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 At one time that orange glow just couldn't be beat, but then it went out of style for health reasons and now it's been replaced by spray on tans.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?