Hear (or see) me on BBC! And yes, I've pundited on this and other topics: BBC World Service uses me pretty often, most recently on a program about moving the Earth. A light take on a very – um – heavy topic that I explicate further here.
Here are a few more of my posted BBC interviews:
Here are a few more of my posted BBC interviews:
A 2012 bit wherein I discuss the likelihood of extraterrestrial life.
A 2017 post about the future in general but especially transparency’s role in keeping it free.
And a bunch of other topics!
== Prophecy! Well, sorta... ==
First a prediction coming true. In my story “NatuLife” ( from my collection Otherness) a character and his wife each have special suits that can stimulate nerve endings and resist pressure in ways that mimic the touch and feel of objects, even the wind. Combine this with futuristic VR and a floor consisting of a million needles that can mimic almost any terrain, and you get an ability to roam ersatz worlds, even run and “throw a spear,” in an Exercise Room the size of a walk-in closet. Now comes another step toward realization: “Through a fast, programmable array of miniature vibrating disks embedded in a soft, flexible material, this smart skin can contour to the body and deliver sensory input -- what you'd feel when using it.”
== Prophecy! Well, sorta... ==
First a prediction coming true. In my story “NatuLife” ( from my collection Otherness) a character and his wife each have special suits that can stimulate nerve endings and resist pressure in ways that mimic the touch and feel of objects, even the wind. Combine this with futuristic VR and a floor consisting of a million needles that can mimic almost any terrain, and you get an ability to roam ersatz worlds, even run and “throw a spear,” in an Exercise Room the size of a walk-in closet. Now comes another step toward realization: “Through a fast, programmable array of miniature vibrating disks embedded in a soft, flexible material, this smart skin can contour to the body and deliver sensory input -- what you'd feel when using it.”
Not all of my predictions come true. One fellow commented at Contrary Brin that he had been re-reading Kiln People. “Here's one Brin forecast that fails to make it into the predictions registry:
“It's one thing to see death coming at the hands of your own creation. That's part of the human epic tradition, after all. Oedipus and his father. Baron Frankenstein and his monster. William Henry Gates and Windows '09.”
Okay I was off by a few years. Should have made it Windows ’29…
An important discovery shows that there truly are boundary conditions to the presence of life… of our kind, at least. We have found bacteria in extremely harsh, caustic pools, boiling subsea vents and crevices of rock deep underground – wherever there’s water and an energy source of any kind. But scientists have found hyper-acid, hyper-saline pools in Ethiopia where absolutely nothing lives. The study ”proves that there are several places on earth's surface which are sterile even though they contain liquid water. Researchers also noted that the mere presence of liquid water cannot be considered a habitability criterion, as there are several other factors required for life to evolve and thrive.”
Home Foods (I know the CEO, a sci fi fan) already donates to food banks but a lot of waste is unsuitable, so the company is equipping many stores with grinders that pulp it all into a slurry that’s trucked to dairy farms that have new tanks that feed waste slurry into anaerobic digesters, cooking the organics to capture the methane emissions and make renewable energy. What remains is crop fertilizer. This is one of my top four dozen techs that might help us save the world.
== Space & Tech ==
The system aiming to provide electricity to remote outposts, removing the need for dangerous convoys, would be powered by a satellite with solar panels twice as big as a football field. The satellite would then electronically steer the radio signal, via antennas, to any point on the ground. The effort long a topic in sci fi and among space enthusiasts, is still in the exploratory phase.
Here's a pretty good CBS special report about how accurate the AT&T "You Will" campaign was, 25 years ago... followed up with some fairly tepid/boring (alas) predictions from their new (amateur!) "futurists" for what will change in the next 25!
== Evolution mysteries ==
Why did populations of Neanderthals and modern humans stay separated for so long, then only overlap a short time till Neanderthals went extinct? A group proposes that complex disease transmission patterns can explain both the transition, in just a few thousand years but also, perhaps more puzzling, why the end didn't come sooner.
“Archeological evidence suggests that the initial encounter between Eurasian Neanderthals and an upstart new human species that recently strayed out of Africa—our ancestors—occurred more than 130,000 years ago in the Eastern Mediterranean in a region known as the Levant. Yet tens of thousands of years would pass before Neanderthals began disappearing and modern humans expanded beyond the Levant. But the unique diseases harbored by Neanderthals and modern humans could have created an invisible disease barrier that discouraged forays into enemy territory.” Hybrids from interbreeding might have let enough mingling to happen that one of the two populations could get heavily infected and culled. And humans had more diseases, coming from the tropics."
In fact, there's huge news about this I'll relate in a later posting!
Well, well. By then humans also had somewhat better tools… and dogs.
“Archeological evidence suggests that the initial encounter between Eurasian Neanderthals and an upstart new human species that recently strayed out of Africa—our ancestors—occurred more than 130,000 years ago in the Eastern Mediterranean in a region known as the Levant. Yet tens of thousands of years would pass before Neanderthals began disappearing and modern humans expanded beyond the Levant. But the unique diseases harbored by Neanderthals and modern humans could have created an invisible disease barrier that discouraged forays into enemy territory.” Hybrids from interbreeding might have let enough mingling to happen that one of the two populations could get heavily infected and culled. And humans had more diseases, coming from the tropics."
In fact, there's huge news about this I'll relate in a later posting!
Well, well. By then humans also had somewhat better tools… and dogs.
And just 5000 years after Neanderthals faded away, humans suddenly experienced a software revolution of stunning magnitude.
Fascinating: “Scientists in Denmark have squeaked out an entire human genome from a prehistoric piece of “chewing gum.” Made from birch tar, the 5,700-year-old gum also contained evidence of diet and disease and is providing a remarkable snapshot of life during the early Neolithic.” Not only did this chewed piece of birch bark give us a complete DNA view of a young woman of that era but much about her diet – samples of duck and nuts -- and bacteria in her microbiome and even viruses (she’d had mono.) Moreover, it’s not the usual peer into the end of a life. Presumably she spat out her wad and went on (I hope) to being a grandma, perhaps of millions. And more such chew-wads await. This is the best time-viewer sci-fi since Utzi the Iceman!
In Why Trust Science? Harvard Prof. Naomi Oreskes (co-author of Merchants of Doubt) explains that, “contrary to popular belief, there is no single scientific method. Rather, the trustworthiness of scientific claims derives from the social process by which they are rigorously vetted. This process is not perfect—nothing ever is when humans are involved—but she draws vital lessons from cases where scientists got it wrong. Oreskes shows how consensus is a crucial indicator of when a scientific matter has been settled, and when the knowledge produced is likely to be trustworthy.”
== Technology! ==
My old Caltech housemate, the brilliant physicist Steve Koonin, calculated that solar thermal systems should outpace photovoltaic cells over the long run, as a way to tap the abundant energy of sunlight. Now a Bill Gates-backed venture aimed to bring solar heating to bear in major, polluting industries like cement-making.
Meanwhile, read about 5 Emerging Energy Technologiest to Watch Out For in 2020. Several of them rather amazing. (Via Peter Diamandis’s Abundance site. Get his book ABUNDANCE for your dour, hypocritically cynical doom-gloom cousin, who assumes we’re headed for the apocalypse world portrayed in The Postman/Death-Stranding (same story.)
A fun article on the several major efforts to bring back the era of airships! Of course I've been there. See a complete novella, "The Smartest Mob," that offers a full adventure-in--an excerpt from Existence. A news reporter finds herself aboard a passenger Zeppelin that might — perhaps — have been turned into a weapon of terror. No one will listen — not the government or the Zep company. No one, that is, except a semi-random band of amateurs, scattered around the globe.
The Shine Scanner has a patented 'Curve-flatten' Technology that let’s you “Scan A Book In 10 Minutes.” So maybe we won’t have to shred-whirl-scan libraries of books the way Vernor Vinge does in his novel RAINBOW’S END.
While rooftop panels get attention, much of the installed solar energy comes from large collector farms that either gain/lose efficiency across the day or else use expensive machinery to turn, facing the sun’s traverse across the sky.
== Misc Cool stuff! ==
I’ve noticed some of our bees (we keep hives and I know mine) cluster at a rough patch at the side of the spa to get a drink, teaching the trick to younger bees, so fewer of them have to be fished out, later, with my net. (The number drowned really has gone down, since they found that patch of rough plaster.) Now see some research done by a couple of profs at my alma mater about how bees propel themselves across water. Kinda intriguing.
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