The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
- Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction novelist (1917-2008)
It wasn't possible for humans to fly, with or without wings. Perhaps the greatest genius of all time--certainly the greatest polymath of all time--Leonardo da Vinci designed a few flying machines, but none proved workable. Now people can "walk" in space, move through air with jet-power packs strapped to their backs, and even travel in airplanes, snoozing and dining at their leisure.
It wasn't possible to see past that glass ceiling known to astronomers from ancient times as the visible heavens. Now telescopes allow astronomers to see light that began its travel up to 13 billion years ago, in places we can't even imagine.
It wasn't possible to speak with someone who was not within shouting distance from you, unless you used a drum whose beat could be heard a little farther away. Now I can use my cell phone from a seat in my boat to speak by phone with someone who lives on the opposite side of our planet. People in desert communities speak with others in desert communities or on mountain tops by satellite phone.
What's possible? Does it indeed have any value to claim that something is impossible?
Judging by what has developed out of impossibilities of the past into possibilities of today, we would not be on certain ground to state categorically that anything is impossible. The question should not be "What is possible?" or "What is impossible?" but "What do we want to do and how can we do it?" Asking the question "How can we do it?" opens the gateway to previously unimagined possibilities.
What purpose is served by claiming that something is impossible? Believe it or not, it has some value. It serves as motivation for those with vision beyond the immediate to show that the "impossible" really is possible. I used to be functionally illiterate, going back about 20 years. This article will be read by people on six continents today. As a middle-aged adult, I learned to read and write. Some say that's impossible, or nearly so.
Don't rule out anything.
Can anyone prove that God exists? Likely not. Can anyone experience God? Definitely. But the people who have experienced God have little real interest in proving what they have experienced to doubters and naysayers. God doesn't proselytize. Neither do those who know him.
Are there bigger questions than that?
Possibly.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to have the best possible advantages in life as they approach adulthood. And for people who want to know what they missed in childhood so they can experience it as adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Showing posts with label Clarke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clarke. Show all posts
Friday, June 27, 2008
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Just How Dumb Can We Get?
Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.
- H. Mumford Jones, US critic & educator (1892 - 1980)
Not just your age Mumford, the present one as well.
Many people have an odd fascination with machines with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Two generations ago the most popular Christmas gifts for girls were talking dolls. A generation ago people flocked to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey to hear the computer Hal conduct conversations with the spacecraft's crew members. The Star Wars franchise brought R2D2 and C3PO (a near-android) and audiences loved them.
Today people scoop up for gifts anything automated, including video games and toys with robotic capabilities. A programmable cordless vacuum cleaner that looks like a shortened curling stone and gathers floor litter without human hands operating it is another immensely popular gift. Sony's walking robot remains an expensive dream for most kids.
So popular are automated things, especially those that use computers or computerized chips are their hearts that Microsoft is about to launch a new all-encompassing operating system that will tie together the computerized systems in many different household appliances, some of which have not yet been released to the marketplace.
We look forward to the day when our computers and computerized robots do some of our thinking for us. Are we not afraid that they will eventually replace us and become effectively the heads of our households? Though we should, apparently we do not have such a fear.
We believe that technology will not only make our lives easier, but it will also prevent itself from taking control of our lives. Arthur C. Clarke, the British science fiction writer and co-author of 2001 (with director Stanley Kubrick), warned us with Hal, but the lesson didn't stick. If anything, Hal (a metal box with an actor's voice-over) prompted even more research into AI and its uses to assist humans in their daily chores.
The modern world population, those who have easy and constant access to the Information Highway which gives us more information that we can absorb, has become essentially a race of stupid animals. As writer Stephen Vizinczey said, "We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them." Yet that culture wants machines that can think. think for them, we must assume.
Are we really stupid? The so-called post-modern world requires expertise in many fields, which in turn requires our best educated people to specialize in one field of study so intensively that they know less about most subjects than a high school dropout. We don't repair anything broken any more, we buy a new one. We don't fix broken equipment in our homes because we don't know how. We toss it and buy new.
We hope for casual conversations with colleagues because strangers might want to talk on subjects we know nothing about. Small talk about nothing of significance has risen to an art form.
We pollute our air with half a million chemicals, warming it unnecessarily with coal-fired electricity generating stations, drive huge SUVs that emit many times as much CO2 as smaller cars, and we drive as much as we can our vehicles that use fossil fuels rather than putting pressure on science to deliver alternative energy sources. And we know we are doing it. That's stupid.
But, as H. Mumford Jones said, we are suspicious of those who think, speak or write along any train of thought that differs from what our politicians, our industries and our pop scientists tell us is the right way to think. In fact, we often socially ostracize such people, cause them to lose their jobs or find ways to imprison them or otherwise silence them.
Perhaps we need Artificial Intelligence to compensate for the lack of intelligence we exhibit ourselves, in our personal and our public lives. Though our public lives are getting smaller as we turn our civic responsibilities over to politicians and their agencies, even to the extent of staying away from the polls on voting days.
Before you go thinking that I believe we are bound for hell in a handbasket or are dumbing ourselves down to the intelligence level of dirt, remember, we will soon be able to have transplants of brain tissue, whole brains or artificial brains.
We'll know it has already begun when we find a revival of the name Hal for newly born babies. Or C3PO.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to be able to think as adults, including the tools, resources and plan to make it happen.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- H. Mumford Jones, US critic & educator (1892 - 1980)
Not just your age Mumford, the present one as well.
Many people have an odd fascination with machines with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Two generations ago the most popular Christmas gifts for girls were talking dolls. A generation ago people flocked to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey to hear the computer Hal conduct conversations with the spacecraft's crew members. The Star Wars franchise brought R2D2 and C3PO (a near-android) and audiences loved them.
Today people scoop up for gifts anything automated, including video games and toys with robotic capabilities. A programmable cordless vacuum cleaner that looks like a shortened curling stone and gathers floor litter without human hands operating it is another immensely popular gift. Sony's walking robot remains an expensive dream for most kids.
So popular are automated things, especially those that use computers or computerized chips are their hearts that Microsoft is about to launch a new all-encompassing operating system that will tie together the computerized systems in many different household appliances, some of which have not yet been released to the marketplace.
We look forward to the day when our computers and computerized robots do some of our thinking for us. Are we not afraid that they will eventually replace us and become effectively the heads of our households? Though we should, apparently we do not have such a fear.
We believe that technology will not only make our lives easier, but it will also prevent itself from taking control of our lives. Arthur C. Clarke, the British science fiction writer and co-author of 2001 (with director Stanley Kubrick), warned us with Hal, but the lesson didn't stick. If anything, Hal (a metal box with an actor's voice-over) prompted even more research into AI and its uses to assist humans in their daily chores.
The modern world population, those who have easy and constant access to the Information Highway which gives us more information that we can absorb, has become essentially a race of stupid animals. As writer Stephen Vizinczey said, "We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them." Yet that culture wants machines that can think. think for them, we must assume.
Are we really stupid? The so-called post-modern world requires expertise in many fields, which in turn requires our best educated people to specialize in one field of study so intensively that they know less about most subjects than a high school dropout. We don't repair anything broken any more, we buy a new one. We don't fix broken equipment in our homes because we don't know how. We toss it and buy new.
We hope for casual conversations with colleagues because strangers might want to talk on subjects we know nothing about. Small talk about nothing of significance has risen to an art form.
We pollute our air with half a million chemicals, warming it unnecessarily with coal-fired electricity generating stations, drive huge SUVs that emit many times as much CO2 as smaller cars, and we drive as much as we can our vehicles that use fossil fuels rather than putting pressure on science to deliver alternative energy sources. And we know we are doing it. That's stupid.
But, as H. Mumford Jones said, we are suspicious of those who think, speak or write along any train of thought that differs from what our politicians, our industries and our pop scientists tell us is the right way to think. In fact, we often socially ostracize such people, cause them to lose their jobs or find ways to imprison them or otherwise silence them.
Perhaps we need Artificial Intelligence to compensate for the lack of intelligence we exhibit ourselves, in our personal and our public lives. Though our public lives are getting smaller as we turn our civic responsibilities over to politicians and their agencies, even to the extent of staying away from the polls on voting days.
Before you go thinking that I believe we are bound for hell in a handbasket or are dumbing ourselves down to the intelligence level of dirt, remember, we will soon be able to have transplants of brain tissue, whole brains or artificial brains.
We'll know it has already begun when we find a revival of the name Hal for newly born babies. Or C3PO.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to be able to think as adults, including the tools, resources and plan to make it happen.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Strange Facts About Science Fiction
Strange Facts About Science Fiction
Opinions vary about when the science fiction genre began. Writer Hugo Gernsback founded the first known science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926.
But the ancients--remember what you learned in high school about the mythology of the ancient Greeks for example--had people abducted by beings from the sky, humans who could morph into strange beasts and events that would make Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein turn over in their graves. Okay, Einstein was cremated, but you know what I mean.
Getting back to Gernsback, the most famous award for science fiction writing today is The Hugo. At one point he even tried to trademark the term science fiction. Gernsback loved greenbacks. (Oh, that was too easy.) He paid writers for his magazine so little that H.P. Lovecraft dubbed him "Hugo The Rat."
In order for science fiction writers to earn a decent living from their work, they often wrote under several different pen names so they could have more than one story published per issue. Ray Bradbury, for example, used six different pseudonyms.
Science fiction writers today dislike the term sci-fi because it reminds people of cheap B-movies. They prefer SF.
Despite how outrageous some of the "science" was in SF stories, several well known real scientists contributed to SF literature. Wernher Von Braun, German science genius turned US nuclear and space advisor, wrote space fiction and provided expertise for such SF movies as Conquest of Space.
One famous SF writer of the 1960s, James Tiptree Jr., who wrote such classics as Houston, Houston, Do You Read? remained in such secrecy that he was suspected of being a spy. In 1961, Tiptree's identity was discovered. Not a spy after all, but prominent feminist Alice B. Shelton.
Some SF writers have a strange aversion to technology, surely a startling irony. Ray Bradbury won't use a computer or an ATM and claims he has never driven a car.
Isaac Asimov, a legend in both science and science fiction, wrote about interstellar space flight, but refused to use airplanes to move around the country.
The relationship between today's technologies such as the flip phone and the communicators of Star Trek can't be denied. Less well known may be Neal Stephenson's inspirations for well known online programs. Stephenson's Metaverse inspired Second Life and his panoptic Earth application is a similar concept to Google Earth.
While we don't yet have a machine that can produce food and beverages as the Star Trek crews had, SF writer Gene Wolfe helped to develop the machine that makes Pringles. Robert Heinlein devised the first modern waterbed. You have to wonder if Heinlein's waterbed had anything to do with the sexual liberation so common in his books.
After the overwhelming popularity of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, A Space Odyssey, US airline Pan Am released an actual list of names of people wanting to go to the moon. Among the 80,000 names were those of Ronald Reagan and Walter Cronkite.
Though the HAL computer of 2001 discussed its own feelings and cared about people (albeit sometimes maliciously), today's computers have trouble sorting out conflicting software and are less intelligent but more annoying than doorknobs.
Science fiction has a long history of stories where the heroes save the world, usually using technology to kill the enemy. Might SF be as influential on our reality if its heroes found ways to save the world using peaceful means, such as by using their intellect?
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book that has nothing whatever to do with SF but everything to do with helping children avoid severe problems related to social and emotional underdevelopment or maldevelopment. And about giving them more coping skills they can use as adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Primary source: Discover, February 2008
Opinions vary about when the science fiction genre began. Writer Hugo Gernsback founded the first known science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926.
But the ancients--remember what you learned in high school about the mythology of the ancient Greeks for example--had people abducted by beings from the sky, humans who could morph into strange beasts and events that would make Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein turn over in their graves. Okay, Einstein was cremated, but you know what I mean.
Getting back to Gernsback, the most famous award for science fiction writing today is The Hugo. At one point he even tried to trademark the term science fiction. Gernsback loved greenbacks. (Oh, that was too easy.) He paid writers for his magazine so little that H.P. Lovecraft dubbed him "Hugo The Rat."
In order for science fiction writers to earn a decent living from their work, they often wrote under several different pen names so they could have more than one story published per issue. Ray Bradbury, for example, used six different pseudonyms.
Science fiction writers today dislike the term sci-fi because it reminds people of cheap B-movies. They prefer SF.
Despite how outrageous some of the "science" was in SF stories, several well known real scientists contributed to SF literature. Wernher Von Braun, German science genius turned US nuclear and space advisor, wrote space fiction and provided expertise for such SF movies as Conquest of Space.
One famous SF writer of the 1960s, James Tiptree Jr., who wrote such classics as Houston, Houston, Do You Read? remained in such secrecy that he was suspected of being a spy. In 1961, Tiptree's identity was discovered. Not a spy after all, but prominent feminist Alice B. Shelton.
Some SF writers have a strange aversion to technology, surely a startling irony. Ray Bradbury won't use a computer or an ATM and claims he has never driven a car.
Isaac Asimov, a legend in both science and science fiction, wrote about interstellar space flight, but refused to use airplanes to move around the country.
The relationship between today's technologies such as the flip phone and the communicators of Star Trek can't be denied. Less well known may be Neal Stephenson's inspirations for well known online programs. Stephenson's Metaverse inspired Second Life and his panoptic Earth application is a similar concept to Google Earth.
While we don't yet have a machine that can produce food and beverages as the Star Trek crews had, SF writer Gene Wolfe helped to develop the machine that makes Pringles. Robert Heinlein devised the first modern waterbed. You have to wonder if Heinlein's waterbed had anything to do with the sexual liberation so common in his books.
After the overwhelming popularity of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, A Space Odyssey, US airline Pan Am released an actual list of names of people wanting to go to the moon. Among the 80,000 names were those of Ronald Reagan and Walter Cronkite.
Though the HAL computer of 2001 discussed its own feelings and cared about people (albeit sometimes maliciously), today's computers have trouble sorting out conflicting software and are less intelligent but more annoying than doorknobs.
Science fiction has a long history of stories where the heroes save the world, usually using technology to kill the enemy. Might SF be as influential on our reality if its heroes found ways to save the world using peaceful means, such as by using their intellect?
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book that has nothing whatever to do with SF but everything to do with helping children avoid severe problems related to social and emotional underdevelopment or maldevelopment. And about giving them more coping skills they can use as adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Primary source: Discover, February 2008
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