Regularly Expressing

Category: future

  • ‘Junior’ the Self-Driving Car

    Stanford’s entry into the Darpa Urban Challenge is a car named “Junior”. It is capable of reading road signs, reflective markers on the road, and avoiding other cars. This suggests to me that we are on-track for self-driving cars in 10 years.

    Let me elaborate on a point I made in a previous post: A self-driving car is not just a cool gadget. The implications are far-reaching and scary. It doesn’t just mean that driving is safer, or that designated drivers become a thing of the past. It means that a whole new class of jobs can be replaced by automation: taxis, busses, and trucks.

    In the past, loss of jobs to automation has always resulted in new classes of jobs that kept the work force humming. I believe that this worked out, in part, because only mundane and repetitive tasks could be eliminated by automation. With the self-driving car we may be entering into an era where nearly any job that does not require a fairly significant amount of creativity or intelligence will be subject to replacement. We are talking about the possible whole-scale elimination of the blue collar and service worker jobs. Even construction jobs could start disappearing soon. Here is another example: migrant fruit pickers will soon be replaced.

    What is the answer? A new breed of socialism where the unemployable (the majority of the population) receive a free minimum wage and only the elite have paying jobs? Certainly a technologically advanced society such as this will be able to afford to have a non-working populace. Or will the change to society be something even more sinister?

  • How to build a Universal Translator

    It occurred to me that something like the “Universal Translator” of Star Trek could be constructed without very advanced technology. I call my more primitive device a “Drongo.”

    If you have two technologically advanced races, and they meet, there is a need to construct a basic vocabulary quickly. One can sit in a room, point and say words — but this can get quite tedious and is not readily amenable to computer analysis.

    The device I am proposing makes the following assumptions about the aliens we contact:

    1. They are able to use some reasonable part of the electromagnetic spectrum for communications (i.e. radio, infra-red),
    2. They see things in images,
    3. They know what primary numbers are,
    4. They know what binary numbers are,
    5. They have the basic concept of nouns and verbs.

    An obvious code for an image would be to write it as an array of binary digits, using a primary number for the number of pixels on the x and y axes (similar to what Sagan proposed in “Contact”). Aliens receiving the signal would recognize they were seeing a product of binary numbers and might deduce an image was intended. To aid in this endeavor, the drongo should have one or more displays that show the image in various electromagnetic frequencies.

    Images and words could be sent on alternating frames, and by studying the sequence of words and images a number of names, nouns and verbs could be communicated (even basic mathematics concepts such as counting and arithmetic). This might form the basis of a very primitive communication, and if both parties have a drongo they might be able to get up to speed on a basic written language in short order. The device would send the foundational vocabulary out repeatedly in an infinite loop. If the foundational vocabulary is understood, the device could be queried to request a next lesson (This would reduce the amount of information that would need to be in the first loop/lesson).

    I could envision two alien races constructing an intermediate language (albeit a primitive one) after only a few hours of drongo communication.

    Key to the success of a drongo is the development of various recognition technologies, such as this. It will make it possible for us to classify images received from an alien’s drongo.

    There might be other kinds of reasonable assumptions that would enable deeper communication to progress, this is only the kernel of the idea.

    Obviously this device is vastly inferior to the device on Star Trek. It is very much dumbed down, but could be quite effective. I named the device “Drongo”, after a type of bird known for its effective mimicry of human speech. “Drongo” is also an Australian slang word for “idiot.”

  • The Coming Intelligence Explosion

    The Singularity institute has a post describing what it calls the upcoming “inteligence explosion.” The concept is that once we learn to start modifying the brain to make ourselves smarter we get a positive feedback loop — more intelligence gives us the ability to construct a better human/brain interface, which makes us smarter, which makes us able to construct a better human/brain interface, and so on.

    Where will it lead? There is a difficulty here which I can’t help but notice — allow me a digression. An animal like a giraffe does not evolve simply by natural selecting creatures with slightly longer necks. As the neck extends, a number of mechanisms must simultaneously evolve to deal with the increasing blood pressure. I can’t help but wonder if simply extending our intelligence might be as disasterous as simply extending the neck of the giraffe. Will it increase at the expense of our sanity? Will we re-create ourselves as ultra intelligent but psychotic entities — reminiscent of Lovecraft’s Elder Gods? Or will we manage a slow and careful progress that will accomodate the changes. (Of course, there’s at least one sf story idea here, with lots of juicy references to the Tower of Babel)

    All this brings to mind Frank Tipler’s “Cosmological SIngularity,” and will be debating this topic on June 3. I did not realize Tipler was just down the road from me at Tulane. If I weren’t going on vacation that week I would attend.

  • Hope for the Future

    There are so many promising alternative energy sources just around the corner, I thought I’d start maintaing a page for them, and update it as I come across links of interest.

    1. Bio-Fuel
      1. LS9: Using microbes to generate hydrocarbons
      2. Plastic that grows on trees
      3. Seashore Mallow as biodiesel source
    2. Hydrogen
      1. Efficient method for Water + Sun = Hydrogen
    3. Wind
      1. Harnessing the Jet Stream
      2. Wind Turbines (safe for birds)
    4. Fusion
      1. Pulsed X-Ray lasers for generating power from sea water.
    5. Solar
      1. Green dye: 10x power, 0.1x cost
      2. Spray on solar cells
      3. Highly efficient design from South Africa
      4. Nano Tower Solar Cells and more on these
      5. Plastic Leaf-like solar cells with 6% efficiency
      6. Nanowires — perhaps this one can combine with some of the above breakthroughs
      7. Quantum Dots
      8. 40% Efficiency at 1000 suns
      9. Space-based solar power generators
    6. Biodiesel
      1. Algae biodiesel could power all cars, use no farm land
      2. And soak up CO2
      3. Oil from turkey parts
      4. Cheaper Biodiesel
      5. Biodiesel breakthroughs website
    7. Batteries
      1. Better Lithium Ion Batteries

  • Standard Problems of Science Fiction

    This may not be a new observation, but a large set of science fiction problems must solve a set of common problems in order to proceed:

    1. Getting around: This may involve faster than light drive, or some alternative. In the Firefly universe there was a single system with “dozens of planets, hundreds of moons” — all usable (possibly with terraforming). Other common ideas include “warp drive,” or some kind of cryo sleep in order to live through a long trip.
    2. Translation: Assuming your story has aliens, how do people communicate? The Babel fish and the Universal translator are two familiar devices.
    3. Technological development: The universe is 10 billion years old. Yet if two civilizations meet and one is a billion years older than the other, there can be no legitimate contest between them. How can technological evolutions be synchronized?
    4. Alien Love: What would Star Trek have been without the occaisional Orion slave girl? Yet how can such similarity exist between species evolving independently on other worlds? Some sort of explanation is desirable.

    Do you have other types of standard problems for Sci Fi stories? Fantasy stories? Let’s hear them!

  • Self-Driving Cars in 10 years

    Self-driving cars: I had guessed that this was coming in 2030-2040, but it looks like I was pessimistic. Once cars can drive themselves, how many jobs will be left for humans to do? Will the machines keep us as pets?

    If people don’t work, what will they do? Play video games full-time?