The Asus Eee, Google and Cloud Computing

I saw an Asus Eee in an electronics shop today. It is qualitatively different from any laptop I have ever seen. It has the feel of a child’s plaything, and carries the same air of cheapness.

As Charles Stross says, the laptop and PC are both heading for a period of commoditisation. As the cost of laptops, PCs, and consumer electronics in general start to fall they will become as expendable as pocket calculators and digital watches.

Aside from the size, the two things that struck me about the Asus Eee are how quickly it starts up, and the operating system. The OS is some Linux derivative. Because the Eee has a solid-state hard-drive and no disk drive it has no moving parts (except for the hinge and keyboard) and as such immediately feels less fragile than a normal laptop. There are no air vents either. Altogether it gives the impression of something you can pour tea on and drop on the floor and it will still work.

The OS is pretty straightforward. There is no messing around with desktop metaphors. There is a simple tab-based menu system with applications grouped into web, office, games, education etc. A great deal of the Eee functionality is based on connections with the Internet, and specifically with the web.

As I said, the laptop restarts in seconds. One of the single biggest causes of minor stress in my life is slow computers. It is a joy to finally discover one that starts in less than ten seconds.

These days most laptop/PC functionality for the casual user is connected with the Internet. Even office programs are now being brought online. Games are now played online. Programs can be developed online (I can’t actually bring an example of this to mind but I know they are there).

Would I buy an Asus Eee? Yes. If I had the disposable income, and if I actually needed one, and if I didn’t know that before my current lappy conks out there will be many cheaper and better laptops in the same league of cheapness and niceness as the Eee.

Google and Cloud Computing

If the Eee teaches us that laptops will become (even) cheaper and (more) ubiquitous then other movements in the world of technology show us even more about the nature of the world ahead.

One of the big buzzwords of recent months has been the idea of “cloud computing” where instead of running programs on a box on your desk, you just enter the data and the commands and they are actually processes in a big “cloud” out on the Internet. Eee-style computers will presumably one day be connected to the Internet via high-bandwidth links and farm out surplus processing to large servers many kilometres away.

Companies like Google have recently been moving towards support of this sort of computing. The Register article where I first noticed this is here. Those at The Register use the charming phrase data smelters (coined here) to describe the vast powerhouses of computation that exist for the purpose of swapping bits in the service of the Net.

The problem for Google is that what they really have (and all they’ve ever really had) is a good search algorithm, a superb brand, and a lot of computers. The search techniques that made Google so successful have now been copied by other search engines. The brand remains as strong as ever, and will be crucial to Google’s long term survival.

The last point: the lot of computers, gives us our glimpse into the future, not just of Google, but of computing in the second quarter of the 21^st century. Vast data-warehouses connected via high-bandwidth links to thin clients like the Asus Eee.

Moore’s Law will probably chunter along for another few decades and then we’ll be left with ludicrously cheap laptop/mobile form-factor devices equipped with prodigious memory and processing power themselves, but connected via high-speed links to processing yards many orders of magnitude more powerful.

Every individual on the planet will own one of these cheap laptop/mobile form-factor devices but only the largest companies and states will be able to pay the huge costs of running the data centres.

Of course this could all be complete rubbish. It could be that swarm computing networks will emerge that reject the centralised client-server model in favour of a more egalitarian “flat” model without hierarchies.

Anyway: I’m willing to bet an Asus-Eee-equivalent of 2018 (i.e. £50 or thereabouts) that the next major upgrade of the MacBook family will involve a solid-state hard-drive.

Tom out.

UPDATE 21/03/2008: Goodness me I am such a fool. The most recent update of the MacBook family, the MacBook Air, does have a solid-state hard-drove option.

Morals and Markets with Robert Skidelsky

Economics boffin Robert Skidelsky has written an interesting article over at CiF about the morality of capitalism, this is my paragraph-by-paragraph response:

"...Because no social system can survive for long without a moral basis..."

This isn't really correct. Slavery persisted for centuries in the ancient world as the economic prime mover and yet was and is morally suspect.

"...It has often been claimed that capitalism rewards the qualities of self-restraint, hard work, inventiveness, thrift, and prudence. On the other hand, it crowds out virtues that have no economic utility, like heroism, honour, generosity, and pity..."

I think this depends on other cultural factors. Capitalism may encourage or discourage certain characteristics, but it doesn't mean these don't exist.

Also it isn't entirely true that honour and generosity are "crowded out" - good businessmen and businesswomen know the value of honour and generosity.

"...For quality of life, we have to rely on morals, not markets..."

This is very true.

"...But it is truer to say that the market economy is sustained by the stimulation of greed and envy through advertising..."

I wonder if it is useful to distinguish between capitalism and consumerism, and if it is useful to distinguish between "good" (buying organic, locally produced, low-CO2-profile vegetables) consumerism and "bad" (cigarettes) consumerism?

"...In a perfectly competitive market, with full information, models of the market show that all the factors of production receive rewards equal to their marginal products, ie all are paid what they are worth..."

As in the market, so in life. If everyone had "full information" we'd all be much happier. But because having "full information" is unfeasible it isn't useful to use this as a stick to beat capitalism with.

"...But no actually existing capitalist market system spontaneously generates justice in exchange..."

This is why liberal democracies have (democratically elected) representatives who control the state and who provide justice.

"...That is why the liberal theory of justice demands at a minimum equality of opportunity: the attempt - as far as is compatible with personal liberty - to eliminate all those differences in life chances arising from unequal starting points..."

Sorry, I should read down further before I comment. I agree completely.

"...Finally, the claim that everyone is - under ideal conditions - paid what they are worth is an economic, not a moral, valuation..."

Yes, I agree with this.

"...The simplest way of doing this is to restrict advertising. This would prune the role of greed and envy in the operation of markets, and create room for the flourishing of other motives..."

Governments do restrict advertising. "Re-moralising" wants is an interesting idea. But I don't see how "restricting" advertising accomplishes that.

Promoting morality is a difficult thing to do without being morally puritan and judgmental of other people's pleasures.

I would say that a good step would be to replace "RE" lessons in UK schools with "morality and ethics" lessons where students were taught about different moral and ethical structures and asked to consider moral and ethical problems.

Word of the Day: Agonism

Agonistic pluralism is the idea that we will never eliminate all the divisions and differences of opinion in society, and that it is unwise to try. It also means individuals can win and succeed, but not forever and not in everything. You can be President of the United States but not for more than eight years. You can build up a big corporation but not a monopoly.

Rather than try to destroy what are really irreducible differences of opinion; as liberalism, socialism, capitalism, and all the other political and economic ideologies attempt to do, agonism tries to find ways to accommodate disagreement and pluralism.

I stumbled across this concept today whilst reading Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder. This is a superb transhumanist, post-singularity, hard SF novel that deals with some interesting ideas about reality, democracy, and the future of humankind.

I strongly recommend everyone read this book. If you don't like it then I clearly do not have the same taste in literature as you do. Neither of us is right or wrong, so what does it matter?

Addendum: I know this doesn't affect irreducible differences, but there are some things that are considered (almost) universally bad and as such will still be considered bad in a agonistic situation.

del.icio.us and 6pli

I've applied the ubercool data visualisation tool 6pli to my del.icio.us account: it's pretty awesome, and give me a new appreciation for how my interests overlap and relate to each other.


The results can be viewed for yourself here.

Saul Bass

A while ago I commented on a trend in the design of movie and TV programme credits.

I noticed this style again in the opening credits of the sublime Mad Men.



A casual reference in The Independent informed me that this style was pioneered by someone called Saul Bass.



This sequence is inspired. Saul Bass is truly the Duke Ellington of graphic design.

This style must be retro at the moment.

Politics

There are three distinct meanings of the word "politics."

1. The process by which groups of people make decisions.
2. The study of the processes, conventions, power structures, rules, laws, ideologies, and schema involved in the making of decisions.
3. The interactions between people involved in the process of making decisions.
   

The difference between the first and third definition is nice, to the point that I can't be sure there really is a distinction.

I dislike "office politics" and I dislike the personality-based gossiping that passes for political commentary in many newspapers (ooh, get me! - but I actually think commentators should concentrate on policy, process, and personality in that order of importance rather than the other way round).

I am fascinated by ideology. I haven't really made any firm ideological political commitments yet. In the past I've tried to define what my political beliefs are, but I've decided to suspend this definition for the time being to concentrate on policy and problem solving.

Ubuntu Update

This is by way of being an update, rather than a full blown review.

There are many aspects of Ubuntu that I like and there are some I dislike. The ones I like are:

1. There is no need for tedious and memory-consuming virus scans.
2. When new hardware is plugged in Ubuntu waits for me to do something about it, instead of trying (and failing) to be helpful by providing Autorun features as Vista does.
3. Change is good. It's refreshing to use something other than Windows.
4. There seems to be much greater scope for personalisation than with Windows.
   

All these things said, for the average and casual user there isn't a great deal in any of this. Most of the above points are more to do with the general crapness of Windows rather than anything good about Linux/Ubuntu.

Things I don't like about Ubuntu:

1. After dual booting Ubuntu with Vista I can no longer disable my Synaptics touchpad.
2. Ubuntu does not include native support for DVDs or mp3 players. I know that this is a niggle and shouldn't be a big obstruction, but for the casual and lazy user (like myself) it is just irritating.
3. New things scare me.
   
4. Ubuntu defaults to being so like windows that there doesn't really seem to be much point.
   
5. I've been prodding the bash shell or whatever it's called and it's all very oldschool and cool but to be honest I don't want to have to learn a whole new language just to get my PC to work when a GUI would do. And yes, I know that I can do pretty much everything through the GUI but I'm lazy.

OK - my conclusion so far is that there really isn't much point to Linux. If it's ever going to go mainstream it will be through things like the Asus Eee, which Charles Stross comments on at length here.

I'm still having trouble understanding the ubiquity of Microsoft Office in business, when OpenOffice is free and does exactly the same thing (at least as far as 90% of corporate users are concerned).

I think when I buy a new PC or laptop the first thing I'll do is install Ubuntu and use it from day one. This way I will avoid falling into the habit of using Windows.

Who do They Think They're Kidding?

A while ago I commented on the peculiar way computer/web use is portrayed in advertising brochures for banks and universities and news websites.

I've found another one on the Java website!

Laptop-use in a forest!?

Outrageous!

Such free-thinking-ness is absurd!

What is this? xkcd land?

Because that would be really cool!

Rudy Rucker and the Singularity

To quote from Rucker's post:

"This is because there are no shortcuts for nature’s computations. Due to a property of the natural world that I call the “principle of natural unpredictability,” fully simulating a bunch of particles for a certain period of time requires a system using about the same number of particles for about the same length of time. Naturally occurring systems don’t allow for drastic shortcuts."

Rucker's argument is fair enough as far as it goes but the whole point of the statistical mechanics invented by Gibbs and Maxwell and Boltzmann is that once you have enough particles in a system you can make accurate statistical statements about that system.

So we have the gas laws, the laws of thermodynamics etc.

Another point worth making is that current developments in spintronics (computations using the "spin" of electrons) offer a layer of computation beneath that of atomic matter.

I concede that at some point "fudging" will have to take place, but as I pointed out before: statistical mechanics isn't really fudging. Diffusion can be accurately modelled without having to model every single damn particle.

Anyway my gut feeling is that if something like a singularity happens it will be much weirder than simply grinding up the Earth into nanomachines then running a simulated Earth on the nanomachines.

I mean c'mon, if you're a superhuman intelligence what's the first thing you're going to do? Create the perfect lay? Work out the formula for the perfect cup of tea (of course, according to Douglas Adams this is a much more difficult computational problem than most anything else...).

Neil Gershenfeld

I stumbled across this talk with MIT Bits and Atoms dude Neil Gershenfeld on Edge.org from way back in 2003.

I'm too exhausted to comment on it now. But I implore you, dear reader, take a few minutes out of your day and read what Prof Gershenfeld has to say.

I'll comment on this further later.

Information Overload

Hi, my name's Tom and I suffer from Information Overload.

Every day I open up my web browser. The browser currently contains tabs linked to slightly over 100 blogs, newspapers, magazines, and news sites.

On a typical day each of these sites will have a couple of articles worth reading, but call it one article for simplicities sake.

On average each of these articles is around 500 words long.

That's roughly 50 000 words every day.

At the moment I'm also reading Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder, and Java for Dummies by Barry Burd.

I have a box of books in my bedroom and another virtual boxload in my Amazon wish list.

I also have a 9:00 - 17:00 job.

Something needs to be done.

But what?

....

RSS feeds have never impressed me. Taking blogs, mulching them up and squeezing them into an email format doesn't appeal.

The challenge then is to find a service or piece of software that combines several blogs together without pissing me off.

I would first have to define exactly what I wanted. This is actually pretty hard.

If anyone has any ideas I'd appreciate them. I haven't thoroughly researched RSS feeds and similar services and if I'm missing something I'd appreciate being told about it.

Mania

Like most people I have a few neurotic manias.

One of them is the one where I compulsively switch off wall sockets that don't actually have an appliance plugged into them.

I'm trying to wean myself off this as there is no discernible benefit.

However there is also my inability to tolerate TV screens left on standby. This is fairly reasonable as that TV is consuming valuable 'leccy but not actually being used. The puritan in me also suspects that getting up and turning the box on reduces sloth.

So standby button are bad for the soul.

The hotel across the street recently had a new wall-mounted flat-screen TV installed.

The room is unoccupied now but I can see that little red dot floating in the darkness...

...taunting me...

It would be the work of moments to email the hotel requesting they replace the offending item with a TV not equipped with a standby button.

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

[some smart-arsed blogging title like "Maxed Out" or something...]

You remember that Max Gogarty thing a few weeks ago?

To summarise: some 19-year-old guy was planning on blogging his gap year experiences (P.S. I'm kind of technically on a gap year and I'm also 19 years old) through The Guardian.

Guardian Unlimited and CiF being what they are his first post (which was to a reasonable standard, certainly better than my own scrawlings) was soon inundated by sneering comments.

The usual hazing then turned into a flaming of thermonuclear proportions as it emerged that Max Gogarty was the son of The Guardian's travel writer Paul Gogarty.

I read Max's blog post after reading Andy Pietrasik's response at the time and my immediate response was anger directed not at Max himself, but rather at the troops of anonymous drones who spent their day writing venomous comments about the Gogartys, The Guardian, and how this was as foul a piece of nepotism as the world has seen since James Murdoch was appointed CEO of BSkyB (and I'm not just saying that 'cos I didn't get the job).

I even wrote a blog post about how annoying I find the majority of the commenters on CiF (which I didn't publish because I felt it lacked panache).

But now I've changed my mind. I've decided I find the majority of commentators in The Guardian more annoying than the idiots who comment on CiF.

There's something about the London-centric, hand-wringing, do-gooder, middle-class, Radio 4-listening-to, we-should-be-in-charge, Save the Polar Bears, Gordon's All Right Really, pompous, Oxbridge, media intelligencia that really sets my teeth on edge.

But what exactly is it that I find so irritating? I listen to Radio 4 and I like London and I think Gordon's all right really. So why do I find Polly Toynbee and George Monbiot and David Aaaaronovitch (or however many as he has in his damn name) so irritating?

Maybe my irritation stems from the fact that I feel I ought to be tribally loyal to these loudmouths in the face of the Richard Littlejohns and Melanie Phillipses of this world and my rejection of their values constitutes a heretical offense.

Maybe it's because, like all bloggers, deep-down I secretly long to be a London-based urbanite intellectual?

Or maybe it's because intelligent bloggers like Chris Applegate at qgwhlm whose views I respect and agree with also think this is damn nepotism and so do random but pretty good blogs that Applegate points to here like The Last Bus Home.

Although I broadly agree with Rafael Behr that this constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment targeting an innocent I also agree with CiF commenter oniongravy here. This storm in a nanocup does demonstrate one of the little faultlines in the UK today - that between those who live in London and write articles for quality newspapers (and most of the crap newspapers as well) and everyone else.

Britishness

Like most young people I'm used to being told that "things aren't as good as they used to be" or that the world's been going to Hell in a hajib since 1968.

Usually I dismiss this as fairly run-of-the-mill middle-aged-ness but occasionally I come across a genuinely thoughtful observation of how Britain has changed. This article at The Times by Minette Marrin doesn't actually contain any but it does discuss the effect of the belief that things ain't what they used to be has on people, specifically middle class (ugh) people.

I seem to have lost my thread....

OK: here it is again.

Britishness.

The state or the government, civil service, and public bodies in general are there to do their damn job and provide services effectively using tax appropriated from workers, companies, and tariffs.

The state is certainly not there to define moral values. The legislature obviously has to bear in mind commonly held moral beliefs and ethics but it has no place in defining them.

Judicial bodies have some say in the nature of morality and what constitutes legal behaviour but judges again have to bow to commonly held beliefs about what is right and wrong when they make their decisions.

The people who define what is right and wrong are the people. Individuals have to make choices in how they behave, and as it doesn't make any sense to discuss individuals without discussing society (the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was quoted out of context on that one) then larger groups, tribes, and communities have to be brought in to chew the fat and make relative judgments on morality.

The state, in the form of the executive government, bureaucracy, legislature and judiciary have a small role to play in this process but in a democratic state should bow to the will of the majority.

So any discussion of "Britishness" is useless (i.e. this blog is useless, but I mean any serious discussion of Britishness --- actually now I come to think of it taking the piss out of the debate is probably the only thing everyone has in common when it comes to discussing Britishness, so in a way I suppose taking the piss is British...).

Forcing an ethical structure on groups of people from outside or from the higher power of the state or church is counterproductive and generates resentment and conflict.

"Shared values" are exactly that. If everyone in Britain suddenly took a liking for wanking-cherub-style water-features then we would say that Britishness was about liking wanking-cherub-style water-features.

In other words, "Britishness" and the "shared values" of the British people are defined by the British people as they are now, not by Gordon Brown or Minette Marrin or Paul Dacre or any other politician or commentator.

Of course these people are fully entitled to express their opinion as to what Britishness ought to be, and I'm fully entitled to complain about their pomposity and presumption.

'Cos it's freedom of speech, innit?

Call Centre

I recently got a job at a call centre. Working there is not quite the drone-like existence portrayed by the minions in Terry Gilliam's brilliant movie Brazil (I know it's a different context/background/type of drone-ishness but I wanted to use this clip):



Also I won't get the opportunity to practice my Eric Cartman-esque sales technique (we're not allowed to swear at customers):

[Damn Viacom took down the video!]

Watching Felix Dennis

It seems that Dennis Publishing is setting up a new venture: Bash the Boss.

Currently I'm thinking in terms of a website that reviews companies by virtue of how good they are to work for.

Or it could be a little game where you score points for punching your boss in the face.

Whatever, I wish the good people at Dennis Publishing every success.

Opinions

Who you are affects what you see as important and what opinions you have.

Recently there has been a debate on the comments pages of the main newspapers concerning Gordon Brown's obsession with "Britishness" and our "shared values."

It occurs to me that for the men and women of letters who, unsurprisingly, occupy the op-eds, editorials, and comment pieces in the mainstream media what matters are words, descriptions, names, titles, laws, treaties, phrases, syntax, semantics, symbolism, narratives, stories, and speeches.

If electrical engineers had such a powerful channel of communication then they would undoubtedly place more importance on practicalities such as how the national grid is set up, electrical component efficiency, and all manner of other eeng topics.

That is not to say that they would only talk about these topics, just as some commentators (most notably the excellent Johann Hari) occasionally deign to discuss practical topics.

Businessmen will opine on business matters, scientists will opine on scientific matters, and bloggers will rant about anything that takes their fancy (and perhaps occasionally stumble across something worthwhile in a million-monkeys-on-a-million-typewriters sort of way).

My point is that different people will always have different perspectives, as well as different ulterior motives.

Britishness is not something I personally give a damn about. I appreciate the arguments as to why Britishness is considered important but I still feel that it is being seized on as important not because it actually is but rather because it lies within the intellectual comfort-zone of the sort of people who write in newspaper editorials.

[Meta-commentary: damn, this came out all wrong. I'm pretty exhausted on account of having just come back from a week-long training junket, more on that and my new job later... Also I'll discuss Ubuntu later as well...]

Ubuntu Linux

As of today I am officially an Ubuntu Linux user. So far everything works very well.



Hooray!

Your move, Mr Doctorow...

Review: The Meaning of the 21st Century by James Martin

The basic thesis of this excellent book is that the 21st century will be a transformative era in human history, the book is partly in response to Lord Martin Rees' Our Final Century.

Unlike Rees, Martin is optimistic about human-beings surviving the 21st century. Martin feels that although the challenges are huge and there will be the potential for catastrophic failure (in the form of the human race ceasing to exist or civilization simply collapsing) we will still be able to tread a path to a better world.

James Martin believes that the trends in economic, demographic, technological, and social change will lead humanity into a period of history that will seem like white-water rafting after centuries of relatively smooth sailing.

Advances in areas like computing, nanotechnology, high-bandwidth communications, low-CO2 emitting power generation, genetic engineering of foodstocks and human beings, transhumanism, biotechnology, direct brain-computer links, and human augmentation will cause tremendous change and offer great promise.

But while this is happening there are also huge problems to be dealt with in the form of environmental degradation, climate change, collapsing of world fish stocks, overpopulation, nuclear war, bio-war, terrorism, failed states and poverty stricken "fourth world" countries.

After this transitional period we can build an ever more wonderful and exciting civilization.

Martin has faith in the idea of technological ingenuity and entrepreneurism solving many of the problems we are faced with.

The book reads rather like a series of slide presentations cobbled together. It's enjoyable to read and doesn't tax the mind with high-falutin' concepts (the book is apparently based on a TV series).

But I feel in his haste to make everything explicable and easy to understand Martin has left out some of the innate complexity in what he suggests.

For example his suggestions as to how to solve the problem of the development of dangerous technologies (genetically engineering viruses; cheap, portable nuclear bombs) are based around the precautionary principle, an idea I'm not entirely comfortable with.

The precautionary principle is applied when scientists are concerned that a particular line of research will lead to the creation of an immensely dangerous weapon. They will make a decision to stop pursuing that line of research.

The most obvious example is a smallpox virus, modified so as to be resistant to any vaccines that exist

The problem is that science thrives when there is a back-and-forth of knowledge and information. The precautionary principle would threaten that. If scientists decide to "hold back" in acquiring and disseminating knowledge and discoveries then the scientific community could become balkanised and fractured.

More seriously, just because one group of researchers (or their financial backers) decide to obey the precautionary principle doesn't mean there will be others who would seek their own advantage in the inaction and withdrawal of their competitors.

It is also likely that such a group will carry out their research in secret, without the overview and transparency required when dealing with potentially dangerous areas of research.

Any weapons or dangers that do emerge would then be completely hidden from everyone else, making the developments even more threatening and dangerous.

And if these weapons were used then none of the reputable and precautionary-principle obeying researchers would have the knowledge required to counteract the problem.

Although I believe advancing technology will render our current concepts of privacy irrelevant Martin is too keen to advocate extending state-control in the pursuit of terrorists.

However the vast majority of what he says makes sense. He is in favour of pebble-bed nuclear reactors, he is in favour of reducing population by educating and liberating women. He wants to extend to poor countries all the benefits and advantages of prosperous liberal democracies.

The book positively vibrates with buzz-words. One of the better ones is "eco-affluence". This is the idea that we can live happy and prosperous and enriching lives without destroying the environment. "Eco-affluence" will soon be picked up by politicians and used to describe an ideal situation for humanity.

He also discusses the idea of the singularity and non-human-like intelligence. NHL intelligence is distinct from "traditional" conceptions of AI because it concerns evolutionary programs, programs that try vast numbers of possible solutions to problems and select from those that work, learning techniques, pattern recognition and data mining.

In fact it concentrates on what computers have potential for and leaves human minds to do the stuff we have potential for, in conjunction with our computer helpers.

In conclusion, this is a must-read for everyone, particularly if you need a basic primer on where we're going as a species, the challenges we are faced with, what the opportunities are, and what human civilization will look like 92 years from now.

Pre-U

News that a new exam - the "pre-U" will be introduced in 2010 has me wondering what has to be done about education.

Education is an area where the genetic, biological, or innate predispositions of individuals come into conflict with the liberal desire for equality.

I have difficulty with the idea of intelligence, but I understand that "IQ" does correlate with financial success and other measures of success to a certain degree.

The difficulty is that it is arguably in the benefit of the "collective", or of society, to reserve the best education for those that will benefit most from it.

On the other hand you have the ideal of "comprehensive" education. It is often argued in support of comprehensives that they allow for everyone to access high standards of education (ideally) and therefore everyone achieves highly, not just those at the top of IQ/innate ability tables.

Someone who favours the "bipartite" system of elite grammar schools and comprehensive schools existing side by side would point out that many comprehensives (mostly, I understand, in inner-city areas) do not have particularly high standards of education.

A proponent of comprehensive schools would point out that comprehensive schools cannot be truly comprehensive if there is an elite alternative in the form of grammar schools or private schools.

In addition there are many comprehensive schools that are surrounded by middle-class families with "sharp elbows" that have bought homes with the strategic purpose of getting their kids into a "good school." These are hardly comprehensive, as poorer families are excluded because they can't afford the houses in an area with good schools.

This issue is also mixed up with ideas of class that are too prevalent in the UK. In somewhere like Germany or Sweden a plumber can look a physician in the eye without all the terrible overtones of class and status that plague us here in the UK.

To get back to the issue of pre-university examinations. I don't know if they are a good idea or not.

That's it.

What - you wanted me to construct some elaborate for/against argument and then plumb down on one side or the other?

I don't know the answer.

Why is it so difficult for journalists, commentators and politicians to admit, just for once, that they don't know?

Systems of Thought

The way I tend to view the world is in the form of a hierarchy of systems.

• At the most basic level everything is composed of waves, particles, and the forces that cause them to interact. It is at this level that the much-vaunted “theory of everything” will work. Other rules that work on this level are quantum physics and thermodynamics. This level is often referred to as “physics.”
• At the next layer of complexity everything is composed of molecules that interact in various ways. This level is often referred to as “chemistry.”
• Above we find the interactions of discrete cells in biological systems to create everything from neurons to connective tissue; from ivory to limestone.
• The next level consists of the creations of the human mind. This is everything that exists by virtue of human beings manipulating the layers below. Tools, engineering, electrical devices and artificial artefacts all fall into this category. However not all of the things at this level are material: some are expressed as patterns of information in material. Things like language (both human and computer), philosophical concepts like truth, beauty, morality and law, systems of rules and interactions.
• Above this comes the interactions between minds and the creations of the human mind. Politics and economics come into play at this level. So does literature. The difference between this level and the previous level is vague. Should “law” be considered something we hold within our minds or is it something we have “created” and that is held externally?
• Above this level is the sum of human endeavour. This could be described as “culture.” It is what Kevin Kelly might term “the Technium.” It is our civilization. It is where the Singularity will happen.

Freeconomy

This is brilliant.

From the BBC website:

"A man has started a two-and-a-half year walk from Bristol to India without any money - to show his faith in humanity.

Equipped with only a few T-shirts, a bandage and spare sandals, former dotcom businessman Mark Boyle is set to cross Europe and the Middle East."

The ideas of the "freeconomy" sounds a lot like anarcho-socialism promulgated in Ken MacLeod's The Cassini Division and Charles Stross' Accelerando (also available as a download here).

These are brilliant books, but the fact that someone is willing to experiment with a real Manfred Macx lifestyle is excellent.

Later:

After having thought about this for a while I realise why I am a filthy capitalist and why what Mark Boyle is doing is admirable but ultimately less-than-optimal.

Human beings will always trade and exchange goods and services. All money does is create a communal illusion of the value of a piece of paper or plastic that allows transfer of goods and services to be more efficient.

As a reformed Catholic I am also tempted to point out that freeconomy falls foul of the general question: "what if everyone behaved like this?"

In other words, if everyone decided to up sticks and travel across Eurasia with nothing but a pair of sandals and a can full of B.O. then pretty soon civilization would collapse and millions would starve as a result.

This is why anarcho-communism/syndicalism/socialism doesn't stand a chance. As a very general rule co-operation tends to be of a self-interested nature.

The ethic of reciprocity works. There may be an evolutionary basis for morality. This is heavy stuff.

Anyway good luck to Mr Boyle. I imagine he will be treated as a sort of mendicant monk.

Theatrical Stuff this Week

On Monday and Tuesday this week I saw Shakespeare's Henry IV part 1 and part 2 at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.

I strongly advise everyone to see these excellent plays. I admit that when it comes to Shakespeare I find the language a little difficult, but when the acting is of such high quality understanding roughly what's going on is fairly easy.

Falstaff, played by the wonderful David Warner, was particularly entertaining.

I also suggest any readers who do visit Stratford patronise the Chaucer Head Bookshop, now the only independent second hand bookshop in Stratford.

On Friday I went to the Impro at Playbox theatre company, which was absolutely splendid.

Good Blogs Article

First up in my round up of decent blogs I've come across is some dude from Hungary. He recently read The Meaning if the 21st Century (like me) and has written a review (unlike me).

His blog, entitled Flow, can be found here.

Fellow Brit Lelly started to blog last year and her blog Mondo Bongo can be found here.

Then there's the Charles Stross. Anyone who reads this blog for any length of time will know that I hold Stross, his writings and his opinions in very high regard. Charlie's Place is here.

Like most people on the web I exist to do Cory Doctorow's bidding. Doctorow recently became a father (congrats!), and as a result his input into the venerable Boing! Boing! blog has diminished. Fortunately he recently recommended the excellent Jon Taplin (entrepreneur, commentator and general polymath).

Another science fiction writer Ken MacLeod deserves recognition for his excellent postings at The Early Days of a Better Nation.

From the geeky to the decidedly awesome (don't worry, it's a circular gauge) I advise you, the reader, to take in the wonder that is Girl with the One Track Mind by blogger Abby Lee.

Just go back to her earliest posting and read all the way through. Hers is an epic story of sex, feminism, evil old-media institutions, politics, sex, travel, experience, and insights into the human condition.

Some Indian guy I found who has resolved (like many people, including myself) to blog more often at Rants of a Survivor.

And to round off, Mark Frauenfelder (great name!) and an associate have created an online magazine called Dinosaurs and Robots. To view and download the magazine go to Boing! Boing! here and follow the link.

The First Post

I just discovered that the First Post, one of the better online news magazines is owned by Dennis Publishing, which is itself owned by none other than Felix Dennis!!

I'm fed up with blogging for today.

Privacy

I tend not to get excited about issues of freedom and privacy, partly because I prefer not to rock the boat and partly because I feel privacy as baby-boomers understand it will soon be rendered impossible by surveillance technology.

However state-sponsored coercion? If the state wants to coerce me by targeting "young people who may be applying for their first Driving Licence" then the least they could do is stop documents like this leaking out.


Attempts to be paternalistic and authoritarian are not welcome, but incompetence is just embarrassing.

Later:

I'm now about on page 2 of 7 of the "NIS Options Analysis Document" and came across this:

This is fairly creepy. Also -- my tax money is spent producing this soulless, poorly written, overly long, wasteful document?

The audacity!

[of course as an unemployed dropout I don't pay taxes, but that is completely irrelevant]

There are two basic objections to the whole principle of any kind of compulsory national identity register - the pragmatic and the principle.

1. Pragmatic: The system will leak. Biometric technologies are only as secure as the media on which they are stored. Biometric data like iris scans and fingerprints and DNA profiles are all reduced to ones and zeroes on the databases and CDs on which they're stored.

As recent news reports have shown these CDs can be lost in the post, stolen, or otherwise mislaid.

So the argument that biometrics is a fundamentally more secure way of securing data is a canard.

A quick search shows plenty of examples of how RFID-based biometric passports have been subverted in various ways and how fingerprint scanners can be duped.

So the result of all this will be that millions of pounds of taxpayer's money will be wasted, law-abiding citizens will still be the victim of identity theft and criminals and terrorists will continue with business as usual.

2. The presumption that the state will control the identity of citizens is wrong. The state is the servant of the people.

The state is a transient and convenient way of ordering our affairs and has no place demanding anything that doesn't make us safer or that doesn't prevent harm to the people.

Later:

What a godawfully boring document. I prefer megalomaniacal police-state power-trips to have some style. Maybe an evil logo as a letterhead or clinical euphemisms like "liquidate" would have been more appropriate.

Still, I think it would be a good idea to sign the NO2ID pledge.

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.

Sanity

Someone has finally written a sensible article on the whole "evil private equity guys are stealing our lunch money/less tax than a cleaner" story.

Polly Toynbee has been particularly irritating on this subject over the past few months.

Tim Worstall is making the very good point that the state shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water on capital gains tax and reduce our country's entrepreneurial spirit.

False Positives on Holocaust Memorial Day

My antisemitism meter keeps throwing up false positives.

Is it me, or is there something about the Jawas from the successful sci-fi epic Star Wars that resembles the more degenerate stereotypes of jewish people?

1. "Jawa" sounds a little bit like "jew"

2. The jawas wander around Tatooine selling wares

3. The jawas all end up murdered by Imperial Storm Troopers

It's probably that cultural cliches of this type are found scattered throughout literature, and part of the success of the Star Wars franchise was it's adoption of a lot of the old favourites of cinema and epic multi-generational drama.

Stylistic Zeitgeist

It's interesting how particular styles crop up at particular times. There's a very good discussion of trends in logo design here. I also think there are some similarities between the opening credits of The Hustle and the most recent James Bond movie Casino Royale. This "paper cutout" style is also used in the closing credits of The Incredibles:

Turbo-Capitalism

There is an interesting and not entirely pointless article by Jonathan Freedland over on CiF. The gist of it seems to be that the bankers, traders, banks, and moneymen who complained of state-intervention when times were good are now demanding support from the state in the form of stimulus packages.

This seems grossly unfair. From the article:

"If the market economy is looking peaky, then its accompanying free market ideology should be on life support. Behold the hypocrisy. The free marketeers have spent the past two decades preaching against the evils of state intervention, the dead hand of government, the need to roll back the frontiers, and so on. Yet what happens when these buccaneers of unfettered capitalism run into trouble? They go running to the nanny state they so deplore, sob into her lap and beg for help. The results of their own greed - "exuberance", they call it - and incompetence have caused more than 100 substantial banking crises over the past 30 years, yet time and again it is the reviled state which answers the call for help. Four times in this period, the authorities have had to rescue crucial parts of the US financial setup. If the banks make money, they get to keep it. The moment they look like losing it, we have to cough up. In Wolf's brilliant summary: "No industry has a comparable talent for privatising gains and socialising losses.""

This debate looks to fundamental questions of the place of the state and the market in the distribution of scarcity.

If a woman chooses to take up rock-climbing as a hobby then the state has no place to tell her she can't do it. However if she falls and breaks her leg whilst rock-climbing the state has no right to withhold state-funded paramedic care.

My concern is that it is all very well to complain of enormous disparities in income between the bottom and the top, but what do people intend to do about it? The answer is usually to raise the top-rate of income tax. But then what incentive do people have for aspiring to wealth in the first place?

To put it another way - would you, as a citizen of a state, rather take 40% of £100 000 in tax or 20% of £20 000? Rich people, for all that they piss off people with less money, are a positive thing in a society.

PS: the second comment in on that article someone called "tommydog" made a good point.

Excitement

My copy of Fleet of Worlds has just arrived! I suspect it will take me less than a few hours to read it.

Inequality

There is a fascinating article over at CiF about how the middle classes in the UK are now more concerned about equality because of the growth of a class of super-rich people immediately above them.

It is really rather disgusting to hear that physicians and architects are complaining about inequality but don't believe that their money should be redistributed to the poor (i.e. households earning less than £16 000 a year).

There is an interesting quotation, apparently from an Oxford study, that claims that the middle classes would only support a reduction of inequality as long as the middle class was expanding.

"There was a big expansion of the middle classes from the 60s to the 90s, but the academics warned it was a one-off event. From now on, any upward mobility would have to be matched by someone else's downward mobility."

From this you could deduce that civilization has become a zero-sum game. Those who benefit from the growth of the economy are only those in the top strata of society, and anyone who gains does so at the expense of someone else.

I've always suspected that Labour was using stealth tactics to redistribute wealth (the EMA, tax credits etc) without telling the middle classes, who would have to supply the money. Labour can keep Daily Mail readers happy by being authoritarian and pro-"British" and funnel cash to poor children and families.

I don't know if we're entering a new gilded age or if there will be some market crash that sees a swing in moral authority away from the rich towards "aspirant" middle class people, such as happened after 1929.

Whither Carnot Efficiency?

An interesting story about a new method of generating solar power from the inventor of the super-soaker. The article claims efficiencies of 60 % are possible.

As some of the comments point out this idea might not be feasible. The Carnot efficiency of a heat engine is given by:

efficiency = 1-(T COLD/T HOT)

(with absolute temperatures used)

The article suggests temperatures as high as 600 degrees centigrade. So (assuming T COLD is room temperature):

1 - ((273+25)/(600+273)) = 0.66.

Giving a theoretical efficiency of 66%.

Of course it's possible there is some error in my understanding of the article and/or theory.

However the endoreversible process is a slightly more accurate method of measuring the efficiency of a heat engine (at least according to the Wikipedia article), which is given by:

efficiency = 1 - (T COLD/T HOT)^0.5.

So:

efficiency = 1 - ((273+25)/(600+273))^0.5 = 0.41

Giving a theoretical efficiency of 41%, rather less than as advertised.

Nuclear Power Endorsement

There are a number of irritating conceits and half-truths in this Nuclear Power Briefing by Greenpeace on the government's decision to endorse the manufacture of new nuclear power plants.

Comments like this, from the Greenpeace Nuclear Power Briefing:

"“We need baseload, and renewables can’t supply that.”

We also need what’s known as baseload – guaranteed electricity to meet
constant demand - and Britain can generate it with low-carbon technologies like
CHP [Combined Heat and Power] and some renewable technologies like tidal, biomass, biogas and hydro.
More efficient use of fossil fuels also has a part to play."

They don't seem to offer any evidence to support this assertion. Tidal projects are very admirable but there aren't many places that lend themselves to use in the this way. The Severn Barrage is one example, but I don't know if tidal and biomass methods can account for a large fraction of our electricity consumption, yet alone a large fraction of our energy consumption.

Is it not also possible that we could use different designs of nuclear power plant, like the Chinese or South African pebble bed reactors? These address the safety concerns and concerns about productions of weapon grade enriched uranium. Because the Chinese models are intended to be "mass produced" and don't require elaborate safety measures they could also be much cheaper than conventional nuclear reactors.

Surely the solution to the problem is to increase efficiency, increase the proportion of our energy sources that are renewable and low in carbon dioxide emissions? Nuclear power helps fulfill the latter of these points.

Greenpeace seem uninterested in providing figures to support their arguments. I'd like realistic estimates of how much of our energy needs could be met by low CO2 emission renewables and how much our energy needs could be reduced before I dismiss nuclear power.

More from the Briefing:

"“If we don’t go for nuclear we’ll be dependent for gas on unstable regimes
like Putin’s.”

The real threat to our energy security is interruptions to our oil supply. However,
essentially all of Britain’s oil is used for transport and cannot be replaced by
nuclear electricity.

Much has been made of the threat of becoming over-dependent on imported gas,
particularly from Russia. Unfortunately, half of our gas is used directly for
domestic space and water heating and cannot be replaced by electricity.
More is used for industrial processes, leaving under a third that is used for
electricity generation.

Much of that third is used to generate electricity at peak
times because gas turbines can be easily switched on and off to meet short term
spikes in demand. Nuclear power stations must be run continuously. This
considerably limits the role nuclear electricity can play in reducing our
dependence on gas, from wherever it is imported."

OK. So wouldn't it make more sense if our cars and buses and trains didn't run off oil? The stuff is going to be running out soon anyway, and we have an opportunity to get in on the ground floor with hydrogen or cell-powered cars.

Shouldn't our intention be to reduce carbon dioxide emissions? Nuclear power stations could be set up to provide electricity at peak times and spend the rest of their time producing hydrogen via electrolysis that could be used to power transport infrastructure.

As to the problem of heating homes - surely we can come up with some solutions based on electricity and greater efficiency? Combined heat and power has a lot of potential in this area.

We're going to have to switch from an oil-based transport infrastructure to an alternative at some point.

"“We can have nuclear AND renewables.”
In reality going nuclear would squeeze out renewables. Indeed, then Secretary of
State for Business Patricia Hewitt said in Commons debate on 2003 Energy
White Paper:

“It would have been foolish to announce …. that we would embark
on a new generation of nuclear power stations because that would have
guaranteed that we would not make the necessary investment and effort in both
energy efficiency and in renewables.”

Since then nothing has changed."

Huh? We're saving the world here. Can't we ditch Trident and pay for both? Again Greenpeace gives no figures and does not give any concrete evidence that we couldn't or wouldn't pay for development of both renewable and nuclear power.

I find myself in a situation where I don't know whether to believe the government or the greens. This is frustrating and counterproductive.

Coming Up...

Questions: "Are some cultures inherently superior to others?" "Is there a God and should I give a crap?" "What mobile phone will I buy?" "Will anyone read this blog?" "Will I pass my January exams?" "Why can't I get a girlfriend?" "Who will win the presidency of the USofA?" and "Are all these questions connected?"

Lists: "My to-read list for 2008." "Books I have read."

Analysis: "Discussions surrounding the World Question Centre [What have I changed my mind about?]."

Design and Writing

I disagree with nearly everything Jeremy Clarkson says, but I agree with him that there is some indefinable essence that certain items are imbued with. Good design.

Good design transcends the value it gives by way of looks and usability and becomes a joy - something to treasure and value simply because it exists. Human ingenuity overcoming the mindless perversity of the universe and converting matter into something that does something well.

Things like the iPhone, and the Nokia 6310i.

Similarly some people write so well that what they write is good simply because of the way the words are arranged and which words are used. Stephen Fry and Terry Pratchett spring to mind. (incidentally I've never been more affected by the news that someone I don't know was ill than when I read that Mr Pratchett had Alzheimer's - the content of his books speaks of a very pleasant and very wise person, it is very sad that he will be robbed of something he and so many other people enjoy so much).

Good design is to be celebrated as much as good writing. It doesn't provoke wonder so much as joy that we can make this difference and do this thing so well.

Watch this Space...

At some time in the future I'll be writing a review of The Meaning of the 21st Century by James Martin.

In it he mentions "the tragedy of the commons" and how companies should factor in the cost to society and cost to the environment of their activities, as well as more familiar expenditures.

These ideas are similar to those explored by Genichi Taguchi in the eponymous Taguchi method of industrial design.

Just thinking aloud. Read and prosper.

Slightly later: LARRY NIVEN'S WRITTEN A NEW KNOWN SPACE BOOK! Thanks.

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!

Technology

I was in the Manchester Museum recently (it is rather good), and I saw a rather splendid display of bows and arrows. These were in many different styles and from many different cultures. There were little interactive displays that told you how the bows were made. An awful lot of effort and craft goes into what I had always assumed was a simple piece of wood.

Thinking about this as I struggled to operate my rapidly aging Sony Ericsson K750i it occurred to me that nowadays that level of development is rarely reached. Innovation and evolution happen so quickly that there is no point in refining a particular device. Hence mobile phones and mp3 players are rather unpleasant and tacky. Good design does crop up occasionally but the general rate of development is such that avenues of design are left unexplored and concepts are left incomplete.

Putting aside speculative discussion of a spike or singularity in the near future I sometimes wonder what “technology” and devices will really be like in, say, a thousand years time. What will human beings look like and how will they move around? In what manner will they reach orbit? Will they even bother?

In the realm of the state change seems constant and always disruptive. The pointless and dangerous desire to collate and store information is partly simply due to the technology being available to do it. This leads to accidents.

I feel privileged to live in this time of change but I do sometimes wonder if humanity will ever achieve an equilibrium with its environment. 99% of human history consists of people living in hunter-gatherer style societies. The current "singularity" we're living through will presumably result in either out destruction or in some new equilibrium. I wonder what it will look like.

An Observation

Why is it that marketeers seem to think that people really use their laptops in grassy parks?

In every university prospectus on the "online" page there will be a picture of an attractive student sitting in a park using an Apple MacBook Pro.

For some reason these people also frequently barefoot.

Why would anyone be using the web in the middle of a public park without any shoes?

Objections:

1. You'd get mugged.
2. Students that can afford MacBook Pros can also afford appropriate footwear.
3. Most grassy parks are not the sort of places you want to walk about barefoot in.
   

American Gangster

I went to see American Gangster. It was rather good. I made the – not original – observation that the only ethnic group not heavily represented in organised crime in the USA are the WASPs. This is because they got in early and legalised all their rackets. Hence instead of drug smuggling, gun running and racketeering you have General Tobacco, Boeing and the World Bank.

Happy Birthday Arthur C Clarke

Happy birthday Arthur C Clarke!

Stephen Fry

Every so often I come across some piece of writing, drawing, idea, or scientific theory that is so goddamn good that it depresses me that I will probably never be able to create something half as good.

I've been re-watching the first season of The West Wing recently. I've also been attempting The Guardian cryptic crossword. I've also been catching up on Stephen Fry's blog. All these things are wonderful. Two of them are guaranteed to make you feel warm and fuzzy and smart. The crossword is a bit of a downer until you get a word and then you feel on top of the world.

Fry's blog is actually "a joy to read." The simple act of reading it makes you happy. I've been linklogging everything he's written because it is of such superlative quality.

This blessay is especially brilliant: Fry summarises the positions of the three broad attitudes towards global warming and why (in game theory terms, considering what it is at stake...) it is most correct to adopt an attitude that holds that CO2 emission should be reduced.

A Problem...

I just thought of something: when you say "Christian" or "Catholic" or "Muslim" you immediately think of someone who has adopted a particular set of ideas and beliefs. These beliefs will generally include:

1. A belief in God, and a belief in some kind of personal relationship with God
2. A belief that the world is the way it is because of God's will
3. A particular moral code and lifestyle

When you say "atheist" the first two are essentially the opposite:

1. There is no God
2. The world is the way it is for reasons other than God or the supernatural

Number 3. is absent. There is no immediate identification with any kind of moral or ethical code in atheism.

I appreciate that Dawkins, Hitchens et al are approaching the problem from the front end - attempting to persuade those who have settled into lazy agnosticism to actually express their atheism openly.

Morality is ultimately a creation of people - not God - and as such atheists should be clear that whilst they reject God, irrationality, and the power structures these things support they are in fact advocating morality more strongly than religionists.

Atheists strip away the fretwork and tinsel of religious ceremony and expose the uncomfortable truths that we are all profoundly alone (in the sense that there is no omnipotent divine being) and our only comfort is in each other and as such we should support and respect each other as best we can.

Atheists should be clear that morality is everything. There is no cosmic scorecard, only the people who surround us, how they judge us and how we judge ourselves.

The Hydrogen Hoax

In Robert Zubrin's latest book Energy Victory he argues that liberal, wealthy countries should wean themselves off oil as a prime mover because OPEC and most specifically the House of Saud funds Muslim terrorism and radicalises moderate Muslims.

The money to fund this radicalism comes from oil revenues that come from us in Europe, North America, and Asia. This money is then used to radicalise the Muslims amongst us.

Also, because OPEC sets the price of oil over what the free market would set it at, OPEC prevents developing countries from accessing the cheap energy they need to develop.

A line quoted in this article on Zubrin's book at The Register concerns the "hydrogen economy" - something I've always felt was a canard:

"It’s all pure bunk. To get serious about energy policy, America needs to abandon, once and for all, the false promise of the hydrogen age... Hydrogen, therefore, is not a source of energy. It simply is a carrier of energy... an extremely poor one."

It's nice to have my own opinions vindicated by people who know what they're talking about.

Datagate

I initially felt more contemptuous of the media than of the government following the loss of those data disks. Rationally I realised the seriousness of the problem, but after I checked my bank balance and it became clear that there has been no widespread identity theft I realised that the media has been turning this into a story of government incompetence when it is really a matter of state incompetence generally.

So some fool messed up somewhere. This sort of thing happens all the time in big organisations.

[And why is Alastair Darling being criticised over Northern Rock? He couldn't nationalise it earlier and he made the right choice in securing people's savings. The fact that it will now cost the electorate is irrelevant. This is why I could never be an elected politician: I despise the electorate. All those whiny, self-involved bloggers and commentators with their precious and ill-concieved opinions. Ugh. (And yes, I am referring to myself as well as everyone else...)]

When will people learn that the government has a very small ability to actually affect people's lives and that this is something we should be thankful for? The state has a much greater direct impact on our lives and the state will always be big and monolithic and dysfunctional (even when it's trying to be hip and efficient by outsourcing non-core tasks to the public sector).

"Datagate" just goes to show that the state should stick to its core tasks of welfare, healthcare, defence, justice, and money supply. Trying to analyse and micromanage every aspect of the lives of every citizen only leads to a greater possibility of these sorts of mistakes happening.

Also: why isn't Gordon Brown concentrating on his vision of equality of opportunity for everyone? Why isn't he pushing this forward at every opportunity and making it clear to everyone that this is what he stands for?

Unavoidable errors can be forgiven if politicians can provide a moral story and justification for their continued stay in power. I don't particularly object to the state losing the data disks as no harm was done and as long as they ensure it won't happen again.

However the lack of an inspirational narrative from Gordon Brown on the environment, equality of opportunity and social cohesion means that all that will ever stand out about this government will be its mistakes and blunders.

George Monbiot

Global warming is a problem that needs solving. Polly Toynbee's fellow Guardian columnist George Monbiot is infuriatingly demanding when it comes to carbon dioxide emissions.

"A 90% emissions cut by 2030" is one of Monbiot's stated goals. Although this is technically feasible, it almost certainly won't happen.

The problem is energy. If you list, as Richard E. Smalley does in his Terawatt Challenge, the biggest issues facing humanity over the next 100 years you would probably get something like this:

1. Energy
2. Water
3. Food
4. Environment
5. Poverty
6. Terrorism and war
7. Disease
8. Education
9. Democracy
10. Population

A moment's consideration reveals that energy is fundamental to all of the problems after energy, with the possible exception of terrorism, war, and democracy - but there is no denying that the politics of energy have an enormous effect on war and terrorism. With enough energy you can accomplish anything.

As of this moment there is a vast chunk of humanity (>4 billion) with access to considerably less energy than I do. This is unfair, of course, and in order to promote increased living standards we need to find energy for all the people who don't have enough.

Monbiot's argument in Heat is that we in the UK are currently using "too much" energy. This is inaccurate. We are using precisely the amount of energy we choose to consume. We are however emitting too much carbon dioxide.

In order to stop the twin catastrophes of global warming and global poverty we need more energy and less CO2 emissions. This will be difficult and will require many of the solutions already suggested: increased efficiency, nuclear power, sequestration, and lifestyle alterations.

Finkelstein

For several months now I have been trying to put my finger on exactly what about Polly Toynbee's attitude towards high-pay for bankers and CEOs I find so distasteful.

Her argument is that it is morally incorrect for footballers, directors, and bankers to be paid quantities of money so much greater than other people, whilst these "other people" include many who experience poverty.

Daniel Finkelstein wrote in a recent article:

"...what all these people have missed is that wages are not a statement about status or a measurement of moral worth. They are a price for a service..."

He makes the point that if you personally disapprove of how much someone is paid then you do not pay for their services.

In the case of footballers' salaries you do this by not purchasing Sky, watching ITV, attending matches or buying club merchandise.

In other words the market, through the invisible hands of supply and demand, will decide the salary of each person based on the demand for the services that person can provide.

Toynbee would rejoin that markets are prone to failures and that the massive bonuses for company directors are an example of this. The directors can influence how large their salaries are and each year the amounts paid increase, as the directors decide they'd like more and more money for their troubles.

In the case of large public companies shareholders would presumably take action against any directors that paid themselves too much. It is the shareholder's prerogative to ensure the director is providing a good service for a fair price.

I prefer the materialistic logic behind Finkelstein's argument to the self-righteous moralising behind Toynbee's.

The problem with Toynbee's arguments is that her methods and goals always seem to require greater state-intervention. I don't believe "the free market" is any better than the state at deciding who gets paid what, but I respect the point that things are the way they are because our current system sort-of-works.

And our economy is still growing and the world is becoming a more pleasant place to live.

A Bit of Fry and Hari

Today my topic is one of problems. Problems are often defined as particular questions or sets of options. In the case of immigration the problem is usually phrased:

"How can we reduce or control immigration so that it becomes a positive force within our society rather than a negative force?"

And, as always, the way the problem is phrased begs the question: "Is immigration a negative force right now?"

Blurgh.

I don't really care about immigration. It's a Daily Mail issue and has been parsed entirely in terms of being something negative, despite the obvious fact that with an aging population it is entirely necessary that we import cheap, youthful labour to care for our elderly.

Many of the great debates in life, the universe and everything devolve to questions that are misapplied. When I say I don't care about debating about God or poetry or global warming or the the ethics of scientific research (empiricism and the scientific method in the real sense of the concept is/should be gloriously free of these considerations, that it clearly isn't is regrettable) I don't mean I don't care. I mean I don't care about the issue as it is usually expressed because I feel it has been misrepresented.

Take transhumanism and the closely related issue of AI. Putting aside the vast technical and scientific barriers to both, the debate is often put in terms of "should we pursue this line of research?" This is a ridiculously stupid question to ask. The appropriate response is:

We are already pursuing this research in a form you don't yet recognise as transhumanist research and AI research.

Even more succinctly, and with regard to transhumanism you could say:

We are already transhumans and could well be considered posthumans.

Consider: prior to the industrial revolution humans were essentially bright apes and they (or other organisms) provided the majority of the energy required to run civilization. We are approaching a period in human development where manual labour might well become obsolete. The key lies in the control mechanisms.

It is still massively cheaper to employ Chinese humans to make most things than to develop and manufacture a robot capable of doing the same job.

Similarly with construction: the problem here requires a robot capable of navigating a building site, following vague instructions, applying "common sense" to problems, drinking tea and reading The Sun: all of which are as yet beyond the capabilities of even the most complex (or simple-minded, in the latter case) non-biological machines.

The point is that I wear glasses and wear clothes and take drugs and read books and use a pocket calculator and function much better, and am much happier, than I would be if I did not do these things.

Scientists of many different disciplines have made it their business to model parts of the human brain and the neural structures of other animals and have been doing so for decades.

Meanwhile genetic engineering continues apace. If you're smart enough to identify the red lines that mark any particular area of research as being dangerous then you're probably smart enough to cope with the outcomes. If you can't identify the red lines then we're probably fucked anyway.

Fukyama's argument boils down to the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle is flawed for all the reasons discussed by Ray Kurzweil in The Singularity is Near, so I won't bother going into it.

Johann Hari's recent article touches on a subject dear to my heart: transhumanism. As a devoted absorber of the teachings of More, Kurzweil, et al, I am always happy to see reference to this interesting ideology in the national press.

(...as an aside, and due to the purchase of T-shirts and prints by myself and many others the sublime Dresden Codak is to be published weekly!)

Apart from a reference in New Scientist a few years ago and a few "eccentric American" stories in The Guardian and other newspapers this is the first serious reference to transhumanism I've seen in the Dead Tree Press. Doubtless more will emerge over time and it will begin to gain credence (or at least name-recognition, which is all you seem to need these days c.f. Boris Johnson) amongst the general populace.

Hari also makes an excellent point regarding the criticism of transhumanism by Francis Fukyama. The debate has been warped to fit the extremes. Either we ban all research that might lead to the creation of a separate posthuman species or we actively pursue such research to the end of creating such a species.

As Hari points out, bickering over creating new species of human is pointless and stupid. Evolution only seems static to us because it works on such a long timescale (but not unthinkably long - only about 40 000 years separate us from prehuman hominids).

I think, like Hari, it is much more sensible to concentrate on the possibilities to create smarter, faster, stronger, healthier, more long-lived people.

The Gattaca issue, that maybe one day humanity might be divided between haves and have-nots, between the rich and the poor, between the upgraded and the legacy, between the Eloi and the Morlocks is also silly.

Human beings have always suffered inequality of health and ability due to inequality of wealth. The key to liberal democracy lies in all individuals being equal under the law (the problem of defining individals, particularly with regard to posthumans, is an issue for another day).

The issue for transhumanism is how to provide people with better lives and greater powers of self-expression and more opportunity for happiness. The issue is not the creation of a new species, although this might be a means to the end of creating more opportunity for happiness.

As always the problem is not as it is phrased, it is something altogether different. In the case of Stephen Fry's recent blog posting (which The Guardian has taken on as a series of articles) the issue as it is often phrased is "do you prefer looks/form to functionality?" in the context of consumer electronics.

Of course, as Fry points out, when it comes to a device you use every day form is very much tied up with functionality. For me beauty in consumer electronics stems from design, and design is also a key component of usability and hence functionality.

If a house is a "machine for living in" then that house should look aesthetically pleasing or it is not fulfilling it's function.

Anyone who claims that those who reject the existence of God are "close minded" is treading on thin ice. The debate should be not be: "does God exist?" The debate should be: "how did the universe begin?"

There are, I assert, ways of finding out if God exists. If God exists then presumably those who pray to God for help will achieve statistically higher in their endeavours than those who don't pray.

If there was a correlation between frequency of prayer ("faith" is difficult to measure) and say, salary, then you could begin to build a hypothesis for the existence of something that could be called God.

I'd be interested to see if any such research has been done and what the result was. I suspect as I am not aware of any such research then the results (if any) did not suggest God exists, as I'm certain the various Churches would be trumpeting it to the heavens.

Of course prayer is there as a comforter. I, as a secular humanist, choose to reject it as a piece of mental transhumanism that is not self-contained enough to be safe.

Faith in God or manifest destiny is too powerful and dangerous. Singularitarianism and transhumanism is as open to corruption as any ideology but, like liberalism, the fundamental precepts of the transhumanist meme are overwhelmingly positive.

Any corruption of liberalism would cease to be usefully described as such. So with transhumanism. Then it devolves to word games and Orwellian propaganda.

I feel it is much better to form a core of easily expressible beliefs and live by them. In the case of humanism this is all there is and I am alone.

This sucks. I'd like to do something to make this last longer and something to make me less lonely.

So transhumanism is the next logical step after humanism.

del.ici.ous

Since indulging in the web 2.0 goodness of del.ici.ous I have had less cause to blog. Suffice to say that little has caught my fancy recently.

My first six weeks at university (of Manchester) have been enjoyable and uneventful. I'm back home for reading week and have another four weeks at uni after this before Christmas.

Life is good.