Science & Politics of Science – Page 13

2007/09/062009/12/04

Review: Introduction to Paradigms–Overview, Definitions, Categories, Basics, Optimizing Paradigms & Paradigm Engines

6 Star Top 10%, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Education (General), Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Public), Science & Politics of Science

Nobel-Level Introduction, Can Be Read at Advanced Level

September 6, 2007

Manfred Stansfield

In my view, this is a Nobel Peace Prize level of reflection that demands broad digestion. This is USEFUL.

I was immediately impressed by the early portion of the book, at which point I went to the back and reviewed the bibliography, which is an impressive mix of philosophical, scientific, documented conspiracy, and systems thinking.

The author takes the trouble to describe his bouncing around different school systems, which is a completely credible way of explaining how he came early on to understand that most teachers are teaching belief rather than reality.

The book provides an easily-read clear-cut solution for eradicating the ten high-level threats identified by the United Nations (LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft representing the USA). This book is a perfect complement to [Collapse of Complex Societies]. I am especially taken with how the author shows paradigms in all their relevance to the human condition and to optimizing society.

There are 23 figures, all of them helpful to the architects of the EarthGame(tm) who wish to focus on reality including the charting of belief systems as they differ from reality.

The author teaches us that paradigms, and the ability to think in paradigmatic terms, are essential to:

1) Achieve the desired outcomes efficiently; and

2) AVOID the bias, corruption, disinformation, manipulation, and withholding of information that is so characteristic of Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids and The Pathology of Power – A Challenge to Human Freedom and Safety.

The purpose of paradigms is to help human manipulate (sic) the environment. The author states and only one in ten thousand understands what a paradigm is, and laments the reality that when a paradigm in power (e.g. the neoconservative paradigm) does not parallel reality, humanity suffers in catastrophic terms.

The author points out that the prevailing Machiavellian paradigm of exploiting people continues to displace the more appropriate non-violent collaborative community paradigms of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela.

His list of failing paradigms is extraordinary; in the comments section I provide a link to my own Op-Ed on this matter written before I bought this book. He specifies:

* Education
* Employment
* National Debt
* Environment
* Food Supply
* Sick Care
* Exclusive versus Inclusive Society
* Failure of the Communist Model (allows immoral capitalism to avoid social costs)
* Event manipulation, disinformation, and cover-up.

Separately the author discusses the failure of the US financial paradigm of debt, arms subsidies, and foreign adventurism that are all unaffordable and unsustainable. The Comptroller General of the USA agrees with him, and recently informed Congress that the USA is officially “insolvent.” I am NOT making this up.

The author describes paradigms as essential sense-making, pattern detecting, anomaly isolating frames of reference, and tells us there are four categories:
1) Action
2) Communication
3) Information
4) Societal

Paradigms, the author tells us, consist of factors and relationships and are best maintained by:
1) Optimizing the Truth Quotient
2) Keeping it current
3) Eliminating bias
4) Retiring & replacing as needed

Only paradigmatic thinking (along with reading, writing, mathematics, and ethics) should be taught. People need to learn how to take a “360° look” at any issue, and to recognize competing paradigms and belief systems.

The author tells us that today's real battle is not over or between paradigms, but among the larger existential challenges to Humanity:
1) Truth versus Deception
2) Survival versus Extinction
3) Enlightenment versus Exploitation
4) Living the Dream versus the Nightmare of Subsistence
5) Doing Your Thing versus Doing Someone Else's Thing

Human integrate four distinct forms of knowing and doing:
1) Body
2) Mind
3) Spirit
4) Emotion

Perceptions are biases by
1) Dimensionality
2) Paradigm filters
3) Perceptors
4) Vested interests

Efficacy is the only proof of a paradigm. The following are NOT “proof” of a paradigm: authority, legislation, logic, conviction, eloquence, poetry, rhetoric, polemics, magic tricks, ridicule, ad hominum attacks, cartoons, art, theatrics, hysteria, religion, terrorism, extortion, monopoly, fanaticism, science, law suits, nor mathematics.

Four primary paradigms that are in competition but can also be blended:
1) Authoritarian
2) Scientist
3) Empiricist (engineer that “does”)
4) New Age

The author states that children have a right to be taught the truth and be taught unbiased paradigms.

Among the most terribly failed paradigms in USA the author cites, in addition to health, the Federal Reserve which usurps the Constitutional role of the US Treasury; the abdication by Congress of its Article 1 responsibilities (see The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy) andBreach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders; and the war on drugs, which is actually a profit-making enterprise for off the books operations (see Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth')

The author ends on an optimistic note, but states that at this time more information is being withheld (unlawfully) from citizens, than is available to citizens. Quite right.

He posits the need to balance among the social roles of dreamer, seeker, exploiter, consumer, referee, and operator, while hoping for the eradication of the perverter (see The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 and Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency)

He ends by defining how to optimize society, suggesting that only four basic skills are needed: reading & writing; mathematics; computer & communications technology end-user skill; and the ability to recognize & evaluate paradigms. He lists 12 occupational categories of importance to a society:
1) Food producer
2) Shelter builder
3) Species reproducer/maintainer
4) Dimensionality increaser
5) Paradigm teacher
6) Environmental preserver
7) Artifact builder
8) External societal defender
9) Internal societal greaser
10) Trader
11) Entertainer
12) Personal fixer (in his view, an honest society with open books and proper health care would eliminate the need for most doctors, lawyers, and accountants).

This is a very serious book by a very serious intellect. It could have “break-out” consequences as we move forward with the EarthGame(tm) and I certainly commend the book to anyone seeking to reflect on how we can displace all the liars and thieves that we have elected or allowed to run corporations that are publicly traded.

2007/02/072009/12/04

Review: The Oil Depletion Protocol–A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Economics, Environment (Solutions), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Future, Science & Politics of Science, Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Bottom Line Deadly Serious,

February 7, 2007

Richard Heinberg

All of the non-fiction reading that I have done supports this author's presenation of both the consequences of doing nothing, and practical bottom line: a 3% reduction per year for the next ten to twenty years, of gross consumption (per capita is meaningless when the number of people are growing rapidly) of oil is the only way to transition gracefully.

Amazon visiters need to be aware that the oil industry, and Exxon in particularly, is applying considerable funds to pay for disinformation and misrepresentation. As Al Gore stated in his briefing to 10,000 Republicans in the Taco Bell Arena of Boise State University, the oil companies (less BP and Chevron) are adopting the precise strategy of the tobacco industry, seeking to turn facts into “theories” that are “in dispute.”

Reality is not in dispute. What is in dispute is the ethics of the Exxon CEO, among others, who choose to lie to the American people and others and take credit for improving gas mileage when what is really needed is a massive turning away from the use of both oil and water.

This book is a great companion to “Peak Oil Survival,” and discusses at the macro levels the implications of oil depletion.

I also like this book because at the back I found a page that informed me that the publisher, New Society Publishers, is both committed to books helpful to society, but that its use of recycled paper as a directly measureable benefit in saving 25 trees, 2,281 gallons of solid waste, 2,512 gallons of water, 3,276 kilowatt hours of electricity, 4,150 lbs of greenhouse gases, 18 lbs of HAPs, VOCs, and AOX combined, and 6 cubic yards of landfill space.

WOW. See my growing list on “true cost” information. Above is the “true cost” for books that do NOT use recycled paper.

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2007/01/282009/12/04

Review: The Great Turning–From Empire to Earth Community

6 Star Top 10%, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Catastrophe, Complexity & Resilience, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Information Society, Justice (Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

People are the new super power–local resilience, global community,

January 28, 2007

David C Korten

I have mixed feelings about this book. It is unquestionably a five-star work of reflection, integration, and focused moral intent. On the other hand, while it introduced a broad “earth-friendly” literature that I was *not* familiar with, it does not “see” a much broader literature that I have absorbed, and so I want to do two things with this review: feature the highlights from this book, and list a number of other works that support and expand on the author's reflections for the greater good of us all.

Early highlights include the continued relevance of Dennis Kucinich and the emerging value of the Case Foundation and Revolution Health as funded by Steve Case, founder of AOL. The author posits early on the choice we have been a great unraveling and a great turning. He describes all our institutions as failing at the same time that we have unlimited potential. He concludes, as have many others, that centralized authority is not working, and suggests that we must confront that which does not work and devise new constructive alternatives (“for every no there must be a yes”).

In the middle of the book he describes the five levels of consciousness as magical, imperial, socialized, cultural, and spirirtual. I would have put socialized ahead of imperial, since the industrial era used schools to socialize us into both factory workers and conscripts for the armed forces. He concludes this section with a commentary on moral autism, which of course reminds us of nakedly amoral Dick Cheney.

The author moves toward a conclusion by pointing out that people are the new super-power, with the Internet and its many new features as the foundation for bringing people together and making people power effective.

A large portion of the middle section is a historical review of America, with its genocidal, slavery, and unilateral militant interventionist nature, and its extreme inequality now, which the literature on revolution clearly identifies (the latter, concentration of wealth) as a precurser to almost inevitable violent revolution).

The book ends with four strategic elements:

1) Awakening of cultural and spiritual consciousness
2) Resistance of the imperial empire's assault on children, families, communities, and nature
3) Form and connect communities of convergence
4) Build a majoritarian political base.

In parting notes he points out that the status of our children is the key indicator of our future, and that today one out of every two children is born into and lives into poverty (one reason why the High Level Threat Panel put poverty above infectuous disease and environmental degradation).

He ends by calling for local living economies at a human scale.

If you have the time to only read one book within the broad literatures of imagination, corporateism, and constructive prospects for the planet, this is probably that book. Below I want to a list quite a few that support this author's thesis, and for which I have provided a summative as well as an evaluative review within these Amazon pages:

The Corporation
WALMART-HIGH COST OF LOW PRICE (DVD/FF/FR-SP-SUB)
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

See also:
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'
“The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past”
Imagine: What America Could Be in the 21st Century
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems
Deep Economy

There are many more should you wish to explore via my categorized lists, but the above both lend great credence to the author of this single book, and expand considerably on the reflections that he has distilled into this one book.

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2007/01/102009/12/04

Review: The Myth of Progress–Toward a Sustainable Future

Atlases & State of the World, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Complexity & Resilience, Disaster Relief, Economics, Science & Politics of Science, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

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End of Immoral Capitalism, Rise of Sustainable Societies,

January 10, 2007

Tom Wessels

I pulled this book from my waiting stack after reviewing Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency While all that we do wrong is rooted in corrupt politics such as Dick Cheney represents so well, I wanted to get away from the personalities and focus on the underlying truths of the greatest challenge facing all of us, preserving the planet for future generations.

This thoughtful careful author from New Hampshire has created a really special book, small, readable, and packed with fact (superb footnotes). He gives all due credit to his predecessors in the field–Georgescu-Roegen, Meadows, Dalay, Hawken et al.

He brings out the nuances of complex systems and how our linear reductionist thinking, and our false assumption that technology will resolve our waste creation and earth consumption issues, combine to place all that we love at risk. I was personally surprised to learn that even if we fund 100 water desalination or decontamination plants, and resolve our shortfalls of clean water, that the energy required to do so would result in entropy and further losses.

The author brings up the need for better metrics (see my reviews of “Ecology of Commerce” and “Natural Capitalism” as well as my list on “True Cost” readings. He points out that the GDP does not reflect the non-cash economy or the degree of equality/inequality in the distribution of new wealth. I would add to that the importance of counting prisons and hospitals as negatives rather than positives.

A good portion of the book (a chapter for each) is spent discussion the three fundamentals: the limits to growth; the second law of thermodynamics (entropy); and the nuances of self-organization and what happens when you reduce diversity.

The author lists the attributes of complex systems as being emergent properties that arise from the interactions (i.e. the space between the objects); self-organization, nestedness, and bifurcation into either positive or negative consequences.

The bottom line for the first part of the book is that in complex systems, especially complex systems for which we have a very incomplete and imperfect understanding, “control” is a myth, just as “progress” is a myth if you are consuming your seed corn.

The author excels at a review of the literature and demonstrating the flaws of economic theories that are divorced from reality and the “true cost” of goods and services (e.g. a T-shirt holds 4000 liters of virtual water, a chesseburger 6.5 gallons of fuel).

I have reviewed a number of books on climate change, in this book the author makes the very important point that the annual cost of weather disasters has been steadily increasing, and is the annual hidden “tax” on our reductionist approach to clearing the earth, losing the forests and mashlands, and so on.

He points out that concealing or ignoring true cost does not make it any less true, it simply passes the cost on to future generations. In the same vein he is optemistic in that he believes that if we take positive action now, however small, the benefits of that action as the years scale out, will be enormous.

This is actually an upbeat book for two reasons: first, it makes it crystal clear that the classical economics that have allowed corporations to pilage the world, bribe dictators and other elites, and generally harvest profit at the expense of the commonwealth; and second, it ends on a note of hope, on the belief that we may be approaching a dramatic cultural shift that embraces reciprocal altruism, true cost calculations, equitable wealth distribution, and so on.

He cites other authors but gives very positive insights into public ownership (by stakeholders, not the government), essentially repealing the flawed court-awarded “personality” of corporations, and re-connecting every entity to its land-base and the people it serves. He recommends, and I am buying, David Korten's “Post-Corporate World.” By restoring the populace to the decision process, we stamp down the greed that can flourish in isolation.

The book ends hoping for a cultural shift from consumption to connection. I believe it is coming. Serious games/games for change, fed by real-world real-time content from public intelligence providers including the vast social networks from Wikipedia to MeetOn to the Moral Majority, could great a wonderfully distributed system of informed democratic governance that implements what I call “reality-based budgeting,” budgeting that is transparent, accountable, and balanced.

This is a much more important book than its size and length might suggest. It is beikng read by and was recommended to me by some heavy hitters in the strategic thinking realm, and I am disappointed at the lack of reviews thus far. This book merits broad reading and discussion.

2006/04/092009/12/04

Review: The Lucifer Principle–A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History (Paperback)

5 Star, America (Anti-America), Complexity & Catastrophe, History, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Time to Dust This One Off–Anticipated Radical Islam and Offers Core Ideas for Surviving,

April 9, 2006

Howard Bloom

Buy and read this book if for no other reason than that the author foresaw the global radicalization of Islam against the West in terms much starker than Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations and much broader than Yossef Bodansky's brilliant tome on “Bin Laden: the Man Who Declared War on America.

Leon Uris is quoted on the cover as saying that this book is “an act of astonishing intellectual courage,” and I will say that the author has pulled together an extraordinary collage of details in an intricately assembled “story” in which he challenges the assumptions of a number of major conventional intellects. There are 58 “parts” to this book, each part between two and six pages long, with an astounding array of multi-disciplinary quotes and footnotes. No scared ox goes ungored.

Some of the history in this book, of the origin of Mohammed as a possible lunatic and then a vengeful warrior using religion to grab real estate, and of the early split between Sunni and Shiite over the issue of the succession, is very useful today.

The author centers the disparate and very broad-ranging pieces of the book on three core ideas: Earth as a superorganism within which a tribe or religion is itself a superorganism; memes as unifying ideas that create us versus them for the sake of changing the pecking order and feeding off weaker tribes, and–in the only optimistic note in the book, at the end, of collaboration and information sharing as the only means to break out of the pattern of dog eat dog.

He specifically slams religion, and especially fundamentalist religion, as a false god that substitutes faith for control, and as a tool of controlling elites who need to keep the impoverished masses from waking up to the raw fact that masses of people can indeed “take over” factories and estates.

On page 94 the following quote struck me as applying equally to George Bush and Osama Bin Laden: “Leaders like Orville Faubus and Fidel Castro have skillfully manipulated a few basic rules of human nature: that every tribe regards outsiders as fair game; that every society gives permission to hate; that each culture dresses the demon of hatred in the garb of righteousness; and that the man who channels this hatred can rouse the superorganism and lead it around by the nose.”

There are numerous gifted phrases throughout this book, and I can understand the frustration of some in absorbing this dizzying array of data points, but it is surely worth making the effort.

He makes much of the evolution of the brain from reptile (survival) to mammalian (social) to primate (individual) and emphasizes that even the most advanced humans still have all three brains in some form, with the lower forms subject to arousal.

Overall I rate this book one of the ten most useful books relevant to understanding and defeating radical Islam, which the author says is “a meme growing ravenous,” a sleeping giant that has been awakened. He goes back in time to look at how the US, in forcing the French and English to give up the Suez Canal, actually helped inspire Arabia to plan for a day when the West might be sent packing. Similar, the first Gulf War, when the Coalition defeated Iraq, undermined secular Moslem regimes, and further inspired Islamic fundamentalists.

In the author's view we erred gravely in not understanding the asymmetric scope of the threat of Bin Laden and post-Taliban Afghanistan, and we appear to have erred in a truly gigantic way in not seeing that the second Gulf War was in fact doing Iran's bidding and accomplishing something Iran could never have done on its own. The author views Bin Laden as having replaced Russia as a “friend” to the Third World, and anticipates both a rapid spread of Islam among the poor, and a plague of animosity toward to the USA specifically.

The book includes a fascination discussion of psycho-social aspects of nations and tribes and other social groups including religions. While some have been derisive of his discussion of “pecking orders” I believe–having lived overseas most of my life–that he nails it. Not only does instability cause the accepted pecking order to go out the window, but prosperity actually destabilizes established pecking orders. When we eventually implement the grand vision of Jeffrey Sachs (see my review of “The End of Poverty” we will need to be very mindful of the animal force that will be unleashed at the same time, and not make the mistake we made in Iraq, of failing to plan for stabilization and reconstruction.

The last two ideas in this book that really grabbed me are from page 292, on how America began a perceptual shut-down and decline from 1973 onwards, culminating in the cheating culture and lazy obese children and parents that are the bane of most teachers' lives today. America is in “slow” mode and has lost its competitive drive.

The book was hugely ambitious, and it is easy to be snide, as some reviewers are, but I for one found this as close to genius and as close to breath-taking intellectual derring-do as any book I have read in a while. If America is to survive the multiple threats to the Republic, it will take leaders capable of reading and understanding this book, and implementing a 100 year strategy for winning the six front war, beginning on the home front with a draconian reform of our educational and information sharing and distance learning environment.

2005/10/192009/12/04

Review: The Republican War on Science

5 Star, Science & Politics of Science

Best Snapshot of the Ugly Baby–3 Others Needed,

October 19, 2005

Chris Mooney

This is the best snap-shot of the ugly baby called US Science, a baby that is on the one hand coddled and spoiled by a politicized program, and on the other straight-jacketed and abused by those same political hand-cuffs.

Of the four books I have reviewed on this important topic, this is the one that is the most compelling on the perversions of the extremist Republicans (I am a moderate Republican). It does not, however, provide a complete picture. Three other books are helpful:

Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion by Daniel Greenberg is the best over-all review, has a strong ethical component, and shows how the competition for money, rather than scientific progress, is diverting scarce resources and frustrating needed advances.

Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Progress by Daniel Sarewitz is a very useful antidote to the many books (Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, comes to mind) that claim science will solve all problems and provide authoritative cost-effective solutions to century-old human problems.

Finally, Investing in Innovation: Creating a Research and Innovation Policy That Works, edited by Lewis Bramscomb and James Keller, brings together a range of views crossing the environment within which scientific research takes place, evaluationg specific programs and policy tools, and making recommendations (all of which have been ignored by the current Bush Administration).

I take four bottom lines from these four books together:

1) We are spending too much on military science & research.

2) Neither Congress nor the Executive have a serious strategy for prioritizing problems, finding private sector partners, and providing seed money for innovative solutions.

3) Both Congress and the Executive, as well as the public and the media, are incredibly ignorant about what science can and cannot do, and where all the money is going to generally poor effect.

4) This is all so important that Science, like Intelligence, needs its own Supreme Court. I am persuaded we need a new form of hybid public agency that is fully independent of the Executive, receiving a percentage of the total disposable budget (say 3%) and hence not subject to Congressional pork-barreling and lobbying-financed pressures.

This book by Chris Mooney is the place to start if you want to be angry, or the place to end if you want to see the other three books end on the ugliest note possible–the destruction of reasonable science by unreasonable ideologues.

2005/09/252009/12/04

Review: The Singularity Is Near–When Humans Transcend Biology (Hardcover)

4 Star, Future, Information Society, Science & Politics of Science

Technically brilliant, culturally constrained,

September 25, 2005

Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil is unquestionably the most brilliant guru for the future of information technology, but Joel Garreau's book Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human covers the same ground, with the same lack of soul, but more interesting and varied detail.

This is really four booklets in one: a booklet on the imminence of exponential growth within information technologies including genetics, nano-technology, and robotics; a booklet on the general directions and possibilities within each of these three areas; a booklet responding to critics of his past works; and lengthy notes. All four are exceptional in their detail, but somewhat dry.

I was disappointed to see no mention of Kevin Kelly's Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilization and just one tiny reference to Stewart Brand (co-evolution) in a note. Howard Rheingold (virtual reality) and Tom Atlee (collective intelligence) go unmentioned. It is almost as if Kurzweil, who is surely familiar with these “populist” works, has a disdain for those who evaluate the socio-cultural implications of technology, rather than only its technical merits.

This is an important book, but it is by a nerd for nerds. [Sorry, but anyone who takes 250 vitamin supplements and has a schedule of both direct intravenous supplements and almost daily blood testing, is an obsessive nerd however worthy the cause.] It assumes that information technologies, growing exponentially, will solve world hunger, eliminate disease, replenish water, create renewable energy, and allow all of us to have the bodies we want, and to see and feel in our mates the bodies they want. All of this is said somewhat blandly, without the socio-cultural exploration or global evaluation that is characteristic of other works by reporters on the technology, rather than the technologists themselves.

The book is, in short, divorced from the humanities and the human condition, and devoid of any understanding of the pathos and pathology of immoral governments and corporations that will do anything they can to derail progress that is not profitable. It addresses, but with cursory concern, most of the fears voiced by various critics about run-away machines and lethal technologies that self-replicate in toxic manners to the detriment of their human creators.

The book is strongest in its detailed discussion of both computing power and draconian drops in needed energy for both computing and for manufacturing using new forms of computing. The charts are fun and helpful. The index is quite good.

I put the book down, after a pleasant afternoon of study, with several feelings.

First, that I should give Joel Garreau higher marks for making this interesting, and recommend that his book be bought at the same time as this one.

Second, that there is an interesting schism between the Kurzweil-Gates gang that believes they can rule the world with machines; and the Atlee-Wheatley gang that believes that collective **human** intelligence, with machines playing a facilitating but not a dominant role, is the desired outcome.

Third that there really are very promising technologies with considerable potential down the road, but that government is not being serious about stressing peaceful applications–the author is one of five advisors to the U.S. military on advanced technologies, and it distresses me that he supports a Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) that focuses on making war rather than peace–imagine if we applied the same resources to preventing war and creating wealth?

Fourth, information technologies are indeed going to change the balance of power among nations, states, and neighborhoods–on balance, based on his explicit cautions, I predict a real estate collapse in the over-priced major cities of the US, and a phenomenal rise of high-technology villages in Costa Rica and elsewhere.

The singularity may be near, as the author suggests, but between now and then tens of millions more will die. Technology in isolation is not enough–absent broad ethical context, it remains primarily a vehicle for nerds to develop and corporations to exploit. As I told an internal think session at Interval in the 1990's (“GOD, MAN, & INFORMATION:. COMMENTS TO INTERVAL IN-HOUSE”. Tuesday, 9 March 1993″ can use as a Yahoo search) until our technologies can change the lives of every man, woman, and child in the Third World, they are not truly transformative. This book hints at a future that may not be achieved, not for lack of technology, but for lack of good will.

EDIT of 24 Oct 05: Tonight I will review James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century His bottom line is that cheap oil underlies all of our surburban, high-rise, mega-agriculture, and car-based mobility, and that the end of cheap oil is going to have catastrophic effects on how we live, driving much of the country into poverty and dislocation, with the best lives being in those communities that learn to live with local agriculture and local power options. Definitely the opposite of what Kurzweil sees, and therefore recommended as a competing viewpoint.

EDIT of 12 Dec 07: ethics is something I have thought about a lot, and my first public article outside the intelligence community was entitled “E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, & Intelligence: An Alternative Paradigm for *National* Intelligence.” It must be something about engineers. Neither the author of this book, nor the Google Triumverate, seem to grasp the moral implications of technology run amuk without respect for ethics, privacy, copyright, humanity, etc. This is one reason I admire E. O. Wilson so much–the first of his works that I read, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, answered the question: “Why do the sciences need the humanities?” The second, The Future of Life, answered the question, “What is the cost and how do we save the planet?” Science had little to do with the latter. The two authors are poles apart.