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Blogging vacation

After 140 posts I've decided to take a little blog vacation. Check back in about a month for further updates.

Is It Fireworks or Something Else

As I'm writing this there are fireworks going on over the nearby ballpark. Sometimes I think how lucky I am that I live where I can make the assumption that big loud bangs are fireworks rather than some of the alternatives and that jets screaming through the air above are doing an airshow. My dogs on the other hand have no preconceived notions and immediately go crazy every time there are fireworks. Fireworks are so old fashioned... but nothing has come along to take the place of fireworks. What would be interesting enough to take their place? Does it have to have a hint of danger?

Laws That Were Made to Be Broken

Doesn't it seem like some laws were just made to be broken? Most new cars will easily exceed any speed limit in the United States. Does anyone really drive the speed limit as they weave through their neighborhood. If car makes and municipalities really wanted to keep drivers from breaking the speed limit laws, the technology required probably wouldn't be that difficult. First start with the car design. The car itself tied to a GPS system could evaluate the speed limit and warn the driver that he or she is operating outside the legal limit. I bet that nifty little GM OnStar that assists drivers could easily be modified to 'assist' the driver stay within the law. But drivers don't want to stay within the law... and if drivers don't want to stay within the law, why do we have the laws.

So will there be changes over the next 50 years in automotive safety technology and will it change transportation in general?

Everyone's A Reporter

It's big news that a reporter caught Barack Obama making some comments that I'm sure he'd rather not have been recorder. There's a lot of discussion about how the reporter was let into the fundraiser at all, but in today's world, isn't everyone a reporter? With today's cell phones, people can easily take videos, record conversations and take pictures. We're in a time when bloggers are the first to report events. What new pressures does that put on politicians? What will the people running for president in 2050 be like growing up in an environment like this?

But Was The Information Flying to China?

Yesterday's post was about how information was flying around during the events of the San Francisco Olympic Torch run, but one has to wonder.... how much information is flying around China? Is it possible to keep up with technology when technology and politics are completely linked together? Before the internet countries like Russia and East Germany could control information because it was mainly in print and on TV. It wasn't hard to limit the type of information that people had access too. Scientists could have access to the best information in their field and the government could keep those same scientists relatively in the dark in terms of politics. The Olympic athletes could be proud of the good and ignorant of the bad. But today, to strive to have your country compete with other countries, the people have to have free access to information, and with that access comes change.

What's going to happen twenty years from now to those countries that try and control access to information?

The Torch Was Never So High Tech

I live in San Francisco and I happen to work right near where the Olympic Torch was supposed to start it's very short journey in San Francisco. There were Chinese supporters bused in for the event, protesters of all sorts as well, as a few people who just wanted to see the Olympic Torch, lined up ready to do their thing as the torch went past, but due to some 'altercations' that occurred in the morning, the Torch route was changed at the last minute and for the most part, the sidelines of spectators along the new route were pretty empty.

It's amazing how the Internet and cell phones have changed things for events like this. A huge police force was down with the groups of protesters and supporters, but many probably had to be rerouted quickly to the new location. There were at least five helicopters hovering over the event. The news was being updated with pictures as events occurred. People could use their cell phones to call people at home and find out what was going on rather than hanging around wondering. Information was flying everywhere.

Snap, Your Identity has Been Captured

I was at a store over the weekend and the person behind the counter mentioned that she always asks to see ID because of all the problems with identity theft. She then went on to tell the tale of how she's heard that the latest form of stealing credit card numbers is for the person behind you to snap a picture of your credit card as you are handing it to the salesperson with his or her cell phone. I didn't bother to point out that asking for a photo ID means that the person standing behind you could also get a picture of that making the possibility of successfully stealing your identity even that much more certain.

I'm always wondering what the next form of identification will be. Will finger print readers become much more commonplace? Will there be a push for some kind of DNA reader? Just sluff off off a few skin cells to make a purchase? Retinal scans? And by giving more secure forms of identifications, will we be giving up a piece of ourselves?

Were They All Hiding Their Ipods?

I think it was the classic movie "The Time Machine" where the main character travels through time and the people of the future have shelves of books that are falling apart and they don't know what to do with them. The character is horrified that people no longer read.

What would someone from the past feel today walking into an office where people everywhere are tuning out the world with their ipods? Would it fill someone with horror or would it intrigue him or her? Would today's fascination with computers be considered a scary evolution where people are distancing themselves from each other or would people be jealous of the quick not to mention global communication that is now easily accessible?

Are There Better Books Today?

I was thinking about last Friday's post about how Amazon is changing the rules on the POD publishers and I started thinking about how many more potential books there must be today in comparison to fifty years ago.

And going back even further, before the typewriter, people had to write out their work by hand, go back and check and do all their rewrites by hand. That work alone must have turned off the majority of people who had an inkling that they might like to be a published writer.

Today with kids being able to touch type practically from the time they enter grade school, people can write out what they think, almost as they are thinking it. (Hence why blogging is so popular.) People who fifty years ago would have been considered idiots when it came to spelling and grammar can simply run 'spelling and grammar check' and while it doesn't fix everything it certainly fixes a lot more than what happened before computers. (I just spelled grammar wrong and my computer practically shouted out loud that it needed to be fixed.) And where writing groups might have once been hard to come by, the internet makes it much easier for people to exchange their work either through email, online groups, online workshops, etc in order to polish their work to a higher level than ever before.

So I was thinking that there must be a lot more 'quality' books out there than ever before. Since people who in the past might have had a great story to tell or lesson to teach are now able to easily put their words into writing. But on the flip side, the agents and publishers out there must have to weed through huge fields of material where they used to have just a nice manageable pile of submissions.

What does this mean will happen in the future? Is the day of the formally published book coming to an end? The music business is already seeing the impact of their work being exchanged in digital format and eventually if e-books catch on, this could be a concern for writers as well (maybe it is even now.) In the music business, people will pay to hear their favorite performers live... if a writer spends years on a book and everyone exchanges it digitally, will writers be able to make any money? If writers can't make any money will quality books disappear?

Change is Hard

There is a lot of talk on the blogosphere about Amazon.com's new policy regarding books that are print-on-demand (POD.) Basically if I'm understanding it correctly, if a book is a POD than Amazon wants those writers/publishers to use Amazon's POD service rather than printing it themselves, sending it to Amazon and having Amazon send it out to the customers. If a publisher does not want to use this service then they request that five copies of the book be provided to Amazon ahead of time so that they can still provide timely shipping of their books. The publisher can do their own POD of books not sold through Amazon.

So if I'm understanding this, in the name of customer service Amazon is basically driving companies like iuniverse and and others that made the self-publish business viable into the ground while growing their own self publishing interest Book Surge.

Everyone seems to have been complaining about every move that Amazon has made since the beginning of Amazon time, but... as each change comes along, it seems like we finally adapt and adjust to it. Is this just another blip?

OR is this actually a first step in moving everyone towards e-books? If all small publishers become dependent on Amazon, will Amazon one day be able to say... no more paper books for you self-publish folks.... Everything has to be electronic! And once everything is electronic how will libraries work? Will the whole idea of a public library be eliminated because there are no 'solid' books for people to borrow and read?

There's no question about it, the book business is under massive change and it's hard to predict where we will be in ten or twenty years.

World Autism Day

Well yesterday was in fact declared World Autism Day... who knew? I watched part of an episode of Larry King Live that discussed Autism and some of it's possible causes. Most of the discussion of the bits I saw revolved around whether or not vaccines are a culprit in the increasing rates of Autism. There was one piece that caught my attention which was that the kids with Autism are sometimes diagnosed with a contributing factor after they are diagnosed.... but since they were not tested ahead of time, doctors can't possibly know whether or not this factor existed prior to the onset of Autism (and after the vaccines.)

So given all the technology we have, are we coming to the day when people will be tested and retested from birth? Will you know the genetic mapping of your child before they are even born? Will you be able to post baby's first cat scan on the fridge? It certainly would be interesting.

Something Doesn't Feel Quite Right

A friend of mine mentioned that ever since Daylight Savings Time kicked in she hasn't felt quite right. For her daylight savings has always been an indicator of longer days and warmer weather and because now daylight savings time comes a few weeks early things have felt out of wack. There's also this nasty cold going around the San Francisco Bay area that's a little off for this time... related?

CNN is really having a field day with articles on Autism. I don't know if it's national Autism week or what. There's an article Study: Extreme preemies face autism risk that says:

"That suggests autism may be an under-appreciated consequence of medical advances enabling the tiniest of premature babies to survive, said lead author Catherine Limperopoulos, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal and Children's Hospital in Boston."

Another article points to the vaccines that kids get. Everyone is looking for "what's off" for these kids and one has to imagine that the advances in technology play a part somewhere along the way. If we can be thrown off course by a 1 hour time difference coming two weeks early, what can throw a baby off course?

Will there be shifts in standard practice for raising children in an effort to avoid things like autism and will there be negative consequences because of those shifts?

Volunteering By the Hour

I had some time between jobs once and decided that it was time to give back. I wanted to volunteer and so I started looking at different organizations and discovered that most organizations required at least three hours a week for a minimum of six months. It was quite the commitment since being between jobs is kind of an unpredictable thing. I had no idea when my latest job would come around. Then I discovered One Brick. One Brick sets up events that only last a few hours and you only have to sign up for one event at a time. I had already done 9 months at the SFSPCA at this time and was interested in doing something new, but I certainly wasn't ready to commit to six months, so I did a few One Brick events. My first experience was at the San Francisco food bank. The food bank is really well organized so when it gets volunteers, it doesn't mess around. It has everything setup and boom... work until you drop. And there's such a sense of accomplishment at the end.

In today's world of hectic schedules it's pretty hard to give back time if you work full time. Is One Brick and organizations like it, the future of volunteering? My niece had to do 100 hours of volunteer work before she could graduate from high school. Could there possibly be a time when we would have to do volunteer work? What if as part of our taxes we all had to report 50 hours of volunteer work per year to get special exemptions? Would the majority of people choose to do the volunteer work or would they opt-out for some paying some kind of tax?

This Drug Has No Side Effects

I was reading an article on CNN: Trial: Popular cholesterol drug fails to improve heart disease about the drugs Vytorin and Zetia which have proved very popular because they have fewer side effects than the tradition cholesterol medicines. According to the article the makers of the drugs made $5 Billion in sales.... but turns out... "The results show the drug had "no result -- zilch. In no subgroup, in no segment, was there any added benefit" for reducing plaque, said Dr. John Kastelein, the Dutch scientist who led the study."

Isn't this the sort of thing they are supposed to test before they release a drug onto the market and do $200 million in advertising? And are we susceptible to advertising.... apparently so -- " In Canada, where marketing drugs directly to consumers is not allowed, sales were four times lower." Doctors weren't supposed to be prescribing this drug unless the more traditional drugs didn't work.

It's stuff like this that makes me think that something big is going to happen around drugs in the next 10-20 years.... but what? What will be the straw that finally breaks the camel's back? Will it be something unrelated to health like a moving interest rate? Or will it be some big case against someone bringing in drugs from Canada? Or will it be a science fiction answer where there's some huge catastrophe where what's going on with the drug companies is just immaterial?

Can Bonnie Change the World?

I can never get enough about how the internet has changed the influence that one person can have in the world.

The first time I remember this happening was right here in the Bay Area. One of the car dealers here in the Bay Area was rude to a few too many Asian customers and suddenly there was an email flying around to everyone as each person sent it to his or her friends and they did the same. In just a few weeks or months it seemed like everyone knew about this specific dealer and the place was blacklisted.

The second time I remember it happening was when this expat in Hong Kong sent a somewhat offensive, but very funny email, about his life in Hong Kong out to a friend using his work email address. That friend sent it to his friend, who sent it to his friend and so on. I got a copy shortly before I read in the news that the expat had been fired.

My friend Bonnie is trying to change one airline in Thailand. Her brother was killed on the flight OG 269 and she wants to know why and has setup an online petition: http://www.investigateudom.com. The petition already has signatures from the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Thailand, Ghana, Canada, Australia, Germany, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, China, Spain, Martinique, Israel, Bahrain, Austria, Mauritius, Indonesia, Singapore, Italy, and New Zealand. The number of people who have signed the petition and who have even heard of the problem airline in question One-Two-Go is still very modest, but what if the scale tips and suddenly everyone is telling two friends and so on? There are so many countries involved. Are we on the verge of a major shift in power?

Where will we be 10 years from now?

How Come Basketball Isn't Like Wrestling?

I was watching the movie Glory Road and it occured to me that basketball would be so much more interesting if there were height requirements for the players or at least different leagues for people of different heights. For instance it would be much more interesting to see someone six feet tall slam dunk a basket than someone seven feet tall. Also there are so many more people six feet and under so I'd have to imagine that the talent involved in playing the game if there were a maximum height would be completely different.


There have been a lot of changes in the equipment used in sports in the last fifty years, but what about the sports themselves. There are now extreme sports and reality TV sports, but what about the traditional sports of Baseball, Basketball and Football? Will there ever be major changes in how these sports are played? Or will the changes come primarily based on the new equipment and the changes in the human physique?

It's Tax Time

I just finished my taxes. In a way it astounds me that I pay something like $50 to buy software to help me do my taxes. If taxes were invented today, the government would have to be responsible for creating a tool to make it possible for me to understand and file my taxes, it would simply be expected. But since taxes have been around long before software and the internet, it was up to private companies like Intuit and H & R Block to come up with the brilliant ideas to create the software to help a person file their taxes. It would be interesting to know how tax software has changed how much people pay in taxes. Do people really pay less? Or do they pay more? How much is spent on tax software? Have some accountants been put out of business by tax software? Do people put more into IRAs now because the tax programs can show them how much less they'll pay in taxes?

If things have changed because of the introduction of software like TurboTax and TaxCut what further changes will we see 10 years or 20 years from now?

The World is Out to Get Me

With the lovely weather we are having here in San Francisco many a blossom is in bloom and the trees are just pouring down a rain of pollen. I didn't used to have allergies but over the last five years things seem to have gotten worse and worse. A friend suggested that it's all the non-native species that have been planted everywhere, but that didn't sound right, after all, I'm a non-native species. My parents are not from here and their parents were not from where my parents grew up. But she had a point. Could we humans be the innocent victims in a war between different species of plant life? Are there trees around us putting out more, stronger pollen in an effort to dominate what terrain is left in this concrete jungle? Are the imported Australian Eucalyptus trees battling it out with the Japanese cherry blossom trees? Will the plant life eventually win out over all?

Are You Watching Me? Why Not?

My nephew has to write an essay about 1984 for school and we got to talking about what kind of things Orwell predicted that have come true or not come true. One thing that that has come true is that we are being watched more, but a lot of people are actually putting a lot of what might be considered private information online via blogging, facebook, youtube and all these other neato social networking sites that allow you to 'publish yourself.' One man who was hauled in for being potential terrorist publishes everything he does to avoid having problems: The Visible Man: An FBI Target Puts His Whole Life Online.

And could Orwell have predicted that the US could be involved in a war for five years (Iraq) and it wouldn't be the most important thing on people's minds and for most probably wouldn't even make the top ten on a daily basis?

I think of it as Big Brother overload. We're being overloaded with all these messages of fear and we're being watched all the time so that the newest generation of adults is reacting by just not reacting to it.

If this is where we are today where will we be in 2048? What would today's Orwell think up? What are the unexpected consequences of the directions the world is going in today? If I had to guess I'd say the single biggest influence in the next forty years will be global warming. Whether efforts or taken to change direction or not, global warming will determine the day to day lives of people forty years from now.

The Trouble With Tribbles

I was watching "The Martian Child" on DVD. It's of course nothing to do with outer space and instead is about the relationship between a young boy and his adoptive father. When the movie was over I decided to watch some of the special features. In all honesty, I just wanted to hear the child actor in the movie talk like a normal kid for once. What I discovered instead was that the writer of The Martian Child is David Gerrold who wrote the episode for the original Star Trek Series, The Trouble With Tribbles. He also worked on Star Trek Next Generation and has many other writings. How amazing that he was able to cross genres so successfully.

Aspiring to Something New

I came across an article that mentioned a car company Aptera and their car which gets hundreds of miles to the gallon. I'd be impressed with the exciting new design (except for the fact that it looks a lot like an airplane minus the wings.) I wonder how safe the wheels sticking out from the body will be since they will have a low visibility to other drivers on the road who generally judge where other cars are by the side of the car. Maybe one day we will need to have roads just for electric cars.

In a way, it would be kind of cool if we had a 'real' gas shortage because it would cause a flurry of new innovations and a change in the rules to accommodate innovations that address a pressing need.

What Technology Could We Not Live Without?

At one time there were questions about whether microwaves were healthy. There was speculation that cell phones were causing brain cancer when they first became popular. Both are believed to be untrue now, but what would happen if a major piece of technology that we depend on on a daily basis was found to be unhealthy? Would we be able to give it up? Not just use it in a different way, but give it up completely. We already know that cars are unhealthy, but not too many people have stopped driving as a result. Because cars are unhealthy on a global basis rather than an individual basis it's hard to appreciate the cause and effect. But it if was something more personal?

I looked around trying to think of what technology I absolutely couldn't live without and I think it would be a sad day in who-ville if I had to give up my computer, well, to get even more specific, email. I know it's ridiculous, but what if the day came and bam... no more email (and no more text messaging since it's basically the same thing.) What would happen?

A Happy Little Mouse

So my favorite new little toy that I got to go with my new computer is a little wireless mouse. I don't know why I hated having a wire, but I definitely like this little mouse. It seems like I used to just deal with the touch pad with my old computer rather than lug the mouse on a cable around with me.

I think for many people the webcam that comes standard or maybe cost $25 on most laptops is probably a favorite. I remember when all these little chat systems, skype, yahoo voice, etc were just taking off and having a camera seemed so cool, but the only systems that came with them were expensive. Or you got an external one and at least for me, it was tough to get it one to sit right so half the time there was a tilted image.

I like the camera. It has a great image, but it worries me. Will we all have to have webcam calls in the next 10 years? Will we lose that anonymity that talking on the phone had where no one could tell that you were cleaning the house or paying bills?

Vista is Not that Bad

I finally broke down and bought a new computer. I've been looking for over six months, but the whole controversy over how bad the new Microsoft Vista was made me hold off. But when keys started to fly off my old computer I knew I had no choice. I had already replaced the battery when it didn't just die, but had a secret code telling me something was REALLY wrong. (The code being that the first, third and fifth lights were blinking and my computer was notifying me that I'd better do something.) I replaced the hard drive when it was making too much noise and then finally started to have problems rebooting. Yup, the keyboard was the final straw.

I braced myself for the worst getting Vista. I could have bought a computer that had XP, but at Dell in my price range it meant spending more on an older computer and that just didn't make sense. So I ordered my computer and crossed my fingers. I set aside a whole day for dealing with the problems I knew I was bound to run into moving all my files and software over to the new machine. I was convinced that at least one or all of my peripherals wouldn't work with my new machine.

... but in the end, everything worked and though I'm still struggling to learn some of the new bells and whistles everything seems pretty straightforward. So was it all just hype?

Is Being Whiny Genetic?

I'm still making my way through watching the original Star Wars. It's not that it's boring at all. I just like to watch on the treadmill so it takes time. I remember there were all these comments about Anakin being too whiny and annoying and when I was watching Star Wars IV I realized how perfect this was because it tied him into the first movie. Luke really seems like Anakin and the whole father/son thing makes perfect sense.

George Lukas really is brilliant. It's amazing that he managed to keep a consistency in the story even over 30 years. And the new movies are on the way:

When would R2D2 Be Put to Sleep?

More on Star Wars. It's interesting watching a movie that was made more than 30 years ago contend with the science of today. Like would an R2-D2 really have been in service for more than 20 years between when he was in the new movie (which takes place in the past) and when he was in the old movies (which is the future)? Here we buy cars every 4 years or so, computers every two years or so. What would be the shelf life of a utilitarian robot?

Wouldn't Clones Have an Achilles Heel?

I was watching Star Wars IV (which is the first movie) for the first time in a really long time and something occured to me. Wouldn't human clones used as soliders have an achilles heel due to the fact that they are all the same? Couldn't someone genetically engineer a virus of some sort that would target only DNA or the clones?

Email A. D.

In the old days... oh say well, depending on the person, yesterday, after someone died their relatives would have the unhappy job of deciding what to do with all their worldly goods. Along with that came the letters and pictures that the person left behind, almost an essence of who they were and what the cared about. But today it's all about the email. Email that is password protected. Will the secret love affairs that used to come out or that curious picture that no one can place be a thing of the past? I wonder what the rules are about email after death. Will Yahoo or Google open up an email box of a relative who has an untimely death? And will we ever know if someone dies if the only record of the relationship was by email?

Will new laws be passed? Will new arrangements be made? Along with telling you where the money is hidden, will grandma give you the password to her account?

Beaches Closed - High Narcotics Level

There's an article on CNN Prescription drugs found in drinking water across U.S. about how prescription drugs are ending up in the water supply. One of the most interesting findings reported in the article is that "male fish are being feminized." With all the estrogen from birth control pills making it's way into nature, the male fish are being impacted.

What does this mean for the future of male species? Can't you just see the intro to the movie? A woman and a man are in there home... the woman pops one of the pills out of the easily recognizable birth control pill dispensers, grabs a swig of water and then uses the toilet. The audience watches and the water flushed down makes it's way through the processing facility and finally ends up with a scientist pulling a fish out of the water and commenting on how something is off with the fish. The scene fades, and a big future date comes on the screen....

It's easy to predict what would happen with too much estrogen in the water system. What about these other drugs?

Common Parts

I was reading a blog post on LinuxDevices.com: Low-cost laptop runs Linpus Linux which talks about a $300 ultra-mini PC for the developing country market and it got me thinking. With the huge number of certain brand name computers like Dell, HP, Apple, etc, couldn't those companies come up with a 'refurbished' type of computer made from recycled parts from their own brands? Right now I know that Dell offers the option of letting you pay to recycle your computer, but what if when you bought a new computer, you sent your old computer back in and all the working parts were harvested and rebuilt into a computer that could be sent off to some third world nation's school?

Now take it a step further, what if companies designed their computers with the idea that they could one day be rebuilt into another computer? And take it another step further, what if all computers had to have the capability to have certain parts be flexible enough to be reused in a different type of computer until the parts died from use. Would the world change with all the extra computers available?

An Opportunity for Technology?

There's an article in Today's San Francisco Chronicle: Court limits home-schooling to credentialed teachers about how the courts have found home schooling in California to be illegal unless done by credentialed teachers. So just what will happen to the 166,000 children mentioned in the article who are being home schooled?

I see a niche market opening up for credentialed teachers using technology to provide homeschooling tutoring. Would a teacher instant messaging a student and correcting their homework through email count? Where will the line be drawn? It's pretty tough to get a teaching credential as specified by the State of California: You must complete a professional teacher preparation program, including successful student teaching, at the level you wish to teach. Pretty scary stuff: http://www.ctc.ca.gov/credentials/leaflets/cl561c.pdf.

Education is always a fun topic for science fiction. I was once looking at books in the library and came across James Clavell's book The Children's Story about a class of children that is quickly re-educated in their classroom. It was one of these really scary stories that seemed all too real. Sometimes I wonder if home schoolers believe this is what happens to their children at school.

After the 15 minutes of Fame

The new American Idol Season is well underway. But in the auditions there was one kid who was in the American Idol Juniors show a few years back. I enjoyed that show. The kids were cute and sang nice little songs. Of course unlike the American Idol winners, you never hear about what happened to the kids, so I looked up the two sisters... turns out, sure enough they have their website own http://www.thompsonsister.net/. Not only that, there's still all kinds of footage of the sisters being posted on YouTube both by fans and by the sisters regularly. Example:






So the kids are stretching their 15 minutes of fame without actually working in the entertainment industry. I look forward to looking up these two girls 15 years from now and seeing if the are still in this in between world, or if they will jump back into the spot light or if they will finally fade from the public view.

Internet Famous

By the way, what was so interesting about yesterday's video was that it had been viewed over a half a million times in just one day. Now let's look at a video that's been looked at almost 77 million times.

I didn't get it. 77 million times? Seriously? That's the magic of the viral effect of the Internet. People will watch things that are not necessarily that entertaining.



The guy in the video is Judson Laipply. He's "Internet famous. " He's interviewed on TV because people are watching his video on Youtube.


The phrase "15 minutes of fame" is taking on a whole new meaning. So is this all going to blow over and be some fad that we all remember as being so charming or is Internet fame something people are going to work towards. Will people try to get their fame via Youtube instead of trying to break into TV and movies?

Things We've Never Seen Before

I decided to take a look at Youtube this week and see just how entertaining the videos there can be and see where we are today in terms of entertainment.

So I went into the "Most Viewed" Section and found an interesting video of a plane landing where the plane very nearly crashed.



(related article)
I think the most interesting thing about this segment is that it's something that I've never seen before. We've all seen staged airplane crashes, but this was real. It was so real that it looked fake. As the plane took off again my thoughts I thought about what some of the bumpy rides I've taken on airplanes must look like from outside the plane.

This was just some guy taking videos, but do airports all have cameras on the runways? Are all take-offs and landings recorded? Could these recordings change the design of planes and the rules about flying for the future? Do we want to know this much detail?

The Beauty of the Overcast Day

I was working from home the other day and I noticed that there was a perfect layer of fog over everything. For some people this may have been a cause for dismay, but for me, it was a good sign. Since I work on the computer all day, on sunny days I have to keep the blinds closed because the sun makes it impossible to see the screen of my computer. On a wonderfully overcast day I can open the blinds and have a little piece of the outside inside.

Ten years from now, will we view the weather differently based on the use of computers. Will someday the computer be perfected and people will be able to use their computers and have the blinds open? Or is this one of those potential market capturing devices that no one has yet noticed?

The Future of the Pet

When Philip K. Dick wrote 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,' I wonder what he was thinking. The movie got twisted around in so many different ways, but the book had a whole element about electronic pets wasn't really covered in the movie. I think we are do for another generation of fake pets. I wonder what it is going to be this time. I'd like an electronic cat that goes and plays around the house dusting and vacuuming it as she goes. And she'd need to be a big cat so that my dogs wouldn't eat her.

Are Computers the New Automobile?

There was a time when it seemed so cool and neat to have the latest and greatest car. Every few years there would be so many innovations that there really was a difference between a car made five or six years ago and I can see why people would buy new cars. I live in San Francisco where buying a new car is more of a luxery than a need. No salt on the roads to cause rust. Here there are still old VW Bugs driving the streets just fine. Now that car development has slowed down a bit, it's hard to justify buying a new car.

I would never think of buying a new car every two years, but there is a product on the market that has me in its grips... the computer. A couple of years is a night and day difference between computers. I'm of course in the process of buying a new computer so I've got it on my mind day and night as I try and figure out which model to get. Do I really need that extra power? No, but it would be so nice to speed along the computing highways. Do I really need to get the fancy green one? No, but green is so in. And should I get the matching mouse? I could use the old mouse, but that green mouse is such a nice accessory. It's the same discussions that people have about cars, the bigger engine, the fancy seats,.

Computers still have a ways to go till they slow down in their evolution. What else can we expect in the future? What fancy accessories? What will the mom and pop computer look like and what will the speed demon have on his or her desk?

And what is an up and coming technology that will eventually suck the cash from our pockets on a consistent basis like the car and the computer?

How Much Better Can Schools Get?

Yesterday's post was awfully negative, so I thought I'd go the other direction today. With the assistance of technology, how much better can schools get? Besides I think this is how most Science Fiction writers try to go whenever they try and look at the education of the future.

What if there were a complete change in thinking and much more time, effort and funds were put into public education in this country. Would that change things? What if class size were reduced to 10 students per class max and there was enough money for all the special programs that anyone could wish. What long term effects would these changes have on society? Would other parts of society suffer because the money had been re-routed? If this was started today, what would walking down the street be like 25 years from now?

How Much Worse Can Schools Get?

I was listening to a teacher complain the other day about class size. It feels like I've been hearing the same old complaints since I was a kid:

There's not enough funds for -

• Supplies
• Textbooks
• Teachers
• Music and Art Classes
• Buildings
• Maintenance
• Sports Programs
• ... the list goes on.

It seems like the US has more money than ever so where is the money going and how much worse can it get? This teacher was mentioning a class size of 40 students in a room. Regardless of the age group, that's a lot of kids. How much worse can it possibly get and what measures will be put in place to make it possible? For instance if you had a class of 100 eight year olds what would be required. A lot more kids are being diagnosed as ADD. Is this because it's so much more important for a child to not demand individualized attention? Will 50% of the eight year olds be drugged so they can sit through a school day in a class of 100? Will restraints become an option? How about forced homeschooling where kids are forced to attend classes remotely so that they don't disturb the other students with their 'antics.'

And some other things to think about: What would happen if no one went into teaching? And what if there's no more football programs in schools? Where will professional football and baseball players come from? Is this why there's already players being imported from other countries? One day will most of the players come from other countries? Will it be almost like a gladiator situation where people are brought in from other places to play games, but they have no ties to this country? In a way, because the players on teams are generally not locals, it's almost like that today anyway.

Re-reading this it sounds like a political rant. Maybe that's why science fiction writers don't try and tackle this subject... too close to home and anything seems possible.

New Definitions for Siblings

Remember when there were half-siblings, step-siblings, twins, triplets, etc? Well now there are whole new definitions for siblings because of technology. I remember catching a special on NBC about a set of twins where the scientists who were in charge of one woman's in vitro fertilization didn't clean the pipette so she ended up with twins with different fathers: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9438648/. It was an easy catch since the fathers were of different races, but one has to wonder if it's happened before where the differences between the children were more subtle so that it wasn't noticed that they had different fathers.

It's a new world in terms of having kids. Biological parents, donations, surrogates, invitro... will there be new definitions that apply to the relationships between parents, children and siblings in the next ten years, what will they be?

The Original Famous Multiples

Yesterday I talked about the fact that it will be interesting to see the kids in Kate & John + 8 grow up, kind of like a science experiment, but how will people look back on this show twenty years from now.

In 1934 a set of identical quintuplet girls were born: The Dionne Quintuplets. These poor girls were taken from their parents and put on display for the amusement of the public.

A less famous set of multiples are the The Fultz Quads, four identical girls born in 1946, who I can barely find anything about on the web. They too were watched by the world when they were used in advertising campaigns, but they were also given shots of Vitamin C by a doctor who decided to experiment on them.

Will those of us who watched the show end up feeling guilty about taking part in the exploitation of these kids twenty years from now, or will it be more like looking back at the Osmond family... nothing but warm fuzzies?

Not Clean Enough

I was watching one of my favorite fluffy reality shows Jon & Kate + 8 the other day. In the episode, Kate, was trying to hire someone to help with the cleaning. For anyone not familiar with the show it's about a couple who have twins and a set of sextuplets. In this particular episode, it turns out that Kate is a clean freak. She mops the dining room/kitchen, wipes down the counter and stove and all the chairs three times a day.... and she has 8 kids. Okay, so I could see where just the fact that she has 8 kids means that if she didn't do this obsessive cleaning then the house would be a disaster. Needless to say, no-one can keep up with her clean freak-i-ness, so she ends up with no help in the cleaning department.

So one of the reasons I find this show so fascinating is that in the natural world, humans are generally not capable of having 6 kids born on the same day. First there was the technology that allowed Kate to get pregnant at all, since she unable to do so naturally. Then there was the technology that allowed her to carry the six babies as long as possible. They don't talk a lot about the fact that the babies were premature, but there is some mention of it, so there must have been a lot of technology to allow the premature babies to survive. In the episode I was watching three of the kids were using special breathing devices. They explained this was because the kids were premies. I don't think that these kids need the devices all the time, but several of the kids were sick so that might be part of it. There have been trips to the eye doctor where it was brought up that premies are more likley to have eye problems because of the oxygen they are exposed to.

I hope they follow these kids all the way until they are grown up because they are a science experiment of sorts and I'll be interested to watch what happens.

Seriously? Bar Codes?

I was watching Terminiator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles last night and as I watched the robots put bar codes on their captive humans, all I could think was: Seriously? Bar Codes? As we speak bar codes are becoming obsolete. I can't imagine that bar codes will be used even fifteen years from now. And would a robot even put a visual tag on a human? Wouldn't they just embed a chip under the skin? Wouldn't it be more practical for robots to be able to 'sense' different humans by internal identifiers?

As I watched the episode I started to think, what would robots dream of inventing? Would a world full of robots be more advanced and in what ways? In the show we see technological advances, but what would be the point of advancing technology for technology's sake? What would motivate a robot to create something new?

What Was that Smell?

Yesterday's blog about was about 'political correctness.' Today I was having lunch with my parents in an little cafe. We were sitting in a pleasant little garden outside when a couple sat down at a table near us. It wasn't really next to us. There was a decent amount of space between our table and their table. Suddenly this waft comes crashing down on us and it becomes hard to breath. My dad starts to talk about 'who is it that smells so bad?' My mom starts to sneeze. My eyes start to water. The woman (or it could have been the man) was wearing a very offensive fragrance. My dad started to complain loud enough that I'm sure the couple could hear and of course, I was a bit embarrassed, until my nose became so overwhelmed that I insisted that we leave.

My dad kept saying "I'm just not used to that anymore." At one time wearing perfume was so common that no matter where you went there was someone wearing a scent, but these days it's much less common to notice someone by smell instead of sight. And it seems like there's a lot more people who are adverse to the smell of perfume than ever before, either not liking it or in more drastic circumstances, being allergic to it.

So if twenty years ago, lots of women wore perfume everywhere and it was completely acceptable, but today it's much less common and many more people have allergies, where will we be twenty years from today? Will perfume be illegal? Will there be new allergen free, more subtle fragrances that are marketed as being easier on the nose?

And on that note -- Happy Valentine's Day!

and this blog will be on vacation until after President's Day!

I Can't Believe You Just Said That

I've come across one prediction for the future of the west coast in Ecotopia that couldn't be further from the truth. The reporter, who is the main character, discusses how people are constantly saying what they think and putting everything out there. In real life, it seems like the concept of 'politically correct' was invented here on the west coast. In seems like in today's world, it's often hard to know what to talk about to new people. You want to avoid anything that might be the least little bit uncomfortable. On the other hand, the book makes a good case that the more open discussions help different people to understand where the other is coming from and maybe see a different point of view.

Where will we be 20 years from now? Will there come a time when everyone explodes and decides to just go ahead and say what they think or will as a society will we become more introverted avoiding anything that might be the least bit uncomfortable. I sometimes think it would be fun if on election day for president everyone wore a shirt that indicated who they voted for. No more of this crazy polling. The reporter could say, "Well, Bob, I'm in a sea of red shirts here, but I do see a few blue shirts working their way through the crowd." It would be nice if it could be more like a friendly college football rivalry... no soccer type fans who do crazy things welcome.

It's Only a Litte Sorting

I'm re-reading the book Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach. It's one of my favorite books, but I haven't read it for many years. For anyone who doesn't know the story, its about the Western States of the United States succeeding to form their own nation 'Ecotopia.' On the back of my copy there's a quote from Ralph Nader:

"None of the happy conditions in Ecotopia are beyond the technical or resource reach of our society."

That kind of gives you an idea of the philosophy in the story.

There's a passage I really liked:

"Every Ecotopian household, thus, is required to compulsively sort all its garbage into compostable and recyclable categories, at what must be an enormous expenditure of personal effort; and expanded fleets of garbage trucks are also needed."

When this book was written in 1975 the idea of sorting garbage was very 'out there.' But today, here in San Francisco we have three garbage cans, the black one, for regular garbage, the blue one, for recyclables, and the green one for compostables. I too thought it would be a pain in the butt to sort my garbage, but what's nice is that while the black can has limits on it, you can put out as much recyclable and compostable garbage as you like. There have been times when I've put out six bags of garbage from the yard or extra boxes of recyclables after Christmas. It's also rewarding to know that a huge portion of my garbage is no longer going to a big old land fill.

The question is, will it catch on? Earnest Callenbach was right... it takes more effort and it takes more garbage trucks and what he didn't anticipate was the homeless who come around all week long trying to pick out the valuable bits of recyclable garbage such as cans and pop bottles. He also probably didn't anticipate the group of neighborhood kids that think its hugely fun to ride the garbage cans down the hills.

Science Fiction Short Stories - Call Signs

It's amazing how many online magazines there are for science fiction. Hard to say why. Maybe it's because in the science fiction sector are the early adopters of reading material online.

I recently read Call Signs by Cathy A. Chance on the online magazine Afterburn. In the story Cathy tells the story of a female clone pilot as she confronts a difficult situation that makes her change her way of thinking. Star Wars introduced the idea of a clone army (at least to me,) but there's never been much discussion about the possibility of female clones having value. Cathy's choice of having her pilots be women is an interesting/apt one considering that women have often played interesting roles in air flight. Amelia Earhart is one of the most famous pilots in history. Jeana Yeager flew the Voyager with Dick Rutan on a non-stop, non-refueled flight around the world. And who can forget Jessica Dubroff who died at seven trying to fulfill a dream of flying across the United States.

I think one of the reasons that science fiction shorts are so poplular is because we all can glimpse at just the edge of what the future holds and science fiction writers take one element like Cathy does her with clones in the military and gives us a glimpse of what might be. It also gets us thinking. I personally wonder what would happen if all pilots were women, clone or not.

Sometimes Technology Doesn't Help

I showed up for a doctors appointment yesterday at a big HMO and the person behind the counter got a defeated look on her face when I told her my doctor's name. It seemed that Doctor Jane (not her real name) had quit the facility over six months ago, but someone had forgotten to take her name out of the system so appointments were still being booked with her. This answer was a ltitle strange. I mean if she had said, her last day was yesterday or even last week I could have believed it, but six months? Were they getting people showing up everyday for the last six months asking to see this doctor? I had only made the appointment two weeks earlier so it wasn't a left over appointment booked far in advance, and the big HMO was efficient enough to send me a reminder card about the appointment.

Sometimes it seems like people don't know how to intervene when technology isn't working.

When the system is so automated that the person who handles the appointments has to rely on other people to make changes to the system such as adding and removing data it becomes faulty.

I might have been far more frustrated, but thanks to technology, they were able to find another doctor in the same building who was willing to see within thirty minutes of my original appointment. And my old doctor only used paper and pencil with no reminder calls.

Technology going wrong is a favorite topic among science fiction writers. It seems that no matter how well a system is designed, the human factor is always going to cause problems.

Transformers

I never go to the movies much so my reviews are always a little, well possibly a lot late. I just watched the movie Transformers. The movie is worth seeing just for the special effects. The robots were brilliant. The only think I didn't like was the way the face of the evil guy seemed to move in an almost human like way. I would have preferred that he be more robotic. I got the movie through netflix which doesn't provide the 'special effects' cd when you rent the movie, but I would have loved to have seen how they got the robots to work because the effects were amazing. It almost made me want to go out and buy a gigantic flat screen TV so I could better appreciate them.

The only thing I found a little disconcerting was the fact that the movie kept reminding me of War Games. Teenage girl and boy fighting to save the world. Teenage girl kind of hot. Teenage boy kind of geeky.

What's With the Look?

One of my favorite blogs is Nathan Bransford's blog. He's a literary agent and has good tips on working with agents. One of the quirks of his blog is that he regularly makes references to the reality show America's Next Top Model on his blog which crack me up... for example: America's Next Top Surprisingly Essential First Page (the Finalists)

I too watch the show, and though I'm a little more embarrassed to admit it, I find the crazy knowledge the show provides sneaking into everyday life. The picture above is of a Gap ad that I see on my way to work in San Francisco. I can't help it, I've started looking at this ad with the same scrutiny as the judges on the show. What the hell is going on with this woman's hair? Why does she look bored? There's no intensity in the eyes and what's with the mouth? Was this the best of a whole set of mediocre pictures. I'm so sorry Ms. Model up there on the billboard. Pre-ANTM I'd probably have thought that was a great picture. I don't mean to be so judgmental. Maybe it was just that the previous ad in that spot of Ai Tominaga as seen here on the blog Asian Models (the second picture down) was just so much more in tune with San Francisco and that part of town and the season. After all the poor model in the picture above is sitting there in her shorts in the cold and rain. It makes me uncomfortable.

Okay so what does all this have to do with Science Fiction? Many reality shows in particular focus on giving either judges or contestants the power to eliminate based on relatively arbitrary criteria. Could these shows move our society further away from cooperation and mentoring to get along to a cut-throat eliminate that which you do not like and somehow have the power to do so?

And what will we do with all the expertise we develop in areas that have no relevance to our daily life? Ten years from now will every picture look posed? Will everyone sit around thinking how bad the facial expression was on grandma in that group photo?

Double Dipping

There was an article on CNN just in time for the superbowl: Beware the bowl: Double dipping spreads bacteria. I don't think that there was any doubt that double dipping spread bacteria... was there? But a study on the subject would have such marketability because of a Seinfeld episode. It must be so gratifying to do a study and have it picked up on CNN as major news. If you look on CNN there's a section called 'Popular News.' The news that everyone reads regardless of what is 'really important'.


Right now that 'popular' news takes up only a small space on the CNN site. How will that part of the news evolve over time?

Lost

Okay, this is a little late, but the lastest episode of Lost was on last Thursday. It was good like always.... you know totally confusing. The thing I liked was the re-run on Wednesday with the subtitles explaining what the hell was going on to bring you back up to speed. They should really think about doing that every week. Watching Lost is like reading a good book, but only reading one chapter at a time. It's hard to keep on top of everything. I read 9 of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time Series, but when the 10th came out, I had forgotten what the story was because there were so many characters and so many sub plots. That's kind how Lost is. I'm sure when the series ends it will end up going on forever because it will be one of those series that will be so great to watch on DVD.


So normally I try and keep my predictions to ten years into the future, but here's my prediction on what's going to be in the coming season of Lost. Jack and the other Oceanic six are going to get off the Island. Obviously we know it's Jack, Kate, and Hurley. We have to guess that it's going to include the dead guy in the coffin which I'm going to predict is.... Ben... too out there? Plus he wasn't on the flight, so maybe not. Anyway my prediction is that the six will get off the island at the end of the season with some threat hanging over their heads so they can't reveal that there are still people on the island. There will be a ton of back and forth between their life in the future and their life on the island leading up to the the end of the season. Then next season will be Jack, Kate, etc going back to the island to finish their unfinished business.

Eli Stone

Okay, I'm going to put my review of the season premiere of lost on hold to discuss the new series Eli Stone. I have to admit, I'm an instant fan. It reminds me a little bit of Monk. Take a series subject - mental illness and turn it into something wonderful and light hearted. But don't make it too light hearted (can you say Pushing Daisies?)My favorite character is Mr. Chen, the Chinese guy pretending to be a Chinese guy. I hope he turns out to be a regular. I'm not sure you can call this science fiction since everything is taking place in the main characters mind, but I figure that it feels like it's real to him so it's kind of like science fiction.

-- Excuse any typos. Blogger spell-check wasn't working.

Why Isn't Her Face Moving?

With cosmetic surgery and botox becoming so popular there's a new kind of older beauty out there in the world. She definitely doesn't look her age... but she doesn't look younger either. She kind of looks like she's made of plastic. Everyone used to make fun of Joan Rivers for looking like she's had cosmetic surgery, but now it seems like people are trying to emulate that look. Better to look like plastic than to have a few wrinkles and look old. I wonder if this is a trend that is here to stay or is it like the tanning salon? At one time that orange glow just couldn't be beat, but then it went out of style for health reasons and now it's been replaced by spray on tans. Will there be pockets of commununities where all the women (and maybe men) use botox and try to stay young or will everyone eventually adopt easy forms of cosmetic surgery?

And what about men? There was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle: More men turning to implants for chests of gold. It seems pretty dramatic for a man to get a pec-job. But they are doing it.

Could it be when you go into the old age home 20-30-40 years from now that there is a subset of people who look oddly young? And what does happen to a boob-job or a pec-job when old age does take over and the body sags around the implants?

Look Back and Then Look Forward

A couple of days ago there were two articles in the Wall Street Journal Thinking About Tomorrow and Predictions of the Past that talk about looking at what might happen 10 years from now and what we thought would happen 10 years ago. It's very conservative looking at trends that already exist and extrapolating based on those trends which is of course very practical, but I wonder what mini-trend is out there now that will explode into the forefront. What item will we all have in our pockets or homes or cars that wasn't there before and was just some crazy gizmo that someone was working on in their basement. What will explode that fast?

The Future is About Interacting with Others

Isn't it funny how everything these days is about interacting online? When I first started my blog I thought it was all about gaining a readership, but really for a blog to be successful, people are supposed to comment and even more important, they are supposed to talk about your blog in their blog. Yesterday I mentioned a web TV service that looked interesting, http://www.hulu.com/. I went to another online programming site today http://www.joost.com/ and on their website they say:

Play with your feed

You can sit back and watch on
your own if you'd like, or you
can jump and get involved.
Chat, IM, share, rant and rave
freely - horsing around is
encouraged.

Of course video games are ahead of the curve and there are all kind of online games with tons of interaction with people you don't know. Second Life makes you a part of a virtual world. On some of these different systems, you can buy virtual items with real money. Need some cool clothes for your character? Get out the credit card.

Where is this all leading us? And what about those who get left behind because they can't afford the latest technologies? What will the life of someone who gets left behind be like in comparison to someone who adopts all these new technologies 20 years from now? Will there be scholarship programs in online worlds to allow those without the means to enter that world?

Unintended Consequences

I remember when Los Angeles had it's last big earthquake, many of the highways were damaged. The unintended consequences were that many people who had never used the new public transportation systems started to use them and when things were fixed, there were some who continued to use those systems.

With the writers strike seeming to go on forever and more and more content available on the web, this strike has the possibility to change how people watch TV series. There's nothing new on so why not go find some older series on the net that might be interesting. I was visiting www.sfsignal.com and I came across a post Sunday Cinema: Firefly - "Our Mrs. Reynolds" where using www.hulu.com they've posted an episode of firefly. I visited the hulu site and they have The Pretender listed as one of the series that they host. It's one of my favorites. I signed up for the beta service, but it looks like there's a line. I see they also have 24 which I've never gotten around to watching.

It will be interesting to see what happens ten years from now. Will there be a blip of people who no longer watch TV programming on TV that grows from this point?

One more Presidential Election Post

This week's blog has been all about the presidential election. As always, the power of data is one of my favorite topics. According to the US census bureau, 64% of voting age citizens voted in the 2004 election and that was actually higher than the 60% who voted in 2000 which represents an increase of about 5 million people. (Actually there's a lot of ways to look at the numbers because the population increased at the same time so for the purposes of this blog, the 5 million people is the 4% of the 2004 voters.) According to Wikipedia the difference between George W Bush and John Kerry was 3,012,499 votes. So the election results are not just about the issues, what issues but about what motivates people to get out there and vote. If the US did have mandatory voting for all eligible citizens, who would win? Who are the 36% who don't vote and would their votes represent a cross-section of the people who do vote? Or would the entire political arena change in unexpected ways?

And that's it for the election... onwards to other topics.

The Presidential Campaign and the Internet

The 2004 election was definitely quite interesting. Who can forget the famous speech where Howard Dean came off bad for yelling too loud in a certain way? But there's one other thing that Howard Dean became famous for and that was using the Internet in his campaign. All the candidates today are very vocal on the Internet. Individuals use websites to setup little house parties to talk about their favorite candidates. There's people dedicated to blogging about anything and everything campaign related. And with the Internet, does a big issue really ever die down? To follow the campaign, you don't have to pay attention the whole time. You can sit down at your computer on any day and start researching what is going on and find out details that happened a year ago. With all this information out there, can individuals remove the 'media' influence from the equation and come to their own conclusions?

It's not there today, but what if in the next election you could pull up a website and do a search for a candidate and their take on a specific issue and it would give you a list of sound bites of that person talking about their views on that issue over time. I always remember that when Bill Clinton was going through his impeachment troubles, there was this clip of Hilary from when they were young saying that she'd never be the Tammy Wynette, Stand By Your Man type. Of course John Stewart does this all the time on the Daily show and it's hilarious, but it would be interesting to be able to see anything you wanted on public figures and cut out the media middlemen.

And how is this going to change what people are willing to say and do in public? Right now it seems like people are willing to 'put it all out there' for the world, but will that change twenty years from now when the people who have put it all out there have to live with what they said?

Did You Really Want the World to Know That?

I was doing a little research on the presidential candidates and came across the fact that there's some questions about Barak Obama's drug use. And where do the questions arise from? Well he wrote a memoir in 1995 Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance where he wrote: "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though." I didn't read the actual book so I don't know what the context of the sentence is, but I can certainly imagine a teacher, agent or editor encouraging him to put something colorful in his memoir. Put something in there that would make it more interesting for the readers. I wonder how he feels about that line today while he is running for president.

So I don't bring this up to discuss Barak Obama . I brought it it because there are millions of people out there blogging and putting down in writing what they are doing and/or thinking. With the plethora of information out there that will be in the haystack ready to find twenty years from now, how will that information impact people's futures 20 or 30 years from now? After all, what a 20 year old thinks or does, may not be relevant to what the same person does at 60, but will the 60 year old be judged on the thoughts of the 20 year old?

Are the Electronic Voting Machines to be Trusted?

Can the Electronic Voting Machines that we use for major elections to be trusted? It's one of the most interesting concepts. There's no way to check because voting is supposed to be annonymous. I remember during the last presidential election, I wrote a short piece of fiction for a writing class about someone hacking the voting machines and then someone else hacking them so that the numbers weren't just off, they were off twice because someone inched them one way, not realizing that someone else inched them another way. You have to wonder, how hard would it be?

So I'm a big believer that elections are going to have to change in the next 20 years. Where it will go, I have no idea. Maybe here in the United States we'll have compulsary voting like they do in Australia. Maybe we'll be able to vote by cell phone and the days of going somewhere particular to vote will be over. Or, more likely, maybe we will vote on the internet.

It would be interesting what would happen if when we voted at an electronic voting machine if the data were then sent to two different entities and then we'd see if the numbers matched.

Why is Our Election System Based on a Lack of Technology?

One of the more interesting things to me is trying to figure out how the US president is elected. Instead of a simple popular vote everything is done by delegates who are supposed to vote based on the popular vote. I assume this system was made because in the days when this country was founded, it lacked the technology to allow the easy communication and accuracy that our system now has access to. It's interesting that the system has still not changed. It was of course a big issue in the 2000 election when Al Gore got the popular vote, but George W. Bush got the electoral vote. Does the system still make sense? If we had to start over using today's technology, what would the election process look like?

There's no yet a world wide leader, but if there was... what would that election process look like?

Do Actors Get Typecast Into Science Fiction?

Yesterday's post was about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. In this series Summer Glau plays the 'good guy' robot. This is Summer's third role in a science fiction series. Okay so she's brilliant at playing quirky characters, which lends itself to the science fiction world and she has had some other roles, but I wonder.... do actors get typecast into science fiction? Does that work as a good thing or a bad thing for an actors career? I mean they'll always be able to attend the science fiction conferences and make a buck like Wil Wheaton the kid whose acting career seemed to end after Star Trek the Next Generation.

Well, just based on first two nights of Terminator, I would say that the casting of Summer in the role of the robot was perfect and I hope this series gives her a nice long stint.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Well this week premiered the new series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.... and drum roll please.... I loved it. I thought it was brilliant that they decided to set the show basically in the present. The subject matter is very dark, but I thought they did a really good job of making the story dark without making the whole show dark the way that the new Battlestar Galactica and Bionic Woman series do. I also thought they did a good job of recreating the Sarah Connor character to be a bit more likable. Who can ever forget Linda Hamilton's portrayal in Terminator 2. Didn't that pretty much kill her career? I'm eager to see where the show goes with respect to the creativity aspect of the future entering the present. One thing I did not like in the Matrix was that although these guys had all these amazing capabilities, the movies relied on really long car chases. It really detracted from the setup. I really hope that we don't just see car chase after car chase.

So far so good. Hopefully this one will make it.

Science Fiction and Publishing

Science fiction is an interesting genre in the publishing world because when you go to a lot of agents web pages it says specifically "NO SCIENCE FICTION OR FANTASY." I'm not sure why this is true. You'd think after Harry Potter that everyone would be looking for the next best thing.

So I was looking at literary agent Janet Reid's blog on how she likes to be queried: How to send me a query. On one line she says she does like: near future noir (like Jeff Somers' ELECTRIC CHURCH) but not not fantasy, urban or otherwise. And on another line Janet says: Second, take a look at the kinds of books I don't represent: science fiction.

So I look on Jeff's blog and there are all these references to science fiction. He has a link to SF Signal (A Science Fiction Blog) where someone has named his book in the best reads of 2007 so I don't think there's any question that it's Science Fiction. (I've ordered it and will have to see)

I think at the end of the day, everyone likes science fiction and fantasy, but the genre is so vast that it's easier to just say that you don't like it because chances are that you don't like what someone else likes.

Do You Have a Right to Know Who You Are?

With anonymous donor programs and adoptions, children don't always have detailed information about where they came from. I read an article the other day where a brother and sister were about to get married and the records turned up that they were brother and sister so they ended up not getting married. It makes sense that people who are related to each other but don't know it, might become romantically attracted to one another. Here's another person who has a connection to you that no one else in your family does. Isn't that kind of what love is all about?

There's a website http://donorsiblingregistry.com/ that allows people with anonymous genetic ties to connect with each other. The Internet has definitely changed how well the rules on anonymity and adoption can be upheld, but should they be upheld? With genetic testing and so much more information about what diseases are passed on genetically, is it right for the information to be protected to that level? According to the article Multiple Single Moms, One Nameless Donor providing more and more information is becoming part of the deal.


How will technology impact the future of adoption and donation? I wrote in an earlier post about DNA Evidence, the ability to leave behind a DNA sample after death. Could a DNA sample be included as part of an adoption or donation in the future so that twenty or thirty years from now, the child would have access to valuable data?

Couldn't We Use Technology to Save Energy

There was a commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle by Jon Carroll. In it, he asks why so many of the big city buildings in San Francisco leave their lights on all night. I was asking myself the same thing a few days ago when my dog woke me up at three in the morning needing to go outside. I was looking at all the buildings that had their lights on. Could that be a hospital? One building caught my eye that had the lights on every floor lit up. Then I looked around the rest of the city and there were lots of buildings with the lights on. I started to wonder what the cost would be for installing motion sensors that would turn the lights off if no one was moving around. I found an article in the New York times, The Cost of Saving Energy, that says it would take an apartment building only 2 years to recoup the cost of installing motion sensors in hallways and stairways that turn the lights down to 50% when there's no one around.

So the question really is not "Why are we leaving the lights on?" Instead the question should be, "Why isn't there a system to turn the lights off?"

I looked up at the sky for the constellations. There's only a few that are viewable because there are so many lights on in the city. Could it be possible that twenty years from now, we'll be so consious about saving energy that we could see more stars in the sky at night?

Smart Ads are Not so Smart

The latest thing these days are the smart ads posted by Yahoo and Google on various websites, but they don't seem so smart to me. A few days ago I was reading an article: Toddler and her grandmother are hospitalized after dog attack and the ads were:

• Pit Bull Liability Insurance
• Tampa dog attack claim
• Refinance $300,000 for only $965/Month
  

A few days before that I was reading the article: Southwest Florida woman plays role in raising 100 kids and there were several ads for anti-porn software.

The Internet has and continues to expose people to a lot of ads that they would never normally see in their daily lives. Why is that? If the pre-Internet world didn't have these types of advertisements everywhere for everyone, why do they appear in the Internet world.

Will advertising continue to develop in this direction such that we are constantly bombarded with ads with questionable content? Will there be government regulation to control what ads are seen by who? Or will the power of the people prevail? Will Google and yahoo eventually have to pull back on some of these 'spam-like' advertisements from normal news websites? What will be the algorithm for the future of ads?

Yikes, Should Have Yelped

Yelp is this great website where people give reviews of different services. I actually picked out my auto repair man Kevin using Yelp. I looked up a auto shop that someone else recommended, but the yelpers out there didn't have good things to say so I started looking for which places got good reviews and then I found Kevin and let me tell you, Kevin was everything the yelpers said he'd be.

I knew I was having lunch at this Japanese restaurant today and I decided that I'd yelp the place before going. (Notice how I used 'yelp' as a verb there -- I'm sure there's a happy brander behind that.) The reviews seemed mixed although overall it got four stars out of five based on forty-three reviews. There was one review that included... "chicken was flavorless and dry." The person was reviewing the chicken in soup. Anyway I decided to get teriyaki chicken. This place is known for it's sushi, but after a few bad experiences I no longer each sushi and I figured... can you really go wrong with teriyaki chicken? The answer is a resounding yes. It was horrible... not just dry and tasteless, but absolutely horrible. It was actually embarrassing because I couldn't finish the meal and someone else had suggested the restaurant and was picking up the tab.

So the question is, will Yelp change the future of restaurants? I think if I had read the reviews before the reservation was made, I might have suggested somewhere else just based on a couple of the bad reviews because the bad reviews seemed to target the things I care about. This restaurant was pretty established so a few bad days with bad reviews wouldn't do it in, but what about a restaurant that's just starting out. Could the immediacy of web reviews limit the chances of this type of venture in the future?

Can You Afford to Be Green?

I remember looking at the Tesla Motors website a few years ago and thinking... sure whatever. Over the years, many companies have tried to make electric cars successfully. What I didn't consider was that with the Toyota and Honda Hybrids out there and successful that there would be more interest at the higher end for people of means to go green. What does a poor celebrity do when their favorite Hummer loses it's shiny status symbol value because it's bad for the environment? Well since a celebrity can afford a $100,000 car they have a lot more options then Joe Shmoe.

Once the celebrities, who can afford it, go green what will the trickle down effect be. Will hybrids become passe because there's something even better out there... electric? Will their influence change our car shopping habits? Will they eventually lose interest and go back to their gas guzzlers?

Look for E. T. in Your Spare Time

There's a project called SETI@home that allows people to donate their personal computer's time to the the SETI project and it's looking for more volunteers: SETI (at) home looking for more volunteers.

I remember watching the movie Contact and thinking how cool Jodie Foster was listening on the headphones for signs of life 'out there.' I seem to remember the book Contact as being even better with more and different things to think about. It's very neat to think that individuals can contribute to this effort. There's still way too much data for even the large number of volunteers that they have now, but think about how easy it's going to be to process that data twenty years from now. With computers advancing every years, could we be making 'First Contact' in the next 20 years? It doesn't seem so crazy.

Is that Rachel Ray?

I was walking through my local Safeway and I saw these ads with a woman on them and it took me a minute to recognize her. It was Rachel Ray, but her normally round face was very slim and her normally short neck was elongated like a model. I can't say for sure whether the photograph was touched up or if maybe it was just an odd shot of her, but I thought it was interesting that the shot they chose to use did not look like her. I can actually imagine her looking at the shot and saying... oh my god, that's such a good picture of me. I look skinny and look at my neck, it looks great. But why would the advertisers want a shot of the 'Brand' also known as Rachel Ray that didn't look like her.

So it got me thinking... will touch-ups eventually be so sophisticated that they go 3-D? Will actors and actresses hide out for fear that someone will see their real features? It would be an interesting alternative to cosmetic surgery.

Nature vs Nuture... or Nuture vs Nuture

There was an interesting Robin Williams movie a few years ago called The Final Cut. It's not the best movie in the world, but like a lot of science fiction books and movies it makes you think. In the movie Robin Williams plays a man who edits the scenes from people's lives after they die. The scenes are recorded by implants the people have. He has to edit out the bad stuff and splice together scenes that will make the family remember the best part of who the person was.

One of the things that the movie reveals is that impressive people don't always live impressive lives and the way the character edited together their lives didn't really represent how their family remembered them.

Anyway I was thinking that it would be interesting to look back on a person's life from what was going on in the world during their lifetime. For instance, what music was popular? Who were the presidents that they took an interest in? So many older people can remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, but can they remember where they were when Reagen was shot and did it matter to them? What about when John Lennon was shot? Was that important? People seemed so in tuned to the Vietnam War, but not as in tuned to the Iraq War. Would the Iraq War make the cut fifty years from now? What songs today are going to be remembered as representative of this decade?

The Future of the Tiger

Yesterdays post was about how fast news about the attack of the Tiger Tatiana at the San Francisco Zoo traveled around the world. There's some speculation now that the tiger may have been taunted before it attacked, but at this point it's still a mystery and the victims aren't talking except to their new high profile lawyer.

Tatiana was a Siberian Tiger. Siberian Tigers are currently listed (according to Wikipedia) as critically endangered. I wonder how much DNA of that tiger was preserved for the future? Could there be a clone of Tatiana someday in the future? Apparently the San Francisco Zoo does have a DNA bank. It would be interesting to know much of Tatiana was preserved before her death?

In Japan the wooden temples would often burn down due to lightening so the dates are often referred to as the date when the original building was built because many of the buildings have been rebuilt multiple times. In the future could we see future versions of the same animals. In the year 2020 might we visit a Zoo and read... "The original Tatiana tiger was born in 2003, but she was shot by policemen when she attacked three visitors to the San Francisco Zoo. This was just a year after she attacked a keeper." Would the history of the clones originator having actually attacked and killed make the future Tatiana a better attraction?

News Travels Fast

Happy New Year and welcome back to spectecdis!

On Christmas day there was a tragedy here in San Francisco. One of the tigers at the zoo got loose and killed one person, injured two others and was killed: Investigation continues into fatal tiger attack at S.F. zoo. It's sad news of course, but the interesting thing was that within hours, my friend in Tokyo was asking me questions about what had happened. This news item quickly became world news. What is it about certain news items that make them so exciting that they quickly rise up the news chain and become world news? I think perhaps the fact that the incident took place in San Francisco was probably a major factor. Many people visit this city from all over the world and since the attack actually took place in what might be considered a tourist attraction that probably played a factor. Would a mauling at the Columbus, Ohio zoo which is actually quite a wonderful zoo have made world news? Was it just the fact that it was a tiger attacking a man and the the whole 'man-eating tiger' concept that made the news item rise?

With news pouring in from all over the world, who or what will determine what news items are known about world wide?