Tim Flannery reckons we have not responded to the threat of global warming partly because recent human evolution was focused on surviving the cold of the ice age. The word "warming" therefore conveys to us subconsciously comforting feelings of safety.
Well if politicians can do "framing" so can the "climate community".
STOP CALLING IT GLOBAL WARMING.
Lets try instead phrases like:
"PLANETARY SEARING"
"UNIVERSAL FRYING"
"BIOLOGICAL BOILING"
or just plain
"GLOBAL HEATING" for starters. Any other ideas most appreciated.
Framing is critical - there is no time to lose.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
note to Google: save the world please
Google promises "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful".
It would be fair to say that the vast majority of the worlds information is in living things - their genes, bodies and minds, and ecosystems. And for a very long time this will be the only feasible way to store that information.
But global warming is threatening to crash the server. If Google wishes to achieve its goals it better start working out how to stop global warming and save this stuff quick.
Sergey, Larry, you have an obligation to your shareholders!
It would be fair to say that the vast majority of the worlds information is in living things - their genes, bodies and minds, and ecosystems. And for a very long time this will be the only feasible way to store that information.
But global warming is threatening to crash the server. If Google wishes to achieve its goals it better start working out how to stop global warming and save this stuff quick.
Sergey, Larry, you have an obligation to your shareholders!
Consciousness is a natural disaster - lets work with it
This article on ice core evidence for how radically we are increasing carbon percentage in the atmosphere must be pretty depressing, even for our most optimistic advocates of reduced carbon production. Tim Flannery and Jared Diamond try hard in their writings to avoid filling their audience with a sense of hopelessness, but it difficult not to notice that often they seem to feel hopeless as well. This further evidence of the danger we are in cannot be helping!
What I feel should be separated a little from the issue is our personal and collective emotions about the developments. Yes we are the cause of carbon increase and thus global warming, and yes we could hypothetically have acted earlier to avert potential disaster, but we are also a product of the environment ourselves, and just because we are conscious beings does not mean we are instantly capable of transcending our instincts as an evolved species.
Humans have dominated via the development of a unique social system - we are tightly networked groups of highly intelligent individuals. This model has allowed us to overwhelm all other life forms with our collective powers. But it does not mean we are perfectly suited to scaling to a global level.
In the past humans competed amongst groups, and our network architecture is finely tuned to an Us versus Them way of thinking. This persists to this day - we see it everywhere in the form of sport. But at global level there can be no "them" and without "them" we struggle to see an Us we can identify with.
In this way consciousness is a natural product of an evolving environment and can be compared to any other discontinuity, or natural disaster, which might befall such a system. Whatever the organism that evolves social consciousness in this model, and whatever the environment in which it evolves, it is inevitable that some resource will be identified and utilized by that organism to a point of collapse.
We should not fall prey to guilt about this eventuality - guilt (like the Us vs Them mentality) is an emotion evolved to benefit survival of small social groups, and has no value in the face of global calamity.
What we should do is view the situation as the most glorious intellectual challenge humanity has ever faced, and as an opportunity for a next step in human evolution to occur. This framing helps us to use our emotional baggage as tools rather than impediments. Rather than being paralyzed by guilt we can use pride to drive us to solve this problem.
What I feel should be separated a little from the issue is our personal and collective emotions about the developments. Yes we are the cause of carbon increase and thus global warming, and yes we could hypothetically have acted earlier to avert potential disaster, but we are also a product of the environment ourselves, and just because we are conscious beings does not mean we are instantly capable of transcending our instincts as an evolved species.
Humans have dominated via the development of a unique social system - we are tightly networked groups of highly intelligent individuals. This model has allowed us to overwhelm all other life forms with our collective powers. But it does not mean we are perfectly suited to scaling to a global level.
In the past humans competed amongst groups, and our network architecture is finely tuned to an Us versus Them way of thinking. This persists to this day - we see it everywhere in the form of sport. But at global level there can be no "them" and without "them" we struggle to see an Us we can identify with.
In this way consciousness is a natural product of an evolving environment and can be compared to any other discontinuity, or natural disaster, which might befall such a system. Whatever the organism that evolves social consciousness in this model, and whatever the environment in which it evolves, it is inevitable that some resource will be identified and utilized by that organism to a point of collapse.
We should not fall prey to guilt about this eventuality - guilt (like the Us vs Them mentality) is an emotion evolved to benefit survival of small social groups, and has no value in the face of global calamity.
What we should do is view the situation as the most glorious intellectual challenge humanity has ever faced, and as an opportunity for a next step in human evolution to occur. This framing helps us to use our emotional baggage as tools rather than impediments. Rather than being paralyzed by guilt we can use pride to drive us to solve this problem.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
The 4 elements: fire fire burning bright
There is nothing like fire under the ocean. This may sound pretty stupid but it is of interest when you consider the evolution of life and of civilisation.
First - what is fire? It is a rapid and runaway oxidation reaction which releases energy and consumes local fuel until it is exhausted.
Why can't we have fire under the ocean? Well in fact we can - there are certain chemicals which when mixed and subjected to ignition will commence a runaway oxidation reaction. But these chemicals do not occur naturally, as does wood and air.
There is another exception to this point which I feel I should also address. By stretching the definition a little we could perhaps say that life (which is a heavily modulated oxidation reaction) is itself a type of fire.
And by stretching the definition of fire in this way to include life I have actually managed to refute my first assertion. Life evolved in water and life does exist in water. Please bear with me.
Why do we have fire in our world? A good way to think about this question is to ask - what burns? And when you think about it - life burns. Before life left the oceans there was nothing - no oil, no wood, no people - to burn. So the modulated oxidation reaction called life that began in the oceans evolved up and onto land and carried with it oxidisable material to where it could burn. Thus fire.
It has been argued that life is only likely in places where liquid water can exist. This is because water is a unique molecule, whose electromagnetic properties are predisposed to generation of complex surfaces, films and structures, among many other specialities. This generative nature of water give rise to a wildly heterogenous environment of liquids, solids and gases and it for this reason (the argument goes) that life formed on earth.
Could we argue that water gives rise to fire?
First - what is fire? It is a rapid and runaway oxidation reaction which releases energy and consumes local fuel until it is exhausted.
Why can't we have fire under the ocean? Well in fact we can - there are certain chemicals which when mixed and subjected to ignition will commence a runaway oxidation reaction. But these chemicals do not occur naturally, as does wood and air.
There is another exception to this point which I feel I should also address. By stretching the definition a little we could perhaps say that life (which is a heavily modulated oxidation reaction) is itself a type of fire.
And by stretching the definition of fire in this way to include life I have actually managed to refute my first assertion. Life evolved in water and life does exist in water. Please bear with me.
Why do we have fire in our world? A good way to think about this question is to ask - what burns? And when you think about it - life burns. Before life left the oceans there was nothing - no oil, no wood, no people - to burn. So the modulated oxidation reaction called life that began in the oceans evolved up and onto land and carried with it oxidisable material to where it could burn. Thus fire.
It has been argued that life is only likely in places where liquid water can exist. This is because water is a unique molecule, whose electromagnetic properties are predisposed to generation of complex surfaces, films and structures, among many other specialities. This generative nature of water give rise to a wildly heterogenous environment of liquids, solids and gases and it for this reason (the argument goes) that life formed on earth.
Could we argue that water gives rise to fire?
exponentially exponential
Jared Diamond likens humanities' global activity and related impact to a race in which two competing forces are accelerating exponentially.
The first force is the brute impact as population grows and consumption grows. Assuming there is a physical limit, the closer we get to that limit the more dramatic the effect of each increment of load on the system. Jared also talks (as do other complexity scientists) of non-symmetrical effects due to positive feedback; that is, no turning back from the tipping point.
The second force is our awareness and response to the change. It too accelerates exponentially. If it was just will-power alone we might consider the situation hopeless. But it is more than just will power; it is the cumulative and network effect of the information collection and processing which occurs when all minds turn to the same problem. Maybe it is enough?
The manhattan project is a primitive example. The technical expertise developed in the few short years of the project in response to a massive social threat are one of humanities wonders and horrors. Splitting the atom is truly a tipping point whether you are a star or a society.
And the manhattan project has further resonances too. As the world looks for ways to respond to an exponential threat, nuclear power is back on the agenda big time. Ironic that this tipping point should attract the product of another earlier one, and offer the same dilemma of creation and destruction once again, with exponential force. Again.
The first force is the brute impact as population grows and consumption grows. Assuming there is a physical limit, the closer we get to that limit the more dramatic the effect of each increment of load on the system. Jared also talks (as do other complexity scientists) of non-symmetrical effects due to positive feedback; that is, no turning back from the tipping point.
The second force is our awareness and response to the change. It too accelerates exponentially. If it was just will-power alone we might consider the situation hopeless. But it is more than just will power; it is the cumulative and network effect of the information collection and processing which occurs when all minds turn to the same problem. Maybe it is enough?
The manhattan project is a primitive example. The technical expertise developed in the few short years of the project in response to a massive social threat are one of humanities wonders and horrors. Splitting the atom is truly a tipping point whether you are a star or a society.
And the manhattan project has further resonances too. As the world looks for ways to respond to an exponential threat, nuclear power is back on the agenda big time. Ironic that this tipping point should attract the product of another earlier one, and offer the same dilemma of creation and destruction once again, with exponential force. Again.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Tipping Points - Climate Change - how fast can you re-arrange the deck chairs?
Recognition of the reality of climate change is cyclical. A balmy winter is merely nice, and news from Southern Hemisphere heatwaves is faint, and obscured by the other natural disasters the South is routinely subject to.
Clarity increases every northern summer as the largest populations of first worlders max out their communal power supplies in search of personal cool breezes.
It is for this reason that it this summer of 2006 that concensus has finally been reached - even the most rabid small government neoconservative has gotta admit its kinda hot.
The tipping point for our minds has been reached. Too bad it is probably ten years after the physical tipping point.
Clarity increases every northern summer as the largest populations of first worlders max out their communal power supplies in search of personal cool breezes.
It is for this reason that it this summer of 2006 that concensus has finally been reached - even the most rabid small government neoconservative has gotta admit its kinda hot.
The tipping point for our minds has been reached. Too bad it is probably ten years after the physical tipping point.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
social R & D
Is it possible to do true Social R&D?
A lot of the Web 2.0 services currently talked about start serendipitously; they are wanderings in the social-systems space, and once they begin to hum they produce a gravity that attracts participants, they distort the opportunity space for later entrants, and then finally they produce an "exhaust" which may or may not be valuable. They are Research in the pure sense not the applied sense; they seek only to prove or falsify the proposition that they are useful. And they are Development only in the sense that some of them stick and then go on to begin to change how society functions; they are not Development in sense of the pragmatic application of research results for commercial gain. They cannot be Development in this sense, purely because they cannot be tested on a closed user group or in controlled environments. They only work on the entire population.
The question I want to ask is; can there be social R & D? Is there any way to do applied social research and then pragmatically develop commercial propositions from it? Or is the combined positive feedback from the waves and waves of cost free collaboration that is currently being implemented too seductive to resist and too transformative to predict?
We are by definition the most reciprocally altruistic organism to evolve. For individual users, the net has moved the cost of minor altruistic behavior near to zero, and the compound benefit that is derived from massive amounts of minor altruism may be the greatest of all transformations of the social space to occur. And it is very likely that it is still in its earliest stages.
A lot of the Web 2.0 services currently talked about start serendipitously; they are wanderings in the social-systems space, and once they begin to hum they produce a gravity that attracts participants, they distort the opportunity space for later entrants, and then finally they produce an "exhaust" which may or may not be valuable. They are Research in the pure sense not the applied sense; they seek only to prove or falsify the proposition that they are useful. And they are Development only in the sense that some of them stick and then go on to begin to change how society functions; they are not Development in sense of the pragmatic application of research results for commercial gain. They cannot be Development in this sense, purely because they cannot be tested on a closed user group or in controlled environments. They only work on the entire population.
The question I want to ask is; can there be social R & D? Is there any way to do applied social research and then pragmatically develop commercial propositions from it? Or is the combined positive feedback from the waves and waves of cost free collaboration that is currently being implemented too seductive to resist and too transformative to predict?
We are by definition the most reciprocally altruistic organism to evolve. For individual users, the net has moved the cost of minor altruistic behavior near to zero, and the compound benefit that is derived from massive amounts of minor altruism may be the greatest of all transformations of the social space to occur. And it is very likely that it is still in its earliest stages.
Monday, May 15, 2006
casual gaming to decide the lounge room wars?
In this round of the console wars the stakes are high. This time, they are not just fighting each other; this time the players want to own the lounge room and everybody in it. And to do so they need to take it from the TV networks.
TV networks and the studios are fighting scared right now; and a scared opponent can be the most dangerous. The broadcast business model may be dead but the will to live is strong and the TV execs have the contacts and the contracts to corral the content for a while yet. And they have already started to be creative to meet the challenges - Warner Brothers and Bittorrent - who would have thought?
In a high stakes slug fest like this the outcome can sometimes turn on the tiniest detail which is overlooked by everybody - even the winner. And for this particular slugfest I think I know what it is.
Consoles are bought, installed and maintained by hardcore gamers. They are a demographic - a pretty broad one but still a subset of the total lounge room market. Other demographics have been targetted by console guys (see Playstation for DDR and the Eyetoy franchises, and Nintendo generally) but in these forays into new demographics there has always been a disconnect between the marketing and the demand, and between the demand and the buying power. Despite the best efforts the big question for the console guys has continued to be how to reach those other demographics.
Cue casual gaming: so far the biggest surprise in this round of the console wars. Long resigned to keeping septuagenarians' grey matter sparking as they wait for their next email, casual gaming is making a spectacular comeback. Microsoft has deployed ArcadeLive on the Xbox360 platform and frankly everybody involved has been amazed at the results.
Why is this? The answer is deceptively simple. There is no demographic for TV and there is no demographic for casual games.
Put it another way. Nearly everybody likes TV and nearly everybody like casual games. If anything is going to make some kids' mum pick up a game controller, it is going to be something like Tetris. And every kid with an Xbox360 likes Tetris. Presto! The two finally meet and they meet on the console guys' turf.
The timing couldn't be better either - blockbuster fatigue has hit the games business big time and everybody, players and developers, wants to have fun again. Casual games are fast and cheap to create. New business models are coming into play via online and they are turning out to be reliably profitable too. The niche-like, PC-based, casual games industry can now get to the lounge room.
What happens then? Well maybe the console is no longer a satanic black invertebrate designed to trip over the person who vacuums the room. Now it is a tool mum uses and likes. Now she might play some music through it, or a DVD. Now she might go into a different menu and find another game, or somebody to play online, or play a round with her daughter, or husband. Now she might talk about it with her friends and work out that they can play together too.
And suddenly the lounge room wars are over. And unless Sony really pulls its finger out it has been won by Microsoft.
TV networks and the studios are fighting scared right now; and a scared opponent can be the most dangerous. The broadcast business model may be dead but the will to live is strong and the TV execs have the contacts and the contracts to corral the content for a while yet. And they have already started to be creative to meet the challenges - Warner Brothers and Bittorrent - who would have thought?
In a high stakes slug fest like this the outcome can sometimes turn on the tiniest detail which is overlooked by everybody - even the winner. And for this particular slugfest I think I know what it is.
Consoles are bought, installed and maintained by hardcore gamers. They are a demographic - a pretty broad one but still a subset of the total lounge room market. Other demographics have been targetted by console guys (see Playstation for DDR and the Eyetoy franchises, and Nintendo generally) but in these forays into new demographics there has always been a disconnect between the marketing and the demand, and between the demand and the buying power. Despite the best efforts the big question for the console guys has continued to be how to reach those other demographics.
Cue casual gaming: so far the biggest surprise in this round of the console wars. Long resigned to keeping septuagenarians' grey matter sparking as they wait for their next email, casual gaming is making a spectacular comeback. Microsoft has deployed ArcadeLive on the Xbox360 platform and frankly everybody involved has been amazed at the results.
Why is this? The answer is deceptively simple. There is no demographic for TV and there is no demographic for casual games.
Put it another way. Nearly everybody likes TV and nearly everybody like casual games. If anything is going to make some kids' mum pick up a game controller, it is going to be something like Tetris. And every kid with an Xbox360 likes Tetris. Presto! The two finally meet and they meet on the console guys' turf.
The timing couldn't be better either - blockbuster fatigue has hit the games business big time and everybody, players and developers, wants to have fun again. Casual games are fast and cheap to create. New business models are coming into play via online and they are turning out to be reliably profitable too. The niche-like, PC-based, casual games industry can now get to the lounge room.
What happens then? Well maybe the console is no longer a satanic black invertebrate designed to trip over the person who vacuums the room. Now it is a tool mum uses and likes. Now she might play some music through it, or a DVD. Now she might go into a different menu and find another game, or somebody to play online, or play a round with her daughter, or husband. Now she might talk about it with her friends and work out that they can play together too.
And suddenly the lounge room wars are over. And unless Sony really pulls its finger out it has been won by Microsoft.
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