While I may have been critical of his less-than-realistic economic principles found in “Accelerando,” sci-fi author Charles Stross has written a couple of interesting essays which I find myself partial to.
At the beginning of the year Stross suggested that no matter how you spin “global warming,” nerds will figure out and implement the solution for it.
In some ways, Stross touches on the same wavelength enunciated by Ethernet pioneer, Bob Metcalfe. In a recent speech at an energy symposium over in Boston, Metcalfe believed the two sides of the issue are not alarmist versus denier, but rather alarmist/denier versus techies. And I would agree.
I am not entirely worried either way simply because I believe that nerds will triumph once more. And I rationalize this non-traditional mindset with the same prescriptions Metcalfe suggested: free-markets that will foster innovations and inventions faster and more effectively than any bureaucratized top-down approach mandated by the State.
And while Stross does not specifically advocate free-markets, he does not think government regulations or tampering will amount to nothing more than additional headaches.
One remedy he advocates is using bigger jumbo-jets to transport goods and peoples, because they are much more efficient than either commuter flights and sea-going passenger vessels.
Oddly enough, today Airbus held a press conference in which it stated that their new jumbo jet (the A380) will save the earth, because it is essentially more efficient and less polluting than alternative solutions.
So ignoring climate changes wrought by cow flatulence, lack of private property, 5-day forecasts gone awry, or even politics, I think that just as Silicon Valley continues to reshape the medical industry (for the better), so too could a gaggle of geeks successfully descend upon this conundrum.
Up and atom
In his most recent essay, Stross details a realistic look at human spaceflight (as found in literature, movies, etc.). After meticulous research and using spot-on assumptions, his findings are quite grim (i.e., it is a waste of bling).
And he is hardly alone.
Back in 2002, I came away from my senior seminar (”History of the NASA”) with a similar conclusion: that it is unnecessary to spend the resources to send humans into space when unmanned, autonomous robots can carry out the same tasks.
It is a fruitless endeavor that is perhaps best punctuated (once again) by the $100 billion money pit known as the ISS. Its sole long-term contribution is that it gives medical doctors a controlled clinical study on bone loss due to a “microgravity” environment.
And based on this timeless quote, Stross and I are in good company:
Some of NASA’s critics say closing down the space station’s science program wouldn’t be such a bad thing. “There is no meaningful research on the ISS to shut down,” said University of Maryland physicist Robert Park.
Perhaps this discussion will lead to a grassroots endeavor to develop self-replicating von Neumann probes. After all, unless you want to spend 10 billion years to survey a mere 4% of the galaxy, what safer and cheaper method is there to trudge through the cosmos? It worked for Vader…