Future Salon

Bruce Sterling is Brilliant

I am a bit bummed that I saw too late Mark Lennard's post that Bruce is doing a lecture in the Bay Area. (Mark, how was it?) I saw him once at the Long Now when he was talking about Singularity. He was speculating whether instead of at the dawn of something big like Singularity we are experiencing Technobesity a glut of technology that we are less and less capable to absorb.

In the new scientist he just published a short story:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Google
It is written out of the perspective of a teenager in the year 2026. Excellent observations of where a couple of trends probably will lead us:

Ted got busted because we do graffiti ...

We teenagers have to live in "controlled spaces". Radio-frequency ID tags, real-time locative systems, global positioning systems, smart doorways, security videocams. They "protect" us kids, from imaginary satanic drug dealer terrorist mafia predators. We're "secured". We're juvenile delinquents with always-on cellphone nannies in our pockets. There's no way to turn them off. The internet was designed without an off-switch ...

You know what they tell me whenever I rant like this? "Get a hobby." Play imaginary fantasy computer games! That is allowed me! Wow, thanks! When she nursed me as a baby, my Mom dropped me right on my head to play Wonder-World of Witchcraft. I sure know where that story goes. If "religion is the opiate of the people", then immersive multiplayer 3D virtual worlds are hard-core Afghani heroin. My Mom will never make it back into the labor force: Mom's way too busy building herself up to 146th-level SuperMasonic Tolkien-Fantasy Ultra-Elf Queen. Like that helps! Look, I can show you Mom's gaming environment, right on the screen here. My Mom's a Welfare Elf Queen

Sweet and frightening. Of course the future will be different. There will be sensors that detect a graffiti-making act such as the spray of a spray paint can, the writing with a felt-marker pen on a surface, and the scratching with an abrasive instrument on a surface ...

There will be other acts of rebellion. Let's not forget the stronger the surveillance the stronger the rebellion. Growing up in Germany the drinking age is not that enforced. I am not even sure whether it is 18 or 16.  Yes there is beer and wine at parties and some would drink to much, but in most cases it is all very harmless. Being of drinking age (especially if you don't really know what age it really is) is then not such a big deal that one has to get it out of the system. It is a bit a chicken and egg thing. If you trust your youth they will behave trustworthy and vice versa. Similar reactions will happen with the restrictions that we will put on future teenagers. The more restricted the more out of bounce they will go.

Thanks Jamais for the pointer.

Future Salon Changing Finance: Socially-Responsive Debt, Sustainable Resiliency and the Means Meter

Update: Please RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/jrcps

The days are getting shorter, the evenings darker, the babies sleep longer :-), the wait and the way to long summer break is over. Next Friday the 6th of October finally a new Future Salon with Bruce Cahan:

Changing Finance: Socially-Responsive Debt, Sustainable Resiliency and the Means Meter*

A salon title with some big words and Bruce will fill them with life next Friday.

I feel a bit like I have let you all down my friends, a long hot summer without Future Salon. Well, the wait is over. An interesting evening with a solution to one or may be even most of our pressing problems is just around the corner. What I like in Bruce Cahan is, that he is not only talking about the solution, but actively working on implementing it.

You can even get a glimpse of Bruce participating in the Open Mike Future Salon by watching the tape on the Internet Archive.

Abstract: Al Gore aptly describes the planetary forces of energy, environment, industrialization, social justice, war and political malaise as an Inconvenient Truth. How much is Wall Street to blame? What if the finance and insurance markets allocated capital and insurance based on energy efficiency, conservationism, social equity of preparedness and other memes of profound human dignity and insight? What would that world of “high stakes” finance look like?

Short Bio: Bruce’s knowledge of finance, law, technology and government processes is unique and empowers his liaison for new ideas across many domains.

Bruce Cahan is a finance lawyer, who worked for 10 years in New York with the law firm of Weil Gotshal & Manges representing clients as diverse as General Electric Capital Corp, and the Salvation Army. After a Con Ed steam pipe burst outside his Gramercy Park apartment building, Bruce changed focus in 1990, and organized a nonprofit, Urban Logic, to apply technology, finance and institutional solutions to the problems of rebuilding fragile cities.

Bruce is a pioneer in the use of geospatial technologies. His work with OMB, the Federal Geographic Data Committee, EPA, US Geological Survey, the City and State of New York, OpenGIS Consortium and others led to major changes in the supply of publicly available spatial intelligence and analytical tools. In 1991, he was an early advocate of the need for New York Cityto map itself digitally, and the resulting base map delivered 6 months before 9/11 helped emergency work crews coordinate safe and effective response in Lower Manhattan

Bruce has briefed OECD in Paris, the European Community’s INSPIRE Initiative, the White House, Congress, GAO and other groups on his research. Bruce served at NYC’s Command Center, after 9/11, and his work on safeguarding cities reflects the lessons and mutual aid of those days.

Details: Future Salon has the following structure: 6-7 networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP. From 7-9+pm presentation and discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map] As always free and open to the public. Tell your friends. Improve your commute by sharing it with a fellow Futurist. Check the Ride Board for opportunities. Free and open to the public.

Please RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/jrcps so that we know which room and how much food and drinks to prepare.

We will also Webcast the event. Details to come soon. See you there.

Lee Smolin: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of Science, and What Comes Next

Hear Lee Smolin discuss his new book, The Trouble with Physics, postulating that String Theory is a scientific dead-end, as recently written up in Wired (Physics Wars), and discussed on Talk of the Nation. See also his article Einstein's Legacy?—Where are the "Einsteinians?", which first appeared in Discover magazine two years ago.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006
7:30pm
Kepler's
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park CA, 94025
(650) 324-4321
Free of charge

I'll be hearing him speak Monday at the American Museum of Natural History. If I get a chance, I'll post an update with my impressions.

Google Image Labeler = ESP Game from Carnegie Mellon

I really love it when things go mainstream that we talked about oh well 2.5 years ago at a Future Salon.

Google Image Labeler is based on the ESP Game that Nicole Lazzaro was presenting at  the Future Salon in May 2004:

One of my discoveries of the evening was the ESP-Game developed at Carnegie Mellon:

The ESP Game was developed by Luis von Ahn, a graduate student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon. He developed the game to try to help solve the problems associated with searching for images on the Web.

Currently, search engines use the names of image files and words around them to find images. Computers are not very good at distinguishing images from each other using visual cues. Humans, however, are great at this, and von Ahn’s game puts that power to work. While people entertain themselves, they are also helping to label the hundreds of thousands or more images on the Web, which will in turn make searching for images more efficient.II

I am a bit disappointed how few changes or additions they did:

• Where is autofill? It's a natural enhancement especially for bad spellers like me.
• I should be able to select a category: For example cars. Once selected I would get all the pictures that are labeleddd in the first round with car and as an enthusiast I would know it is for example a Citroen DS 1966
• How about showing country competitions? Of course only if you give Google that information. That would be sweet.

Oh may be in the next releases. So far it is just some Google look and feel difference, which is a bit disappointing. Where is your creativity Google? (via TechCrunch)