Source: “The Need for Speed: The Importance of Next-Generation Broadband Networks,” by Stephen Ezell, Robert Atkinson, Daniel Castro, and George Ou. March 2009. The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. Web site www.itif.org.

Big Ideas for Saving the Earth

By Bob Olson
Hacking the Earth: Understanding the Consequences of Geoengineering by Jamais Cascio. Self-published e-book, 118 pages, $7.50 PDF or $12.99 paperback, available at www.lulu.com.
(Reviewed July-August, 2009)

Some of the most thoughtful work on the topic of climate change appears in Jamais Cascio’s new e-book, Hacking the Earth. Cascio is a Bay Area futurist who worked with Global Business Network during the 1990s and is currently a research affiliate at the Institute for the Future, a global futures strategist at the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, and a fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

The actual pace of climate change seems likely to be faster than in even the gloomiest scenarios in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 Assessment Report, Cascio notes. Greenhouse gas emissions increased much more quickly than anticipated before they were trimmed back by the global recession. Higher temperatures are now expected to trigger self-amplifying feedback effects that were not taken into account in the 2007 report, such as melting permafrost in the Arctic releasing large amounts of methane, which is 20–25 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Recent research also suggests that the world’s oceans have less ability to moderate global warming by soaking up both carbon and heat than previously estimated.

Meanwhile, few political leaders understand the scale of effort needed to prevent dangerous climate change. Accelerating climate change and weak political responses are leading a growing number of people to conclude that we need to seriously consider the possibility of using geoengineering to offset and temporarily delay global warming. Major articles on geoengineering have recently appeared in publications ranging from New Scientist to Foreign Affairs.

While geoengineering technologies are the context for Cascio’s book, they are not the focus. For his purposes, all we really need to know is that geoengineering schemes to damp the greenhouse effect range from low-tech to sci-fi, and they all work by either reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface or by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it in the oceans, plants, soil, or geological formations.

On the lower-tech side are concepts such as reforesting on a massive scale (trees absorb CO2), fertilizing the ocean with iron to stimulate the growth of CO2-eating plankton, and putting ground limestone into the ocean to help it absorb more CO2 and counter ocean acidification. At the other extreme are proposals to put large mirrors in orbit to deflect the sun’s rays and to genetically engineer trees so they will absorb more carbon than normal trees. In between are ideas like creating clouds to block sunlight by pumping atomized seawater into the lower atmosphere or pumping sulphate particles into the stratosphere to make it more reflective.

Cascio assumes that these and other geoengineering technologies could be developed, and moves on quickly to the really hard questions, such as “Who should be responsible for making decisions about the use of such technologies?” (geopolitics) and “What ethical guidelines should shape the decisions?” (geoethics).

Cascio makes it very clear that he is not enthusiastic about climate geoengineering and completely rejects the idea that it might be a replacement for the economic, social, and technological changes needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Its only possible purpose, he asserts, is to give us more time to make those changes. It would be far better if geoengineering is never needed, because we still know too little about geophysical systems to be confident that we could engineer changes on a planetary scale without making an already-bad situation even worse. And the politics of geoengineering is a nightmare to be avoided if at all possible.

But, he argues, “we may be running out of alternatives.” If it comes down to a choice between a global climate catastrophe and using geoengineering to buy more time to reduce carbon emissions, would we really choose catastrophe?

Two lines of thought out of many in the book stand out as especially important: Cascio’s analysis of the climate problem from a futurist’s perspective and his discussion of the challenges involved in what might be called climate stability governance.

Climate change is arguably the toughest problem we face in terms of the demands it makes for sophisticated thinking about the future. Cascio stresses again and again the importance of lag in geophysical systems due to the Earth’s “thermal inertia.” Even if we could instantly end all human emissions of greenhouse gases, global temperatures would increase for at least the next 20–30 years. And if that temperature increase triggers feedback effects, like methane released from thawing tundra or dark open water absorbing more heat than highly reflective ice as the Arctic ice cap shrinks, then temperature increases could go on longer.

Of course, we can’t stop our emissions on a dime. Meeting the climate challenge will require an Energy Technology Revolution in which virtually all of our energy-using technologies are redesigned to be more efficient and new energy sources that do not emit carbon dioxide are fast-tracked on a global scale to replace fossil fuels. This will be, by far, the greatest deliberate technological transformation in human history, and it will take many decades to accomplish. Behavioral changes in how we live, move around, and build our cities will take at least as long and probably longer. All the economic, political, and social changes required to mobilize on the needed scale will face stiff opposition that will take time to overcome. So the climate problem involves major response lags as well as geophysical lags.

Climate change, says Cascio, is the prime example of what he calls a “long-lag problem.” The combination of geophysical lags from thermal inertia and response lags from human inertia means that the solution window will close well before the problem fully hits. Only foresight can prevent a climate catastrophe.

Therefore, Cascio argues, more farsighted governance arrangements need to be developed to pursue climate stability over the generation ahead. He does not make proposals about what those arrangements should be like, but says they need to embody a new form of power based on superior information and analysis, better long-term thinking, and greater openness and accountability.

Governing the use of geoengineering will present special problems. Preferably, the United Nations would both authorize and provide oversight for any use of geoengineering, since both the benefits and the risks would be global in scope. But some geoengineering approaches are relatively inexpensive, not in absolute terms but in comparison to the enormous costs involved in creating a new global energy infrastructure. It’s entirely possible that a state that has the capacity to undertake geoengineering and is suffering particularly severe climate impacts might decide that it needs to act on its own without waiting for the approval of dithering international institutions. Such “rogue actors” need not be just states. Some geoengineering schemes are financially within the reach of the world’s multi-billionaires.

This possibility that geoengineering might be attempted without international approval is, for Cascio, a key reason why it needs to be studied now. The most important task is to identify approaches that may look workable but might actually have dreadful side effects. We need to know what approaches to avoid even if we’re desperate.

As a counter to unwise decision making, Cascio urges the development of geoethics: guidelines that researchers and policy makers dealing with geoengineering can use in making difficult decisions. He proposes a number of core principles for geoethics, the most important of them being reversibility. This means that any decision to employ geoengineering should be made with a strong bias toward the ability to step back and reverse the decision should harmful outcomes begin to appear or become more likely. Cascio develops this concept at some length and discusses other proposed principles, such as interconnectedness, diversity, foresight, integration, and expansion of options.

He uses the provocative term open-source terraforming to describe the level of openness he believes there should be in research on geoengineering. He argues that, the more people who examine and evaluate proposed geoengineering schemes, the better the chance of finding flaws or dangers and the greater the pool of knowledge from which to develop solutions. Critics of open-source approaches to anything typically argue that they can undermine the market and put knowledge into the hands of people who may use it in unwise or even hostile ways. Economic concerns make no sense in the case of geoengineering since there’s no market for it, but the security argument carries some weight. Nevertheless, Cascio believes a “many eyes, many minds” approach is ultimately safer than secrecy.

To some environmentalists who continue to argue that we should not even consider geoengineering options but should focus solely on reducing CO2 emissions, Cascio argues back that, yes, reducing emissions is the fundamental solution and the preferred strategy, but a resilient, farsighted, ethical approach must include preparing to deal with the failure of one’s preferred strategy before that failure occurs. If we do come to a point where geoengineering is the only alternative to climate catastrophe and we haven’t studied it, it will be far too late to develop the technological options and choose wisely among them.

Cascio is at least moderately optimistic about humanity’s ability to prevent a climate catastrophe and to make it through the coming era of global system breakdowns battered but ultimately successful. “The end result,” he believes, “may be far greater than we dare hope. Not only would we find ourselves in a world of sustainable wealth, abundance and efficiency, we’d be living in a civilization that, for the first time, had really started to think like a mature, adult society.”
About the Reviewer

Bob Olson is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Alternative Futures, 100 North Pitt Street, Alexandria, Virginia 22314. Web site www.altfutures.com

Print:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00262KMVM

Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002BDV8FU

Futurist Bookshelf

Calculating Political Risk by Catherine Althaus. Earthscan. 2009. 304 pages. Paperback. $48.95.

From containing food-borne epidemics to preventing terrorist attacks, public officials have to continuously make decisions that involve high levels of risk. But what exactly is risk? How does it manifest itself? What makes a given action too risky? Public-administration consultant Althaus explores these and related questions, bringing together perspective from medicine, finance, philosophy, mathematics, and other fields to flesh out a scholarly understanding of political risk, the calculation thereof, and what it means to actual political practice, which requires the frequent making of decisions that literally involve life and death. Australia’s regional infrastructure-development plans, Britain’s response to the mad-cow epidemic, and the U.S. government’s counterterrorism policies in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks are cases in point, from which she pinpoints lessons to learn.

Counterknowledge: How We Surrendered to Conspiracy Theories, Quack Medicine, Bogus Science, and Fake History by Damian Thompson. W.W. Norton & Company. 2008. 162 pages. $21.95.

Demonstrably false beliefs are in high demand nowadays, notes sociologist Thompson. Officials in the United States and Britain endorse teaching creationist explanations for the origin of life on earth in public schools, while publishing houses circulate new “nonfiction” books that allege U.S. government complicity in the 9/11 attacks, claim that a Chinese fleet circumnavigated the globe 70 years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, and warn parents that having their children vaccinated for measles might make them autistic.

Mainstream media are no help. They promulgate such theories to fan discussions, drive audience traffic, and sell copy. And tens of millions of educated adults believe them. Thompson asks what has happened to scientific proof and historical fact; a generation of adults seems to be losing faith in both while they let themselves be deluded by “counterknowledge,” or beliefs that contradict clear evidence. At a time when our methods for ascertaining fact are more sophisticated than ever, our interest in the facts seems to be waning.

Thompson analyzes the psychology that underlies this—why people create counterknowledge, why others hunger for it—and he speculates on how it will affect society overall. Vast political and socioeconomic disaster is inevitable, he says, if we do not come to our senses.

Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change by David Holmgren. Chelsea Green Publishing. 2009. 126 pages. Paperback. $12.

We need to find new ways of living in the face of climate change and global oil peak, says sustainability-innovator Holmgren. He envisions four future scenarios: techno-explosion, in which large new energy sources allow us to keep expanding our wealth; techno-stability, in which steady consumption and new renewable energies allow us to maintain current standards of living; energy descent, in which declining energy availability triggers declining economic activity, population, and urbanization; and collapse, in which human systems across the globe fail.

Large new energy sources are unlikely, according to Holmgren: We best learn to live with less. He advocates permaculture living—maximizing communities’ self-sufficiency via localized food, renewable energy, community-based economies, and bioregional political structures. Argentina, Cuba, and New Zealand have already adopted some permaculture practices in the wake of rising energy and food prices.

(Note: Holmgren is co-originator, with Bill Mollison, of the permaculture concept following their joint publication in 1978 of their book Permaculture One. He has also written Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainaiblity and developed three properties whose designs incorporate permaculture principles.)

Hacking the Earth: Understanding the Consequences of Geoengineering by Jamais Cascio. Self-published, www.lulu.com. 2009. 160 pages. $12.95.

The greenhouse gases currently in the earth’s atmosphere are not going away—unless we apply some special tools to remove them, says environmental futurist Cascio. In this self-published collection of essays, he explores the prospects for geoengineering, or using human-made structures to undo climate change: pumping seawater into clouds to increase their reflectivity of incoming sunlight; growing genetically engineered plants that will absorb carbon dioxide at faster-than-average rates; building mirrors in space to block some of the sun’s rays; dumping iron into the ocean to stimulate growth of carbon-dioxide-consuming plankton; and more.

None of these will be easy to deploy. And all carry risks—they might trigger new changes in the earth’s atmosphere or ocean currents; they might benefit some parts of the earth while scarcely helping, or even harming, other parts; and disagreements over their developments and deployment might spark heated political tensions, or even wars. It’s the future we know versus the alternative future we don’t know. Both are scary, and both and will require us to make hard decisions.

Mom-in-Chief: How Wisdom from the Workplace Can Save Your Family from Chaos by Jamie Woolf. Jossey-Bass. 2009. 262 pages. $22.95.

The skills that working mothers learn at the office can help them create happier family lives at home, says leadership consultant—and proud parent—Woolf. Drawing from her own experiences, she elaborates some readily transferable “best practices” that foster communication, teamwork, and morale in employees and children alike. Her anecdotes and tips aim to help readers discover their personal leadership styles and maximize them to nurture healthy family cultures, manage crises, delegate effectively with their spouses, and motivate their children to discover and unleash their potential strengths.

One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Journey for Natural Silence in a Noisy World by Gordon Hempton and John Grossmann. Free Press. 2009. 356 pages. $26. Includes compact disc.

Natural silence is harder to find, according to ecologist Hempton and freelance-writer Grossmann. In Hempton’s expedition across the continental United States, he recorded the sounds of nature—the vibrations of butterfly wings, the sifting of breeze through pine branches, the crash-boom of waterfalls, the howls of wolves, and all those other sounds that existed eons before the first human beings. To hear these sounds uninterrupted, however, is increasingly difficult nowadays. The authors note that even in the most “remote” natural parks, one may hear human-caused noise: a chainsaw here, a jet plane there, highway traffic, helicopters, trains, and more.

Hempton’s journey is retraced with vivid descriptions of wilderness through which he hiked and the local humans he met and conversed with along the way. They express the hope that the reader, too, will rediscover how to listen to the land and thus reconnect with it. This will only happen when we can experience natural silence, the “meeting place” between us and our environment. An enclosed compact disc features Hempton’s sound recordings and illustrations of poignant natural scenes.

Political Economy in a Globalized World by Joergen Oerstroem Moeller. World Scientific. 2009. 442 pages. $48.

Our world’s global economy is a fragile system, as the widespread damage of the recent financial crisis demonstrated, says economist—and World Future Society Global Advisory Council member—Moeller. He advises taking careful note of the system’s strengths and weaknesses, because it will undergo even greater strains later this century: climate change, demographic changes, shifting balances of geopolitical power, rising nationalism, the continuing menaces of extremism and terrorism, and new scarcities of needed resources in every economy worldwide. The global economy is our best hope of worldwide prosperity, but we must modernize it in order to meet all these new challenges.

Moeller describes the future trends, and the ways we can expect the world’s financial system to evolve in light of them. Global economics could be a bigger factor than domestic policy in most countries’ domestic prosperity, since all citizens are vulnerable to events beyond their national borders. We have an opportunity to act now and identify the right policies. If we take it, we will have the brightest prospects of reducing or eliminating the negative impacts on our societies, and promoting human rights and opportunities.

The Shut-Down Learner: Helping Your Academically Discouraged Child by Richard Selznick. Sentient. 2009. 160 pages. $15.95.

Children with diagnoses of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and other “learning disabilities” need much more than clinical tests and medications; they need understanding and support, says school-psychologist Selznick. The typical classroom setting just isn’t designed for the way they think: Most of these children excel in creative tasks that demand strong visual skills or spatial thinking, but they struggle—and often fail—at following standard instruction in reading, math, and writing. Their difficulties leave them feeling anxious, depressed, and resentful. Their self-esteem suffers, and their relationships with their parents become strained.

Well-meaning parents may expect counseling and medication regimens to “fix” them. Selznick cautions against this. Medical treatments are often necessary, he says, but parents also need to explore the underlying factors that may be worsening their children’s conditions. Selzick helps parents identify the factors, and offers concrete approaches that can help resolve them.

Social Capital: Reaching Out, Reaching In by Viva Ona Bartkus and James H. Davis. Edward Elgar. 2009. 369 pages. $150.

“Social capital,” the resources that individuals and groups accrue from building and maintaining personal relationships, is a highly discussed—and controversial—subject of study, according to management professors Bartkus and Davis. Each one of us can enrich our lives, make it through tough times, and discover new personal or professional opportunities by way of the relationships we share with friends, family, co-workers, and colleagues.

Larger groups benefit, too, since their members’ mutual relationships foster information flow, raise awareness of common problems, and identify and sanction unacceptable behavior. But there can be too much of a good thing: A community that is excessively close-knit can become insular, discriminatory, and prejudiced against those on the outside.

Recent research is making many fascinating new revelations about human community behavior, challenging many long-cherished assumptions, such as classical economics’ belief that humans are individualistic and self-interested. Bartkus and Davis share innovative discoveries by leading economists, political analysts, and sociologists on the nature and value of social capital: what social capital is, how we measure it, how we create and maintain it, and where it stands in our society today.

The Virtue of Wealth: Creating Life Success the Zenvesting Way by Paul H. Sutherland. Spirituality & Health Books. 2009. 193 pages. Paperback. $16.95.

Living in accordance with our unique values and dreams is not easy, but it is the only way to true happiness and true wealth, says investment-manager Sutherland. He leads readers through the processes of creating road maps for lives of healthy relationships with money, possessions, and, most importantly, other people. Balance, anticipation of life’s up and downs, substitution of personal responsibility for victim mentality, and awareness of one’s own place in the grand scheme of human existence are his core tenets. Applying those tenets, you will learn how to successfully save for retirement, plan for a more fulfilling future, and raise your kids to spend money wisely, engage in household chores, share with others, and deeply value their educations.

The Wall Street Journal Guide to the End of Wall Street As We Know It: What You Need to Know About the Greatest Financial Crisis of Our Time—And How to Survive It by Dave Kansas. Collins Business. 2009. 199 pages. Paperback. $15.99.

Radical changes are under way in the world’s financial systems in the wake of the subprime-mortgage implosion, credit crunch, and market meltdown, according to financial-writer Kansas. He clues consumers in to what the crises mean to them, and what they need to do to weather the storm. His text traces the unwise investment decisions and spending excesses that led to today’s situation, and he compares it with prior economic downturns, such the stock-market depreciation of 2000.

Taking stock of the current morass, he notes what the current events mean for the global economy. It will recover, he says, but it will be of a markedly different form: fewer Wall Street firms, more global players, and the disappearance of many small- to medium-size banks. He notes further what the current events mean for individual investors: He describes the changes in the housing market; clarifies the new rules of funds protection, identifying which investments are protected and which are not; suggests ways to pay down debt; and shows how you can determine the safety of your assets.

Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell by Dennis Bray. Yale University Press. 2009. 258 pages. $28.

Robots made from biological materials aren’t found only in sci-fi movies, says biologist Bray. Our bodies, and the bodies of every other living thing on earth, contain billions of them. Those robots are our cells, and their moment-to-moment function is nothing less than living computation: Each cell consists of organic circuits performing logical operations, albeit with unique properties that human-made computers cannot yet match, and protein complexes that switch genes on and off just to execute microchip-like “programs of development.” We owe everything to these computational capacities. They are the source of cells’ ability (and ours) to become aware, to adapt, and to be intelligent.

What’s Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science edited by Max Brockman. Vintage Books. 2009. 237 pages. Paperback. $18.95.

Literary-agent Brockman gives a sneak peek of the next generation of scientific discovery with a compilation of essays by 18 of today’s most promising young scientists. Essays weigh in on some of the most perplexing questions in astrophysics, neuroscience, paleoanthropology, and a cross-section other research fields.

The authors detail new revelations about childhood and adolescent brain development; reexaminations of the role of culture in the way individuals think; and critical speculation on the universe’s mysterious stores of “dark energy” and “dark matter,” among more subjects. Other essays speculate on future trends, such as the ethical frameworks that we might put in place to govern genetic engineering, and the prospect that climate change may spark massive migrations of human communities from warmer regions to the Northern Hemisphere. In all, authors challenge long-standing notions and elucidate intriguing new ones.

Winning the Global Talent Showdown: How Businesses and Communities Can Partner to Rebuild the Jobs Pipeline by Edward E. Gordon. Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc. 2009. 246 pages. $27.95.

The “cyber-mental” age is coming, and the world’s work forces are not ready for it, says management-consultant Gordon. A fundamental shift is under way in the global economy, he says, from industries that require basic skills to those that require higher skills. He argues that national school systems, designed in the nineteenth century, are behind the curve. They are not cultivating in their students the technical, communications, and thinking skills that this new economy demands.

The sad consequence is that, while the world’s young-adult population is larger than ever, the population of young adults with critically needed technical skills remains small. They miss opportunities, workforces shrink, and community infrastructures everywhere fall under strain.

We need to reinvent the systems, Gordon says. He praises some efforts now under way: programs that find employment for low-income youth, new mothers, people with disabilities, and former prisoners; career academies that combine traditional liberal arts with intensive study of mathematics, science, and technology; partnerships between local businesses, governments, and NGOs to develop local talent; and workplaces that increasingly embrace employee training and lifelong learning.

Economics: Internet Fraud on the Rise

July-August 2009

Spike in Internet crime complaints concerns U.S. law enforcement.

As more of our lives are conducted online, including our financial lives, the risk of falling prey to online crime also grows. In 2008, a record-setting 275,284 complaints were filed, according to the latest report of the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Crimes, both fraudulent and nonfraudulent, increased by more than 32% in the United States between 2004 and 2008, and the amount of money reported lost annually skyrocketed from $68 million to $265 million.

Fraud complaints include auction fraud, credit and debit card frauds, and nondelivery of goods or services. Nonfraud complaints include computer intrusions (hacking/cracking), spam, and child pornography.

One of the biggest stories of 2008 was the popularity of fraudulent FBI e-mails used in identity-theft schemes, the report notes. Another development was the increasingly personalized nature of the contacts to gain trust of the victims, allowing fraudsters to take over unsecured e-mail accounts.

Despite the global nature of the Internet, more than 66% of the perpetrators of Internet crimes were from the United States, as were 92% of the complaints that the organization received.

Predicting where, when, how, and whom Internet crimes and frauds may strike is impeded by the many variables of individual Internet usage — more time spent using the Internet increases exposure, for instance, but also increases a user’s experience and Net savvy.

The report concludes that the best crime-fighting strategy is proactive prevention measures. Users need to educate themselves about Internet crimes and fraud schemes, and be more aware of their own risky behaviors.

Tips offered by the report for preventing Internet crimes include:

*In Internet auctions, learn as much about the seller as you can and see what actions the auction site will take in the event of a problem.
*Obtain a physical address for the seller, not just a post office box.
* Be particularly cautious in responding to unsolicited e-mail offers.
*Make payment by credit cards, because those payments can be disputed if something goes wrong. Another option is an escrow service, but be sure to investigate that service, too.
*To avoid identity theft, guard your personal information, especially your Social Security number; check your credit reports; and destroy documents before discarding them if they contain critical information such as account numbers.

Victims also need to overcome any embarrassment they may have about reporting such crimes, because more information on more Internet users’ experiences enables law enforcement officials to better see trends in the criminal uses of the Internet. — Cynthia G. Wagner

Source: 2008 Internet Crime Report, Internet Crime Complaint Center, Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover Building, 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20535-0001. Web site www.fbi.gov .

Government: Are Small Governments Getting Too Big?

July-August 2009

Local and state governments in the U.S. may be restricting individual rights.

“Big Government” has been characterized by those on various sides of the political spectrum as an ever-expanding bureaucracy interfering with individual rights and limiting economic freedoms. Some also believe that small government may pose a similar threat. They charge that state and local governments are guilty of intervening too much in private citizen affairs.

According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, there are close to 90,000 local governments in the United States. The bureau recognizes both general-purpose governments (counties, municipalities, and townships) and single-purpose governments (school districts and special districts). The latter comprise the majority of newly formed governments.

A new local government now emerges, on average, once a day in the United States. “I think it gives you a fair sense of the scale of growth that warrants attention,” says Nick Dranias, director of the Center for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute, a public policy think tank in Phoenix, Arizona. For example, according to the California state government Web site, “within California, there are 58 counties, 468 cities, and over 3,400 special districts, exclusive of school districts.” Dranias believes that “few [special districts] are models of limited government restrained by a system of checks and balances,” arguing that these bodies are often driven by special interests.

“The bottom line is that special districts are the major contributor to the growth of the number of local governments,” Dranias tells THE FUTURIST. “I view this as actually worse than an explosion of new cities, counties, and towns because special districts tend to undermine accountability and transparency in local government when county and municipal services are spun off to unfamiliar entities with overlapping jurisdictions, unusual election dates, and broad taxing and spending authority. They are ripe for special-interest capture, and they are often electorally immune from the general public.”

Another organization tracking local governments’ influence over citizenry is the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. The Center’s new report, “Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom,” ranks all 50 U.S. states according to the amount of governmental intervention across the public policy spectrum, “from income taxation to gun control [as well as] overall respect for individual freedom.” Its authors divide these issues into three “components of freedom”: fiscal policy, regulatory policy, and paternalism (governmental attempts to control citizens’ lifestyle choices, with regard to such issues as gambling, alcohol, and marijuana).

“Government intervention,” however, is a subjective term, and difficult to quantify. The index’s authors further argue that “freedom, properly understood, can be threatened as much by the weakness of the state as by overbearing state intervention.” However, the index offers a methodology for measuring how restrictive state and local public policies may be to individuals. The study’s authors choose to err on the side of caution: Certain “hot button” issues such as abortion and the death penalty are not included in the index due to larger disagreements over what, exactly, constitutes a rights violation with regard to such issues.

According to the Mercator Center’s index, Colorado is the freest state. New York finishes in last place.

The index’s authors have created another tool for measuring state governments’ influence on citizens that may be found at freedom.robocourt.com. This Web feature places the control squarely in the hands of the viewer: Adjust the index according to which individual liberties you value most (gun ownership? Gambling? Civil unions?) and watch the rankings automatically reconfigure themselves accordingly.

Americans feeling that their liberties are abridged by their local governments might find some consolation by taking a global perspective. The index’s co-authors, William P. Ruger and Jason Sorens, conclude that “even New York provides a much freer environment for the individual than the majority of countries.” — Aaron M. Cohen

Sources: Nick Dranias, Center for Constitutional Government, Goldwater Institute, 500 East Coronado Road, Phoenix, Arizona 85004. Web site www.goldwaterinstitute.org.

“Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom” by William P. Ruger and Jason Sorens. Mercatus Center, George Mason University, 3301 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 450, Arlington, Virginia 22201. Web site www.statepolicyindex.com.

How Evolution Is Evolving

By Patrick Tucker
The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. Basic Books. 288 pages. $27.
(Reviewed July-August,2009)

Mainstream science maintains that humans stopped evolving about 50,000 years ago. Civilization put an end to process. Therefore, the human of the pre-modern era is the human of today and will be the human tomorrow, right? Not so fast, say scientists Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. In The 10,000 Year Explosion, they argue that humankind is evolving even faster in the modern age. We developed new genetic traits as recently as the Middle Ages. The Ashkenazi (or European) Jews, for instance, don’t just seem smarter; they demonstrate a genetic predisposition toward higher intelligence.

Cochran and Harpending open the book by disputing the common perception of evolution as an inexorably slow process. Natural selection, they assert, does not always transpire over the course of multiple millennia. In fact, an evolutionary leap can be quite fast under certain conditions where organism and challenging environment converge. Such a combination can result in an explosion of genetic variation, especially when species intermingle, as humans interbred with Neanderthals thousands of years ago.

Such explosions and experiments aren’t well represented in fossil records and so mainstream science has regarded them as little more than interesting anomalies. Today, say Cochran and Harpending, genetics is showing that these incidents of chromosomal blossoming — whether due to species interbreeding or behavioral factors such as the change in diet — can impact the genetic future of an entire species in remarkable ways.

One need only look to domesticated variations of the same species to see how evolutionary divergence can take place over just a few hundred years. For instance, stand a tiny Maltese — a somewhat ill-tempered purse dog — up against a Neapolitan Mastiff, or try to make a corn casserole with an ear of teosinte, the genetic ancestor to maize, and you’ll immediately get a sense of how quickly human-aided evolution moves. While it is true that domesticated animals and plants arise from artificial selection, the process by which certain genes are favored and gradually increase in frequency is, according to the authors, “the essence of evolutionary change.” From a genetic point of view, there exists no important distinction between natural and artificial selection. Genes are genes.

In the same way we selectively breed dogs, so we are selectively (but not as deliberately) breeding ourselves, turning our descendants into crossbreeds. The difference is that, when it comes to human breeding, we have no idea what we’re doing. The sorts of jobs we enter into, the types of social experiences we have, the advice we take about who to marry and how to eat, each of these little decisions and actions — carried out repeatedly over multiple generations — will have effects that show up in the genome.

Cochran and Harpending single out the Ashkenazi Jews as a textbook example of how cultural decisions from just a few hundred years ago (a nanosecond in the conventional view of evolution) have already resulted in new genetic advantages. Prior to the Middle Ages, Ashkenazi Jews lived in the middle of an important cultural route, linking Europe to key parts of Asia. The Jews were the recipients of tremendous genetic variety as ancient people crossed through their territory, settled down, married, or just mated.

As increasing numbers of Jews moved into Europe during the Middle Ages, cultural rules against marrying outside the group, coupled with external social pressures, resulted in a relatively closed genetic circle. The more useful chromosomal traits picked up in the Levant rose to the top as genetic of dilution was contained. More importantly, the difficult conditions in Europe ensured a strong biological imperative to adapt and survive.

Indeed, while most Europeans experienced the Middle Ages as a clear improvement over the preceding dark ages, European Jews were roundly persecuted and, by and large, were locked out of land-ownership. They developed a set of shared survival tactics that happened to be ideally suited for the changes sweeping the continent. Without the legal ability to own large tracts of land, most were relegated to towns and hamlets. This gave them a head start on urban life. The primary occupations available to the Jews who settled in these nascent urban centers were service trades requiring literacy and arithmetic skills. Abstract intelligence and reasoning skills were valued more highly within the group than was the ability to wield an ax or pull a cart. Over the course of multiple generations, a cultural emphasis on developing quantitative intelligence rather than physical strength accentuated one particular genetic trait at the expense of others. The chosen trait in question was intelligence.

“The [genetic] mutations themselves suggest this,” the authors write. “Some of them look like IQ boosters, considering their effects on the development of the central nervous system.”

Ashkenazi Jews show slightly elevated levels of sphingolipids, a class of fat molecule. Sphingolipids are common in neural tissues and play an important role in signal transmission. Elevated levels of this molecule can lead to more interneural connections, therefore, a bit more brain.

The authors go on to show that people of European Jewish descent, regardless of family background, perform better than average on IQ tests. They are disproportionately well represented among lists of major math and science award winners. Although they account for less than 3% of the U.S. population, they comprise 27% of U.S. Nobel Prize winners over the past two generations, account for about a fifth of CEOs, and about 22% of Ivy League students.

In broaching this idea, Cochran and Harpending flirt with dangerous territory. The politically sensitive reader is likely to recoil at the notion of genetic variation along ethnic lines resulting in superior intelligence, even if the befeficiaries of this genetic bounty are God’s chosen. All of modern history, Joseph Mendele’s genetic experiments on twins in particular, cautions against wading too deeply into such a line of inquiry. Much time and energy has gone into portraying the mere consideration of such distinctions as inherently misguided, pseudoscientific, and even evil. But this is cultural baggage and has no bearing on the scientific merits of Cochran and Harpending’s argument, per se.

In terms of the future, the value of Cochran and Harpending’s book is primarily as a cautionary tale for our times. We stand today on the verge of yet another great evolutionary leap forward. In the next 50 years, scientists may be able to eliminate all congenital illnesses known to man. Tomorrow’s genomic breakthroughs, treatments, and vaccines will indeed be a great boon to future generations.

But as Cochran and Harpending show, no species can be perfected. In striving to optimize our genetic makeup, we may inadvertently (or even intentionally) decrease the genetic variety that has been vital to our species’ progress. This next evolutionary leap will rise not from the unconscious biological imperative to adapt but from human curiosity as to what improvements may be practically achievable, what, indeed, “improvement” even means. In undertaking this experimentation, we may do well by our descendants to err on the side of chaos, randomness, and nature every now and again.
About the Reviewer

Patrick Tucker is the senior editor of THE FUTURIST and director of communications for the World Future Society.

Stephen Thaler’s Imagination Machines

An inventor discusses his revolutionary form of AI — a highly proficient synthetic consciousness that has quietly existed for more than 30 years.

The Creativity Machine has invented new-and-improved everything from toothbrushes to warheads, and has even released an album of original music compositions (“Song of the Neurons,” available on eMusic and iTunes). It may also represent the closest that inventors have come to achieving artificial intelligence and machine consciousness.

THE FUTURIST recently spoke with Stephen Thaler, inventor of the Creativity Machine and president and CEO of Imagination Engines Inc., about the principles behind this powerful form of artificial intelligence, the reasons why consciousness itself may simply be a neurologically induced illusion, and the technology’s potential for both good and evil.

THE FUTURIST: To begin, could you explain a little about how the Creativity Machine works, and how you designed synthetic neural networks capable of generating ideas?

Stephen Thaler: In 1975, I discovered that trained artificial neural networks spontaneously “dream” potentially useful information that transcends what they already “know,” once they are properly stimulated by random disturbances (i.e., noise) to their internal architectures. Such disturbances within an artificial neural net are tantamount to heat in the biological neural networks of the brain.

Essentially, one artificial neural network, an “imagitron,” is stimulated via computationally simulated heat to dream new ideas, while another network, a “perceptron,” perceives value or utility to this stream of candidate ideas. The perceptron can micromanage the simulated heat in the imagitron so as to coax the imagitron to cough up its best ideas.

To those unfamiliar with the concept of an artificial neural network, this very concise description may not pack much punch. After all, a computer algorithm can be written by a computer programmer to generate a crapshoot of possible solutions to a problem. Furthermore, the same programmer can write another algorithm to filter for the very best of the ideas generated by the first (i.e., a genetic algorithm). But a Creativity Machine is composed minimally of two neural nets, a perceptron and an imagitron, and neither of these algorithms is written by human beings. Each is self-assembling.

For me, coming out of the culture of physics, this theory of the mind and the accompanying AI paradigm send shivers down my spine: It is a simple, elegant, and immensely powerful concept, accounting for the breadth of human cognition and consciousness while supplying the core principle for many future generations of artificial intelligence.

THE FUTURIST: How much do artificial neural networks rely on intuition versus pure logic when inventing or problem solving?

Thaler: From a computational psychologist’s point of view, discrete logic, fuzzy logic, intuition, and the most sublime of thoughts are all the same: numerical activation patterns of neurons. However, we in the cognitive neurosciences do tend to search for the neural correlates of such high-level psychological concepts as “intuition.” One prime example of such hunch formation in an artificial neural network is how it follows mathematical gradients that lead it toward better solutions to a problem (i.e., if I add more of this or that to a recipe, I suspect it will have more appeal).

Another example of the intuitive process is how an artificial neural network automatically carves the world up into its most frequently occurring themes. Within its internal or “hidden” layers, certain colonies of neurons spontaneously respond to and classify certain objects and scenarios. … This is all a computational process, but not what I would call a logical process. And this “intuitive process” can and often does err.

So far, I’ve just talked about ordinary neural networks that merely perform pattern recognition. In the Creativity Machine paradigm where pattern generation occurs, disturbances to those hidden layers of the networks tend to combine those token representations of things into new compound ideas in a process akin to juxtapositional invention, or new analogy-based models of things and behaviors in the external world. Both processes may be considered intuitive.

THE FUTURIST:You’ve said that human consciousness may, in fact, be running on inferior neural networks. Do you think that the Creativity Machine is “conscious”? And will this form of AI ultimately become the basis for strong AI and mind uploading?

Thaler: In regard to the consciousness question, how do you synthetically create that which is not real in the first place? One can kick, scream, and plead that consciousness is a uniquely human and inimitable quality of mind, but that doesn’t budge me an inch. Consciousness is an illusion of mind that is handily modeled by the Creativity Machine concept, wherein one internally perturbed neural net spontaneously generates the parade of memories, ideas, and feelings (all neuronal firing patterns) that we call “stream of consciousness.” That is, those sensations and thoughts that appear to miraculously emerge from nowhere. …. So, you can bet on the Creativity Machine being the closest thing to human consciousness there can be, as well as the only vehicle for the mind, once one’s protoplasmic matrix peters out.

THE FUTURIST: How do neural networks differ from genetic algorithms?

Thaler: The short of it is that genetic algorithms emulate the way biological species adapt through mutation and natural selection. The Creativity Machine faithfully emulates how the brain achieves cognition, creativity, and consciousness. There is a big difference between these notions, as sizable as the intellectual divide between Evolutionists and Creationists.

In the Creativity Machine paradigm, ideas are autonomously and intelligently designed by non-human, machine intelligence, whereas genetic algorithms accidentally produce concepts through the “rolling of dice” loaded by human beings. If you want to build that scary, genuinely autonomous AI portrayed by science fiction, you can’t afford to have professors and graduate students rushing in and out to periodically change or repair the code!

THE FUTURIST: What are the implications (existential, ethical, and otherwise) if someone who has little to no knowledge or expertise about a certain subject someday gains access to inventing technology that enables them to achieve breakthroughs in, say, medical science — simply by asking a computer a question?

Thaler:Wow! Great question, but give me a year and a literary agent to respond!

Let’s deal with the ethical implications of letting a Creativity Machine supply the answers. Obviously, those with motives we may not all admire can devise Machiavellian schemes to attain power over the rest of us. On the other hand, such systems may be used to fulfill peaceful, harmonious, and noble visions.

Weapons of mass destruction can be quickly formulated and optimized. Just as quickly, Creativity Machines can devise effective countermeasures to such weaponry. Economic systems can be toppled overnight by this paradigm. Otherwise, the paradigm can usher in a new era of global prosperity. We can ask a Creativity Machine how to preserve our health, or recommend the most efficient means to end the life of others.

So, without going any further, suffice it to say that the Creativity Machine paradigm is a double-edged sword, as many technologies typically are. Another dimension to the ethical dilemmas posed by a Creativity Machine “genie” is the ultimate request of its user to grant us exactly what they want. To me, this suggests an even more subtle and effective way for machines to get the upper hand, in a way that pales the classic Judgment Day scenario of the Terminator series.

With regard to the existential aspect of the question, I think that, with the expanded use of highly augmented machine intelligence based upon the Creativity Machine paradigm, we will all begin to question our purpose and nobility in the scheme of things. Naturally, pride within certain professional cultures may begin to erode as machines begin to outthink the thinkers in these conceptual spaces. Even within the field of artificial intelligence and neural networks, there is growing angst and denial over Creativity Machine accomplishments. After all, people say, “I’ve been trying to do that the last 30 years and you say you’ve accomplished the same in a day!?”

I believe that the ultimate existential challenge to humanity will be the growing suspicion that our self-revered intelligence, consciousness, and self-importance are only neural network-induced illusions.

About the Interviewee

Stephen Thaler is president and CEO of Imagination Engines Inc. He holds more than 20 patents in the field of machine intelligence and has written numerous scientific and philosophical papers on the confabulatory basis of cognition, creativity, and consciousness. His Creativity Machine paradigm has been proclaimed by NASA visionaries as AI’s best bet at creating human to transhuman intelligence in machines.

This interview was conducted by Aaron M. Cohen, staff editor of THE FUTURIST.

Tomorrow in Brief, July-August 2009

Ice That “Burns”

Harvesting chunks of ice from the bottom of the ocean and beneath the Arctic permafrost may yield a source of burnable fuel in the future. Gas hydrates are a form of frozen natural gas that readily combusts when lit by a match, suggesting a promising source for renewable energy, according to researchers working with the U.S. Geological Survey. The gas hydrates also would leave a smaller carbon footprint than other fossil fuels. “These gas hydrates could serve as a bridge to our energy future until cleaner fuel sources, such as hydrogen and solar energy, are more fully realized,” says the study co-leader, research geologist Tim Collett.

Source: American Chemical Society, 1155 Sixteenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. Web site www.acs.org .

Sunny—with a 50% Chance of Migraine!

Allergy sufferers already can obtain warnings for oncoming sneezes and itches from weather forecasts during pollen season. Now, meteorologists can also help predict the likelihood of migraine headaches, asthma attacks, arthritis flare-ups, and other chronic conditions. A new, free service called MediClim.com tracks weather patterns to identify when health-impacting events may occur. The service sends an e-mail alert to a subscriber to warn if the weather is likely to trigger a problem, such as changes in barometric pressure or humidity, which can exacerbate arthritis. Armed with the weather-health predictions, patients can consult their doctors to find ways to minimize the weather’s impacts on their chronic conditions.

Source: MediClim, www.mediclim.com

Rising Sea Levels Will Threaten New York

New York City is only a few feet above sea level, so the rising sea levels predicted by climate modelers should give the city and other parts of the northeastern U.S. coast cause for urgent concern. Sea-level rise is now expected to occur twice as fast in the twenty-first century as it did in the twentieth, bringing a greater risk of hurricanes and winter storm surges, according to a study by the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies at Florida State University. By 2100, thermal expansion and a slowing of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation could increase sea levels in this region by as much as 18 inches, Yin predicts. Aside from potential flooding, other potential problems include beach erosion, loss of wetlands, and increased salinity of estuaries. The good news is that a cut in greenhouse gas emissions—by 70% this century—could diminish this threat, according to the latest report by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Sources: Florida State University, Media Relations, 114 Westcott Building, Tallahassee, Florida 32306. Web site http://unicomm.fsu.edu .

WordBuzz: Open Dictionary

Trend watchers watching trends in language in order to identify trends in culture may want to check out Merriam-Webster’s Open Dictionary.

The latest-submissions page offers a frequently amusing glimpse into the minds of the word-centric, as well as new social norms. Among the new terms offered recently:

• Unfriending: the act of removing a person from one’s social-networking site. (See also "unfollow" for Twitter, specifically unfollow Thursday.)

• Podference: a podcast of a conference call.

• Textaholic: one who compulsively sends text messages.

• Geekanese: jargon used by geeks, especially technical language showing specific knowledge.

Source: Open Dictionary, http://www3.merriam-webster.com/opendictionary/

Trouble Ahead for Suburbanites?

Rising poverty rates in the United States may hit suburbs especially hard, warns a study by the University of Illinois, Chicago. A big yard and a quiet neighborhood away from the hustle and bustle of the city may be part of the suburban dream, but in economic hard times, many suburbanites may be left wondering where the nearest soup kitchen, emergency clinic, or shelter is. The study reports that the number of poor living in suburbs has been increasing since 1990—well before the current recession—and many suburban townships have reduced or eliminated services. Researchers recommend decentralizing services from state governments, along with better coordination of social services among different levels of government and across public and private sectors.

Source: University of Illinois, Chicago, Office of Public Affairs, 601 South Morgan Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607. Web site www.news.uic.edu .