Illusions of technological nirvana

One formulation of technological optimism is found in Moore's Law, which has accurately stated that computing power will double approximately every two years. 

Futurists believe that Moore’s Law will lead to what is known as a technological singularity.

A situation in which computations occur virtually instantaneously. 

This could perhaps be attained using quantum computers based on super-positioning and entanglement. 

However, here one must remember the law of diminishing returns. 

How much benefit can be drawn from this ever increasing computing speed? 

We have long since passed the point at which greater computational speeds have greater significance in everyday life. 

For instance, when I search "house" in Google, I get 1,520,000,000 hits in 0,05 seconds. 

The question being, whether am I significantly better off now than two years ago when I only got 760,000,000 hits in the same time.

Or when it took me all of 0.1 seconds.

These differences are effectively beyond the threshold of human senses:

The time differences have become negligible and I would never in a whole lifetime be able to browse all the results and make a meaningful choice between them anyway. 

So, in this particular case, Moore’s Law has not improved my life significantly. 

In fact, some would argue that the proliferation of possibilities and options as regards hits in a computer search and technologies have made me much worse off, 

Creating paralysis in the face of all this information and choice. 

The psychologist Barry Schwartz has eloquently argued that this reduces the quality of life.

Although computing speeds double every other year, the computer is itself an old invention, as readers of Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon will know. 

The first mechanical computers go back to the 1600s and savants such as Blaise Pascal and Gottfried von Leibnitz. 

Indeed, the cryptology and mathematics involved are older yet, since the binary number system used for computers originates with the ancient Indian mathematician Pingala. 

The 1800s saw the rise of punch-card computers and the first modern electrical computers were designed by Alan Turing in 1936 and built during the Second World War. 

This is old stuff. 

The first commercial word processor was WordStar from 1978.

Which was coincidentally made famous by Arthur C. Clarke who praised its qualities from a Sri Lankan beach. 

The Internet is from the 1960s. 

The cellphone is from 1973. 

The first satellite was put into orbit in 1957.

The idea and details of which were put forth by Clarke in a Wireless World article in 1945. 

But Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had already calculated the necessary orbital speeds in 1903. 

The first heart transplant was in 1967.

And the first kidney transplant in 1953. 

The list of technology goes on and on: television, radio, nuclear reactors, cars, refrigeration, rail, internal combustion, reinforced concrete, aeroplanes, industrialized agriculture, robots, windmills, solar panels, in vitro fertilization, and so on. 

These were all invented in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

In fact, one would be hard pressed to suggest a single innovation from the last 30 years that has changed, improved or eased everyday life for ordinary people in a radical way, such as those mentioned here.

At best, one could speak of combining existing technologies, such as internet on the cellphone or improving efficiency, as in Moore’s law and deadly and destructive economies of scale. 

In fact the Time magazine list of best inventions for 2009 has astounding wonders such as the universal unicycle, the edible race car, and the sky king, a radical breakthrough in paper plane folding.

Even seemingly useful inventions on the Time 2010 list, such as a seed bank or Seed Cathedral is a rip off from the 20th century. 

The 1972 Sci-fi movie Silent Running has a seed bank.

But reality also has them

Such as the 1926 Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry.

The 1936 Wellcome Trust.

The 1984 Nordic Gene Bank at Svalbard. 

Why delude ourselves into thinking that this is innovation in any other manner than presentation and aesthetics? 

Similarly flying cars (sic), jet packs (sic) and plastic fur (sic) from the 2010 list are not true innovations either, but high-energy gimmicks.

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Which leads one to the question.

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When will man wake up to the limitations and shortfalls of technology?
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Technology obscures it's own total failure to make us happier
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Technology does not answer our needs
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Technology does indeed support us in certain areas while taking away in others.
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Only when we look more objectively at technology can we see where it has harmed our ability to grow a fairer more equitable planet.

Stubbornness or desperation?

It appears that most advertisers look like they are missing the boat on the precipitous decline of the value of advertising due to over-saturation. 

The problem is not that we are shown irrelevant ads, which of course we are.

But rather it's that the overabundance of advertising has taught us to block out all of them. 

Besides, in a world with so much product information.

Direct comparisons.

Professional reviews.

User reviews.

Friend recommendations, etc

All being one click away, one has no need for additional, clearly biased, information.

It used to be that if you did not advertise, there would be no way for anyone to find out about your product or service. 

This is not true anymore. 

Look at how all of the new tech companies have grown without much advertising themselves. 

This works even at the smaller scale – consider the success of something like the Pebble watch on Kickstarter, which raised $10M+ with nothing more than a good idea and a compelling video of the prototype.

Marketers are trying to offset their looming irrelevance through increased targeting. 

Since such privacy invasion tends to really piss people off.

What they are actually accomplishing is speeding up their decline, rather than preventing it.

This of course is my own subjective point of view.

Time will show where we go from here.

Conning ourselves

The slowing in innovation is not merely a hypothesis, intuition, or vague impression. 

Jonathan Huebner has made a case for the concept of peak innovation using quantative measures.

His paper examines the number of technological innovations in relation to population size since the 1450s and reaches the flabbergasting result that innovation peaked in 1873 and that within a few years, the rate of contemporary innovation will drop to levels not seen since the Middle Ages. 

There may be inaccuracies in using patents as proxies for innovation, but the results are so marked that they at least suggest an overall trend. 

In the abstract, Huebner is therefore able to draw an astounding statistical conclusion: "

We are at an estimated 85% of the economic limit of technology, and it is projected that we will reach 90% in 2018 and 95% in 2038."

Not unlike with oil, it would seem that the low-hanging fruits of research have been taken. 

The remaining breakthroughs in science will take longer to attain and involve more extensive funding and regard ever more esoteric subjects. 

This can be seen, for example, in the age of Nobel Prize winneres. 

They have been getting older and older over the last many decades, suggesting that scientific results take longer to reach. 

For instance, the winners of the 2010 Nobel Prize in economics were 62, 70, and 71 years old, while conventional wisdom would have it that 50 years of age was an upper limit.

It seems that a technological solution to the challenges facing modern consumer society and its high energy lifestyles is happening in a circumstance where outlooks for innovation are very bleak indeed. 

We are facing the prospects of fewer breakthroughs, which require longer time for development, need more funding and will be less useful when completed. 

Over and against this, universities across the globe are facing severe cut-backs all the while bibliometric management principles have drawn efforts away from basic research and directed them into knowledge dissemination in conservative peer-reviewed journals. 

In fact, one issue here could be the inherent conservatism of the peer-review process, which consistently rejects ground breaking research.

Vested interest in given theories and schools of thought counters the process of "conjectures and refutations" that science lives by and slows innovation even further by reducing everything to what Kuhn calls 'normal science' rather than challenging paradigms.

So, how do we account for the discrepancy between popular conceptions about the rate of innovation and reality? 

Firstly, there is a general confluence of true innovation and gimmickry. 

Go-faster stripes on a cellphone hardly constitute a radical new breakthrough. 

In fact, modern life has developed into an age of illusion, valuing spectacle and fantasy more than reality.

Ever more efforts are spent on creating virtual innovation: new fantasies, new computer games, new special effects in movies, "reality" shows, political spin. 

These create the illusion of movement, while the technology supporting the real, physical basis for life has not changed, merely been ignored. 

Mankind is stuck in a highly entertaining hamster wheel and is running out of energy.

Being conditioned by computers, movies, malls, ads, and TV, many accept the seemingly magical appearance of food, clothes, water, heating, and electricity without any real knowledge about the more fundamental reality -- 

The enormous and hidden infrastructure  

Which sustains people. 

Many have simply learnt to suspend their disbelief, that very questioning ability, which drove Bronowski's primitive apes to pick up tools millions of years ago and resulted in the theory of relativity more than a hundred years hence. 

This suspending of disbelief numbs the faculties, which we employ when seeking deeper understanding of the natural world, which sustains us.

This conditioning is so extensive and powerful that many are even able to suspend disbelief in arguments that defy logic. 

Such as those that claim that exponential growth can continue indefinitely in a closed system.

Thomas Derek Robinson

One liners

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it. - Mark Twain

Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.
- Emo Phillips

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
- Hunter S. Thompson

If I owned both Texas and Hell, I'd rent out Texas and live in Hell.
- Philip Henry Sheridan

I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.
- Jennifer Unlimited

Judge not a man by his clothes, but by his wife's clothes.
- Thomas R. Dewar

I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating.
- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, referring to Vice President Dick Cheney

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.
- Gilbert Chesterton

Only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we".
- Mark Twain

If they could figure out a way to channel my anger, they could solve the energy crisis.
- Woody Allen

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
- Mark Twain

Hey, the way I figure it is this: if the kids are still alive by the time my husband comes home, I've done my job.
- Roseanne Arnold

There are terrible temptations which it requires strength and courage to yield to.
- Oscar Wilde

Anyone who can only think of only one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.
- Mark Twain

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.
- Will Rogers

Anyone who is considered funny will tell you, sometimes without even your asking, that deep inside they are very serious, neurotic, introspective people.
- Wendy Wasserstein

All modern men are descended from wormlike creatures, but it shows more on some people.
- Will Cuppy

The most important service rendered by the press is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
- Samuel Butler

The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the train before.
- Gilbert Chesterton

The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.
- V.S. Pritchett

Chrissie Wellington

She has won four world championships – but Wellington is even more impressive when revealing the corrosive insecurities of her past. 

The times and number of victories I've managed matter less than the continual surprise I feel. 

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It's so empowering to defy your own perceptions of what is possible and to keep on opening doors within yourself that you didn't know even existed. 

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Looking back five years ago this month I would never have predicted anything that has since happened.

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We all have talents that, sometimes, we never quite fulfil.

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We're all scared, deep down, but maybe we just need to lay it on the line and explore our abilities and just not be afraid of failing. 

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But I know it's hard.

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That human need once became, for Wellington, dangerously consuming. "I haven't revealed it before," she says

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There is still a stigma and so I swing between wanting to talk about it and being ashamed because to me it's still tantamount to weakness. 

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But every week I receive letters from women and young girls. 

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They don't know I've suffered from eating disorders but they explain how they're suffering from these same afflictions. 

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I've got a message in my inbox now from an American girl saying: 'I don't know where to turn, can you help me?' 

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She's a triathlete.

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Wellington looks moved, if distressed, until she straightens her shoulders and says she is ready for her life to change once people understand the depths from which she emerged. 

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When I first started in sport I did it for purely selfish reasons – to be as good as I could be. 

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I still have that desire but the more I do it the more I realise I can do something else. 

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Hopefully, I can show people what is possible.

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She enjoyed a comfortable middle-class childhood in Norfolk and then achieved a first-class honours degree in geography. 

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And yet, with no knowledge of the sporting greatness within her, Wellington was so beset by insecurity that she went out of her way to change her body-shape – and ended up in the grip of anorexia and bulimia.

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The victims of such illnesses are often very ambitious, outwardly successful young women who pursue these ideas of control and achievement, she says. 

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We're driven, compulsive, obsessive, competitive, persistent and seek perfection. 

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That can be channelled incredibly negatively.

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Wellington was saved by her family. "My parents' reaction got to me," she says, especially my dad. 

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He is less outwardly emotional but when I saw he was near tears looking at me I understood how worried they were. 

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But it was really my brother who made me face the truth. 

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His tough love really worked.

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She has now reached the point where, without vanity, she can talk about "loving" her own body. 

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Rather than focusing on her outward appearance, Wellington can celebrate all her body has achieved – in conjunction with an exceptional mental strength. 

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Sport has given me a different perception and respect for my body.

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I cannot judge its success by whether I can fit into a pair of skinny jeans. 

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I look at other women and, yes, they're beautiful with stereotypically wonderful figures but I can think, 'Yeah, but you haven't won what I've won.' 

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I might not be perfect but I can love my body now.

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Wellington came to the tortuous world of Ironman as an amateur jogger – who discovered by chance that she loved running. 

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She ran her first marathon at the age of 25, in London in 2002, and surprised herself by finishing in 3hr 8 sec. 

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Five years later, she decided to quit her government job and become a triathlete. 

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Wellington chose to work with the world's most successful but controversial triathlon coach.

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Brett Sutton's infamy centres on the fact that he once had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl he trained. 

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In later years, as an adult, she made a formal complaint and Sutton was charged. 

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He argued that the affair had been consensual but the judge still accused Sutton of abusing his role as Australia's national triathlon coach to an inexcusable degree.

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Sutton received a suspended two-year sentence.

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It was unforgivable at the time, Wellington says of Sutton's behaviour. 
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But Brett repented. 
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He said to me, 'I despise myself for the suffering others have gone through for what I did.' 
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Some will choose never to forgive him. 
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Others do. 
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But Brett is not the cold mercenary that is usually depicted. 
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He has an incredible emotional intelligence.
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On the first Monday we started working together we went for a swim and he said, 'I can see you've suffered from an eating disorder.' 
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I thought: 'How the bloody hell does this paunchy little man know?'
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He can read me like a book and developed an understanding very quickly of my personality – my impatience, my inability to rest my mind, my desire for perfection. 
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He summed me up in one sentence. 
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You want to be different, yet you crave to be normal. 
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It's true. I didn't want to be like the other girls. 
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I wanted to be better than them. 
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But I wanted to be one of them.
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Wellington details how she and Sutton fought for control.
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Recounting his demands that Wellington, a self-confessed "control-freak", become "supine like a slave", there are vague echoes of a sado-masochistic relationship. 
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Does such a description sound overblown to her?
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No, Some of the problems I had, the worries and fears in the first six months with Brett, were due to the fact I didn't trust him. 
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I was questioning him constantly and that's so draining. 
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It was only when I allowed him to take control that I could feel that sense of liberation.
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Sutton shouted at Wellington and treated her cruelly in training.
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How could she bring herself to trust him? 
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Away from training he had a warm, caring and sensitive side. 
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But he could be cold and callous and in front of the other athletes he was very harsh. 
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He was either going to make me or break me.
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Those thoughts went through my head when he shouted at me that, You're weak, you'll never be successful.' 
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Well, yeah, I was crying into my goggles but the other part of me said, 'I'll show you, you bastard. I'm going to prove to you that I'm not weak.' 
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I needed that but it was so liberating handing the reigns to Brett. 
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It was definitely right at that point and it made me the athlete I am. 
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Could I do it now? 
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Probably not because Brett taught me most of it anyway so I don't need him now – but I've also built on what he taught me and learnt from others.
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Brett was hugely influential in my life. 
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No other coach would have done what he did, in 2007, when he threw a rookie who had never done any long-distance triathlons, into the world championships in Kona. 
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Brett had seen something special in me. 
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He knew long before anyone else that I could do it.
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Wellington shocked the Ironman world by winning – and beating her nearest rival by five minutes. 
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Yet her triumph last year, in the same world championships, transcended all expectations. 
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She began the race with a damaged pectoral muscle which she'd torn two weeks earlier. 
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She was grazed and bruised and had been to hospital just a few days before the race. 
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Wellington was told it would be a miracle if she even finished.

She was forced to swim more slowly than usual and, also struggling on her bike, she began the marathon 21 minutes behind the leader. 

Wellington scrunches up her face. 
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Normally, I've not suffered much more than discomfort. 
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Maybe my discomfort is someone else's debilitating pain. 
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But, this time, I got it. 
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This was bad pain. 
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Persistent and deep, deep pain.
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Wellington still ran the marathon in 2 hours 52 minutes and 41 seconds – and won by almost three minutes. 
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Around Christmas last year," she remembers, Brett called me. 
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He hasn't trained me for years but he said, You used to doubt if you could win a race under duress. 
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You wondered if you would crumble. 
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Now you know. 
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You've got nothing more to prove. 
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It's true. 
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That's why I have maybe completed the journey. 
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I'm not retiring but I'm going to take a break for a year or two.
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Wellington will work on her charities and in the media, and possibly train exclusively for next year's London marathon where she believes she could run "2.20 something".
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But Wellington will also sit back, for once, and savour a new truth. 
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I'm content
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I'm happy. 
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I've got nothing to prove to anyone anymore – not even to myself.

Donald McRae

Your life

Life Is a special privilege even though you might not see it that way

   Today before you say an unkind word -
   Think of someone who can't speak.

   Before you complain about the taste of your food -
   Think of someone who has nothing to eat.

 Before you complain about your husband or wife -
 Think of someone who's crying out for a companion.
      
        Today before you complain about life -
        Think of someone who died early .

Before whining about the distance you drive  - Think of someone who walks the same distance with his feet.

And when you are tired and complain about your job -  Think of the unemployed, the disabled, and those who wish they had your job.

And when depressing thoughts seem to get you down -
Put a smile on your face and think: you're alive and still around.
      
  Please try to stop complaining, never ridicule other people.

All of us moan from time to time

What we do not notice is how this can become a habit

And habits once formed are hard to shift

So make your habits ones of compassion and appreciation for life

Once you do this your life changes for the better

Why?

Because you are becoming one with life.

Moving from a little blob of me me me.

To one uniting with all around you.

You are becoming more altruistic.

GM - and California

 Stacy Malkan, a longtime advocate for environmental health, told me:

"It's about our right to know what's in the food we're eating and feeding our families. It's about our right to decide if we want to eat food that's been fundamentally altered at the genetic level, by companies like Monsanto, to contain bacteria, viruses or foreign genes that have never been in the food system before … Sixty-one other countries require labeling laws, but we haven't been able to get labeling here because of the enormous influence of Monsanto and the chemical companies."

Journalist Michael Pollen is no lightweight when it comes to food. His bestselling books include The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, Food Rules: An Eater's Manual and the forthcoming Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. He is on the faculty at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism. He supports Prop 37, and explained why:

"Something very exciting is happening around food in this country. There is a movement. You see it when you go to the farmers' market … People are getting very interested in where their food comes from, how it was produced, and they're trying very hard to vote with their fork, as the slogan goes, for the kind of food that supports their values, the kind of food that they deem most healthy or environmentally sustainable."

For Pollan, the science is still unclear on whether or not GMO food poses a health risks:

"Genetically modified organisms may have been developed in laboratories by scientists in places like Berkeley, but make no mistake, they're owned by very large corporations. Monsanto and DuPont now own something like 47% of the seed supply in this country. The real benefit of GMOs to these companies is really the ability to control the genetic resources on which humankind depends ... this represents a whole new level of corporate control over our food supply."

Prop 37 still might lose, because of these corporate stakeholders, which Malkan describes as the world's largest pesticide and junk-food companies, who are spending $40m carpet-bombing California with a campaign of deception and trickery, with lie after lie in the ads that are going unchallenged in the media.

The paid ad campaigns are slick and pervasive, suggesting that the labeling law is poorly written, will cause new state bureaucracy and increase food costs, and will provoke a flurry of frivolous lawsuits.

UC Berkeley agriculture professor David Zilberman opposes Prop 37, but, ironically, provides a strong argument in favor of broad food-safety regulation:

"Almost all the food that we eat is genetically modified … If we label, there are pesticides that are much worse than genetically modified food."

Perhaps, in his opposition to Prop 37, he has planted the seed of a broader food-safety movement to include pesticide labeling as well.

California produces much of America's food.

The Golden State's labeling law just might set the gold standard for food safety.

Denis Moynihan.
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America is in many respects behind other countries in demanding informative, clearer and more easily readable food labeling.
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The idea of colour coding food labels to indicate their healthiness is not even on the agenda.
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The power of the food industry lobbying is very telling.
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In Europe this lobby group were successful in removing many good ideas from discussion of food labeling.
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A victory for greed, however the war is far from over.
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The crunch comes as societies wake up to the cost of obesity.
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Once politicians have to choose between food industry pressure for hard to understand labeling and ever increasing money being needed for dying voters the tide may well turn.

Crop changes

Climate change could lead to bananas becoming a critical food source for millions of people, a new report says.

Researchers from the CGIAR agricultural partnership say the fruit might replace potatoes in some developing countries.

Cassava and the little known cowpea plant could play increasingly important roles in agriculture as temperatures rise.

People will have to adapt to new and varied menus as traditional crops struggle say the authors.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

When the farmers see the problems they are having with production, they really are willing to shift”

Bruce CampbellCCAFS

Responding to a request from the United Nations committee on world food security, a group of experts in the field looked at the projected effects of climate change on 22 of the world's most important agricultural commodities.

They predict that the world's three biggest crops in terms of calories provided - maize, rice and wheat - will decrease in many developing countries.

They suggest that the potato, which grows best in cooler climates, could also suffer as temperatures increase and weather becomes more volatile.

The authors argue that these changes "could provide an opening for cultivating certain varieties of bananas" at higher altitudes, even in those places that currently grow potatoes.

Dr Philip Thornton is one of those behind the report. He told BBC News that while bananas also have limiting factors, they may be a good substitute for potatoes in certain locations

It's not necessarily a silver bullet but there may be places where as temperatures increase, bananas might be one option that small holders could start to look at.

The report describes wheat as the world's most important plant derived protein and calories source.

But according to this research, wheat will face a difficult future in the developing world where higher prices for cotton, maize and soybeans have pushed wheat to marginal land, making it more vulnerable to stresses induced by climate change.

One substitute, especially in South Asia, could be cassava which can tolerate a range of climate stresses.

But how easy will it be to get people to adjust to new crops and new diets?

Bruce Campbell is program director of the climate change, agriculture and food security research group (CCAFS) which co-ordinates work among leading institutions around the world. 

He told BBC News that the types of changes that will happen in the future have already happened in the past.

Two decades ago there was almost no rice consumption in certain areas of Africa, now there is. 

People have changed because of the pricing, it's easier to get, it's easier to cook. 

One of the big concerns among researchers is how to tackle the need for protein in the diet. 

Soybeans are one of the most common sources but are very susceptible to temperature changes.

The scientists say that the cowpea, which is known in sub-Saharan Africa as the "poor man's meat" is drought tolerant and prefers warmer weather and could be a reasonable alternative to soya. 

The vines of the cowpea can also be used as a feed for livestock.

In some countries, including Nigeria and Niger, farmers have already moved away from cotton production to growing cowpeas.

There are also likely to be developments animal protein sources says the report including a shift from to smaller livestock.

This is an example of something that's happening already, there's been quite a shift from cattle keeping to goat keeping in southern Africa in face of droughts.

When the farmers see the problems they are having with production, they really are willing to shift.

Change is really possible. 

It's not just a crazy notion it is already happening.