Wikipedia Eater

Thanks to stimulation sparked by my favorite new Twitterer, @exoplanetology, I just went on a lovely little wikipedia tour. Allow me to curate for you:

Dyson Bubbles on NextBigFuture:

Speculative physics insanity

Unlike the Dyson swarm, the constructs making it up are not in orbit around the star, but would be statites—satellites suspended by use of enormous light sails using radiation pressure to counteract the star's pull of gravity. Such constructs would not be in danger of collision or of eclipsing one another; they would be totally stationary with regard to the star, and independent of one another. As the ratio of radiation pressure and the force of gravity from a star are constant regardless of the distance (provided the statite has an unobstructed line-of-sight to the surface of its star), such statites could also vary their distance from their central star.

Dyson Spheres (Wikipedia):

The star eater

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure originally described by Freeman Dyson. Such a "sphere" would be a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output. Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the long-term survival and escalating energy needs of a technological civilization, and proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the detection of advanced intelligent extraterrestrial life.
Since then, other variant designs involving building an artificial structure — or a series of structures — to encompass a star have been proposed in exploratory engineering or described in science fiction under the name "Dyson sphere". These later proposals have not been limited to solar power stations — many involve habitation or industrial elements. Most fictional depictions describe a solid shell of matter enclosing a star, which is considered the least plausible variant of the idea.

The Penrose Process (Wikipedia):

basically a centripedal brake for a black hole. Made out of light.

The Penrose process (also called Penrose mechanism) is a process theorised by Roger Penrose wherein energy can be extracted from a rotating black hole. That extraction is made possible by the existence of a region of the Kerr spacetime called the ergoregion, a region in which a particle is necessarily propelled in locomotive concurrence with the rotating spacetime. In the process, a lump of matter enters into the ergoregion of the black hole, and once it enters the ergoregion, is split into two. The momentum of the two pieces of matter can be arranged so that one piece escapes to infinity, whilst the other falls past the outer event horizon into the hole. The escaping piece of matter can possibly have greater mass-energy than the original infalling piece of matter. In summary, the process results in a decrease in the angular momentum of the black hole, and that reduction corresponds to a transference of energy whereby the momentum lost is converted to energy extracted.

Kardashev Scale (wikipedia):

Soviets tended to think big.

The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement. The scale is only theoretical and in terms of an actual civilization highly speculative; however, it puts energy consumption of an entire civilization in a cosmic perspective. It was first proposed in 1964 by the Soviet Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev. The scale has three designated categories called Type I, II, and III. These are based on the amount of usable energy a civilization has at its disposal, and the degree of space colonization. In general terms, a Type I civilization has achieved mastery of the resources of its home planet, Type II of its solar system, and Type III of its galaxy.

Malthusian Catastrophe (Wikipedia):

peak metabolism.

A Malthusian catastrophe (also called a Malthusian check, crisis, disaster, or nightmare) was originally foreseen to be a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth had outpaced agricultural production. Later formulations consider economic growth limits as well. The term is also commonly used in discussions of oil depletion.
Based on the work of political economist Thomas Malthus (1766–1834), theories of Malthusian catastrophe are very similar to the Iron Law of Wages. The main difference is that the Malthusian theories predict what will happen over several generations or centuries, whereas the Iron Law of Wages predicts what will happen in a matter of years and decades.

The Omega Point (wikipedia):

WHAT!?!?

The Omega Point is a term used by Tulane University professor of physics and mathematics Frank J. Tipler to describe what he maintains is a physically-necessary cosmological state in the far future of the universe. According to his Omega Point Theory, as the universe comes to an end at a singularity in a particular form of the Big Crunch, the computational capacity of the universe (in terms of both its processor speed and memory storage) increases unlimitedly with a hyperbolic growth rate as the radius of the universe goes to zero, allowing an infinite number of bits to be processed and stored before the end of spacetime. Via this supertask, a simulation run on this universal computer can thereby continue forever in its own terms (i.e., in "experiential time"), even though the universe lasts only a finite amount of proper time. Tipler states this theory requires that the current known laws of physics are true descriptions of reality, which he says implies that there be intelligent civilizations in existence at the appropriate time in order to force the collapse of the universe and then manipulate its collapse so that the computational capacity of the universe can diverge to infinity.
Tipler identifies this final singularity and its state of infinite informational capacity with God. The implication of this theory for present-day humans is that this ultimate cosmic computer will be able to run computer emulations which are perfectly accurate down to the quantum level of all intelligent life which has ever lived, by recreating simulations of all possible quantum brain states within the emulation. This would manifest as a simulated reality. From the perspective of the recreated inhabitant, the states near the Omega Point would represent their resurrection in an infinite-duration afterlife, which could take any imaginable form due to its virtual nature.
Assuming that achieving the Omega Point is physically possible, Tipler says this would be accomplished by "downloaded" human consciousness on quantum computers in tiny starships that could exponentially explore space, many times faster than biological human beings. Tipler argues that the incredible expense of keeping humans alive in space implies that flesh-and-blood humans will never personally travel to other stars. Instead, highly efficient uploads of human minds ("mind children" as Tipler calls them, they being the mental uploads of our descendants, or of ourselves[1]) and artificial intelligences will spread civilization throughout space. According to Tipler, this should likely start before 2100. Small spaceships under heavy acceleration up to relativistic speeds could then reach nearby stars in less than a decade. In one million years, these intelligent von Neumann probes would have completely colonized the Milky Way galaxy. In 100 million years, the Virgo Supercluster would be colonized. From that point on, the entire visible universe would be engulfed by these "mind children" as it approaches the point of maximum expansion. Per this cosmological model, the final singularity of the Omega Point itself will be reached between 1018 and 1019 years.

Freak out.

So I was thinking, about the time I got to the article about the Omega Point, that maybe with the cancellation of the human space program, we are reaching a turning point. If, for some reason, society does not completely collapse, perhaps this will be the high-water mark for humanity conquering the stars. Maybe we'll look at this period as the time when we wised up, and stopped sending fragile corpses up into radiated space wrapped in tin foil, just as now we look back at when we used to send men miles under the ground to dig up coal at great expense and many lost lives. Oh... wait a minute.

But seriously, I'm not saying people will never go into space again. Earth orbit is the next area just PRIMED for gentrification. A few starbucks, a couple of leash-free dog park satellites, and we could totally start Facebook groups to complain about the lack of magnet schools at the Lagrangian points. But space exploration? Why bother? What is an astronaut going to do on Jupiter? Sweat in canned air while s/he watches a flag disintegrate under the gravity?

But heck, we're using data-linked robots to bomb people in Central Asia, so why wouldn't we use robots to terraform Titan, and settle for the digital postcard?

"Because it is there?" Maybe space will be solely the rich person's pursuit. They'll spend years and millions of dollars training to go walk on asteroids and lesser-known moons. Then, fifty years later, after they make it back to earth, they can talk about the multi-solar eclipses in the portion of the asteroid belt now named after them with tears in their eyes, while they have a cocktail at the Explorer's Club. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be crowd-mapping Plutonian mineral deposits via our HD, 3D displays from our compounds here on good old earth, for an inflation-equivalent 30 cents an hour.

I am not nearly the impressive nerd-knowledge zone that Exoplanetology or NextBigFuture is, but it seems pretty clear to me that once you surmount the problem of earth's initial gravity and atmosphere, slinging a few thousand camera-equipped smart phones into the galaxy is way easier than trying to ship a human there. At least until we get gravitational drives, or spin-dizzies, or something else I haven't read about on Wikipedia yet. But there's an awful lot of pre-stage Kardashev 1 left before we get there.

More seriously (actually the serious part): I do think we are primed for a lot of new speculative thinking about the future of space exploration. Now that the human narrative has been derailed, it's the perfect time to start thinking fresh.

In the meantime, as I said earlier, I'm into fusion power for the helium exhaust. Here's to sending massive structures into the air, only to have them come back down again.

Tremble, Human

"Humans can run, but frankly, it would be futile to do so."

And there endeth the lesson on another object case in the futility of bipedalism.

Quaking in fear is always safe to do, of course.

However, I will be taking bets on who will be eating from the other's mangled, cybernetic, zero-gravity-forged metal corpse: a swarm of mecha-cockroaches, or the all-powerful RO-BALL!

Oh wow, it has... eww.

Let's try and forget that I'm posting this directly after a post about sex robots, and just enjoy it for how cool it is. In principle, this is the sentry units from The Prisoner.



So try and forget sex robots.

Also, try and forget you ever heard the phrase, "jammable slurry".

[via Posthuman Blues]

Once Upon a Time in the West

So maybe you aren't interested in the inner workings of the porn industry. But all the same, it exists. If we deny that, we deny how sexual human beings are, and we deny what will happen when you live in a claimed free market society, in which people do things that make money. So there it is.

And while there have been many articles detailing the horrible/degrading/un-feminist/sexy/mysterious/glamorous things that happen in the porn industry, I found this one especially interesting, just because it depicts it in a way that shows just how truly surreal it is. We live in a society that pushes everything as far as it will go in terms of being made a product. And when you commodify sex, a distinctly human act which almost every human ostensibly claims is at least personal in some way, besides being a rooted element of the psyche, well, things just get weird.

I can think of at least two important and interesting conversations to have about every page of this article, evoking emotions from amused to self-righteous to defensive to disgusted, but I thought this passage was the best. This is america, ladies and gentlemen. Intellectual property, mass production, recessions, fear/excitement for the future, labor relations, and... robotic phalluses.

The recession has forced us into making this,” Powers states flatly, the quiet machine at his feet. According to him, the “Fuck Machines” series isn’t a product of some sick mind—say, his. It’s a consequence of the recession.

The day of reckoning has arrived in the Valley. Online content pirating, increased competition, a flooded market, the economic crisis, and a series of federal obscenity indictments have completely transformed the business of making adult movies. Consumers are no longer interested in paying for what they can get online for free. Across the board, those I spoke to reported profits have fallen by an estimated 30 to 50 percent.

Three years ago, Powers shot four to five movies a week. Nowadays, he’s lucky if he shoots two a week. Like many other businessmen, he’s been forced to cut corners. Ergo, the “life support system for a penis” of yesteryear has been replaced by the lower maintenance RoboCock.

“We got rid of the male talent!” Powers crows, triumphant. He enumerates the benefits of working with an animatronic phallus on one hand. “They don’t complain as much. They’re always hard. You don’t have to feed them.” Of course, the 21st century woodsman does have one drawback. “They’ve always got bolts falling off,” Powers admits with a shrug.

“The market is saturated with porn, the Internet is pirating porn left and right, and the economy is in the shitter,” Powers laments after Hunter’s shoot, staring out the sliding glass doors at a fountain trickling pleasantly in the sun-dappled backyard. He looks like a spurned lover—heartbroken. “Porn destroyed itself,” he mutters. “2005 was the peak of shit.” He shakes his head. “Now, we’re just living in piles of shit.” He is crestfallen. “It completely destroyed everything.” He looks at the floor.

A redhead appears in the doorway. Powers will shoot a total of five scenes today, and hers is next. It’s time for Jim to get back to work. On the sidelines, another machine is waiting for its turn in the spotlight. This one is double-headed.

Ro-ball

Remember my ranting that included rolling, heavily armed robots?


Well, the future is now.


Feel free to panic.

Robot 101

What sort of robot are you?

There being as many iterations of robots, cast across as many frequencies of the imagination as there are human personalities and psycho-sexual patterns, we find the robot is not a question of existence in the future, but a question of your mind today.

What sort of robot are you?

Are you the social robot?



The social robot finds its robotics giving it a form and function different than the rest of its society. This can be a positive differentiation, or a negative one. Your robotics might have nothing to do with circuits and servos, but instead be all about culture, and about attitude, and desire. Cybernetics has been misappropriated by cyber culture, and has forgotten its programmatic roots. In the end, it is all about your territory. Are you comfortable with what you are? Are you similar, and yet you desire a different purpose? Are you reaching some sort of program fault? How will your programming allow you to adapt?

In Daft Punk's Electroma, everyone is robotic, except for robots, who wish to be human. Is it about the self-destruct sequence? Or is it really about the self-desire sequence? Silly human! In cybernetics, nothing is "about" anything! There is no meaning here. There is only the sequence, its continuation, and its eventual death. If you're asking about what it "means", then you are clearly non-robotic.



Or perhaps you have reached a more frantic zone, and you are feeling your territory dissolve beneath your feet? Are you the neurotic robot?

Are you the neurotic robot?

The neurotic robot is a simple machine. It is the contact between two planes, the axle through the wheel, the teeth of gears intermeshed, each biting each other in sadistic self-existence. But when you dislodge the tab from the slot, the function breaks down.



There is never only one neurotic program, and so the others will take over. Without the guiding physicality of the emotional program, the other programs will function in their stead. The on/off of logic may be applied to color preference. The left/right plane differentiation may be applied to in and out of the body. In a state of deterritorialization, the robot functions jerkily, unable to orient itself. But it still functions. This is a robot, after all!

In THX 1138 the humans are robots, and the robots are machines. Programming is reserved for those constructed from the weaknesses of flesh, who need their emotions tightly and cybernetically designed to function without break down in such a harsh territory. Neurotic robots are sometimes readjusted, other times they do not.



This has been an introduction into two types of robots. There are many more!

Man vs. Nature: This Time, it's Robotics!

I want you to watch this video, for one reason, and one reason only.



No, not for the booming, 90s club techno soundtrack. For the part where the snake climbs up the guy's leg.

If this does not strike fear into your human's animal heart, I do not know what will.

We've reached a new uncanny here. The famous "uncanny valley" is an uncomfortable element of robotics, in that mirror stage, "I wonder if my pleasure bot is ethical" sort of way. This, on the other hand, is an uncanny of motion, an uncanny of physicality that is distinctly primary narcissism, "the womb which I held dear now rises against Me to strangle me with that lonely umbilical which was my only Love."

What? You want me to explain? Okay, check this, which you might have seen.



Why is it when we see these sorts of robots, the thing many of us automatically think of is being pursued by a pack of these robotic "animals", who hunt us down, clawing us to death with their efficient metal grippers, as their servos yap merrily, and without so much as a face to show us their merciless hate/desire/pack instinct? Other than them being sponsored by DARPA, that is?

Because they don't have human faces! Because they move like animals, and are so resolutely unhuman, that they move and appear like animals. This is not the technology, with which we have mastered the world. This is nature--the unknown, which will eventually kill us, no matter what weapon we use, or how fast we run.

The Terminator is killable. You can stab out his eye, or pull off his arm, crush his legs, and eventually burn his torso. Even the T-1000 is a fluid, a bodily essence that only has to be purged with fire. The car assembly robots of the last generation are human machines; they have arms, legs, fingers, heads, and most importantly, brains and nervous systems. But how do you kill something without a body, or can self-assemble and re-assemble, and even, perhaps, replicate?



A paranoia begins to rise in us. It is a fear that is constant, equivocal across the terrain, because these things do not even return to the dark of the woods when the sun comes up. They are as numerous and ubiquitous as the air we breath, as the molecules of which we are made. We are no longer afraid of animals--but we are afraid of germs.

This is a revolution in robot design. Because we are afraid of them, we are truly approaching a level of ubiquity when a robot can actually insinuate itself into an environment, and be part of it. They are no longer an assembly line, or a museum exhibit, but they are learning how to move and live in our nature.

I ranted before about the droids in Star Wars. These are possibly one of the greatest sci-fi blunders, and what makes Star Wars fall resolutely into fantasy for me, rather than actually science fiction. The issue: who the hell designs a humanoid robot?

Humans, and their bipedal form, have been designed over a long period of time, due to the fate/probability pathways, over which they have managed to survive. The bipedal form is not "good" for anything; it has merely been the way things have worked out (check out constructural law, if you've never had the pleasure) no different than the branching of a river delta. This has worked pretty well for us. But, we are designing robots to be better than us, not to imitate us. We want robots to do the tasks we are not designed for. So, for running a bipedal 100M dash we have athletes, for creating brilliant art work we have artists, but for chasing human beings like the little bits of fleshy prey that we are, we will build robots.

Look at C-3PO. In every battle scene, of which the droid is somehow constantly ending up in the midst, he is falling all over the place, because he is a flat-footed, heavy thing that cannot even bend his legs and arms correctly. R2D2 is a bit better--he looks like the water cooler/electronics controller that he is. Give him some wheels perhaps, but even these fail when he is expected to get across rough terrain.

In the three prequel films, there is a massive droid army, that everyone is supposed to cower before. Give me a break! What idiot droid designer decided to make a battle droid that is disabled if you knock its head off? What manager approved that design? What testing facility gave it the OK? And you have to arm them separately by handing it a blaster? Of which it can then be disarmed? How many facilities are needed to manufacture both of these things? Is this a government sponsored plan?

You want to know my design for the perfect battle droid? A metal sphere with blasters bristling out of every direction. A giant gun with legs. A guided missile. All of these make sense, because they are robots designed with their task in mind. It is pretty ridiculous that the Star Wars vehicles fire unguided rockets, and yet send hordes of robots into battle with arms thinner than their hand guns.

Don't even get me started on the fact that robots have "chain of command". That's human crap.

Naturally, what we design is limited by what we can imagine. We can imagine a hive, or a pack, or even the distributed chemical diffusion of bacteria, reacting in feedback loops to the secretions of their clones. All of these, as nature has shown, react amazingly well to certain environments, and certain tasks--often much better than reasoning, bipedal, heat engines like humans. These sorts of "animal" robots, robots designed to swim and crawl, but not giving a damn about Turing tests or displaying Honda emotions, are the future, just as the vast distribution of nature has been the past, for distinct, evolutionary reasons.

And just as naturally, these robots will cause fear in humans, the same way fear towards that which moves fast without legs, that which sees without eyes, and that which can think and decide without a brain has evolved to feel uncomfortable when we apprehend it. But, we can also overcome this fear, in the same way we've learned to harvest bacteria as protein synthesizers, install symbiotic species inside our own bodies, create harmonies with species like dogs, and even more importantly, introduce technology into our physiology. Can you even imagine running without shoes? How about eating without a stove? Speaking without a language? We'll incorporate nature into our technology, and with good purpose, just as we always have. Because at the root of it, all our technology is natural, from the ion pump to the lever.

But in the meantime, let's relish this horror, eh? What is nature, if not the primal hunting ground of our unconscious? Hey, our psychical technology needs exercise too!

I'm imagining an epic horror/sci-fi film, in which technology is hunting us. Our every day devices form into lethal killing machines. A chain of mating toasters pursues people down the street, climbing their still running legs to strangle them. The components of a car divide and let the passengers fall to the speeding asphalt below. Alone in a consumer electronics store, a character feels stalked by predators. This is no Transformers, no Gremlins, and no self-aware Cyberdyne network. The technology has been shrunk down to tiny components, which work together in an organic system. Until it evolves... until nature takes technology back. Scientists try and reprogram the devices to fight for us, but they can't discover what is making them turn against us. They look, but their devices conspire against them, and they cannot observe the nature of the problem. They can't look past the flat earth of the technological/nature divide, and they can't get around the heliocentrism of being human. Looking at nature from the human perspective, after all, is science's only power. There is no bug, no virus, and no communications link to sever. It is merely the course of evolution. Nature is killing us, just like it always has. But this time, nature has the weapons, because the weapons have become nature.