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Charlie Stross’ 21st Century crystal ball

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Charles StrossIf you’ve not caught it already, you should get over to Charlie Stross’s blog and check out his 21st Century FAQ; it’s your source of rant fodder for the coming week.

For example, in answer to the question “[w]hich of (Socialism | Capitalism | Libertarianism | Fascism | Democracy) is going to save us?”:

We’re still waiting for the definitive ideological polarity of the internet era to emerge, although Bruce Schneier has opined that the key political hot potato of the 21st century will be the question, “how do we maintain the concept of privacy in an age of ubiquitous communications and surveillance”, and some believe that privacy is already dead. Given the way Moore’s Law is taking us towards an essentially unlimited ability to record everything, I’m not able to argue with the inevitability of surveillance: what I’d dispute is the morality of it.

Responses and counter-arguments are cropping up already, naturally enough; for example, here’s Brian Wang refuting Stross’s claim that space colonisation and the Singularity are non-starters:

We know we can send people into interplanetary space for several days (Apollo). We could easily make the trip to Mars in days [using the Orion nuclear rocket configuration] and then onto to Jupiter in days. We could bring supplies, radiation protection in cargo that is equivalent to several great pyramids or how many loaded aircraft carriers equivalents.

Plenty of material for discussion for the more geeky water-cooler meet-ups. [image by Patrick Nielsen-Hayden]

So, do we reckon Charlie Stross is a fox or a hedgehog?

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Why pundits always get it wrong

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Bill O'Reilly motivational poster spoofHave you ever wondered why the talking heads on television are so often utterly wrong in their predictions about the future?

According to a research psychologist from Stanford University, it’s because the people the media tends to hire as pundits are the sort of people who are psychologically predisposed to making predictions based more on their own beliefs than any rational assessment of the situation:

At first, Tetlock’s ongoing study of 82,361 predictions by 284 pundits (most but not all of them American) came up empty. He initially looked at whether accuracy was related to having a Ph.D., being an economist or political scientist rather than a blowhard journalist, having policy experience or access to classified information, or being a realist or neocon, liberal or conservative. The answers were no on all counts. The best predictor, in a backward sort of way, was fame: the more feted by the media, the worse a pundit’s accuracy. And therein lay Tetlock’s first clue. The media’s preferred pundits are forceful, confident and decisive, not tentative and balanced. They are, in short, hedgehogs, not foxes.

That bestiary comes from the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who in 1953 argued that hedgehogs “know one big thing.” They apply that one thing (for instance, that ethnicity and language are primal; ergo, any country that contains many ethnic groups will break up) everywhere, express supreme confidence in their forecasts, dismiss opposing views and are drawn to top-down arguments deduced from that Big Idea. Foxes, in contrast, “know many things,” as Berlin put it. They consider competing views, make bottom-up inductive arguments from an array of facts and doubt the power of Big Ideas.

Intriguing, no? But while foxes are arguably better than hedgehogs, here’s the sobering conclusion:

If there are three possibilities (say, that China will experience more, less or the same amount of civil unrest), throwing darts at targets representing each one produces a forecast more accurate than most pundits’. Simply extrapolating from recent data on, say, economic output does even better.

Unfortunately, extrapolated data doesn’t make for such good television… or blog posts, for that matter. Will the decentralisation of current affairs newscasting make this situation better or worse? [image by silas216]

I wonder if we could classify science fiction writers using the same dualism?

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US Signs Deal with DUGOO

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by ARTURO BIGBANGBOOTIE, Alternate Reality News Service Transdimensional Traffic Writer

[ This is a guest broadcast from the Alternate Reality News Service. ]

The Bush administration has entered into a tentative agreement with the Democratic Union of Great Old Ones which will see that group of ancient deities (or alien beings – the mythology, and, therefore, the government, is uncertain on this point) assist in the efforts to quell the insurgency in Iraq.

“This is a great day for the war on terror,” President Bush announced. “The Democratic Old Ones, they know how to kick ass. See, they been doing it since before man walked the earth!”

“Anything that would speed up the end of the insurgency is welcome,” Iraqi President Jalal Talibani, sweating for reasons that had nothing to do with the camera lights on him, stated in a separate press opportunity. “We, uhh, just hope that, when this is all over, there will be a country left to live in.”

Talibani broke up the room with a suggestion that he could rule Iraq from a safe distance. Like, the North Pole.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the news by complaining that in enlisting DUGOO in its war on terror, the Bush administration was escalating the arms race. It is well known that the Russians have only a handful of relatively young demons at their disposal, and are vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike using mid-range Shoggoth.

President Bush, responding to Putin’s concerns, said, “Pffft.” Translated out of diplomatese, this roughly means, “Hey! You lost the Cold War and now we’re the only military super-power in the world. Get used to it!”

It had long been known in military circles that the War Department (later the Defense Department) had obtained a copy of the Necronomicon in 1927, and had been trying to decipher its long forgotten language ever since.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) took over the project in the 1970s; recently, advances in parallel computing which allowed for the use of sophisticated cryptographic algorithms led to an almost complete translation of the ancient book of dark magic, which in turn led to communication with DUGOO.

“Our first contact was exciting,” General Cathcart Cynthia stated. “We only lost 237 enlisted men before we finally convinced them just to talk!”

Negotiations with DUGOO were often difficult. “Money was of no use to them,” General Cynthia said. “Fame? Well, they already haunted the dreams of men and boys, so there really wasn’t anything we could offer them there. Eventually, we hit upon the idea of a portal into this dimension; after that, the deal came together rather quickly.”

Although the Pentagon will neither confirm nor deny it, the DUGOO is believed to already be in Iraq.

Domestic critics of the agreement pointed out that the beings the White House has summoned had always been known as the Great Old Ones – Bush merely tacked on the phrase “Democratic Union” to make them more palatable to the American public. “There’s nothing democratic about laying waste to entire nations,” Democratic Presidential hopeful John Edwards pointed out.

“Oh, that’s just silly,” White House spokesperson Dana Perino chirped in response. “Killing every living thing within a thousand mile radius – what could be more democratic, more non-discriminatory than that?”

Perino added that the best way to look at the agreement was that it was just another form of outsourcing.

“Some of our contractors protect our senior officials in Baghdad,” she explained, “some of them hideously dismember our enemies and defile their corpses. It’s just a continuation of the policy we’ve had in place since the war began, really.”

Edwards, one of the few Democrats who haven’t openly or tacitly accepted the agreement with the DUGOO, pointed out that unleashing demons from another dimension to help the war on terror could have cataclysmic unforeseen consequences.

“Did we learn nothing from the blowback from our aid to the Afghanis fighting against the Soviets?” he asked. Journalists knew he was serious, because one hair on his head was out of place.

“Oh, John,” Perino countered, “can I lend you my comb?” The White House correspondents chuckled merrily to themselves.

The Alternate Reality News Service sent stringers into Iraq to get the point of view of DUGOO. Those who weren’t disemboweled and fed their own entrails returned gibbering about an “awful squid-head thing with writhing feelers” the size of a small mountain. Our staff therapist believes that the best we can do is make them comfortable for the remainder of their lives, which we all hope will be mercifully brief.

Under the circumstances, we decided to forego the usual journalistic trope of contacting all sides of the story.

Excerpted from Alternate Reality Ain’t What It Used To Be. Copyright 2008 by Ira Nayman.

Print versions of Alternate Reality Ain’t What It Used To Be can be purchased through Amazon.com and major bookstores. A complete digital version of the book (except for the amazing cover – sigh) can be found on the Web site Les Pages aux Folles, which also features three new Alternate Reality News Service stories every third week.

The Alternate Reality News Service: “If you don’t like this reality, try another one!”

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Smarten your car with downloadable software

flickrFirefox prompts you for updates every 15 minutes. Why can’t your car be more like that?

…[A]n automotive software architecture [is being] developed by European researchers to keep vehicles up to date with the latest technology.

Developed over two and a half years by a consortium of research institutes, software companies, vehicle manufacturers and parts suppliers, the architecture represents a fundamental building block for an intelligent car able to reconfigure and update itself autonomously, as well as communicate with other devices, such as the driver’s mobile phone or PDA.

Much as the software on a personal computer connects to the internet to download and install updates, the DySCAS architecture allows automotive software to automatically download patches and improvements whenever the vehicle is in range of an accessible wireless hotspot – in the owner’s garage, for example, or even in a public parking lot. It could then download new maps for the navigation system, update the entertainment system to play new music formats, or even adjust engine timing based on more fuel efficient settings supplied by the manufacturer.

A little better fuel efficiency — well, a lot better — and we’ll be good to go. In a few years, the researchers say.

[Image: FlickrMobile by Leo Reynolds]

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