Jim Baen's Universe

What's New in The Future And You

Columns

April 2008

Written by Stephen Euin Cobb

My curiosity about the future is too powerful. Try as I might, it’s often difficult to bring the fun and fascinating interviews I have with my guests to a close; and so the show grows longer and longer. I'm now trying to hold them to 45 minutes, but even that’s a strain. Often they run to a full hour. The good news is that I am learning more about the future in the show’s new weekly format than ever before. Hopefully, every listener can say the same.

Featuring a single guest in each episode is allowing a deeper and more detailed examination of each guest’s vision of the future. This has expanded the variety of topics covered rather than contracting it, and has produced a bounty of material too great to fully describe in this column. Instead, a summary of recent topics followed by a list of recent guests seems more in order. So here they are.

Summary of Recent Topics

Topics discussed within recent episodes of The Future And You (those from January 16 to March 5) include all the following.

Human level Artificial Intelligence: The Turing Test; how profits will likely be made with AI applications; Artificial General Intelligence (AGI); “Friendly” AI; and how AI may go far beyond human level and lead to the Singularity.

Nanotechnology: Molecular manufacturing; gray goo; the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology; the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies; and the Foresight Nanotech Institute.

Cryonics: How much public credibility did cryonics lose by being associated with Paris Hilton?

Biotech: Synthetic biology and Craig Ventor's new artificial organism.

Life Extension: Life extension activism, and the founding of the Immortality Institute.

Privacy: We're losing our privacy and may have none left at all in a few decades, even in our own homes.

Catastrophic Dangers to Humanity: Replicating and non-replicating nano-weapon attacks; bioweapons; nuclear weapons; unfriendly AI; devastating asteroid strikes; pandemics; The Lifeboat Foundation; ADC (Asymmetric Destructive Capability in which large scale destruction can be accomplished with relatively small scale resources); SIMaD (Single Individual-Massively Destructive, or as some describe it "The Unabomber on steroids").

Transhumanist Philosophies: Making people far more than just healthy; increasing human IQ; wiring computers directly into the human brain (for linking to the internet and for sharing our thoughts with one another unfiltered and undiluted); singularitarianism and extropianism; negative public perceptions of transhumanism; and the fundamental question of transhumanism: do individual humans have a natural right to augmentation and enhancement?

The Transhumanist Community and its Activism: The World Transhumanist Association (WTA); the ongoing revitalization of the WTA and the new WTA webzine being put together by R. U. Sirius; the general public may be warming to transhumanist ideas thanks to movies and TV, but there remains a lot of fear of transhumanism among the religious right; the betterhumans.com website and the acceleratingfuture.com blog; there seem to be a lot of closet transhumanists but new transhumanists seem to be of all ages, not just young people.

Dirty Bird Secrets: Why official decisions concerning which birds are, and are not, declared to be separate species are based mostly on science, but also partly on politics, emotionalism, local tradition and sentimentality.

Cultural Trends: The ongoing feminization of civilization; how non-lethal weapons might alter the nature of war; and the best and worst that can be expected of the US presidential candidates (John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton).

Virtual Worlds: The prejudice and intolerance against digital people inside Second Life; the concept and philosophy of being a digital person; Sophrosyne's Saturday Salon; college classes within Second Life; future technology may allow total immersion through full sensory feedback directly wired into the human nervous system; Extropia DaSilva’s blog post entitled Snowcrashing into the Diamond Age.

Trends outside of America: English has become the world language for business and technology (the French hate this); trends in Germany, Europe, Turkey, India and China.

SETI: The Fermi Paradox; extrasolar planets; and what it might mean to find another earth.

Energy: Running out of oil; coal is plentiful, but burning it cleanly may be decades away; solar power; nuclear power; and one environmentalists claim that “if environmentalists are going to get serious about global warming they may have to find a way to embrace nuclear power.”

Going Green: Green energy; green investment funds; being Green has become the In thing for corporate marketing; Wal-Mart has become a leader in promoting Green; saving the environment is now widely seen as good business.

Misc Trends: Wikipedia; eBay; PayPal; science fiction; trends in butterfly watching; space exploration; the new F-22 fighter jet which is under production, and the F-35 fighter which is still in development.

Misc People: Randal L. Schwartz, Shaun Ferrell, Rich Sigfrit, Mur Lafferty, Tee Morris, Argent Bury, Peer Infinity, Khannea Suntzu, and Boc Cryotank (your host’s name in Second Life).

Recent Guests

Guests who have been kind enough to reveal their thoughts and ideas about the future in the recent episodes of The Future And You include all the following:

Eric Flint, best selling author of more than 25 novels of science fiction and fantasy, as well as editor-in-chief of the online science fiction and fantasy magazine Jim Baen's Universe.

Catherine Asaro, scientist and Nebula award-winning author, has written 16 novels which have been described as a blend of hard science fiction, romance and space adventure. From UCLA she received a Bachelors Degree in Chemistry. From Harvard she received a Masters in Physics and a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics.

David B. Coe the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of nine fantasy novels, some of which have been translated into no less than six languages including Russian, German, Dutch, and French. David has a doctorate in American history from Stanford University and enjoys nature photography, bird and butterfly watching, and playing guitar.

Paul Levinson, author, media commentator and professor, has been interviewed over 500 times on television and radio. He is a professor teaching in New York City and has a doctorate in Media Ecology. In the 1960s and 1970s he was a songwriter, singer and record producer; with recordings by the Vogues, Donna Marie of the Archies and Ellie Greenwich. As a radio producer he worked with Murray the K and Wolfman Jack.

Michael Anissimov, the well known futurist, blogger and transhumanism activist is the Lifeboat Foundation's fundraising Director for North America, and is involved with the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, and was recently voted to join the board of the World Transhumanist Association.

George Dvorsky is Executive Editor of betterhumans.com, which is a webzine with News, Articles, and interactive features serving the transhumanist community. He is also the co-founder and president of the Toronto Transhumanist Association and has served on the Board of Directors for the World Transhumanist Association.

Philippe Van Nedervelde is the international spokesperson for the Lifeboat Foundation. He is also Executive Director for the Foresight Nanotech Institute in Europe, and a Global Task Force Member for CRN, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.

Giulio Prisco is a futurist, scientist, corporate consultant and until recently the Executive Director of the World Transhumanist Association. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and on the Global Task Force on Implications and Policy for CRN, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.

Matt Browne is an IT professional living in Frankfurt Germany. With a Masters degree in Computer Science and Computational Linguistics, he has been involved in projects developing natural language processing (a form of AI) with a strong focus on machine translation systems.

Glen Walkerson writes tech-manuals for the F-16 fighter jet.

Peer Infinity is a digital person and transhumanist resident of Second Life.

Argent Bury, a digital person living exclusively within Second Life, provides an essay concerning the tension between immersionists and augmentationists within her virtual world.

You can learn more about exactly who said what about what at the show's page.

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Recent News

Your Host has Joined Lifeboat Foundation’s Board of Advisors

I have been invited to join the advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation. Here are the first two paragraphs of their mission statement:

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards a technological singularity.

Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity, including new methods to combat viruses (such as RNA interference and new vaccine methods), effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and even self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.

I consider this a personal honor, as well as a vote of confidence in the educational value of the work I have been doing here by creating, producing, writing, and hosting this show: The Future And You.

The Lifeboat Foundation's advisory board is not a tiny cloister. There are over five hundred board members divided into subcategories so that those within each subcategory can work together to achieve goals specific to that group. There are groups concerning nanotech, biotech, physics, chemistry, space exploration, artificial intelligence, etc. I am in two groups: "Media & Arts" and "Futurism."

The complete list of Lifeboat Foundation board members reads like a who's who of future-minded thinkers and activists. Indeed, many board members have already been on this show, some of them several times during the last two years. These include: Robert J. Sawyer, David Brin, Catherine Asaro, Jack McDevitt, Alan Dean Foster, Nancy Kress, Sarah A. Hoyt, Giulio Prisco, George Dvorsky, Mike Treder, Matt Browne, Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Rudy Hoffman (cryonics insurance provider).

I look forward to interviewing many more of my fellow advisory board members in the months and years to come. And I look forward to the diverse ideas and visions they will share with us all.

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Your Host to play Uncle Sam

I was asked to lend my voice to the famous iconic character “Uncle Sam” for an episode of the retro-style radio-show podcast called Amazing Pulp Adventures starring Mister Adventure.

It's a comedy-adventure series done in the style of the old-time radio dramas which were popular in the 1930s and 40s before television broadcasts became the dominant home entertainment.

My piece was small, just a few paragraphs, but it was fun.

I got this little gig because the producer, who bill's himself as Podcasting's, Rich Sigfrit, is a buddy of mine. Rich Sigfrit is one of the three people who first encourage me to try my hand at podcasting; the other two being Mur Lafferty and Tee Morris. Mur Lafferty is the producer and host of several podcasts including the award-winning podcast I Should be Writing. And Tee Morris is co-author, along with Evo Terra, of the book Podcasting for Dummies, which was the one and only instruction book I used for creating the first episode of this show back in the fall of 2005.

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Your Host's Personal Appearance Schedule

As in previous years, I will be a guest author at a number of conventions this year. This allows me to participate on panels alongside very famous and, in some cases, best selling authors and generally get a really exaggerated notion of myself.

Those of you who feel that you can stomach me in such a state, and live within reasonable travel distance, may see and visit with me in person at the following SF&F conventions: (Each of which has its own website.)

RavenCon (in Richmond Virginia -- April 25 to 27)

ConCarolinas (in Charlotte NC -- May 30-June 1)

LibertyCon (in Chattanooga TN -- July 11 to 13)

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Your Host's Virtual Appearance Schedule

Those of you who wish to visit with me inside the virtual world called Second Life can do either of two things: Send my avatar—Boc Cryotank—an instant message, or attend Sophrosyne's Saturday Salon.

The Salon is a weekly gathering of transhumanists, extropians, and other future-minded people hosted by Sophrosyne Stenvaag ("Soph") each Saturday afternoon. Located on the island of Extropia Core, it's open to the public and newcomers are always welcome. The format is usually a lecture followed by an enthusiastic discussion with many questions and comments.

Granted, I won't be there every Saturday, but it's the one recurring event within Second Life I am most likely to attend. I missed the Salon on my birthday recently because my girlfriend threw a birthday party for me. She and I, however, did attend the beach party that evening in Extropia Core, and had a fine time visiting and dancing to the live DJ.

If you would like to join us inside, you can go to secondlife.com and sign up. A standard account costs nothing, but I should warn you: Second Life is a strange and fascinating world. If you have a powerful curiosity, it can be powerfully seductive. Sometimes it's hard to let go of it and come back out.

I've met many people inside, including a number of my listeners. I've toured the Star Trek Museum of Science, been shopping on Freebee Island, my girlfriend and I went dancing at The Golden Oldies Dance Club, and I've been places and seen things I can not properly describe in mixed company.

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Yuri’s Night 2008

Yuri Gagarin was the first human to travel in space. Each year on April 12, the anniversary of Yuri’s flight, hundreds of parties are held in dozens of nations around the world to celebrate this achievement. Many of these parties are now held inside virtual worlds. Your host has been invited to be a part of the entertainment for the celebrations being devised within Second Life. Plans are still being developed, and much is still unknown, but it will probably involve a number of interviews, anecdotes and commentary from authors, NASA people, and assorted celebrities.

This will be a live event you can attend (as an avatar). There is also the possibility it will be made available as a live audio stream in addition to the usual time-shiftable podcast. Updates on this will probably be posted here and here.

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Listener Feedback

Email from Eric Klien

President of the Lifeboat Foundation

Steve,

I noticed that you are worried about the Fermi Paradox. Just to let you know, it was the reason the Lifeboat Foundation was created. A dead universe is a data point that can't be ignored. It most likely means that great dangers will sneak up on us quicker than expected and were therefore not prepared for.

Best wishes,

Eric Klien

Lifeboat Foundation

http://lifeboat.com

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Email from Branden whose email address ends with the domain name "mac.com" so I'm guessing he must be an Apple employee of some sort.

subject: Way cool!

I was just reading my RSS feeds using Google Reader (on my iPhone), when I came across a short blurb from the Lifeboat News RSS. They mentioned your podcast and an interview you did with Giulio Prisco! I haven't listened to it yet, but I think it's really cool when I see other people promoting things I like. :-)

You know you’re popular when the internet starts doing your promoting!

Congrats and win more awards! ;-)

Love the show,

Branden, MI

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Email from Dmitri Buterin

Thumbs up on the new weekly format with shorter shows, I like it so much more.

Thanks for all your work.

Dima Buterin,

Toronto, Canada

Chief Apricot at www.WildApricot.com

Web software for Membership Management and Event Registration

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Email from Daniel Warner

Hello Stephen Euin Cobb,

I discovered your podcast a few months ago and now I am a big fan.

Thanks for such great content.

- Daniel Warner

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Email from a listener named "Mister Wall 21"

A girlfriend of mine wanted me to write her an email and didn't care what it was about. I was in a hurry and pushed-out this prediction for her. When I was finished, I realized it was actually rather thought-provoking, and I am eager to hear what others might think about it:

With the current fluidity of media, the next major step will be cybernetic. In the future we will be able to instantly download/upload all media directly into our brains, acquiring the psychological benefits of entertainment and education as one would acquire vitamins by ingesting a capsule. Information will flow both ways, meaning people will become psychic for all intents and purposes, capable of sharing thoughts with the entirety of the human race. Eventually this will mean not just broadcasting our thoughts; all thought will be done simultaneously by the collective human consciousness. The individual human mind, in whatever physical form it will exist, will function more like a brain cell or computer chip than as an independent unit.

By this time, the physical will be as fluid as information is now. Technology will have eliminated any physical concerns. Machines will engineer themselves; ultimately their only purpose will be to maintain the physical state of the collective conscience and to serve as avatars for whatever physical experiments or expeditions it should embark on. This will likely be in deep space, where technology will advance to the physical limits of the universe and everything that can be known will be known. The farthest frontiers of the universe may never be mapped as they are expanding too fast for anything in the local universe to overtake them. As the collective conscience returns to the cosmos from which it originated eons ago, the circle will be complete as the universe has finally understood itself, and can now only contemplate the impossibilities of predicting its own thoughts.

"Mister Wall 21"

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Learn More

You can learn more about The Future And You here, or here or even here.

Or learn more about its host here or here.

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