One of the biggest challenges in future explorations of other planets is the processing and collating of the data gathered. A team at the University of Glasgow is looking at the problem well ahead of time, though, and have been running simulations of smart dust motes that could act as a distributed computer network as they spread across a planet’s surface on the wind. Elsewhere in the UK, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory are also planning ahead, developing the principles of a magnetic plasma shield that could protect spacecraft (and their occupants) from cosmic radiation.

Looks like he’s in full-on book promotion mode: Greg Bear talks to the SF Signal gang about current book Quantico, as well as some of his older classics.

The internet has enabled new methods of distribution, as well as means for users to connect with content they might never have known existed; who knows where things may go in the coming years? Pandora is a fantastic method of finding new music that you might like, based on pattern and content analysis of music you already like. It’s fantastic. But in America a recently passed, dramatic increase in licensing fees for internet radio stations will kill it, along with most other stations. Pandora’s founder has set up a means for lobbying the politicians to get their eyes open to what this means to their constituents.

Just in case you were looking for proof that culture is developing in strange and interesting new ways, take a look at this review of a graphic novel written in the style of a graphic novel. When you bear in mind that the graphic novel in question (Alice in Sunderland) is partly about the history of the graphic novel as a format, as well as being a reexamination of Lewis Carroll (the author of Alice in Wonderland), you find yourself in about four metacultural layers of significance all at once. I’m not sure what that actually says about culture in general, but it strikes me as pretty cool none the less.

Here’s some interesting if slightly disheartening news – our bodies are nothing but temporary colonies constructed by our genes as a method of propagating themselves into the next generation, and diseases like cancer are all part of the process. The better we get at treating cancer, the longer we’ll live, and the more at risk of developing cancer our bodies will be – which sounds like a good starting point for arguing a transhumanist agenda. And another blow for those who like to think we humans are the peak end-product of evolution – chimps are actually further evolved than we are. Existential humble pie, anyone?