Hey, it’s hump day – you should probably reward yourself for surviving to the half-way point of the week. So why not celebrate with some new fiction to read?
Brenda Cooper, who writes the Today’s Tomorrows column here at Futurismic, has a story in the latest issue of the excellent Clarkesworld online zine; it’s called “My father’s Singularity”, and you should go and read it. If you’re too busy (yeah, right), there’s an audio option as well, so no excuses.
This idea for this article started when I was doing some research on prosthetics and came across an article about a wheelchair that can be controlled with brainwaves. That got me thinking about what else we might be doing to use electronics or other implants to manage our interface with the world. This was pretty interesting research: I learned a new word (Geoslavery, or location control), and I got to see that the new wave in implants may not be chips at all. Continue reading Under Your Skin: The Implants are Coming
So how did I go from last month’s topic about geoengineering to cancer treatment? Well, for one, keeping the Earth healthy is a bit like doing the same for humans: harder than you’d think. Systems engineering on a fairly complex level that we don’t entirely understand. This is also a personal topic. Cancer used to be an academic concept for me. Not any more. Science fiction lost a brilliant voice to cancer earlier this year, when Kage Baker died of it. Now I have friends and family with cancer, and it has become a palpable evil rather than something distant that I don’t want, like elephantiasis or malaria. I’ve seen it, and I don’t like it. Continue reading An Old Enemy: Fighting Cancer
The Earth’s climate is a complex web of systems: ocean temperature and current, sea and glacier ice, air, wind, sun, and more. Strands of that web are being plucked by the variety of things which are causing our climate to change: pollution, extra carbon dioxide, soot, cow farts, and maybe even sunspots. Superpower countries are vying for control of the Northern Passage and energy moguls are making record profits while doing serious damage. We’re letting them do it; it’s convenient to drive and shop and waste and live the lives we were taught we’d have. Me, too. Just as guilty as the next person. Heck, I ordered an ipad the first day I could. I, too, want the newest stuff.
One way out? Undo the damage and apply the principles of engineering to the systems that run the earth. Continue reading Becoming Planetary Gardeners: Geoengineering
When I was very little, some early-grade teacher lost in the mists of memory told me the story of how Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon spent much of his life searching for the Fountain of Youth. Now that I’m approaching one of those decade birthdays, I can finally relate. Besides, as the leading edge of the baby boom starts retiring, this seems like a good time to take a peek at the science around longevity. Continue reading We are all Ponce: The Quest for Longevity