Category Archives: Blog

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The future’s alright

futureThe role of science fiction vis a vis the future and predictions thereof has always been a target of lighthearted mockery. However Centauri Dreams articulates, with the help of futurist Peter Garretson, what science fiction can offer, even if predictions aren’t always on the mark:

Many forays into fictional futures, then, can give us alternative ways to make a new concept real. We can try on those futures by reading stories that make them come alive, seeing what effects these changes would have on society. And we can do more. By placing futuristic concepts in a tangible, fictional context, we can encourage their growth and dissemination.

Science fiction explores how human beings respond to change and disruption, and as such helps us explore ourselves. It can also offer pictures of how the world could be, so as to encourage us to actualise these images and build a better future.

[from Centauri Dreams][image from doug8888 on flickr]

Blog

E.O. Wilson tells Will Wright: ‘Games are the future in education’

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dragonNational Public Radio just aired a wonderful conversation between Spore and Sims creator Will Wright and Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, well worth a read or listen. But the chat didn’t go the way Wright thought it would:

I came into the interview with all these questions I wanted to ask him about evolution,” Wright said, “but his first response was, ‘Oh, I thought we were going to talk about games!'”

Wright wasn’t completely surprised. One of Wilson’s goals has been to “unify science with disciplines such as the humanities,” Wright said. “He is one of the few scientists who really has the guts to do that.”

So, asked by Wright about the role of games in education, Wilson said:

“I’ll go to an even more radical position,” Wilson said. “I think games are the future in education. We’re going through a rapid transition now. We’re about to leave print and textbooks behind.”

Wilson imagines students taking visits through the virtual world to different ecosystems. “That could be a rain forest,” he said, “a tundra — or a Jurassic forest.”

Wilson said that for the most part, we are teaching children the wrong way. According to the biologist, “When children went out in Paleolithic times, they went with adults and they learned everything they needed to learn by participating in the process.”

That’s the way the human mind is programmed to learn, Wilson said.

But he believes that today, virtual reality can be a steppingstone to the real world. It can motivate a child to exploration.

Wilson had a very different experience growing up. He explored the real world — and its creatures and plants — from a very young age. He credits his permissive parents and the schools he attended for allowing him to “disappear” into the forest.

“No one knew what I was doing,” he said.

Wilson is now studying the origins of altruistic behavior, taking his cue from Paul Gauguin: “Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?” An education system that produces that kind of curiosity is the one I want for kids today.

Such ideas aren’t new to most of us, but it’s encouraging to hear them nudge their way towards conventional wisdom.

[Image: Torley]

Blog

The next 100 years

Pivot_areaGeorge Friedman, writing in The New Statesman magazine, has an article up on the next 100 years, as seen through the theoretical prism of geopolitics. This is a doctrine that emphasises the importance of the permanently operating factors of geography in determining global dominance:

Thus, the question is how these geopolitical and strategic realities shape the rest of the century. Eurasia, broadly understood, is being hollowed out. China is far weaker than it appears and is threatened with internal instability. The Europeans are divided by old national patterns that prevent them from moving in a uniform direction. Russia is using the window of opportunity presented by the US absorption in disrupting the Islamic world to reclaim its sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union, but its underlying weakness will reassert itself over the next generation.

New powers will emerge. In the 19th century, Germany, Italy and Japan began to emerge as great powers, while in the 20th century global powers such as Britain and France declined to secondary status. Each century, a new constellation of powers forms that might strike observers at the beginning of the century as unthinkable. Let us therefore think about the unthinkable.

Friedman paints a rather pessimistic picture of a future of exactly the same kind of nationalistic war that took up most of the 20th century.

I’ve never been comfortable with tub-thumping nationalism/patriotism as something to dictate beliefs and action. To me the future of the people living on Earth is as much about cultures, attitudes, and society as it is about the fight for power between specific nation states [1].

But states will remain the single most powerful entity on Earth over the next few decades, and as such it is worth thinking about which of them might gain greater influence in the future.

The central conclusion of Friedman’s article is that “they that control the North American continent, control the world” as they will have access to both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans as well as the vast wealth of the North American continent. As such he posits Mexico as a potential rival to US power. He also suggests that Japan might engage on further military ventures. Turkey may become the core of an Islamic sphere of influence in the Mediterranean and Middle East.

[1]: Inasmuch as particular states have particular cultures and attitudes (e.g. pluralism, rule of law, liberalism, democracy, individual freedom) I think that it is a mistake to support a nation state because of the attitudes it purports to value, rather than the reality of its actions. You support the people and the ideals first, the countries second.

[from the New Statesman][image from here on Wikimedia]

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The coldest, driest place on Earth would be a great place for an astronomical telescope

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antarcticaNo human has ever set foot on Ridge A, 4,053m up the Antarctic Plateau. But a U.S.-Australian team collating satellite, ground-station, and climate-model data thinks it’s the coldest, driest place on the planet–and therefore the best place on Earth to set up an astronomical observatory.

The study revealed that Ridge A has an average winter temperature of minus 70C and that the content of the entire atmosphere there is sometimes less than the thickness of a human hair.

It is also extremely calm, which means that there is very little of the atmospheric turbulence elsewhere that makes stars appear to twinkle: “It’s so calm that there’s almost no wind or weather there at all,” says Dr Will Saunders, of the Anglo-Australian and visiting professor to UNSW, who led the study.

“The astronomical images taken at Ridge A should be at least three times sharper than at the best sites currently used by astronomers,” says Dr Saunders. “Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope there would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth.”

It’s not the first time Antarctica has been proposed as a site for stargazing:

Located within the Australian Antarctic Territory (81.5◦ S 73.5◦ E), the site is 144km from an international robotic observatory and the proposed new Chinese ‘Kunlun’ base at Dome A (80.37 S 77.53 E).

Interest in Antarctica as a site for astronomical and space observatories has accelerated since 2004 when UNSW astronomers published a paper in the journal Nature confirming that a ground-based telescope at Dome C, another Antarctic plateau site, could take images nearly as good as those from the space-based Hubble telescope.

Last year, the Anglo-Australian Observatory completed the first detailed study into the formidable practical problems of building and running the proposed optical/infra-red PILOT telescope project in Antarctica. The 2.5-metre telescope will cost over AUD$10million and is planned for construction at the French/Italian Concordia Station at Dome C by 2012.

I confess I haven’t read Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Antarctica, but I’d be surprised if he missed this. But writers looking for a setting should find the neighborhood isn’t too crowded. Bring your mittens.

[Image: Antarctic Peninsula, giladr]

Blog

Depression may be evolution’s way of telling us to think things over

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hello“Mental disorders should generally be rare,” state researchers Paul W. Andrews and J. Anderson Thomson, Jr. ” — why isn’t depression?” It doesn’t seem to be a function of aging and culture, yet prescription drugs for it help keep pharmaceutical companies afloat.

There is another possibility: that, in most instances, depression should not be thought of as a disorder at all. In an article recently published in Psychological Review, we argue that depression is in fact an adaptation, a state of mind which brings real costs, but also brings real benefits…. So what could be so useful about depression? Depressed people often think intensely about their problems. These thoughts are called ruminations; they are persistent and depressed people have difficulty thinking about anything else. Numerous studies have also shown that this thinking style is often highly analytical. They dwell on a complex problem, breaking it down into smaller components, which are considered one at a time….

Many other symptoms of depression make sense in light of the idea that analysis must be uninterrupted. The desire for social isolation, for instance, helps the depressed person avoid situations that would require thinking about other things. Similarly, the inability to derive pleasure from sex or other activities prevents the depressed person from engaging in activities that could distract him or her from the problem. Even the loss of appetite often seen in depression could be viewed as promoting analysis because chewing and other oral activity interferes with the brain’s ability to process information.

But is there any evidence that depression is useful in analyzing complex problems? For one thing, if depressive rumination were harmful, as most clinicians and researchers assume, then bouts of depression should be slower to resolve when people are given interventions that encourage rumination, such as having them write about their strongest thoughts and feelings. However, the opposite appears to be true. Several studies have found that expressive writing promotes quicker resolution of depression, and they suggest that this is because depressed people gain insight into their problems.

The idea that depression–which the authors acknowledge is painful and can be serious–can have a purpose is a new idea to me.

I’m going to go lie in a dark room and think about it.

[Image: Somebody Needs a Hug by Robyn Gallagher]