Planning For A Distant Future

One Hundred Years?  One Thousand?
.................

Dylan Matthews, at Vox, has a new free newsletter called Future Perfect (sign up here).  Last Friday's issue features highlights from a paper written by Nick Beckstead about how we might "shape the far future", beginning with highly targeted ideas, then broadening out.  Here are a few reactions I have (in dark green, small type):

•  Do technical research which will help build a Friendly AI
Can't argue with this.

•  Advocate for nuclear disarmament to prevent a nuclear war
Again, good point.

•  Reduce carbon emissions so that climate change is a smaller problem
What's not to like.

Now some more moderately targeted proposals:

•  Tell people about the importance of shaping the far future....
Let's do that.

•  Tell people about the importance of helping animals....
This sounds rather arbitrary until one realizes that 'animals' are easier to identify with than "the environment"

•  Do research on risks and opportunities from future technologies....
I'd be surprised if this isn't built-in to most tech research.


Now some very broad proposals:

•  Help make computers faster so that people everywhere can work more efficiently
Though there's a need (high speed internet where it doesn't exist), speed is seldom a limitation

•  Change intellectual property law so that technological innovation can happen more quickly
There is a good argument for this; the flip side is that patents, for example, encourage inventors and investors to get involved in the first place.  Avoiding frivolous lawsuits and patents that rip-off the public are worthwhile goals of course.

•  Advocate for open borders so that people from poorly governed countries can move to better governed countries and be more productive
Objectively, this makes sense: allow people everywhere to live productive lives.  There are, however, several objections: some valid, some not.  
Illegitimate objections involve racism and nativism, which have been resurgent in many more economically advanced countries, due to an acceleration in immigration.  
Legitimate objections include the abandonment of countries gripped by undesirable leaders (removing a despot's critics), along with the crowding and environmental degradation that large increases in immigration necessarily involve.
Then there is the political question of whether 'open borders' is the issue to fight for when so many other concerns require our limited resources and political capital.

•  Go work for Wikipedia to help improve the site’s overall functionality
Nothing to argue with here, though this seems like it belongs in a different category.

There are even broader items, but they are rather vague.

Any time one advocates for policy, future-oriented or not, one is making a political choice.  Do the limited prospects for success outweigh the drag on resources and political capital?  Most items in Mr. Beckstead's list are likely, some even very likely, but there is at least one that will doom any politician who adopts it.  Frankly, there isn't much new here hanging on the concept of "the far future".

20th Century Books That Made America

...That I've Read

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First off, no, we're not counting comic books (Tarzan), movies (Gone With The Wind, The Color Purple) or just leafing through, reading a bit here and there (The Tin Drum).

Second, I remember reading these books to varying degrees (was it For Whom The Bell Tolls or another Hemingway book?)  I'll note this, occasionally, and when I read the book after each entry.

Third, the entire list for each decade can be found here (00s), here (10's), (20s), (30s) (40s), (50s) (60s), (70s),  (80s), and (90s).

Also, after the titles in bold (the top ten for each decade...that I've read), are the also rans that I've read.

1900s
L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
childhood

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902)

circa 1990 (part of a book club--I gave a presentation on this)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)

childhood, again in 80s

Jack London, The Call of the Wild (1903)

high school

Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

college

Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)

jr. high

Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901)

childhood

1910s

Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (1919)

college

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (1911)

childhood

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

college

1920s

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

college

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

college

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (1924)

high school

E. M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924)

high school -- did I really read it?

Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor (1924)

high school

A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)

childhood

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

high school

1930s

Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth (1931)

high school

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)

college (did I read it all?)

P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins (1934)

childhood

William Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom!(1936)

college

Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa (1937)

80's

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937)

high school

Thornton Wilder, Our Town (1938)

high school

T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone (1939)

high school (not sure about this one)

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake(1939)

70s - remember buying this; did I make it very far?

1940s

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (1943)

childhood

Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight Moon (1947)

childhood

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

high school 

Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls(1940)

college (not sure which Hemingway)

George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)

jr. high?

E. B. White, Stuart Little (1945)

childhood

Albert Camus, The Stranger (1946, first English translation)

high school (French class, with some French, untranslated)

Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (1949)

high school

1950s

J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

high school

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

college

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

high school

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)

college--summer

Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

college

Leon Uris, Exodus (1958)

high school

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe(1950)

childhood (may have been only partial)

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (first English translation, 1951)

high school

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

college

Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

high school

E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web (1952)

childhood

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1953)

high school

William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954)

jr. high

Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems (1954)

college

Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat (1957)

childhood

Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums (1958)

80s (did I read it all?)

John Knowles, A Separate Peace (1959)

high school

Strunk & White, The Elements of Style (1959)

80s

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (unexpurgated U.S. version released 1959)

high school

1960s

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)

jr. high

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

high school

Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

high school

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962)

high school

Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (1962)

jr. high

Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (1963)

childhood 

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (1963)

high school

Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion (1964)

high school

Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin Vol. 1 (expurgated version) (1966)

70s

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49(1966)

high school

S. E. Hinton, The Outsiders (1967)

jr. high

Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)

college

Mario Puzo, The Godfather (1969)

high school

1970s

- none

Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Our Bodies, Ourselves (1971)

college

Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973)

high school

Studs Terkel, Working(1974)

70s

1980s

- none

- none

1990s

- none

Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father (1995)

2007

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997)

90s

I have a high school English teacher, Mr. Dobbins, to thank for so much high school reading.  He gave extra credit points for book reports--what a deal, though each did involve an oral presentation.

Also:
 * I seem to be a product of the '50s and 60s.
 * Shocking that I've yet to read any of the 68 books listed for the 1980s: ten finalists, plus also-rans.                         * Ok, maybe I read selections from Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 (1983) in the 90s, making it 15 female-authored books, out of 72.
 * Lonely books read within a year or so of being published:
     - The Cat In The Hat
     - Slaughterhouse Five
     - Where The Wild Things Are
     - The Outsiders
     - The Godfather
     - Jonathan Livingston Seagull
     - Guns, Germs and Steel
    otherwise, my reading hasn't been particularly 'in the moment'.

The Websites That Made History

Countdown Highlights
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Gizmodo had a countdown of the 100 Websites That Shaped The Internet As We Know It.

Here are highlights I found interesting, like, or hadn't heard about before:

99. I Can Has Cheezburger (2007)

Will we ever get enough of pet pranks?

95. WhoSampled (2008)

I’m afraid I don’t have time for sampling, though I’ll make exceptions for allusions contained in lyrics.

92. The Toast (2013)

A satire site that lasted for three years.  Feminist laughter.

90. Stack Overflow (2008)

All you need to know about building a website.  

88. Electronic Frontier Foundation (1990)

Privacy, and hands-off our internet.

87. Bandcamp (2008)

Musicians and music fans come together to buy and sell music, and more.

85. DuckDuckGo (2008)

"Privacy-centric search engine.” 

83. HaveIBeenPwned (2013)

Check to see if any of your accounts have been hacked.

81. wikiHow (2005)

Step-by-step guides to doing just about anything.

79. Genius (2009)

Annotation for lyrics, blogs and more.

75. Project Gutenberg (1994)

Volunteer-run, meticulous archive offering free e-books.

58. Pitchfork (1995)

Music reviews.

48. Vimeo (2004)

“All your video needs”.  Ok.

47. Giphy (2013)

When “words fail you”….

43. WebMD (1996)

Looking up medical conditions.

41. Chatroulette (2009)

Be matched with a random stranger; chat.  What could go wrong?

39. Etsy

A home for your "creative wares”.  Bought and sold.

32. Urban Dictionary (1999)

A dictionary for “contemporary words and idioms”.

29. Kickstarter (2009)

Connecting inventive ideas and investors.  Can you tell what’s worth it and what’s not?

11. Snopes (1994)

"Fact-checking, debuking…"

5. Internet Archive (1996)

Archive of our internet, including  Wayback Machine, for returning to removed content.

Note: Most of the lower items in the countdown were commonplace platforms like FB and Twitter.

What I'm Doing To Fight Climate Change

The Checklist
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A recent article in Lifehacker, titled How To Demand Action on Climate Change, by Leigh Anderson, presented something of a checklist.  I run through it, below, with notes in dark green, on ways I'm addressing each item:

* You have power
I'd accentuate 'hope' as well as power; I've thought through a solution (see previous blog post) and written to three experts with a link.  
* Know where your elected officials stand
Generally, it's a Democratic (yes, we'll fight Climate Change) vs. Republican (no, we'll pretend)
* Focus on State and Local Gov.
I wrote to my state government official about a proposed hog confinement (boo) next to a local organic farm (yay)
* Take Action Yourself
Transport
I drive an 11-year-old hybrid that averages 35-40 mpg.  I drive it sparingly, trying to talk myself out of going places.
Diet
I eat mainly unprocessed, organic food.  I grow my own veggies.  We do eat dairy, fish and chicken; and occasional bison, however.
Waste less/compost
We eat just about everything we buy/grow; and we compost.  We recycle things like cardboard, as well as paper, and the usual.
Less disposables
I reuse plastic bags; I have totes for the supermarket; I do generate things that can't be recycled in the trash, but less.
Buy less stuff
We have a 20-year-old TV.  We generally don't give Christmas presents.
Energy efficient home
We have wind power (through the Sierra Club, which swaps local power for wind); we keep heating and cooling to a minimum, and wear sweaters, hats in the winter and few clothes in the summer.
Electric Car / cycling / carpool
My next car will be electric
Don’t support bad banks
I use Working Assets for $$ and Credo for my phone service
Lightbulbs etc., with link
Yes, we have efficient lighting, and a super efficient heating/cooling unit.
* More links at the article, above

Many people do much more than I do.

European Union To The Rescue

We Can Do This

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"Freak Out", "Panic", "Climate Change will destroy our world"!  Headlines like these remind me of a Tin Tin comic book from my childhood (see book cover photo here).  A meteor is hurtling towards earth.  Doom!  But it lands in the Arctic, melting icebergs.  European nations mount a joint expedition.  There's a struggle with a shadowy group trying to thwart our heroes.

That's right, the most likely path forward in the fight against Climate Change, as with the Tin Tin book, is for the European Union to act, followed by other nations (see my previous post, #160); and, for the focus to be on redirecting military spending to fight climate change.

Here are a few reactions to the IPCC report, each followed by my comments--in dark green; then, making our plan an easier sell:

 * New York magazine has a piece by David Wallace-Wells that makes the things-are-even-worse case.

Right, things are devilishly disturbing; and the sooner action is taken, the easier our efforts.  

  * Vox has a piece by Mary Annaise Heglar that suggests Climate Change isn't so much our fault, as it is the fault of multi-national corporations trying to disrupt our efforts.

Like the dastardly Bohlwinkel Bank that disrupts Tin Tin's comic book expedition, monied interests are behind attempts to prolong our Age of Fossil Fuels, the primary force driving Climate Change.  Once our plan is in place, however, we may find that opposition was all about the plan's financing.  Taxing or capping carbon has always been hard; and a relatively easy fight for the no-goodnik opposition: who wants to pay taxes, anyway?  Our plan, a global military spending cutback is, by way of comparison, relatively painless once a given country sees that its adversaries are on board, too.

  * In Pacific Standard, Sophie Yeo addresses whether the IPCC report was a waste of time or a valuable 'heads up'.  One source for her piece suggests the resources behind the report would have been better spent determining "...how to reach more realistic goals in light of political realities."

Odd, that sounds like a brainstorming session, which is free and open to the public, and will generate emergent ideas...like this blog post.

  * A workhorse of the online environmental movement, David Roberts, dishes the good news at Vox: the technological solutions are almost all in place to make our plan work.

Science and technology!  Roberts has identified our most promising innovations over the years.  We really can do what needs to be done.

  * I've also read comments left by dejected readers to the effect that all effort is hopeless: the gigantic increases in consumption needed by poorer countries to reach rich country status are not only inevitable, but impossible to ignore.

Perhaps there's something to this pessimism.   But, installing a renewable energy power plant simply costs money, it doesn't produce carbon.  Sure, there's some carbon involved in construction, but not much, relatively speaking.  The real problem is: How do we generate all the money to pay for what we want done?  And our plan solves that problem.

  * And finally, in Vox again, Eliza Barclay and Umair Irfan, with 10 ways to reduce Carbon.

..........................

So, where does that leave us and our plan?
  * We can make the 2030 deadline.  There may not be many coral reefs left, and hurricanes, wildfires, etc., will likely get more intense, and so on, but once we get to 2030 we can then work to reverse the effects of our fossil fuel fever.
  * The technology exists to get us to our goal.  Simply put, it's the financing that's lacking.  No voter will be eager to agree to a 10% tax.  Meaning that taxing our way out of this problem will be a heavy lift, which is usually why anyone who thinks long enough about the path ahead is so glum.
  * Financing our plan is maybe half as difficult as a global carbon tax.  See below, for how we can reduce the difficulty level even more.
  * Um, no; fighting Climate Change does not cost $$, net, it saves $$.
  * Somebody will need to get our plan noticed.  The piece by Sophie Yeo has several contacts that might be interested.  I will send them a link.

And finally, how might we make our plan more likely?  A redirection of resources, such as we propose, is bound to meet with resistance: not only from those who'll suffer financially (arms manufacturers, for example), but defense ministers, who'll be pressed to find enough spare change in the seat cushions, so to speak.  A 10% cut to military spending is going to be a difficult sell, even for Scandinavian countries, for example, who have few foes to defend against.

Instead of trying for 10%, which is our eventual goal of course, we could start with a mere 1.5% (1.5 being our  target, in degrees Centigrade).  This might jeopardize our eventual need to redirect 2.5% of global GDP a year, every year, for a decade, but starting at a lower level is much more doable.  Then, once a peace dividend emerges (governments find they don't need as many armaments if their neighbors are buying fewer), and nations realize they're participating in a giant disarmament exercise, the momentum to further the process will mean we can end up with a higher level of redirection than 10% in the final years prior to 2030.

Maybe a sequential target like this:
1st year: 1.5%
2nd year: 6%
3rd year, and thereafter: 12%
Which, over a ten-year period totals: 1.5 + 6 + (12 x 8) = 103.5
As opposed to 10 x 10 = 100

Which means we have about two years to work on that 1.5%.  Ideally, the E.U. would start the ball rolling with a symbolic redirect in 2019; perhaps 0.35%.  Pressure would then be on all countries to commit to our 1.5% goal for 2020.

And, it goes without saying, our heroes--our winners--at least in that first year, would be the EU.

And if the E.U. can't come through?  Being a hero could be any country's role, even the U.S.  A new U.S. president in 2021 could hold a summit with the Chinese, who spend the 2nd-most on their military.  It is hard to imagine how that would fail to bring aboard most other countries as well.

Sure, Take A Peek Ahead

What's Next?

............
I'm working on a post--maybe several--that'll take a closer look at my #160th piece on this blog: "Let's Gamify The Fight Against Climate Change".

And here's a photo hinting at where I'll find inspiration:

A comic/graphic novel from my childhood!

Life After Trump -- Getting Back To Square One

Making The 'Take It Easy' Case

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With the release of Kathleen Hall Jamieson's new book, "Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect A President -- What We Don't, Can't, And Do Know" (see this review in the New Yorker), the puzzle of Russian influence in our 2016 presidential election is now beginning to make sense.

As a non-partisan observer (someone I've seen dozens of times over the years on various TV shows), Jamieson is probably the closest we'll ever come to having a truly objective judge mediate political disputes.  So, does she shed light on the Russia 2016 affair?  Yes, and here is the gist:

   * As expected, it wasn't that Russian hackers changed votes after the fact; rather, in the run-up to the election, using fake accounts on social media that spewed false information, they encouraged voters to choose different candidates, or to stay home***.
   * Likewise, as expected, it wasn't that Russia necessarily colluded with the Trump campaign, though this may have occurred--we shall see; rather, it was that hackers stole the information (e-mails, campaign strategy documents) that allowed their operatives (WikiLeaks, Russian intelligence) to target negative news cycles (the October 7th Access Hollywood Tape) and identify vulnerable states (Democrats-leaning-toward-3rd-Party voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin).
   * Some Russian 'fake news' talking points made their way into 2016's candidate debates, dramatically increasing the likelihood that debate viewers thought Clinton duplicitous, according to polls.
   * Perhaps Jamieson's biggest revelation is that even the infamous James Comey letter, that many feel decided the election, was based on Russian disinformation (as was Comey's original July press conference clearing Clinton while labeling her "extremely careless") .

My point in writing about Jamieson's book is that the legitimacy of the Trump presidency may soon be at stake.  This won't happen before the November '18 elections, and it may require that the Mueller Investigation be concluded.  But at some point it seems quite likely that we'll be confronted with the question: How Do We Get Back To Square One.

For example, what do we do about the two Supreme Court justices nominated by a president who is, or soon may be seen as illegitimate?  What about all the other judges named by Trump over the past two years?  What about all the policy decisions that have changed the course of history?  Never before in our nation's politics have we had to deal with major and obvious illegitimacy.

There would seem to be two paths we could take:
1. Attempt to convince the public that some kind of remedy is warranted.
2. Seem accepting of the past, and don't rock the boat.

Almost certainly, a combination of these two options will actually occur.  I'd advocate a 'take it easy' approach that doesn't shy away from advocacy, but that waits for events to transpire.  For example, pause most calls for impeaching the president until after the '18 election, when opposition to Trump will most likely have been made manifest.  Likewise, wait for the Mueller Investigation.  Doing otherwise can lay the groundwork for action, but can also make such arguments seem uncouth and even laughable.

In any event, we're entering uncharted waters.

*** For example, Facebook could place ads that emphasized celebrity dissatisfaction with Hillary, and that seemed to be locally sourced (rather than Russian) on a few thousand screens of black men in Milwaukee.  Besides being sleazy, and usually employing outright lies, this kind of foreign interference in our elections is illegal.