Monthly Archives: November 2008

Reviews and Criticism

BOOK REVIEW: The Coming Convergence by Stanley Schmidt

The Coming Convergence - Stanley SchmidtThe Coming Convergence by Stanley Schmidt, PhD

Prometheus Books, April 2008; 275pp; $27.95 RRP – ISBN13: 9781591026136

The Coming Convergence nestles at the better (i.e. not too sensational) end of the pop-science niche, and could easily be strap-lined as “a beginner’s guide to the singularity”. Schmidt’s degree in physics means he’s no stranger to the scientific method, but his twenty-five years as editor of Analog Science Fiction Magazine suggests he should have a pretty decent grasp of how to make science into a story that’s engaging to read. I don’t doubt he has; what I do doubt, with hindsight, is my suitability as a reviewer for this book. Continue reading BOOK REVIEW: The Coming Convergence by Stanley Schmidt →

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I CAN HAZ MANNED MARTIAN EXPEDITIONZZ??!1

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Yes. As the title brilliantly puts it, there have been developments in the area of protecting astronauts from deadly solar radiation. This radiation has been seen as one of the big obstacles to transporting astronauts over interplanetary distances:

Large numbers of these energetic particles occur intermittently as “storms” with little warning and are already known to pose the greatest threat to man. Nature helps protect the Earth by having a giant “magnetic bubble” around the planet called the magnetosphere.

…

Space craft visiting the Moon or Mars could maintain some of this protection by taking along their very own portable “mini”-magnetosphere. The idea has been around since the 1960’s but it was thought impractical because it was believed that only a very large (more than 100km wide) magnetic bubble could possibly work.

…

Computer simulations done by a team in Lisbon with scientists at Rutherford Appleton last year showed that theoretically a very much smaller “magnetic bubble” of only several hundred meters across would be enough to protect a spacecraft.

Now this has been confirmed in the laboratory in the UK using apparatus originally built to work on fusion. By recreating in miniature a tiny piece of the Solar Wind, scientists working in the laboratory were able to confirm that a small “hole” in the Solar Wind is all that would be needed to keep the astronauts safe on their journey to our nearest neighbours.

All in all good news – and since our Glorious Leaders were able to drop five huge into our bust financial system at short notice I am no longer concerned over the cost of long range manned space exploration.

[image from the Physorg story]

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What the US election tells us about how marketing is changing

smashed televisionGiven that the bulk of Futurismic‘s readers are US-based, I doubt we’re going to get much sense out of you for a few days while the smoke clears… and if you’ve come here looking for a respite from the election topicality, please accept my apologies and this uber-cute box of puppies. [No, for real, live webcam feed! Via MeFi, of course.]

But for the rest of us (and those of you tuning in regardless) here’s a topical (and pretty much non-partisan) note from the master marketer, Seth Godin, who notes that this year’s presidential election has turned a lot of old marketing truisms on their head. F’rexample:

TV is over. If people are interested, they’ll watch. On their time (or their boss’s time). They’ll watch online, and spread the idea. You can’t email a TV commercial to a friend, but you can definitely spread a YouTube video. The cycle of ads got shorter and shorter, and the most important ads were made for the web, not for TV. Your challenge isn’t to scrape up enough money to buy TV time. Your challenge is to make video interesting enough that we’ll choose to watch it and choose to share it.

Zing! Of course, most of us know that already, but hey – it’s nice to feel ahead of the curve sometimes, ain’t it? 🙂 [image by Scott89]

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Stephen Fry on the power of words and CCTV

Stephen Fry’s latest blessay on words and their use is splendid, and it also includes a point relevant to the emerging Panopticon:

CCTV is such a bland, clumsy, rhythmically null and phonically forgettable word, if you can call it a word, that the swipe lacks real punch.

If one believed in conspiracy theories, you could almost call it genius that there is no more powerful word for the complex and frightening system of electronic surveillance that we lump into that weedy bundle of initials.

For if CCTV was called … I don’t know …. something like SCUNT (Surveillance Camera Universal NeTwork, or whatever) then the acronyms might have passed into our language and its simple denotation would have taken on all the dark connotations which would allow “One nation under scunt” to have much more impact as a resistance slogan than “One nation under CCTV”. “Damn, I was scunted as I walked home,” “they’ve just erected a series of scunts in the street outside,” “Britain is the most scunted country in the world” …

I for one will immediately adopt this usage (and the equally compelling “SS” or “Surveillance System” Fry goes on to suggest).

It’s a profound point: meaning matters, but so do the shape and nature of the words themselves.

[image from squacco on flickr]