Rants & Raves
To Beam, or Not to Beam In his article "Beam Me Up an Einstein, Scotty" (Wired 3.11, page 116), Lawrence Krauss takes six pages – going into incredible detail on such wide-ranging topics as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, fundamental particles, the nature and composition of the soul, digital information storage and retrieval, and resolution of sensor data – to tell us that the scientific principles behind Star Trek's transporter are almost non-existent, and that not only is such a device currently impossible, but its existence would require a major breakthrough in our basic understanding of the universe. So, the TV show that brought us such delightful scientific ideas as devolution to one's genetic ancestors, conflicting theories on the nature of time and traveling through it, and enough particles to keep a physicist busy until the 23rd century got matter transportation wrong as well. And this is worthy of being written up and printed?
This reminds me of the treatise arguing that Santa Claus cannot exist because his visitation of every household in a period of 24 hours is physically impossible. The fact that transporters are an impossible technology surprises no one. However, this is part of the willing suspension of disbelief that we all undergo when we watch any science fiction. Just as I know that Rudolph would be burnt to a cinder by air friction if he were to travel at the speed necessary to convey Santa on his one-night trip, I also know that transporters will not work. This doesn't detract from my enjoyment of a story that makes use of these scientific oversights.
To think this article was preceded by an incredible interview with Douglas Hofstadter. I am still recovering from the whiplash of paradigm shifting.
Dylan Northrup
I really enjoyed Lawrence Krauss's analysis of the problems with transporting. However, he seems to have missed a few obvious methods for reducing the bandwidth and processing power necessary to transport at least the data for a human. Radio engineers have long known that it is necessary only to broadcast the difference between the last bit of transmission and the following one. While this wouldn't work for people or critters being beamed for the first time, thereafter, the transporter computer would already have a template to work from and could just do a "fast save" of the changes made, drastically reducing computation time.
Also, while Star Trek does not specifically show this (it is probably constrained by Screen Actors Guild rules), I have no doubt that human biology will be more standardized by the 23rd century. People will have organs and other body parts engineered from the best genes, thus allowing the transporter computer to add a boilerplate at the end.
Hugh Thompson
Who Said That? I enjoyed the article on freedom of anonymous speech ("Anonymous Speech," Wired 3.10, page 80), but it raises one point: an anonymous idea without a human entity to back it up or help spread the word is simply an idea. Signing a note anonymously is an admission of a lack of faith in the idea. If the Declaration of Independence were signed anonymously, how could it have had the effect it did? Ideas that are conceived in order to improve the world cannot succeed fully, if at all, without a proper spokesperson. Without one, the idea ends up as just a bunch of anonymous words.
Mike Rogers
Back to the Future of the Past Your review of the book 1939 ("Lost World of the Future," Wired 3.10, page 82) missed the point. The three international world's fairs in 1939 reflected an agreed upon, widely held – at least in Western Europe and North America – utopian view of the future. It was optimistic, democratic, and positive, and it was built on improved technology.
A half-decade later, after the dropping of two atomic bombs and the start of the Cold War, this utopian view was dead: we had seen the future, and it wasn't attractive. Science could develop horrors.
In the decades since the end of World War II, that utopian view never really regenerated. 1939 asks why and asks whether the lack of a utopian view is good. These days, the future is crowded with images of overpopulation, increasing violence, and horrendous – possibly irreversible – pollution. The future looks grim, but in the days before World War II, it looked wonderful.
The prewar era can be viewed with nostalgia: a moment in time when the future had been seen, and it was good. Or, it can be viewed as a model: if we – as a society, nation, or world – develop and agree on a positive, exciting, beneficial utopian vision, as existed by the end of the '30s, that vision could encourage creative people (as well as the rest of us) to work toward its realization.
Peter Melczer
Beverly Hills, California
GPS PS We were surprised to see that the slightly modified Signal.gif from the Geographer's Craft GPS Overview (http://www.utexas.edu/depts/grg/gcraft/notes/gps/gps.html) had been used – without acknowledgment or credit – as a background for the "Global Positioning System" article (Wired 3.10, page 72).
These materials may be used with permission, of course; please credit The Geographer's Craft Project, Department of Geography, The University of Texas at Austin.
You should also know that each bit in the 1.023 C/A code does not, as your article states, correspond "to an exact moment in the 30-second transmission cycle." The 1.023 bits in the C/A code repeat every millisecond; other methods are used to mark time to more than one millisecond. Also, I question your 76-meter accuracy figure. Presently, the C/A code Standard Positioning System is specified at 100 meters of horizontal error (95 percent of the time) and 156 meters of vertical error (95 percent of the time).
Peter H. Dana
Department of Geography, University of Texas
I enjoyed your article on GPS. I have been a fan of the technology for years (I get lost going around the corner) and was anxiously waiting for the price of portable GPS receiver units to drop. When it hit US$200, I bought the Magellan GPS 2000, which is available through L. L. Bean. I do some serious hiking in the Catskill Mountains of New York, and much to my dismay, I found that the unit could lock onto satellites only in a clear, open area. Under heavy foliage it does not work, so for deep woods hiking, it's a bust.
Thanks for a great article, though. I had a general idea of how GPS worked, but your piece greatly enhanced my understanding.
Hank Muller
Floppy Laundry I read A. Lin Neumann's "Information Wants to Be Free – But This Is Ridiculous" (Wired 3.10, page 88) with great pleasure. I visited the Golden Shopping Arcade in Hong Kong last spring. Though I vaguely recall reading references to software piracy before my trip, I was on an innocent search for bargains. Living as I do in Japan, bargains are hard to come by, to say the least.
Neumann's description of the neighborhood surrounding the subway station brought back vivid memories – what a fantastic jumble of a place Kowloon is. When I entered the basement floor of the arcade, I was quickly hailed by a young guy behind a counter who asked me if I had a Mac or a PC, and then proceeded to show me his catalog. I was still dumb enough to imagine that US$25 was buying me a legitimate version of Fractal Painter – until I saw the salesman hand my order to a team of guys sitting at computers behind a curtain. I then joined a rather furtive group of customers waiting for their rubber-banded floppies.
Like Neumann, I was absolutely terrified of being discovered at customs. Like he, I put my floppies in some socks in my laundry bag.
Dave Biasotti
biasott@moon.jhs.tohoku-gakmin.ac.jp
More Moravec I found the article on Hans Moravec ("Superhumanism," Wired 3.10, page 144) quite amusing. I do not share Moravec's optimism about the future of artificial intelligence and robotic consciousness. The article failed to address the "noncomputability" of human understanding as put forth by Sir Roger Penrose in his latest book, Shadows of the Mind. Penrose argues that human thought is nonalgorithmic, and thus cannot be reduced to a set of rules (software) that can be run on a general-purpose computer.
The argument is based on the famous theorem by Czech-born mathematician Kurt G�del, which states that given any "knowably sound" formal system of mathematical rules, there will always be at least one theorem that is known to be true but cannot be proven within the formal system. In other words, there are truths accessible to human mathematicians that cannot be obtained through a purely computational procedure. Because computers run according to a fixed instruction set (a knowably sound formal system of rules), there are mathematical truths that are inaccessible to computational AI systems. Therefore, a computationally based AI system could never outperform a human mathematician.
Daniel Dowling
What is so edifying about the introductory quote you chose for Wired 3.10 (page 12)? Being born into independent wealth is nothing new. If Hans Moravec is suggesting that progress in robotics and automation will make this prosperity a widespread phenomenon, I challenge him to explain his voodoo economics. Granted, the average standard of living may increase as automation improves, but these technologies will never significantly change the extreme disparity between the wealthy minority and the rest of the world. If anything, such advances tend to widen the gap. Moravec's assertion exemplifies the kind of blithe optimism that promotes a willful ignorance of socioeconomic realities rather than a passion to change them.
For more than 100 years, would-be prophets have capitalized on the idea that the rosy future will bring retirement at birth. As early as 1935, Aldous Huxley explored this notion in exhaustive detail in his sobering, dystopian satire Brave New World. It was with the goal of widespread retirement at birth that Huxley's Alpha-Plus world controllers oversaw the systematic creation of people for entertainment rather than vice versa.
Huxley's ideas are especially important to those who consider themselves Wired, since he pioneered a caustic, wholesale critique of the Industrial Revolution's impact on civilization. Huxley's invective exposed how the unmitigated materialism of the Industrial Revolution's most powerful proponents caused them to conceive of the world (and of life) only in terms of its potential comfort level and entertainment value.
I am disturbed (but not surprised) when I find the same motif running through publications that cater to those who ride high in today's revolution. One glance at the demographics of the online community shows that Wired aims its pens at the Alpha-Pluses of 1995. And despite Wired's pretense of egalitarian politics, a good business tells its customers what they want to hear. Beneath your sensationalization of Moravec's na�vete, I see a tired tale: the myopic perspective of entrenched hegemony.
Shane Mecklenburger
Hans Moravec seems oddly conservative for a futurist; his notion of robot yuppies running robot corporations is as quaint as a Victorian vision of steam-driven airplanes. Why should a cultural artifact as unsound, irrational, and unethical as the modern corporation be a model for any kind of future? The whole point of the future is that it's supposed to be different.
As for intelligent machines taking over, a machine does not need to be intelligent to conquer the world; it merely has to be desirable. We've already lost a war to a synthetic species – the automobile – that has killed more than 15 million people; occupied all of our cities except Venice, Italy; and continues to exact crushing taxes in resources, wealth, and time from over half the planet – and everybody wants one.
Grant Thompson
Hans Moravec suggests that robots, starting out as household appliances, will within 50 years return to the cradle and bump off humanity in a bid for precious natural resources.
It strikes me as odd that each time Moravec refines his calculations on the date of the robot's ascension, he places the moment further into the future. His first estimate in the 1970s placed this era in the mid-1980s, just 10 years away. He next expected his vision to be realized in the late 1990s. The most recent prediction is 2040, nearly 50 years from now and a full 70 years from the time he began this line of thought! If he refines his formula further, he might find his solution set empty.
Moravec wears the blinders of a too narrowly focused researcher. He contends that widespread robot populations will arise out of humanity's aversion to mundane tasks such as mowing the lawn and housekeeping. Given the state of molecular-physics work relative to robotics, we can expect that grass of a specific height and shade as well as dust-gathering filter-carpets will obviate the need for such menial helpers at all! Even in industrial production, where robots are already used, it seems more likely that smart molecules (combining the adaptability of organic organisms and the programming of genetic engineering) will replace existing robotic tools.
The likelihood that miniature robots will descend to Earth to replace their fleshy progenitors is, well, minuscule at best.
Mark Brotherton
MathSoft 1.0 Nathan Myhrvold must have been using some mysterious Microsoft math when he conducted his study of the growth of code in Microsoft software. ("The Physicist," Wired 3.09, page 152.) "We have increased the size and complexity of software even faster than Moore's Law," he states, citing Basic as growing from 4,000 lines of code in 1975 to "perhaps half a million." Actually, by Moore's Law, the program should have grown 220 or 1,048,576 times, meaning that Basic should have more than 4 billion lines of code. Myhrvold is off by a factor of more than 8,300!
R. W. Fitts
San Diego, California
Wiring Spin Dear Spin, I enjoyed your November issue on the future.
You guys must be reading Wired.
Kurt E. Starnes
Telecom's Fiber-Coax Fray Nicholas Negroponte comments that Telecom Italia "declared fiber to the home as its goal and will swallow the initial cost meeting this goal in the name of the national interest" in "2020: The Fiber-Coax Legacy" (Wired 3.10, page 220). I have lived in Italy for 11 years and have been a customer-victim of the infamous state telephone monopoly (SIP), and now the equally notorious Telecom. Those of us who have had the misfortune to deal with Telecom (all who have phone "service" in Italy) are swallowing the costs of Telecom's expansion: our phone rates are the highest in Western Europe. Dealing with Telecom for a basic service like installation is a nightmare. We pay a monthly phone and fax rental fee, whether or not we use the company's dismal phones and pseudo-faxes; every small service requires endless requests by registered letter (at a cost of about US$3 each), which are regularly lost by Telecom employees; services are promised, paid for, and never delivered; even a simple thing such as receiving an itemized phone bill is an option for which the user must pay extra.
I'll take 40 small companies dragging their feet with fiber-coax hybrids, thanks.
Robert de Lucca
The Feedback of the Future "Savior of the Plague Years" presents a fascinating view of the future. (Wired Scenarios, page 85.) You're all to be congratulated – for the depth of thought, the realism, and for the chills it gave me.
But only at Wired would it be a graphic artist who saves the world.
Tom Kelleher
I respect Stewart Brand and have been reading his work for years. I also had the opportunity to work for John Cage years ago and found it truly inspiring. However, Brand closes "Two Questions" (Wired Scenarios, page 28) with a quote from Cage (via Laurie Anderson) that "things are getting better slowly."
Not that I'm a curmudgeon, but The Roaring Silence – John Cage: A Life, by David Revill, presents |a different view: "In the course of the previous decade, Cage's thinking on social matters had become less hopeful, turning him … from a prophet of Utopia to Jeremiah. 'We are under the control of precisely those things that the arts would like us to become free of; and we are under that control almost hopelessly,' Cage felt. 'I hate to say something like that because I haven't had much training as a pessimist. But I think it's evident from the media and the news that something like that is happening.' World affairs are conducted in foolishness; what is needed, suggested Cage, is a little intelligence, which is scarcely in evidence."
Congratulations on another interesting issue!
Lloyd Trufelman
Like Danny Hillis ("The Millennium Clock," Wired Scenarios, page 48), I care about the future. Like him, I feel a responsibility to contribute to it in a positive way. And like him, I "plant my acorns knowing that I will never live to harvest the oaks."
But unlike Hillis, I don't have such high hopes for the future, because I see those oaks being ripped from the ground and sliced very thin – just so his interesting prose could be printed in senselessly huge type. Did the lumber barons at Wired plant trees to make up for this colossal waste of paper?
Steve Mulder
Thank god I don't fit into Wired's demographic – male, pale, overeducated, middle-aged, and with extravagant income. I don't even have a SLIP connection or a copy of the latest Web browser. I say thank god, because I don't have to feel insulted by the Wired Scenarios on the future of the future. The mag obviously is not for me – in much the same way that Playgirl isn't.
As an analyst with a masters of library and information science who has worked in telecommunications, electronic networking, telemedicine, astronomy, health, et cetera, for years, I have the skills and understanding of the information continuum to know that one can get along just fine without the likes of Wired's cadre of boy writers. Gosh, it almost makes a girl shiver with delight to recognize that those on the leading edge of information technology and scenario planning are floundering in an ocean of garish graphics and barely legible copy – it means there is still room for sensible, thoughtful writing and analysis on our future and how technology might perform a meaningful role.
Suzanne Steele
Undo The foreign language on the cover of Wired 3.12 is Swedish, not Laotian as stated. – Apologies go out to Cathay Pacific. As the article "The Plague Years 1996-2020" (Wired Scenarios, page 84) indicated, the photograph of a jet being incinerated was photo-manipulated. No such disaster has ever befallen Cathay Pacific. – Apologies also go to Charles Platt. Some errors were edited into his description of the Multifunction Molecular Manipulator in "The Museum of Nanotechnology" (Wired Scenarios, page 102). The actual manipulator arm is a single component of a single nanobot; it would contain 4 million atoms and could perform a million operations per second. – Even in the future, human sperm will be haploid, containing either an X or a Y chromosome rather than the XX or XY combinations we mentioned ("Sex Objects," Wired Scenarios, page 91).
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