Atheist bus

I blogged about Ariane Sherine's suggestion for an atheist bus advert back in June and it seems the plan has come close to fruition:

The Atheist Bus Campaign launches today thanks to Comment is free readers. Because of your enthusiastic response to the idea of a reassuring God-free advert being used to counter religious advertising, the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" could now become an ad campaign on London buses – and leading secularists have jumped on board to help us raise the money.

Their picture:


And here is my original mock up:


Mine is admittedly less positive and more definite - but whatayagonnado?

However since then I have come to the conclusion that there isn't anything inherently wrong with a belief in God, just as long as belief does not become the basis of any kind of temporal power or influence.

I can empathise with the faithful, even if I don't agree with them.

Still, I applaud this agenda of atheist expression.

{Money? What money? Give it to Amnesty I say!}

[images from the Graun and SideLong on flickr]

I, for One, Applaud the Success of our Planetary Engineers...

...with the news that the fabled North-West passage is now open and should soon be suitable for trans-Oceanic freight.

Huzzah for Global Warming

Suck it, Panama! (in a couple of decades or so...)

Aeroplane Conveyor-Belt Problem

I have come to the conclusion that the aeroplane will take off in the aeroplane conveyor-belt problem.

The forces acting on the plane are thrust from the engines.

The conveyor-belt will simply make the wheels spin much faster than they usually do.

The purpose of the wheels on aeroplanes is to reduce the frictional effects that act in the opposite direction to the thrust from the engines.

These frictional forces will not be greater by virtue of the wheels resting on a surface moving backwards relative to the aeroplane.

*Is the British usage "conveyer" or "conveyor" ... ? I wouldn't mind except I'm very obviously using B.E. in "aeroplane" and I'd like things to be consistent.

Purge

Because I have new years resolutions to draft I want to get all the bile out of the way as quickly as possible so that I can enter 2008 a clean vessel ready to be filled with another year's worth of anger, fear, depression, hatred and smug vindictiveness.

Here is an essay that, even though I don't live in the USA, has inspired me to new levels of self-righteous arrogance. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is such a joy.

Here is a HowTo at Vice magazine that is so un-PC I could weep. Bravo.

And Charles Stross has written a wonderful Christmas wishlist. I'd add one of these neat-o Soviet supersonics as well.


And to round off: we need nukes! Nuclear power is brilliant! Long live Monty Burns! Hooray for the atom!

Truck Love

It often seems like the trade-offs we'll have to make to reduce carbon dioxide output promise a hair-shirt existence of low-acceleration cars, more public transport, less international flights, and fewer articles of ultra-consumerist potlatch.

It is therefore fortunate that steps are being taken to achieve what we want in more environmentally friendly ways. This series of images from the Hybrid Truck Users forum at Wired are part of this trend towards maintaining our ridiculous capitalist system whilst reducing our carbon dioxide emissions.

Also I really want an E-One Command Centre. I don't know what I'd use it for, but it's important to know what you want, as well as what you need.

Hydrogen Production

Interesting article here at PhysOrg, entitled "Engineers perfecting hydrogen-generating technology". Judging from the article, an alloy of aluminium and gallium (which is conveniently produced as a byproduct of aluminium production) could potentially be used to convert water into hydrogen, whilst oxygen bonds with the aluminium to form alumina, which can be recycled back into aluminium.

When water is added to the alloy, the aluminum splits water by attracting oxygen, liberating hydrogen in the process. The Purdue researchers are developing a method to create particles of the alloy that could be placed in a tank to react with water and produce hydrogen on demand.

From the article:

"The gallium is a critical component because it hinders the formation of an aluminum oxide skin normally created on aluminum's surface after bonding with oxygen, a process called oxidation. This skin usually acts as a barrier and prevents oxygen from reacting with aluminum. Reducing the skin's protective properties allows the reaction to continue until all of the aluminum is used to generate hydrogen, said Jerry Woodall, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue who invented the process.

I wish they made an effort to give more context to these articles: it would help if someone who knew more about this sort of thing were to draw up a "score sheet" showing the relative energy-densities, cost, benefits and problems with each of the various auto-powering technologies.

Lots more quotations:

"The U.S. Department of Energy has set a goal of developing alternative fuels that possess a "hydrogen mass density" of 6 percent by the year 2010 and 9 percent by 2015. The percent mass density of hydrogen is the mass of hydrogen contained in the fuel divided by the total mass of the fuel multiplied by 100. Assuming 50 percent of the water produced as waste is recovered and cycled back into the reaction, the new 80-20 alloy has a hydrogen mass density greater than 6 percent, which meets the DOE's 2010 goal.

Aluminum is refined from the raw mineral bauxite, which also contains gallium. Producing aluminum from bauxite results in waste gallium.

"This technology is feasible for commercial use," Woodall said. "The waste alumina can be
recycled back into aluminum, and low-cost gallium is available as a waste product from
companies that produce aluminum from the raw mineral bauxite. Enough aluminum exists in the United States to produce 100 trillion kilowatt hours of energy. That's enough energy to meet all the U.S. electric needs for 35 years. If impure gallium can be made for less than $10 a pound and used in an onboard system, there are enough known gallium reserves to run 1 billion cars.""

One of the problems with the predicted hydrogen economy is the difficulty of transporting and storing hydrogen safely and efficiently. Because this aluminium/gallium alloy can be transported as easily as oil: ""Particles made with this 80-20 alloy have good stability in dry air and react rapidly with water to form hydrogen.""

Another interesting idea is the possibility of converting conventional internal-combustion engines into hydrogen burning engines.

It also has obvious applications for boats: you wouldn't have to haul the raw water around with you.

"The Purdue researchers had thought that making the process competitive with conventional energy sources would require that the alumina be recycled back into aluminum using a dedicated infrastructure, such as a nuclear power plant or wind generators. However, the researchers now know that recycling the alumina would cost far less than they originally estimated, using standard processing already available.

"Since standard industrial technology could be used to recycle our nearly pure alumina back to aluminum at 20 cents per pound, this technology would be competitive with gasoline," Woodall said. "Using aluminum, it would cost $70 at wholesale prices to take a 350-mile trip with a mid-size car equipped with a standard internal combustion engine. That compares with $66 for gasoline at $3.30 per gallon. If we used a 50 percent efficient fuel cell, taking the same trip using aluminum would cost $28.""

So the energy is generated somewhere, and "stored" in the aluminium/gallium alloy, which would produce hydrogen when needed, which could be used to power an engine.

This solves the problem of safely and efficiently storing and transporting hydrogen. For automobiles it does mean you'd have to lug around water and metal. 6 % hydrogen mass density doesn't seem like much to me, but it'll be interesting to see how this does genuinely compare with petrol.

Antique Tech at the Science Museum

The BBC have a little gallery of stuff from one of the Science Museum's warehouses. The gallery reads like a list of cool antique technology, including a de Havilland Comet (IMO the greatest aeroplane design ever), an assortment of analogue computers, ERNIE, a Unimate, hovercraft, aqua-cars...

Hyperventilating aside, I hope the Science Museum get their Lottery grant, as it would be lovely to be able to see all this stuff in person.

Evidence of Aeroplanes

The new Boeing 787 is a step in the right direction as far as the organisers of Live Earth are concerned (although I suppose they'd probably prefer that no one flew at all unless it was absolutely necessary).

However it is interesting that the two big players in aircraft manufacture seem to be traveling in opposite directions as far as solving the problems facing air travel are concerned. Boeing is going for a smaller, lower carbon-dioxide emitting, aircraft, and Airbus are going for a bigger-is-better approach.

Airbus claims the A380 is more "fuel efficient" than a car, averaging an equivalent of around 90 mpg.

Meanwhile Boeing claims the Dreamliner offers "unmatched fuel efficiency, resulting in exceptional environmental performance".

Of course my preference for a 21st century aeroplane would be a scaled-up version of the non-polluting Smartfish hydrogen-powered plane.

I've commented before that I feel that the idea of a "hydrogen economy" is overrated as far as automobiles are concerned. I reckon there is a great deal of potential in electric cars of various types.

However for aeroplanes hydrogen-power makes sense. It is light-weight and as kerosene (which is normally used as aircraft fuel) is fairly hazardous, there would be less of a jolt as far as transport and storage are concerned compared with replacing petrol in cars.

Anyway the Smartfish looks great.

Electric Cars

There are three basic problems facing the nascent electric car industry:

1. How to find a device to store electric charge that can be charged to full capacity so that the time taken to provide a full charge is comparable to the time taken to full a tank with petrol.
   
2. How to find a device to store electric charge that can deliver energy rapidly enough to the motors of our hypothetical car so that the car can accelerate as well, and haul loads as well, as cars powered by internal combustion engines.
3. How to find a device to store electric charge that has an energy density and longevity similar to that of the same mass and volume of petrol.
   

The first two problems are linked: if you can find a way of getting energy into a electric charge storage device (ECSD) quickly then you also have a way of getting it out quickly.

As far as getting energy in and out of an ECSD is concerned the most obvious choice is the ultracapacitor. Capacitors are basically two sheets of conducting material held a short distance away from each other, with a layer of insulator between them. The two conducting sheets are attached to a circuit, connected to a potential difference.

The electrons flow into one of the sheets, so that each plate has an equal and opposite charge. The magnitude of the charge grows until the capacitor reaches a critical threshold and a current forces its way between the two plates.

Ultracapacitors (AKA: hypercapacitors, or supercapacitors) are simply capacitors capable of storing a very, very large charge in a small volume (compared to traditional capacitors). As there is no chemical reaction involved, as in cells, the discharge and charge times can be very short (so capacitor-based cars would be very powerful and very quick to charge).

Capacitors are the basis of the company EEstor's project to produce a low-cost, high energy-density, rapid-recharging, and rapid-delivery capacitor.

Meanwhile elsewhere, lead-acid batteries are being given a new lease on life by a company called Firefly Energy. Their idea is to take the 19th century technology and use 21st century manufacturing and processing methods to make the surface area of the lead electrode greater, whilst also making it more stable (traditional lead-acid batteries tend to crystallise over time, particularly if they are not being used). Firefly have replaced the lead plates found in traditional lead-acid batteries with a carbon graphite foam that contains the lead.

The company boasts that the greater surface area afforded by the lead-impregnated graphite foam means recharge times are smaller, energy delivery times are smaller, and the whole shebang is more stable.

The soon-to-be-more-famous Tesla Roadster uses lithium-ion batteries, the kind (I assume, wait... yes, hang on... yeah) used in my laptop and many other portable electronic devices.

Li-ion batteries also have problems, as they sometimes catch fire.

So there are three different technologies competing for the title of automobile ECSD:

1. Lithium ion batteries.
2. Improved lead-acid batteries.
3. Ultracapacitors.
   

Eestor promises an awful lot (from TreeHugger):

"Among EEStor's claims is that its "electrical energy storage unit" could pack nearly 10 times the energy punch of a lead-acid battery of similar weight and, under mass production, would cost half as much.

It also says its technology more than doubles the energy density of lithium-ion batteries in most portable computer and mobile gadgets today, but could be produced at one-eighth the cost.

If that's not impressive enough, EEStor says its energy storage technology is "not explosive, corrosive, or hazardous" like lead-acid and most lithium-ion systems, and will outlast the life of any commercial product it powers. It can also absorb energy quickly, meaning a small electric car containing a 17-kilowatt-hour system could be fully charged in four to six minutes versus hours for other battery technologies, the company claims."

EEstor seem to be very secretive (if they can back up their promises they have every reason to be suspicious of someone stealing a march on them), but I am attracted to the elegance of the ultracapacitor. It is the hydrogen-fuel-cell problem writ on a smaller scale: why go to all the trouble of juggling chemicals (hydrogen for fuel cells and lead-acid and lithium for electrochemical batteries) when you can store the charge directly?

EEstor seem to be ready to ship this year. Again from TreeHugger:

"The first commercial application of the EESU is intended to be used in electric vehicles under a technology agreement with ZENN Motors Company. EEStor, Inc. remains on track to begin shipping production 15 kilowatt-hour Electrical Energy Storage Units (EESU) to ZENN Motor Company in 2007 for use in their electric vehicles. The production EESU for ZENN Motor Company will function to specification in operating environments as sever as negative 20 to plus 65 degrees Celsius, will weigh less than 100 pounds, and will have ability to be recharged in a matter of minutes."

Neat. At the moment, if I'm asked to place a bet - I'd say the inheritor to the internal combustion engine automobile will be hybrid-electric/electric cars, rather than vehicles based on hydrogen, bio-ethanol, or other biological sources. And I'll also wager that the successful technology out of the ECSD set will be the super/ultra/hyper-capacitor.

Ultracapacitor-based electric cars strike me as much more elegant, and much more sensible. I suspect that when people turn to bio-diesel and bio-ethanol, they're thinking about what fluid they could use to replace petrol in their tanks - rather than what is the most effective way of storing energy.

But the best technology isn't always the most marketable technology. I look forward to finding out how things pan out.

Space, Global Warming, and Technology

Sorry I haven't written anything for a while. As I mentioned before I've spent most of the past few weeks doing exams, revising for exams, and dealing with the usual stresses that accompany these activities.

As always, an awful lot of stuff has happened over the last few days. Gordon Brown got to be Prime Minister. I'm looking forward to seeing what he'll do.

NASA is planning to launch a spacecraft called Dawn this July to study the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. When it comes to space development asteroids are the first logical source of real cash. They are large reserves of useful materials and aren't sitting at the bottom of massive gravitational wells, like most of the useful material in the solar system.

Charles Stross recently blogged a long and interesting article on space exploration and the economic difficulties of delivering cans of apes to distant star systems. I suppose we can only assume that when human civilization starts to really affect matter beyond our immediate solar system it will be through star-wisp style probes, rather than massive generation-ships, as Stephen Baxter imagines in this month's edition of Focus Magazine.

The star-wisps would carry a small payload that would be capable of "bootstrapping" itself to a more useful state using energy and material it would find when it arrives at its destination star system.

Stross makes a very good point that living in space (even in habitats like O'Neill cylinders) will probably be as difficult and uncomfortable as living on oil rigs or in the Arctic or in the Gobi Desert.

I think it's fair to say that when and if civilization begins to have a large material impact on the solar system it will not be through homo-sapiens living in bottles. It will be through artificial machines controlled by homo-sapiens living in comfort on Earth.

Global warming: From my point of view, I don't mind (in fact I would welcome) giving up personal automobile transport, but cheap international flights is one area where I feel resentful of the necessary sacrifice. A recent article at Physorg suggests the development of an electric plane. I can only assume from the article that it does not refer to an electrical jet engine, but rather to an old-fashioned propeller.


This is disappointing: currently I think the best possibility for have your cake and eat it air travel is alternative fuels, like Richard Branson has been plugging recently.

There is also the wonderful Smartfish project. The sketches of the plane look wonderful.

As for cars, driving on today's roads is an affront to the dignity of man. A sensible, low-cost/free, integrated, information-saturated and nationalised public-transport service is a necessary component of any developed nation seeking to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

I'm still cynical of hydrogen-gas as an alternative fuel. It seems wasteful to produce electricity to electrolyse water to produce hydrogen (assuming you don't use fossil fuels), transport the hydrogen, and then use the hydrogen to power a car or bus. It would be simpler to generate electricity and use it to charge a more conventional battery or super capacitor. There's a fascinating story on Wired about the Tesla electric sports car.

With the current hype surrounding Web 2.0 (Twitter, for example, which I have failed to use and will probably remove if it doesn't become more interesting) there have been a number of articles on the future, and how you predict it. This fascinating article on Slate about the future of the computer is an example. For all the recent advances in computer technology and communications technology we haven't even started to scratch the surface of how these two areas will transform our lives.

As computational devices ooze into the background and interfaces become more intuitive and ubiquitous (for example, Microsoft Surface) the potential for Black Swan events will increase.

All this makes predicting exactly what life will be like in the future difficult. An interesting book Imaginary Futures - From Thinking Machines to the Global Village by academic Richard Barbrook suggests that our ideas of imminent utopia have more to do with Cold War spin than any realistic analysis of potential future technology.

My own feeling is that the world is likely to get better for everyone over the next century, even as we find new and ever more cunning ways of making ourselves miserable. I suspect that at some point over the next 50 years the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, like the Sudan, Namibia, and others will experience an enormous surge in quality of life, which will make things better for everyone. Global Warming is just crammed with potential Black Swans.

I read an inordinate quantity of science fiction. I've never been able to identify precisely what I like about it: it's probably to do with the mix of optimistic escapism and extraordinary ideas.

Another interesting component is looking at what people in the past thought the future was going to be like. It seems to me that we here in Britain started the 20th century with the spectre of a European War between colonial powers hovering over our heads.

Following several decades of predicted global catastrophe (WWI, WWII, the Great Depression, the rise of dictatorships of various flavours, the creation of atom bombs and the start of the Cold War) people turned to science and technology to create a bright new future.

After this there came various waves of science fiction, dealing mostly with how people felt at the time of writing. Now that the future seems bleak again, with global warming, climate change, peak oil, and all the usual problems of Getting Along, it will be interesting to see how our view of the future changes.

With regard to this, Henry Jenkins writes about how this change in our perception of the future has affected science fiction.

I can't wait for it to be the future!

Is Personal Wealth a Good Thing?

Here are a few things that have been on my mind for the past few days. At the moment I’m re-reading Learning the World by Ken MacLeod. It is superbly written, and assumes a degree of (admittedly fragile) civility in the (post-)humans of the future, in stark contrast to Stephen Baxter’s peculiarly pessimistic view of the future (Baxter disregards all possible human enhancement, and instead concentrates on natural human evolution, which has ceased to be a major factor in the future of humanity).

In the futuristic society MacLeod envisions in LtW humanity has spread out from the solar system and colonised several star systems. The method of colonisation involves launching vast generation ships (with indefinite longevity all of the original inhabitants survive to see the end of the trip. Once the ship arrives in a new system the youthful “ship generation” disassemble the asteroids, moons and minor planets and build a vast green sphere of space habitats around the new star. The original ship, divorced of its engines, turns into one of many habitats and the engines themselves are outfitted with raw materials, and become part of the first of many more ships to travel out to the next system to repeat the process.

Over the course of the journey, as more information about the destination system comes to light, there is much (monetary) speculation over the destinations system, with “resource futures” divvied up between members of the crew and passengers. MacLeod has explored the idea of an anarcho-capitalist society and the idea of an anarcho-socialist society in his previous (and excellent) Fall Revolution sequence.

All this has got me thinking about the nature of capitalism, the distribution of wealth, and the future of a posthuman humanity.

At the moment, in Britain and the USA there is a trend towards greater disparity in wealth, average incomes for the top 1% of the population in terms of wealth are increasing, whereas average incomes for the bottom 50% are remaining more or less static. Upper-middle-class people, who would be considered “well off” in another era now believe that they are “poorer” than they actually are. This is because of a combination of factors, including the greater visibility of the rich and their lavish lifestyles. This phenomenon is explored in depth in Stewart Lansley’s excellent book Rich Britain.

This book raises an interesting ethical question: is it fair (and is it just) that some can have so much and some can have so (comparatively) little?

From what I have absorbed on the subject there seem to be two broad schools of thought on the subject:

1. People who believe that enormous individual wealth is good. These people argue that individuals who possess great wealth have grown assets (e.g. property, land, a business), worked hard, taken risks and deserve their wealth. People who believe this argue that these wealthy individuals pay enormous amounts of tax money (more than other individuals on more modest incomes pay over a lifetime), and also create employment in their businesses and in the services and products they consume. This is an opinion shared by Winwood Reade (see elsewhere in this text).
2. People who believe that great personal wealth can only exist at the expense of other individuals. These people believe that the owners of capital are given too many advantages, way out of proportion to their actual contribution to society. People who believe this argue that the uber-rich can afford tax-havens and accountants who can hide their wealth and ensure that the uber-wealthy can pay as much, or as little, tax as they want.

My own opinions lie somewhere between these two extremes (although slightly closer to the first school of thought than the second – incidentally, check out The Political Compass for a much more rational description of how [relative] political views should be talked about, in contrast to the traditional left/right image), I believe that individuals should be given as many freedoms as possible, and that these freedoms should extend to things like access to top-quality education, healthcare and biological self-determination (see democratic transhumanism for what I mean by that last point).

I agree with Warren Buffett that inherited wealth is generally a bad thing (here engineered indefinite longevity would solve problems – if individuals never expect to die, they would have no desire to pass on their wealth to their offspring), but I believe the competitive and entrepreneurial spirit has done a great deal of good for humanity as a whole.

One of the more controversial aspects of the new breed of super wealthy has been highlighted by the recent record-high bonuses paid to bankers and financiers. I think that those who gain the most wealth should be the people who create the most wealth – the people for whom the platitudes of the first school of thought apply. I would probably include Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Howard Hughes (only because I have a soft spot for Howard Hughes – he was probably a most objectionable individual). In the process of making their fortunes, these individuals improved the lives of many other people, either through philanthropy (Philanthropist: a rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket – Ambrose Pierce The Devil’s Dictionary), or improvements in the standards of living brought about by their industrial actions.

However there are bankers and usurers who don’t so much create wealth as rearrange it, mostly so that it ends up in their pockets. I’m thinking of Carl Icahn, Mike Milken, and Phillip Green amongst others.

This trend of the rich getting richer and the middle-incomers staying the same without any detectable improvements brought about by the new super-rich may one day backfire, with greater controls put on the recently liberalised financial markets.

Also, I think the most essential question does not concern relative wealth in wealthy countries, but relative wealth between countries. Is it an immutable fact of life that there will always, somewhere, be poor people who must suffer in order for others to lead comfortable lives? Is the fact that there are a few uber-wealthy individuals a cause of the problems faced by poor countries?

I don’t think it is a fact of life. I believe that one day we will be able to arrange the matter of this Earth and this solar system is such a way that it can provide for each and every one of us a lifestyle that Bill Gates or George Soros could not buy today.

However until that time we are forced into considering whether a more authoritarian socialist-style redistribution of wealth might not be better for the time being.

Unfortunately “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs” simply doesn’t work without an unacceptably powerful (and inevitably corrupt) state, and even when it is created it means that no one has any great need to excel, except for the empty promises of corrupt governments.

What about social democracy? I suspect that Tony Blair’s third way is a reasonably compromise between social justice and individual liberties. Aside from the Really Bad Idea Tony Blair has been a good premier, and has overseen one of the largest redistributions of wealth in history via the family tax credit system.

I think the middle class consensus of greater consumerism and aspiration that allowed the “third way” to work has broadly been a Good Thing, with the obvious (MASSIVE) problem of third-world poverty as the price-tag for cheap(-ish) designer clothes and nice coffee.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way I need to consider more personal things: I know that as an individual I can have very little influence on global affairs. I know it will make little difference if I recycle, or vote for a particular political party, or write a letter to my MP. I will do all of those things at one time or another, and will do so more out of principle than anything else.

However. Is it not my duty as a responsible citizen to extend my influence as wide and as high as I am capable and in doing so enact the changes I believe need to be undertaken? I’m not sure.

There is a difference between being faced with the abstract reality of a few wealthy people vs. the down-to-earth grinding poverty much of humanity is forced to live in and actually being offered the choice of wealth or power. Power corrupts. Good advice, so is the answer to water down power (through democracy) until its debilitating effect is destroyed?

What I’m trying to say is this: I am in a very fortunate position as a young, healthy, male in a progressive Western democracy. There are problems in the world that I feel I can have no effect on as an individual at the moment. I believe that I can amplify my positive effects through gaining large personal wealth (and incidentally having a good time into the bargain – money corrupts, see?), and ganging up with a load of other guilty people and trying to make a New and Better World. Which option should I take?

1. Live an ethically and financially secure life as a middle-class writer/academic/engineer. Vote, recycle, minimise my carbon footprint, write to my MP, attend protests and try to shuffle through life without causing trouble or offence to anyone.
2. Live a somewhat more exciting life as an entrepreneur. Make lotsa money and retire to try to force my idea of what a perfect world should be down various people’s word-holes.

Phrased like that, neither choice seems particularly appealing.

What about the Future?

Between now and the time when the cost of production goes down through magic nanotechnology, everyone is turned into an artificial genius, and everyone gets a butler robot in their own glittering space habitat and the present moment we will need to explore a few important questions:

1. Is large personal wealth broadly a good thing or broadly a bad thing? Answer: broadly a good thing as long as the wealth is created in an entrepreneurial manner and the wealth is not derived from anything that is detrimental to society as a whole.
2. Is capitalism, and the free market, broadly a good thing or broadly a bad thing? Answer: I’m not sure about capitalism, however the free market is a powerful resource allocation tool as well as being a necessary side-effect of personal liberty.
3. Should corporations and limited companies continue to be granted the legal personhood they enjoy today? Answer: Yes, if only to allow for the legal personhood of AI and virtual humans. However corporations should be held to account to a much greater extent than they are today.
4. Will democracy exist in a posthuman world? Can it exist? Should it exist? Answer: probably. Answer: Probably. Answer: Probably.
5. Will a posthuman world be broadly libertarian or broadly socialist? Answer: a glib answer might be that as transhumanists seek to overcome the basic causes of human suffering, the very same thing the socialists and the liberals have been trying to do for three hundred years, then a future society will be libertarian, without a need for a state to nanny and bother and help and hinder. But really it depends on what kind of posthumanity various people end up with. Another way to phrase this question is: “will a posthuman world have an all-powerful state (or dominating organised body or group [to account for group minds {in as much as I can judge what a group mind would be like} etc]) that can override individual liberties to a great extent, or will a posthuman world be anarchistic?”

I understand that this is a somewhat rambling summary of some of my political and economic beliefs, I think I will re-write it a few times in the future.

Achievable Transhumanism

Here is more goodness from the Edge Foundation, Stephen M. Kosslyn, a psychologist at the University of Harvard, is optimistic that we will be able to improve human intelligence. He has three basic points to support this optimism: the first is that neurobiologists have managed to identify several discrete systems within the brain, and have also managed to identify how they work together to perform tasks:

Each system can be made more efficient by "targeted training." Such training involves having people perform tasks that are designed to exercise very specific abilities, which grow out of distinct neural networks. Just as a body builder can do curls to build up biceps and dips on parallel bars to build up triceps, we can design computer-game-like tasks that exercise specific parts of the brain—mental muscles, if you will. By exercising the right sets of systems, specific types of reasoning not only can be improved but—the holy grail of training studies—such improvement can generalize to new tasks that draw on those systems.

This is exactly the sort of cheap, achievable goals that transhumanists need to be talking about. There isn’t any need for smart drugs or neural implants to improve the human mind, all we need to do is understand the mind more effectively and find innovative ways of improving it manually.

The second point is an increased understanding of group interaction, and resulting methods of creating more effective teams.

Just as a mechanical calculator can extend our mental capacities, other people help us extend our intelligence—both in a cognitive sense (as required to solve problems) and in an emotional sense (as required to detect and respond appropriately to emotions, ours and those of others). In this sense, other people can serve as "social prosthetic systems," as extensions of our own brains; a wooden leg can fill in for a missing limb, and others' brains can fill in for our cognitive and emotional limitations.

Teams amplify and strengthen the effects of human achievements. By cultivating a deeper understanding of an individual’s strengths and weaknesses we can create teams that achieve far more than the sum of their parts.

The third point is usually the favourite of transhuman commentators: widgetry.

Some people carry computers with them everywhere they go, and treat Google as an extension of their own knowledge bases. Or, in my case, my PDA extends my organizational ability enormously. We soon will have a wide variety of mechanical helpmates.

Whether being constantly in communication is a good thing or not is debatable, but constant access to the web is useful: a lot of information and knowledge can be acquired very quickly, and much more accurately than from normal human memories