In A City

Lots of books on the environment (like James Lovelock's 'The Revenge of Gaia') have pictures in them of the earth from space at night, showing the cities of Europe and North America lit up across the map like constellations.  The implication, and reprimand, is that humans have ruined the beautiful pristine earth with their evil development, and now, thanks to their unnatural electric lights, it's not even dark at night any more.  

There is, of course, a different perspective on this, and a pretty good example of it is here, from Stewart Brand, the cleverest man on earth who lives in a converted tugboat.  A great example of how to give a presentation.  The music, if you're interested, is by Brian Eno. 

"The stars have shined down on earth's life for billions of years, and now we're shining right back up."  

More on this man later.  

Young and Old

Here's fun: 

http://colorwar2008.com/youngnow

Pictures of people when they were kids, and then the same shot retaken as adults. Hats off to the fully clothed man in the bath.

Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper

Karl Popper said that you can't predict the future well because you cannot predict new technology with any degree of accuracy.  New inventions are, to use Nassim Nicholas Taleb's phrase, black swans - unpredictable, paradigm changing developments and discoveries.

Now Dean Kamen might be one of those snake-oil salesmen adept at telling people he has found the solution to all of life's ills, and it's in this magic box, and if you just give him a few million dollars he'll give one to everybody.

Or he might have invented something that can change the world.  Time will tell, but  I'm betting on the optimists.  I'd rather do that and be wrong that side with the pessimists and cynics.   A pity that Colbert didn't get around to drinking the Doritos though.  

Design Features

Over in the links section you'll find a website called Palojono, by a stirling British chap currently exiled to California studying design and creativity at Berkeley.  His site his full of interesting links about aspects of design and the making of things.  Not just the usual things we think of as designed, but anything that people create, and the huge range of fascinating questions and problems they come across while making things.  

I've been reading 'Freedom Evolves'  by Dan Dennett over the past few weeks (and working very hard, hence the lack of posts).  The book is about whether and how free will can exist if we are all essentially just a collection of cells that obey deterministic laws. Dennett makes a compelling and inspiring case that it does exist (although maybe not in the form that many would regard as free will), but one of the things that has really stuck in my mind is a question of design.  

When discussing speed of decision making, Dennett talks about returns of service in tennis being designed.  Which of course they are, but I had never equated a person working on a product - refining it, testing it, improving it - with an athlete practicing a particular move over and over again - refining it, testing it, improving it.  Like many good ideas (or perhaps successful memes) it's completely obvious when pointed out, and then you start to see the parallels everywhere.  The feeling you get when you're impressed by a good bit of design is very similar to that you have when you see a bit of sporting excellence.  So my delight at finding out that iPods pause if you accidently yank out the headphone cable is the same kind of experience as my joy at seeing Cristiano Ronaldo's backheeled goal against Aston Villa yesterday.  They both elicit an admiration of human intelligence and creativity, and, for me, a sense of pride at what humans are capable of.  

Of course one might expect good design from these two sources.  I'm not a Manchester United fan, and my doses of astonishment and delight are much more frugally rationed by the sports team from my area.  Such is life.

The other point that Dennett makes, citing Hume, is that morality is a kind of human technology.  Again, despite years of reading and thinking about this stuff, no way of looking at morality that I have come across has resonated quite so clearly as this idea.  Starting from evolved behaviour, and then refined, tested and improved by generations of humans, morality is something we make - for our own benefit as a social animal.  It doesn't come from any external source, and it doesn't need to in order to have meaning and force.  Dennett's book is essentially a plea to look at free will (and by extension morality) as something designed by humans, and also to ignore the claims of the transcendental - so that we do not view freedom and morality as unquestionable and untouchable externalities to our animal natures, but instead as something we make, something that improves, and something that we continue to try to perfect.  Keep the R&D rolling.  

You Won't Fall

Well, actually, you might.  

"Q: This job is unbelievable.
A: I know. I used to tell people at parties that I knock people over for a living and no one believed me. Every now and then, after a team meeting, I would be struck by how absurd it was that we'd just spent 30 minutes in a brainstorming session on new or better ways to make people fall down."

Side Effects

Fans of beards, being alive,  the Republican Party, and short posts will enjoy this.  And it's only three minutes long.  

Lucky

In one of David Attenborough's many nature documentaries, he showed a fungus which entered the brain of an ant, took control of its motor functions, forced it to climb to the top of a plant, paralysed it, consumed its body, and then exploded out of the back of its head to scatter spores onwards to reproduction of the fungus, and presumably the demise of more ants.  It was utterly terrifying - a zombie creature struggling against the thing controlling it, aware that it is no longer in charge of matters.  I felt real sympathy for the poor ant, which was surprising given the number of both old fashioned and chemically advanced ways I have successfully murdered ants and their offspring in the past.  

The Lancet Fluke described by Daniel Dennett in this talk is a different creature, but has a similar M.O.  Control the ant in order to reproduce.  Dennett's talk is fascinating, although a bit rushed as he realises he's running out of time, but let's be kind and say that this is the mark of an expansive and wide-ranging intelligence. 

Dennett makes an interesting comparison between the Lancet Fluke and memes.  On this account, like flukes, memes get into our heads and control what we think and do.  If this is right, then it's reassuring that we don't notice it happening and don't feel like we're being controlled by something 'other' than ourselves (assuming that there is a self to be controlled).  I particularly like the idea of unawareness, as it makes me feel less sorry for the ant, and therefore allows me to carry on pouring kettlesful of boiling water into their nests.  

Dennett has I think explored this theme to a certain extent in his books (memes and their effect on us, rather than pest control), but it's where he takes the idea of memes next that's the most interesting, and the most frustrating because it's so rushed.   Noting that it was germs, not bullets, that truly conquered the new world and destroyed indigenous cultures, he compares memes to germs.  Our memes (freedom of speech, equality of sex and sexuality, all the things we associate with western civilisation*) are fantastic replicators and are successfully taking the place of other memes in other cultures.  This is destroying other cultures, and, he hints, reducing the cultural biodiversity of the world.  Like blankets infected with smallpox, television, the internet, movies, all our cultural products, are spreading our ideas into the minds of others.  

Is this a good or bad thing?  Dennett offers no view, other than we need to be aware of this happening, and be less surprised when cultures react against ours and our memes, sometimes violently.  

On the one hand, we must believe that our memes are the right ones.  Liberty, tolerance, respect - these are good things.  We should try and spread these ideas around the world, we should consider them better than the alternatives, especially as we at least try to base them on reason rather than superstition.  Yes we should exercise care, think about the ways that people react to fundamental change in their culture, and not try and drop democracy out of  plane, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to shed light on the world.  

On the other hand, as Dennett hints at, this could just be our memes talking (or causing us to talk), and maybe we're not so different from the ant after all.    So we need to be vigilant, rigorous, and (to steal Dennett's joke) try to ensure that what we think is not just a fluke.