All posts by Tom James

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Things can only get better

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The sense that things are getting worse and worse is supported by the various imminent cataclysms of global warming, peak oil, antibiotic resistant diseases, fundamentalist terrorists, social collapse and an intrusive state.

However it seems people have been getting happier, from researchers at The World Values Society at the University of Michigan:

Economic growth, democratization and rising social tolerance have all contributed to rising happiness, with democratization and rising tolerance having even more impact than economic growth. All of these changes have contributed to providing people with a wider range of choice in how to live their lives—which is a key factor in happiness.

This is just fine and dandy. But when Tom Harris MP suggested that people should be grateful for their increased wealth (the UK) and freedom (many other places) he was mauled by the Press.

It is interesting that on the one hand people are predicting all the ills I mentioned above, and on the other you have Ray Kurzweil and the World Values Society pointing out that things are about to get a lot better and that people are feeling happier respectively.

I look forward to finding out who is correct.

[story via PhysOrg]

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Robot Snakes in a Mother-F*ckin’ Pipe

Bad tidings for drain-blockages and nervous defecators alike with the news that Norwegian scientists are developing a robotic snake (yet more biomimetics!) to navigate and clean complex pipe-systems:

The 1.5-meter long robots, which are made of aluminium, are being designed to inspect and clean complicated industrial pipe systems that are typically narrow and inaccessible to humans. The intelligent robots have multiple joints to enable them to twist vertically and climb up through pipe systems to locate leaks in water systems, inspect oil and gas pipelines and clean ventilation systems.

It seems snakes are a versatile form for robots, with applications for robot snakes in space exploration, military espionage, and surgical tools.

[story from PC World via Slashdot]

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Dynamic Skyscraper in Dubai

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The announcement of the world’s first dynamic building has echoes of the futuristic and modernist designers of the Archigram movement:

archigram domesThe 420-metre (1,378-foot) building’s apartments would spin a full 360 degrees, at voice command, around a central column by means of 79 giant power-generating wind turbines located between each floor.

It is interesting to see certain elements, including the modularity, individualism, and dynamism of concepts like the Archigram Plug-in-City re-emerge in the 21st century.

The Dynamic Tower itself is impressive in it’s grandeur and the scale of it’s ambition. The fact that the architect claims the building “would be energy self-sufficient as the turbines would produce enough electricity to power the entire building and even feed extra power back into the grid” adds to the wonder.

[story via BBC News][image by Claire L. Evans]

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Ephemera of the Future

When writing science-fiction – aside from the grandiose themes of plot, concept, and character – one occasionally has to portray the mundane aspects of life in the land of the speculative.

Inclusion of day-to-day ephemera can lend a touch of realism, a sensawunda (like when Hari Seldon takesweb_2.0 out a pocket computer in Foundation – an idea that would have seemed fantastical in the 1950s), or even humour to a storyline.

However the devil is in the details. Part of the joy of science fiction is the way grand concepts like the Singularity manifest themselves in mundane, day-to-day things. This can also make the writing a little trickier.

For example the contents of business cards, ripe fare for design students are shortly to be revolutionised by the continuing liberalisation of the domain name system by Icaan, the Internet corporation for assigned names and numbers:

Individuals will be able to register a domain based on their own name, or any other string of letters, as long as they can show a “business plan and technical capacity”.

If this works out it will (presumably) mean that there will now be thousands of new top-level domain names. The projected cost of registering a domain name is quoted at “…at least several thousand dollars…” but I’m sure there are plenty of individuals, organisations and companies that would love to acquire their own patch of web-real-estate equivalent to .co.uk or .eu.

It is a tiny item, but it shows how much the world has changed, and how difficult it is to predict where change will come from.

[story from BBC News][image by jonas therkildson]

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Rainbows and Unicorn Farts…

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…are about as likely to solve the two little problems of peak oil and global warming as hydrogen fuel cell technology.

hydrogenSorry to flog a dead horse here but it’s always worth repeating something, especially if you’ve found someone who can express the idea more articulately than you can.

Joseph Romm of the Center (sic) for American Progress (centrist American think tank) writes eloquently on the reasons why hydrogen fuel-cell powered automobiles are a dead-end and that there are better alternatives:

More than 95 percent of U.S. hydrogen is made from natural gas, so running a car on hydrogen doesn’t reduce net carbon dioxide emissions compared with a hybrid like the Prius running on gasoline. Okay, you say, can’t hydrogen be made from carbon-free sources of power, like wind energy or nuclear? Sure, but so can electricity for electric cars. And this gets to the heart of why hydrogen cars would be the last car you would ever want to buy: they are wildly inefficient compared with electric cars.

I’ve never been entirely clear why investors, boffins, and the popular press like hydrogen fuel cells so much. And why the insist on using the buzzword the hydrogen economy, implying that this is capable of replacing our current oil-based transport setup. Is it just because the cars themselves don’t emit any carbon dioxide during operation? I don’t know, but I suspect some people, including automakers Honda are in for a nasty shock.

[story via Technology Review][image by mirrorgirl]