 1.00 999.00 .60 10000 5100 3060.00 ROMA - - - - - - SGP - - - - - - SHAWN - 1.00 - 10000 - - SSI - .10 - 10000 - - TCMAY .75 3.00 2.00 10000 6000 12000.00 TIM 1.00 - - 10000 - - TRADE - - - 1000000 - - TRANS - .10 .40 10000 1511 604.40 VINGE - .50 .20 10000 1000 200.00 WILKEN 1.00 10.00 10.00 10000 101 1010.00 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 418877.79 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 23:23:07 -0500 From: extr@jido.b30.ingr.com (Craig Presson) Subject: HEX: share offering ARRRRGH. Needless to say that was meant for Perry. I mostly only do this at home where I am using gnumacs in dumb-terminal mode with no mouse. Somehow when I have just cut the From: address into the X cu buffer I can remember to paste it, whereas when I have to do it with emacs commands I don't. Turn some cogsci guys loose on that, huh? -- F_cP-- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 02:06:46 -0400 From: Alexander Chislenko Subject: FWD: Sterling & Gibson on computers & kids. The science fiction writers Bruce Sterling and William Gibson recently gave speeches about education and technology at a convocation at the National Academy of Sciences. They graciously agreed to make their texts freely available to the Internet. Please share these as you wish, but they are not to be used in any commerical way or publication. I hope this stimulates thoughts, reactions, and discussions throughout the 'net. This is a crucial time in the evolution of the Internet and the proposed networks-to-follow. Open and equal access is NOT guaranteed; in fact just the opposite may well happen. Is this important for education? for democracy? What do YOU say? -- Mike Eisenberg mike@ericir.syr.edu School of Information Studies Syracuse University Syracuse, NY 13244 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 11 May 1993 18:52:59 -0700 From: Bruce Sterling To: mike@suvm.acs.syr.edu Subject: You Asked For It, You Got It Bruce Sterling bruces@well.sf.ca.us Literary Freeware -- Not for Commercial Use Speeches by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling National Academy of Sciences Convocation on Technology and Education Washington D. C., May 10, 1993 BRUCE STERLING: Hello ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for having the two of us here and giving us a license to dream in public. The future is unwritten. There are best-case scenarios. There are worst- case scenarios. Both of them are great fun to write about if you're a science fiction novelist, but neither of them ever happen in the real world. What happens in the real world is always a sideways-case scenario. World-changing marvels to us, are only wallpaper to our children. Cyberspace is the funhouse mirror of our own society. Cyberspace reflects our values and our faults, sometimes in terrifying exaggeration. Cyberspace is a mirror you can edit. It's a mirror you can fold into packets and send across continents at the speed of light. It's a mirror you can share with other people, a place where you can discover community. But it's also a mirror in the classic sense of smoke-and-mirrors, a place where you might be robbed or cheated or deceived, a place where you can be promised a rainbow but given a mouthful of ashes. I know something important about cyberspace. It doesn't matter who you are today -- if you don't show up in that mirror in the next century, you're just not going to matter very much. Our kids matter. They matter a lot. Our kids have to show up in the mirror. Today, we have certain primitive media for kids. Movies, television, videos. In terms of their sensory intensity, these are like roller-coaster rides. Kids love roller coasters, for natural reasons. But roller coasters only go around and around in circles. Kids need media that they can go places with. They need the virtual equivalent of a kid's bicycle. Training wheels for cyberspace. Simple, easy machines. Self-propelled. And free. Kids need places where they can talk to each other, talk back and forth naturally. They need media that they can fingerpaint with, where they can jump up and down and breathe hard, where they don't have to worry about Mr. Science showing up in his mandarin white labcoat to scold them for doing things not in the rulebook. Kids need a medium of their own. A medium that does not involve a determined attempt by cynical adult merchandisers to wrench the last nickel and quarter from their small vulnerable hands. That would be a lovely scenario. I don't really expect that, though. On the contrary, in the future I expect the commercial sector to target little children with their full enormous range of on-line demographic databases and privacy-shattering customer-service profiles. These people will be armed and ready and lavishly financed and there every day, peering at our children through a cyberspace one-way mirror. Am I naive to expect better from the networks in our schools? I hope not. I trust not. Because schools are supposed to be educating our children, civilizing our children, not auctioning them off to the highest bidder. We need to make some conscious decisions to reinvent our information technology as if the future mattered. As if our children were human beings, human citizens, not raw blobs of potential revenue-generating machinery. We have an opportunity to create media that would match the splendid ambitions of Franklin with his public libraries and his mail system, and Jefferson and Madison with their determination to arm democracy with the power knowledge gives. We could offer children, yes even poor children in poor districts, a real opportunity to control the screen, for once. You don't have to worry much about the hardware. The hardware is ephemeral. The glass boxes should no longer impress you. We've shipped our images inside glass boxes for fifty years, but that's a historical accident, a relic. The glass boxes that we recognize as computers won't last much longer. Already the boxes are becoming flat screens. In the future, computers will mutate beyond recognition. Computers won't be intimidating, wire-festooned, high-rise bit-factories swallowing your entire desk. They will tuck under your arm, into your valise, into your kid's backpack. After that, they'll fit onto your face, plug into your ear. And after that -- they'll simply melt. They'll become fabric. What does a computer really need? Not glass boxes -- it needs thread -- power wiring, glass fiber-optic, cellular antennas, microcircuitry. These are woven things. Fabric and air and electrons and light. Magic handkerchiefs with instant global access. You'll wear them around your neck. You'll make tents from them if you want. They will be everywhere, throwaway. Like denim. Like paper. Like a child's kite. This is coming a lot faster than anyone realizes. There's a revolution in global telephony coming that will have such brutal, industry-crushing speed and power that it will make even the computer industry blanch. Analog is dying everywhere. Everyone with wire and antenna is going into the business of moving bits. You are the schools. You too need to move bits, but you need to move them to your own purposes. You need to look deep into the mirror of cyberspace, and you need to recognize your own face there. Not the face you're told that you need. Your own face. Your undistorted face. You can't out-tech the techies. You can't out-glamorize Hollywood. That's not your life, that's not your values, that's not your purpose. You're not supposed to pump colored images against the eyeballs of our children, or download data into their skulls. You are supposed to pass the torch of culture to the coming generation. If you don't do that, who will? If you don't prevail for the sake of our children, who will? It can be done! It can be done if you keep your wits about you and you're not hypnotized by smoke and mirrors. The computer revolution, the media revolution, is not going to stop during the lifetime of anyone in this room. There are innovations coming, and coming *fast,* that will make the hottest tech exposition you see here seem as quaint as gaslamps and Victorian magic-lanterns. Every machine you see here will be trucked out and buried in a landfill, and never spoken of again, within a dozen years. That so-called cutting-edge hardware here will crumble just the way old fax-paper crumbles. The values are what matters. The values are the only things that last, the only things that *can* last. Hack the hardware, not the Constitution. Hold on tight to what matters, and just hack the rest. I used to think that cyberspace was fifty years away. What I thought was fifty years away, was only ten years away. And what I thought was ten years away -- it was already here. I just wasn't aware of it yet. Let me give you a truly lovely, joyful example of the sideways-case scenario. The Internet. The Internet we make so much of today -- the global Internet which has helped scholars so much, where free speech is flourishing as never before in history -- the Internet was a Cold War military project. It was designed for purposes of military communication in a United States devastated by a Soviet nuclear strike. Originally, the Internet was a post- apocalypse command grid. And look at it now. No one really planned it this way. Its users made the Internet that way, because they had the courage to use the network to support their own values, to bend the technology to their own purposes. To serve their own liberty. Their own convenience, their own amusement, even their own idle pleasure. When I look at the Internet--that paragon of cyberspace today --I see something astounding and delightful. It's as if some grim fallout shelter had burst open and a full-scale Mardi Gras parade had come out. Ladies and gentlemen, I take such enormous pleasure in this that it's hard to remain properly skeptical. I hope that in some small way I can help you to share my deep joy and pleasure in the potential of networks, my joy and pleasure in the fact that the future is unwritten. WILLIAM GIBSON: Mr. Sterling and I have been invited here to dream in public. Dreaming in public is an important part of our job description, as science writers, but there are bad dreams as well as good dreams. We're dreamers, you see, but we're also realists, of a sort. Realistically speaking, I look at the proposals being made here and I marvel. A system that in some cases isn't able to teach basic evolution, a system bedevilled by the religious agendas of textbook censors, now proposes to throw itself open to a barrage of ultrahighbandwidth information from a world of Serbian race-hatred, Moslem fundamentalism, and Chinese Mao Zedong thought. A system that has managed to remain largely unchanged since the 19th Century now proposes to jack in, bravely bringing itself on-line in an attempt to meet the challenges of the 21st. I applaud your courage in this. I see green shoots attempting to break through the sterilized earth. I believe that the national adventure you now propose is of quite extraordinary importance. Historians of the future -- provided good dreams prevail--will view this as having been far more crucial to the survival of democracy in the United States than rural electrification or the space program. But many of America's bad dreams, our sorriest future scenarios, stem from a single and terrible fact: there currently exists in this nation a vast and disenfranchised underclass, drawn, most shamefully, along racial lines, and whose plight we are dangerously close to accepting as a simple fact of life, a permanent feature of the American landscape. What you propose here, ladies and gentlemen, may well represent nothing less than this nation's last and best hope of providing something like a level socio-economic playing field for a true majority of its citizens. In that light, let me make three modest proposals. In my own best-case scenario, every elementary and high school teacher in the United States of America will have unlimited and absolutely cost-free professional access to long-distance telephone service. The provision of this service could be made, by law, a basic operation requirement for all telephone companies. Of course, this would also apply to cable television. By the same token, every teacher in every American public school will be provided, by the manufacturer, on demand, and at no cost, with copies of any piece of software whatever -- assuming that said software's manufacturer would wish their product to be commercially available in the United States. What would this really cost us, as a society? Nothing. It would only mean a so-called loss of potential revenue for some of the planet's fattest and best- fed corporations. In bringing computer and network literacy to the teachers of our children, it would pay for itself in wonderful and wonderfully unimaginable ways. Where is the R&D support for teaching? Where is the tech support for our children's teachers? Why shouldn't we give out teachers a license to obtain software, all software, any software, for nothing? Does anyone demand a licensing fee, each time a child is taught the alphabet? Any corporation that genuinely wishes to invest in this country's future should step forward now and offer services and software. Having thrived under democracy, in a free market, the time has come for these corporations to demonstrate an enlightened self-interest, by acting to assure the survival of democracy and the free market -- and incidentally, by assuring that virtually the entire populace of the United States will become computer-literate potential consumers within a single generation. Stop devouring your children's future in order to meet your next quarterly report. My third and final proposal has to do more directly with the levelling of that playing field. I propose that neither of my two previous proposals should apply in any way to private education. Thank you. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Alexander Chislenko | sasha@cs.umb.edu | Cambridge, MA | (617) 864-3382 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 00:15:10 -0600 (MDT) From: J. Michael Diehl Subject: What are big upcoming problems? According to Heath G. Goebel: > > One problem I worry about is increasing state power. The political > climate today makes it easy for the guv'ment to imprison/murder > dissidents. And because of technology, the government can easily > outgun a person trying to defend themselves from the government. > In recent weeks we've seen two cases of note: Waco and Randy Weaver. I quite agree with you. Because of this, I anticipate political aspirations when I get older.... Something to think about. > I mean if the BATF, CIA, FBI, SS show up at any of our houses, > fighting back with our own armaments (as suggested many times > by T.C. May) is a sure path to real death. ...But what can you do? > When will the balance shift? When we get involved. ========================+==========================================+ J. Michael Diehl ;^) | Have you hugged a Hetero........Lately? | mdiehl@triton.unm.edu | "I'm just looking for the opportunity to | mike.diehl@fido.org help| be Politically Incorrect!" +=========+ al945@cwns9.ins.cwru.edu| Is Big Brother in your phone? | PGP KEY | (505) 299-2282 (voice) | If you don't know, ask me. |Available| ========================+================================+=========+ PGP Key = 7C06F1 = A6 27 E1 1D 5F B2 F2 F1 12 E7 53 2D 85 A2 10 5D This message is protected by 18 USC 2511 and 18 USC 2703. Monitoring by anyone other than the recipient is absolutely forbidden by US Law ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 #206 ********************************* &