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Maybe the coolest technology could get very good and cheap, while at the same time crucial fundamentals for survival could become expensive. The calculi of digital utopias and man-made disasters don’t contradict each other. They can coexist. This is the heading of the darkest and funniest science fiction, such as the…
PRECISELY because the clock did not start as a practical tool shaped for a single purpose, it was destined to be the mother of machines. The clock broke down the walls between kinds of knowledge, ingenuity, and skill, and clockmakers were the first consciously to apply the theories of mechanics and physics to the…
While these state records survive, most of the ancient Chinese literature on astronomy has disappeared. Because astronomy was so state-oriented, so security-bound, and so secret, the old astronomy books have left few traces. By contrast, the early books on mathematics, which were used by merchants, directors of public…
IN Europe the clock very early became a public machine. Churches expected communicants to assemble regularly and repeatedly for prayers, and flourishing cities brought people together to share a life of commerce and entertainment. When clocks took their places in church steeples and town belfries, they entered on a…
When Friendster eliminated the “most popular” feature in May 2003, they also deleted both Burning Man and Ali G, each of whom had more than 10,000 friends. This was the start of a Whack-A-Mole–style purge of Fakesters, in which Fakesters and Friendster competed for dominance. Fakester farms were created and Fakester…
It is hardly surprising that many participants find social interactions on Friendster formulaic. The social structure is defined by a narrow set of rules that do little to map the complexities and nuances of relationships in other contexts. Formula-driven social worlds require everyone to engage with each other…
The drawback to covering your tracks like this on a daily basis is that it sometimes makes you look like, well, like you’re covering your tracks. People who engage all of their privacy functions sometimes stand out in a transparent society. It may make people suspicious, thinking that you’re up to something. If you’re…
The O’Neill cylinder is named after an American physicist and space scientist who sought to engage his students by getting them to think about big problems—space settlement, in particular. He also led symposiums where the concepts behind large, permanent space habitats—including the cylinder that bears his name—were…
Conceding that the battle to stop documentation of people’s private details and lives was a lost one, the Decepticons have taken a different approach: make this data unreliable. Decepticon hackers work hard to penetrate mesh databases and seed false information. They have released numerous worms and trojans into the…
There are some who argue that individuality suffers under universal surveillance. When everything about you is known, and you have little or no control over how your identity is presented to others, you become just another person in a mass of similar persons. With no way to define yourself, individuality is eroded. We…
Where power intervenes, transparency fails to provide accountability. This is the main fact that the residents of the Planetary Consortium and their ilk must grasp. Public-accessible cameras and citizen sousveillance of police is not enough. To truly hold the people at the top accountable, publicams should be placed…
The historians say that we sleepwalked into a surveillance state. They meant that the technology for widespread surveillance progressed and was implemented in a gradual manner, though quick considering the actual time scales, and with little in the way of open discussion about the ramifications, so that before anyone…
Optical fibers can transmit digitized light signals over long distances because of the purity of glass fiber combined with improved electronics technology. With some acceptable transmission loss, low interference, and high-bandwidth potential, an optical fiber is almost an ideal transmission medium. Optical…
...humanity does not understand the language of science. Therefore it does not know that all that science has ever found out is that the physical Universe consists entirely of the most exquisitely interreciprocating technology. Ninety-nine percent of humanity thinks technology is a "new" phenomenon. The world populace…
As humanists who value human creativity and human reason and who have seen the benefits of science and technology, we are decidedly willing to take part in the new scientific and technological developments around us. We are encouraged rather than fearful about biotechnology, alternative energy, and information…
If you had come to me a hundred years ago, do you think I should have dreamed of the telephone? Why, even now I cannot understand it! I use it every day, I transact half my correspondence by means of it, but I don’t understand it. Thnk of that little stretched disk of iron at the end of a wire repeating in your ear…
Like all things of the mind, science is a brittle thing: it becomes absurd when you look at it too closely. It is designed for few at a time, not as a mass profession. But now we have megascience: an immense apparatus discharging in a minute more bursts of knowledge than humanity is able to assimilate in a lifetime…
[T]he moment man first picked up a stone or a branch to use as a tool, he altered irrevocably the balance between him and his environment. From this point on, the way in which the world around him changed was different. It was no longer regular or predictable. New objects appeared that were not recognizable as a…
The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect—to help people work together—and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the…
There were two factions of TMRC. Some members loved the idea of spending their time building and painting replicas of certain trains with historical and emotional value, or creating realistic scenery for the layout. This was the knife-and-paintbrush contingent, and it subscribed to railroad magazines and booked the…