You Can't Make Mistakes.

This piece appears in this month’s issues of Erudition. You can find it here: http://www.eruditiononline.co.uk/article.php?id=909

When I was invited to write a piece about the future of technology, I assumed that I was being asked to predict which gadgetry we would have next year, how medical science will progress, and the new and terrifying surveillance methods our governments will employ. So, here are those predictions:

You will have more and smaller (and sometimes bigger) gadgets. They will thrill and delight you. Then you will tire of them and throw them away and buy different gadgets. Apple® will love you. Your smartphone will begin—if it already hasn’t begun—to be a little creepy. It will, of its own (programmed) volition, gather data about your friends and contacts in such a way that every time you pull someone up in your contacts list, you will be presented with more information than the last time you looked them up.* Medical science will find increasingly bizarre ways to not cure cancer, but to look at cancer. Cattle and chickens will be replaced by grasshoppers and ants as sources of protein as the human population outgrows its ability to produce food supply. Your government will place tiny microchips in your toilet paper to monitor your bowel movements.

Now, with that boring, run-of-the-mill assessment out of the way, let us actually have a look at what the future of technology will be for us as people.

Firstly, you will not notice the proliferation of technology in the world around you. It will just be there. Everywhere. You will not see it. It is this type of technology which I will address presently. Secondly, due to proliferation, there will be two kinds of people in the world: those who know what they are looking at and how it works and those who do not. The latter group will comprise the majority of people.

This is, of course, already happening. Ask anyone with an iPhone to describe the manner in which it connects to other such devices and you will get a range of bizarre answers of varying levels of complexity and detail. An example: a friend explained to me his theory that the reason that he had to turn off his iPod on take-off and landing was because it was communicating with satellites. He believed that the device was communicating with satellites because it would magically change its time when he went from the United States to Egypt or Egypt to Thailand. He had overlooked the fact that the time had only changed once the device had been plugged into a laptop.

Explanations like this abound when your average end user picks up a device or opens a web browser and then tries to contemplate how and why these things work the way that they do. This is not really a problem most of the time. Users of technology do not need to understand how something works or in some cases even how to use it. Some things just work without ever requiring human intervention. When they stop working, however, this is a problem.

What do you do when your mobile phone, iPod, computer, router, or other devices stop working? You call someone and then they tell you to either take or send it somewhere to have it looked at by a technician. We are becoming increasingly reliant upon technicians and technology experts. There will come a time, very soon indeed, that there will be no user-serviceable devices in the market at all. Apple has done a good job of doing away with external artifacts that betray that your device can be opened up and looked inside. This is the way of the future.

Personal computing could already be considered esoteric, but this is only the beginning. As mentioned above, we are going to see—or, more importantly, not see—tiny computing devices embedded in all manner of objects and products. Everything will become “smart”. Users, on the other hand, will become less smart about how these things work. Those who do know and who can repair and change the manner in which the devices function will become tantamount to clergymen or magicians. They will be the keepers of the esoteric knowledge of the future.

Think of it like this: if you told someone in the fifteenth century that you could look into a device and see someone looking into a similar device on the other side of the world, they would either turn away in utter disbelief or they would call you a witch and burn you at the stake. Yet we do this all the time with Skype and other internet video phone and video chat appliances and applications. Magicians, astrologers, priests, and mystics in antiquity were revered—or reviled—for their knowledge of the unseen world and familiarity with the methods used in manipulating it.

Magic, science, and religion have never really been all that different, if even at all separable. Each comprise on one hand a set of theoretical models which are required for understanding and explaining the world. On the other hand, they each have a set of protocols for interacting with that which is not directly visible or tangible. The practitioners of each have deep knowledge about both the theory and protocol associated with their chosen discipline. This knowledge allows them to interact with the world in a manner very different from those around them.

Place technological advancements in computing in this context. There is already a clergy associated with computing. System administrators (sysadmins) require a huge amount of knowledge in order to do their jobs and to make systems and networks function properly. Dabblers often miss things and with disastrous consequences. End users neither need nor want to have the kind of knowledge that sysadmins have , but they know that they are different. Every office has a set of people who are considered “technological wizards.” These are often the same people who are employed to keep the servers and networks in good operating condition.

There are also those who will use their vast knowledge for evil. The recent Stuxnet infection of computers in Iranian nuclear power plants comes to mind. Black-hat hackers and virus engineers will hold dominion over the black magic of the future and we will have reason to fear them. The less end users know about the devices that they use, there will be a greater chance that those devices can be used against them. This may manifest in actual life-threatening situations—think “smart” cars, onboard navigation systems, autopilot—or they will be used to monitor their users surreptitiously—tracking the whereabouts of users using the GPS devices in their mobile phones, monitoring email and text messages, tapping calls.

This is not a warning, this is a prediction. The path has already been set. End users have neither the desire nor the the need at present to know how or why their devices function. This trend will continue to the point that they will barely even know how to use them. They will simply know that they are there. Those who possess the esoteric knowledge will be increasingly considered to be wizards and magicians to the point that they will come under scrutiny if not members of the orthodox clergy. This already happens to some extent. In governmental background checks, technological knowledge of those being investigated is of great concern to weed out any potential “hackers” who might be or have been involved in any illegal activities.

The average lay person will both marvel at and fear the knowledge of the sorcerer. The clergy will work to maintain their position of dominance as the keepers of the knowledge, though they will mostly be charlatans, possessing only partial or partially-falsified knowledge; the real knowledge being locked away in vaults somewhere; the keys held by few, if any.

——————

*This has already happened. My phone freaks me out all the time with things like this. It should learn to mind its own damned business

n. – the opposite of innovation.

Yah, I made up a word: sue me. Actually, don’t sue me. I can’t afford that right now. Between preparing to move out of the country and writing chapter 4 of my thesis—a job I do for very little pay—I’m not in any position for an out-of-court settlement.

More to the point though. I caught the following quote this morning, and this was the word that came into my brain.

It’s not the genius who is 100 years ahead of his time but average man who is 100 years behind it. -Robert Musil, novelist (1880-1942)

It is absolutely true, by the way and it reminded me of a discussion that I had with my dad after my last post regarding the state of innovation in our current economic and social climate.

What we decided was that the best thing for a struggling economy/company/city is to let it fail, unless it is willing to change.

Case in point: General Motors. Old, good company. Makes cars. Could be substituted with any of the other major American automotive companies. They haven’t really committed any serious innovation in the past century. Cars are, with many bells and whistles aside, primarily the same as they were 100 years ago. They still operate under the same principles, for the most part, and the end result is the same. If you disagree with this, then you haven’t looked under the hood of any car. I would suggest then that you find a Model-A and dismantle it. Then, find a late model Mustang and dismantle it. Put both of the back together. You’ll see what I am talking about.

Now, there are some companies which have committed innovation. Any company that is putting a solar panel on the top of a car to give extra power for the air-con—Toyota—is innovative in this climate. Running cars on hydrogen fuel cells, hybrids, electrics, and plug-in models are all innovative.

General Motors—our present case-study—has done none of these things. And I don’t want to hear that GM has the Volt, an electric concept car. It is too late for concept cars. Please move to the back of the line.

Back to the crux of this line of argumentation: GM has made no major innovations of late, possibly ever, and yet they and their investors are worried and scrambling to figure out/fix their current financial problem. However, nothing they do will make any difference.

They already have the only solution to their problems, but it is just a concept car. They could save the company and generate a huge amount of business if they were just to release that car, and all problems along with it. It wouldn’t be for everyone, of course. At first it would only be for the brave who don’t mind being late because their battery died or something. It would be for those who are willing to test and try and see how it works. The deal that would have to come along with it, of course, is that the dealers would have to service anything that went wrong with the car free-of-charge and immediately. Throw in 24-hour tow-from-anywhere-and-take-you-home service: brilliant.1 They would change everything.

The only other thing to do now is to simply let it die, which is more likely. Maybe the market fallout from that will take the other big two with it. We can only hope.

I know, I’m a horrible bastard for wishing such fates on American companies. “Do [I] know what effect that would have on so many Americans’ lives?” Yes, I do. But, do you know what else would happen? Some genius young engineer, right in line with his time, will be able to step up and do something brilliant. This time, though, he won’t have the added innovative hurdle of having to either out-shout the “Big Three” or be subsumed into them and destroyed by their contrary interests. Jobs and economic development to follow.

We haven’t seen a Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, George Washington Carver, or any of their ilk in such a long time that we wouldn’t know an innovator if they punched us in the face. Maybe it is time for some knock-outs, but they won’t come until the big, stupid brutes die off to make way for the skinny, malnourished geniuses.

———

1 This idea was lifted directly from a phone conversation with my dad yesterday. Dad: it’s a great idea.

Itchy and Scratchy

I came down with a rather bad case of poison ivy last week. I was absentmindedly pulling weeds and likely picked it up then since I wasn’t wearing any gloves, which is abnormal.

In any case, I usually don’t have any problem with it. The point of contact is itchy for a few days, I put calamine on it, it goes away. This time is totally different.

I have had it since last week and it has been spreading. I think that this occurs while I am sleeping so I am reduced to sleeping in a burqa to keep myself from making contact with my own skin.

The funniest part about this experience, though, is the advice that I have found for getting rid of it.

I was, against my better judgment, trolling Google last night looking for remedies. I found the usual sort: calamine, steroid shots, vitamins, etc.

Then I found a treasure trove of insanity. There were recommendations that poison ivy victims use everything from hair dryers to cool whip to saran wrap on their poison ivy. They went something like this:

“I had poison ivy a few years ago, and it was so bad and nothing worked so in desperation I mixed together a paste of bleach, oatmeal, furniture polish, and baking soda. Then I spread the mixture on my poison ivy and wrapped it with saran wrap for five hours. Then I removed the saran wrap and used the hair dryer to dry the mixture into something just shy of concrete and then sanded it and the rash off my skin with a belt-sander. I never got poison ivy again.” – Ralph, Oklahoma, 2001

“When we were little, and got poison ivy from playing outside in the woods, my grandma would draw us a really hot bath, as hot as she could get it. Then, she would pour kettles of boiling black tea in it and tell us to get in. It scalded something terrible, but when our skin finally healed from being scalded, the poison ivy was gone too!” – Sally, New Jersey, 1997

“I get poison ivy every summer because my cats play outside and then come in and I pet them and end up with it all over my hands and neck. Every summer! I don’t know, I just love my cats! So, now I take 8000mg of vitamin c and 10000mg of zinc and wash it down with a tea made of poison ivy leaves, cat hair, and acetone. It works like a charm! I have to carry my liver around in a bag from all the vitamins, but I haven’t had poison ivy in 10 years!” – Gertrude, Idaho, 2006

The moral of the story: don’t google your symptoms, or about any sort of home remedy unless you want to be amused. People are crazy! For now, I am sticking with the way that has worked for me in the past, that my grandma recommended to me one time: cover my entire body in a paste made of baking soda, cut a clove of garlic in half, put one half in my mouth and bury the other half in the yard where the poison ivy is, do a little dance, and take a hot shower, then a cold shower, then a hot shower, then a cold shower, then a hot shower and then dry myself off with a hair dryer with a diffuser attachment.

Then I am going to judiciously apply calamine and aveeno, remember to take my vitamins and hope it goes away by the end of the week.

Wear gloves and long sleeves folks.

We ask all the wrong questions

I read these two articles this week:

The Future of Space Games

The Physics of Zero-G Whipped Cream

I realize that when presented in this manner, the two articles seem a little bit more tawdry than they were probably intended.

Or are they?

My question after reading these, and following up with a bit more research, is this:

“Has anyone—or, more appropriately, “Have any two (or more)—ever had sex in space?

If you tell me that you haven’t wondered this, or even at least thought about it for a second, then you are lying to me. You can’t tell me that you can think about what it would be like to float through 0-gravity attached to a makeshift medicine ball of your own design without thinking: I wonder if it would be difficult to stay engaged while copulating at 0-G’s.

Or maybe that is just what I think about when people start talking about “games” aboard the International Space Station and “whipped cream in space.”

Come on people. Lighten up. We went through the whole “space toilet: everybody poops” scenario about 15 years ago. I think that it is high time that we discuss the realities of performing “the deed” while floating, unencumbered through the void.

And, if none of the ISS crew nor any Soyuz or space shuttle crew from the USA was ever done it, I will eat my words. But, if this is the case, then we have a whole new—and really fascinating—set of experiments to carry out, don’t we?

Use it however you wish.
Try it. I dare you.

I have always loved
haiku, since the form often
distracts, entertains.

This is why I recently decided to start using it as a teaching tool in my private lessons. The hardest part about tutoring kids is that I have to distract them from worrying about learning long enough to get anything to sink in. I employed haiku last week for just this purpose while working on vocabulary with one student.

Miriam could not
remember any words, not
for lack of trying.

So, I asked her if she knew what a haiku was. She said no. I explained the form: she looked at me like I was an idiot—which is possibly true. Then I asked her to write her definitions for new vocabulary using this form.

She looked confused then,
but the light-bulbs came alight,
eventually.

After a few tries, she was coming up with amazing stuff. This week I quizzed her on the new words, and she didn’t even hesitate in telling me their meanings.

Now that is something that you can stick in your teaching methods courses and smoke it.

Donkey, that is

So, this afternoon I actually saw a traffic cop in Mohandessin giving parallel parking direction to a guy driving a cart with two donkeys.

And they were doing it!

He backed them right into the spot, stopped, and then unloaded the cart into a shop. This just goes to show you that you can teach an old dog—or donkey—new tricks.

It also reminded me of an interesting phenomenon that I witness regularly. I call it: “The Green Acres Syndrome.” In this city, I regularly see horses and donkeys engaged in regular automobile traffic. Not so much downtown, but in almost every other part of the city. The closer that I am to the outskirts and the Delta, even more. This morning, before leaving for tutoring, I saw three donkey carts with 10 meter lengths of rebar on them. This is apparently the most efficient way to transport building materials as well. This is a common sight.

The donkeys are asmaller adorable too. Poorly treated most of the time, but cute in a pitiful way. Big sad eyes, floppy ears, dogged determination.

Horses are also a regular occurrence in traffic. Rarely ever have I seen people riding horses in the city, but in the smaller towns and cities in the Delta it is pretty common. Usually in the city, they are pulling carts with vegetables: taking things to market.

The best, though, the night of Egypt’s big Africa Cup of Nations win, there were people riding camels, horses, donkeys—whatever they could find—up Gameat al-Dowal in celebration with all the buses, cars, trucks, motorbikes and roving bands of celebrating Egyptians. It was a crazy night, but then, it was a big celebration as well. No reason not to bring the camels out for a ride downtown.

What I want to know is when the last time there was a horse-cart with vegetables in New York City. I certainly don’t think that it was within my lifetime, but perhaps not that long ago at all. It would be pretty shocking to see one there now, yet here it is such a common occurrence that no one even bats an eye at it. I think it’s pretty cool, overall. It reminds me that there are animals, and farms, and farmers: and that they are not that far away. One of the reasons that I don’t see this phenomenon at home is that the farmer that grew most of my food, as well as the donkey that pulled it to market is some great number of thousands of miles away. I would have a hard time figuring out where most of my food has been.

Here, though, all I have to do is ask the guy on the cart where he is coming from today.

Reduce? Reuse? Recycle? Answer: Throw my Garbage on the Ground!

There is a garbage problem in Egypt. The problem is that there is garbage everywhere. People throw garbage out of their windows, in the street, from the tram, on the ground, in alleys, in abandoned buildings, the river, canals, drains, holes in the street/sidewalk, under cars, around corners… I need not list every single place, nook and cranny in Egypt. Though, rest assured, if there is a nook or a cranny in Egypt, it likely has garbage in it.

There are many reasons for this, I am sure. We can cite economic reasons, education, public awareness, etc. While those reasons all have their particular arguments, they are all bullshit. The truth of the matter is simply that no one cares. That and there are not public waste receptacles, or when there are they are full.

A recent demonstrative anecdote: I was sitting in the coffee house around the corner from my apartment and noticed that there was a guy who would come along every day or so and just dump the two garbage receptacles sitting across the street onto the sidewalk and the roll them away. I watched this happen numerous times. The receptacles we always back in place, or had been replaced, the next day.

One afternoon, whilst sipping my Earl Grey, I noticed that the guy came up to the garbage bins and couldn’t move them. They had been chained and padlocked to a nearby lamp-post. He looked pissed off, then he started talking to an old man leaning out of the window of a nearby first-floor apartment. They chatted for a while and the guy left.

About fifteen minutes later, he returned and handed an extension cord to the old man, who presumably plugged it in somewhere. To the other end of the cord, he attached a wheel-grinder which he employed in grinding through links in the chains.

Then, he removed the chain, dumped the garbage on the sidewalk, collected his cord and rolled the bins away.

Well done everyone.

I am sure that this guy had a job to do. He probably worked for the garbage collection system, which is improving. I am not questioning his motives, just his methods.

Convervationism and environmentalism is relatively non-existent here, as well. Here is a recent Onion article on the topic. This, unfortunately is about the only way that you could get people to notice that there is an environmental problem. It would be like telling Americans that they can have no more cheeseburgers because we have destroyed and squandered the resources that make them possible. Oh, wait… Nevermind.

Joking aside, this problem is endemic here. Conservation and environmental sciences are relegated to the academic world, such as it is, and see very little real action. Some government initiatives, minor interest here and there, but as for real results: nothing. Air pollution is at an all-time high, water pollution is terrifying, and garbage—as said—is everywhere.

This is not to say that there is not hope. Recently, I attended a presentation/workshop on climate change at an Alexandria high school. My friend Mohamed Zakzouk—graduate student in engineering and environmental policy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario—conducted the workshop portion of the event. The purpose of this event was to raise awareness about environmental concerns and to encourage dialogue between parents and students. The results were interesting. Few parents participated, but the students were really into it. With any luck, this sort of thing will be a precursor to later interest in environmental concerns and will encourage students to take an everyday approach to them.

In the mean time, I am not sure what can be done. As with many problems here, the approach to environmental problems—and even just cleaning up the garbage which proliferates the streets—seems to be one of, “Well, what can I do? I’m just one person.” Perhaps laws about littering would work. Then there would be the problem of arbitrary enforcement, and the net result would be minimal.

I will have to be content that I have tried to lower my waste footprint here as much as possible, and maybe lead by example: attempting to re-use containers, purchasing vegetables at the market (and carrying them home in my bookbag), picking up garbage and depositing it in proper receptacles, when possible (which really gets some interesting looks: I did this one afternoon and watched a group of kids watching me all throw their soda cans on the ground and walk away). In addition, I take public transportation, I try not to take cabs and if I do, I try to share them with others. I use compact fluorescent lights in my apartment, and turn things off when I am not using them.

These are no different than my behaviors in the United States, though. In fact, in the U.S., my housemates and I would be called tree-huggers for the amount of composting, reusing, recycling, and garbage collection that we do. I am fine with that if it helps me and anyone else to not have to walk over a pile of garbage to get to their door.

This is one of those “one-at-a-time” problems. The answer lies not in legislation (though it helps to encourage behavior) or in pouring money on awareness programs. It lies, as Mohamed pointed out in his workshop, in asking ourselves: “What can I do?” and asking each other: “What can we do together?”

Yah, elves really exist. Seriously.

In this report on NPR’s All Things Considered this week, we learned that elves exist—in Iceland at least.

Icelandic Elves – All Things Considered

Merry Christmas, if you’re into that. Otherwise, I hope that everyone is having a nice Tuesday: I know I am.