Jim Baen's Universe

What's New in The Future And You

Columns

April 2009

Written by Stephen Euin Cobb

Asking Jerry Pournelle to be Guest of Honor for DeepSouthCon in 2010; interviewing Peter S. Beagle for Space and Time Magazine; being granted press credentials for WorldFuture 2009 in Chicago (a convention for professional futurists), writing articles for H+ Magazine; and being recruited to write a column for Grim Couture—a new publication inside Second Life. I’ve been a busy little bee.

Doctor Pournelle accepting the GoH position was, by far, the biggest honor. (When I’d interviewed him a few weeks earlier, he’d mentioned his battle with a brain tumor, described the annoyances of his radiation treatment, and reported that he is now cancer-free.)

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Recent Guests

Kim Stanley Robinson is author of Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars; as well as Fifty Degrees Below, Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and most recently, Sixty Days and Counting. He has won the Hugo, the Nebula, the Asimov, the John W. Campbell, the Locus, and the World Fantasy Awards. He has a PhD in English, and his doctoral thesis was titled The Novels of Philip K. Dick.

David Drake is the author of over 60 novels of science fiction and fantasy including his Hammer's Slammers series of military SF and his Lord of the Isles series of fantasy. He is a veteran of Viet Nam and a former lawyer. For relaxation he translates books in Latin from the Roman Empire into English.

Jerry Pournelle (author, journalist, columnist, essayist, blogger, political advisor) and co-author (with Larry Niven) of The Mote in God's Eye, Lucifer’s Hammer and Footfall.

Stefano Vaj is an author, futurist, public speaker, and transhumanism activist, as well as author of the book Biopolitics of the New Paradigm (which covers the biotechnological areas of transhumanism). He is also on the Board of Directors of the Italian Transhumanist Association, and a lawyer with offices in Milan, Italy and Brussels, Belgium.

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News Items Mentioned in the Show

() The Spring 2009 issue of H+ Magazine is available. H+ magazine is dedicated to an intelligent and informed exploration of the future, especially as relates to transhumanism and the singularity. This issue contains more than two dozen articles about the future, one entitled Singularity 101 which is an interview with Vernor Vinge (the mathematician who first suggested the idea of the Singularity in 1993, and who has been a guest on The Future and You (in the April 8, 2006 and May 1, 2006 episodes).

() The Singularity University, a new institution dedicated specifically to teaching about the technological singularity, was announced on February 3, 2009. It will be housed at NASA's Ames base in California and will begin classes this summer. It is the brainchild of Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis, and has the backing of NASA and Google.

() As many as 50 planets like the Earth are expected to be discovered during the next three years. They will be discovered by the Kepler orbiting telescope, which will begin its search about 60 days after NASA launches it on March 5, 2009. As a side result it will also locate many thousands, or even tens of thousands, of planets not like the earth.

() Google has made one million public domain books freely available for reading on iPhones.

() Google's new Latitude lets you see the location of your friends on Google maps using the GPS in their cell phone, and lets you immediately contact them with IM, SMS or a phone call.

() Kim Stanley Robinson described his reaction to being chosen as Guest of Honor for the 2010 World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne Australia. He also described the benefits and challenges of his January 17, 2009 personal appearance in Second Life.

() A CNN graphic depicted the Earth rotating backward. In a March 13, 2009 report on the orbiting space junk which prompted the International Space Station to evacuate all personnel into their reentry vehicles as a safety precaution, CNN displayed a three dimensional graphic depicting the earth, the recently created lanes of debris from a pair of impacting satellites, and the vast cloud of space junk surrounding Earth which has accumulated over many decades. In this graphic, the Earth was rotating backward and all orbiting objects orbited in the wrong direction. This sad and somewhat pathetic oversight may or may not be a direct result of CNN’s layoff, three months ago, of its entire Science and Technology reporting team. That layoff included their Senior Science Reporter Miles O'Brian. At this rate, in another three months, they may be depicting the Earth as the center of the universe with the sun and planets and stars orbiting it. CNN has yet to address the rumors generated by their layoff that they believe science has completed its mission and will never again have anything new for them to report.

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Recent Topics

Earth's current population may be the result of an “Oil Bubble,” and may be unsustainable after we run out of oil.

A fundamental problem with today's space suits.

How the fall of the Soviet Union was an engineered event, planned decades in advance, which worked exactly as planned (and specifically what that plan was).

The Catholic Church’s power in public and political life in Europe, and as the main opposition to transhumanism.

H+ Magazine (a new transhumanist periodical).

Why Europeans do not share the American view that intellectuals are outside the loop in their ivory towers and are therefore unimportant.

Singularity University (a new institution which will teach about the Singularity).

The powerful political and religious forces that are trying to prevent Life Extension.

Why transhumanism is taken seriously by the Italian public and the Italian press (as opposed to the American public and American press which often view transhumanism as a delusional fantasy).

How politicians in Europe use fear of transhumanist ideas as a tool to get more votes.

How to turn Grand Coulee Dam into a space-based weapon of immense power and very nearly global reach. A weapon so powerful that only one would be needed in a war.

The future of human longevity, and the political forces needed to bring it to fruition.

The health of transhumanist movement worldwide.

The desirability of increasing human longevity as much as possible, even if that means centuries, and even if it throws a monkey wrench into population control.

Why some people may be disappointed concerning the relationship they have with their robots in the future, since they will watch their machine for some glimmer of personality or recognition but will not find it.

How increasing longevity is equivalent to decreasing human suffering.

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.”

Astronaut: Buzz Aldrin.

Authors of SF&F: Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Greg Bear, Jim Baen, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson and Dean Ing.

Generals: Patton and MacArthur.

Classical Authors: Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Johnson and his biographer James Boswell.

As well as: Project Gutenberg, military theory, teacher's unions, NASA, the Survivalist Movement, and Soldier of Fortune Magazine.

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