Issue # 79 April 27, 2003
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Planet of the Hypes?
Planet X and Robots
Catastrophes are wonderful things, at least from the standpoint of publicists and authors whose works would otherwise never see the light of day. They give the journalistic opportunist some of the best pickings and most favorable conditions to make a buck on what has passed for yellow journalism.
But, while Planet X has been a subject that has driven millions of dollars into the pockets of the apocalyptic writers, we're almost at the time where truth will win out - and we'll know soon enough whether Planet X has been only so much hype, or whether there is really something to it. Planet X, however, is only part of a larger phenomena going on in society today - a period of media suggestibility. It's almost like there's something a tad off in the thinking of thousands of people such that pseudo-science has gained more respect than many of the old-fashioned engineering disciplines.
Thanks to a large body of logical work that has been done in the field of technical analysis, we already know to expect that the present downward trend in the markets may last until around May 24th, before reversing course and heading up. After that, leaders in mathematic, such as Didier Sornette and Cesare Marchetti has both contributed extremely useful tools to the art (more than science) of forecasting markets. The body of work seems to suggest a fluctuating summer and perhaps a declining fall, but then how big a deviation from recent history would that really be?
I thought it would be fun to sit back for a few thoughtful moment this weekend to consider the current wave of catastrophist hype and see if there's maybe something to be learned from all the rhetoric and hype. We'll begin our thought processes by looking at a few recent - and current - catastrophe-centered hype.
We could, of course spend all day debunking, but in the interest of time, let's go through these one-by-one and separate the wheat from the chaff. But in the process, remember, we're not trying to figure out the truth of the matter, only to consider the hype, and why people are getting into it in such numbers because that's the real story: What is it about our present situation that is driving us in lemming-like fashion to get collectively weirded out.
The way we will approach this problem is quite simple: we will observe the potential impacts which would logically follow as consequences for any of the much-touted events. By taking this approach, and systematically reviewing possible impacts, we may be able to arrive at some new insights about what drives us as a society to engage in catastrophic speculations.
Let's begin with Planet X. Speculation that earth would be visited by a long orbit planet began in the early 1980s. This planet which has been called Wormwood and Planet X, supposedly has an orbit of several thousand years. Various web sites placed the estimated periodicity at between 3000 and 5000 years, with 3500 years about typical.
Over the past several years, the popularity of Planet X speculation has increased almost geometrically on the Internet. Authors ranging from quite expert to fairly ignorant have watched web sites on the matter. If you draw a bell curve around the expectations you'll see that Planet X is most likely to arrive sometime around the middle of May this year. May 15th 2003 is one of the most favored dates. About 3-weeks off.
Conspiracy theorists have been having a ball with Planet X. For one thing there are very few observatories presently operating in the southern hemisphere. This has led to speculation that there is some vast global conspiracy to suppress observations of the southern sky. Adherents believe that Planet X will make its appearance in the southern sky anytime now. The lack of publicly accessible observatories, along with a suspicious fire at an Australian observatory, have completely supported the conspiracy notion -- if of course you believe the theory.
Another oddity that they point to is the existence of two observatories, run by the Vatican. The idea here, implied but not quite stated, is that the Vatican knows something about the arrival of this planet Wormwood, and is just watching events unfold very carefully while not informing the rest of us.
Of course, Chemtrails have been woven into the tail also. Conspiracy theorists believe that not only are Chemtrails real in the northern hemisphere but that these Chemtrails are designed to obscure the right people of America and Europe from observing the arrival of Planet X.
Regardless of whether the planet arrives in the next few weeks, the rational investor must ask himself, or herself, "If Planet X is real, what are the investment implications?" To sort through this we need only ask what the impact of the planet's passing would be. There's no lack of speculation for us to choose from. At a minimum, we would expect to see ocean currents and tides radically change their behavior. At a maximum, we would see Richter scale nine earthquakes, massive volcanism, a quick breakdown of society, followed by mass starvation from a lack of food and wildly propagating disease. It sounds like a fun world doesn't it?
Now let's make a list of the things that people would actually lose, or could fear losing, should this event actually take place. Using our systematic worldview approach, we see that housing would radically change as we move to living between rocks and in caves. Our favorite mode of transportation would obviously change from the automobile to our feet because most roads would become impassable due to earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding from subduction, and tectonic shift. Energy would disappear, because the predicted 200 mph winds would uproot not only power lines but whole substations as well. Solar panels would not work because of all of the dust and debris in the atmosphere from the volcanoes. Food would become incredibly valuable, along with seeds, because crops would be destroyed worldwide. Then there's communications: with the exception of a few battery-powered ham radio stations that would survive running on generators until the gasoline ran out, or solar and wind power thereafter, there wouldn't be much left. According to the theorists, satellite communications should have been seriously impaired from about December of last year.
I guess I don't have to tell you that I'm skeptical about whether Planet X will actually get here any time soon. However we can make an important generalization about Planet X. What seems to drive people's fascination with the topic is the potential for catastrophic loss of our present highly materialistic form of existence. Anyone in the right mind would regret the loss of loved ones, and pretty much everything they had worked in entire life to obtain.
Worse, there have been several articles in the past six months that have said in effect, if the "powers that be" knew something in advance of a global extinction level event, they would probably not tell anyone about it. What they would do instead, is lay in food supplies, drill holes all over the earth and prepare shelters for the power elite to ride out the cataclysmic event. Thus, we frequently see references to military tunnel boring machines. In reality, the buildup of food stores and other military supplies, common a few months ago, were likely nothing more than the government purchasing in advance of the second Iraq war.
It's safe to say that there is no one thing that people would miss the most. What is feared is a loss of everything but particularly the physical items that give us present comfort.
Cold fusion is a different case. Cold fusion wasn't a catastrophic event; it was a conspiracy and at its core there was a cadre of government agencies and unnamed rich people who were conspiring to keep us all from accessing cheap energy. If you're as old as me, you may remember back in the 1950s the promise of nuclear power was that it would make energy so bountiful we wouldn't even need to measure it. Of course, measuring power has become more important, not less.
Cold fusion is thus not fear of a real loss in the public's mind, it's more like a fear of losing some future benefit. There is a widespread belief among cold fusion and free energy (the zero-point energy crowd) believers that someone is taking advantage of society. This is the same crowd that has held, for as long as I can remember, the belief that Detroit was withholding production of a magical carburetor for automobiles that would extend the mileage to 80,100, or even 120 miles per gallon.
These two examples, cold fusion and Planet X, demonstrate two aspects of loss: both have a future orientation, and both scientifically unprovable until after the fact.
In this sense, Y2K was similar and fit the mold. There was much hand wringing before the event, including no shortage of Internet mavens who predicted the total collapse of society. As I mentioned last week I think, the urbansurvival.com Y2K danger index seemed to accurately predict Y2K as a nonevent. Notwithstanding my index, which I hadn't trusted completely, I managed to be safely ensconced on my sailboat a safe distance from Seattle and completely prepared - just in case. That was in keeping with my philosophy of living life for minimum risk rather than maximum reward. If I had it to do all over again, I would exactly the same thing.
"Earth changes" is another one of those cataclysm buzz words and more general then something as specific as Planet X's passing, and when you think about it actually holds a little bit of water. From seventh-grade science you no doubt remember that the earth is constantly changing, so to simply speed up the process for a few moments of geological time doesn't sound unreasonable. Where the earth changes believers go over the top, is in their drawing of new maps of how they think North America will look after the earth changes take place. We've seen all kinds of maps in the past ten years that show no more California, a vast inland sea where the Mississippi River is now, and we've even seen various scenarios projecting planetary impacts as a result of the earth's poles shifting.
Once again, the common element that seems to be at the heart of the belief is nothing more than a fear of potential for future loss.
The conspiracy surrounding the "new world order" is again an expression of fear not for an actual loss, although the recently enacted homeland security measures certainly come close, but for the future potential for loss of our current freedoms.
And credible Chemtrail reports are so scattered that it's hard to make sense of what's really going on. Speculation here ranges from inoculating the entire unwitting population of America from some unnamed bio threat, to an attempt to reflect sunlight from the atmosphere of planet Earth to slow down global warming. You're seeing the pattern now, right? What is feared is not something in the present, but a potential loss in the future..
The reasonable observer of all of these events might therefore use this pattern: a pattern suggesting that society has some component that is afraid of the future loss of the present state of affairs. To put a positive spin on the data, maybe things are not so bad right now, but they sure could go downhill quickly, if something bad happened.
It's perhaps an indicator of just how well-off society is right now. While we have not conquered disease, and SARS is afoot, we have made tremendous strides against diseases such as smallpox, typhoid, and polio. At least in America, we have plentiful enough foods so that most of us are able to be overweight. While gasoline is pushing $2 per gallon, it's still less than half the price of gasoline in Europe. Besides, logic says if the price of gasoline was really out of line, we would not be buying sports utility vehicles in such huge quantities. We would all be driving Honda's and enjoying 40-50 MPG economy.
If there is a lesson from all of the catastrophe predictions it is perhaps that we fear future loss but at the same time, we don't understand clearly or are in firmly entrenched denial about the reality of the looming future future losses ahead.
The future losses I speak of are demonstrably more real than any of the faddish concerns with their own Web sites. The real specter we face is the loss of growth for the world's economies.
You see, since the Western world began rolling in fifteen hundreds, the economic systems that we have placed our faith in have been predicated on unlimited growth. But we're now at a place in world history where we don't have an economy that is anywhere near sustainable should growth be reduced to near zero and remain there over some period of time. When that zero-growth state occurs, we will see massive economic change because the nature of investment itself will have changed.
Without a new engine of consumption, that rivals the computer, the automobile, the railroad, or the sailing ship, the economy will need massive restructuring. It's perhaps a subliminal recognition of this fact that drives modern catastrophism..
For now, speculating about Planet X, Chemtrails, the eventual death of 300 million people by SARS, and the New World Order, is interesting but fundamentally misguided and a waster of energy.
The real issues ahead are: what should we invest in if there is no growth, and, as a corollary, what happens to our economic system when stability rather than expansion rules the day and our future outlook?.
With this in mind I'm pleased to share a paper from Dr. Pete Markiewicz, which could perhaps be titled, "The Next Big Thing"
Hi George:Read your article on saturation economics with interest. I have an idea about the next "big thing" which I'll throw out:"...Like radio, the Internet is becoming ubiquitous, and it will sink, just as radio did, from a "gee whiz" to a background "thing" we all just take for granted."Very true. Already, Wired and similar computer-tech worship mags are sounding an increasingly false note. They're reduced to running breathless copy about the next installment of "The Matrix" series rather than meaningful change in the tech industry. More on the significance of "The Matrix" movies below."...But in today's world, we lack the kind of large-scale consumption drivers that made recovery from the Depression (and World War II) possible. The cost of building the information super highway was relatively small, as a proportion of resources. And, while there was a lot of intellectual property involved, IP is easy to ignore. It's not like plant and equipment that sit out in the rain and deteriorate if not used."This is also true. Despite the dreams of the tech industry, sales, investment, etc are likely to remain flat permanently, even as individuals and companies slowly upgrade their computers and networks. Newer technologies like "Internet aware" cellphones and PDAs are cheaper than desktops, and even large volumes won't restore revenue.However, there is a technology that seems to be hitting a tipping point right now, IMHO that will return us to physical reality. It's the anti-Matrix.To understand this, one has to look at the way computing technology is used. Right now, we're welded to the 25-year old vision of "cyberspace" - something we can visit that lurks inside our phones, computers, web browsers and the like. It is like an alternate, parallel world. It is the Matrix. Our computing machinery today is designed as a portal - gateway to this world. To enter it, we have to play by a huge set of rules set up by the programmers. I teach introductory computer classes and am constantly reminded how difficult it is for humans to learn to deal with the arbitrary, buggy, and self-contradictory features of using computers. We're like priests stumbling to say the right thing to the cyberspace oracle to get it to "work." When something goes wrong, we blame ourselves rather than the inflexible machine.Cyberspace is an idea that has been slowly growing in our culture. It started out as the equivalent of a "virtual board meeting" with early services like CompuServe (originally called "The Source" in 1979), The Well, early AOL, and the like. 20 years later, it has become so powerful that people seriously discuss how "real" cyberspace is (as a place, it's not) and can enjoy movies like "The Matrix" series -- in which reality is revealed as a simulation running on a grand computer network.This willingness to accept cyberspace as reality has, in my opinion, risen with other areas of increasing "unreality" in our society - Neal Gabler celebrity worship, the "Life Movie," celebrities seeking the X-treme edge, and so on.My own opinion is that the popularity of "The Matrix" series is really a swan song for our love of cyberspace. After all, once everyone believes in something you should suspect its on its way down. When everyone plays stocks the market has probably peaked. Same Music mags are declaring that hip-hop is now a single world youth culture. If this is really true, hip-hop is probably past its peak. People put up monuments just as the bottom begins to fall out, possibly because they unconsciously sense the ground shifting. Dotcoms were buying sports stadiums as their money ran out. I see "The Matrix" as a similar expression of a declining trend.I feel that when the big economic downturn really bites there will be a massive rejection of cyberspace as a model of computing. Of course, people will use things like the web and email - but the romance of cyberspace won't just fade away, it will be actively rejected and attacked. There will be a backlash caused by the experience of real hardship in the real world. People will be mad about the entire concept - the feeling will be that they were fooled. They will despise toy worlds that don't reflect their real-world hardship.Which brings us to the anti-Matrix. What is the opposite of a computer that creates a virtual reality for humans to enter? Simple - a computer that strives to enter and live in "our" world. Instead of creating a virtual environment, it learns and navigates in the our real one. And what is this kind of machine called? (easy guess).Robot.If nothing else, the videos from Robodex 2003 over in Japan should be a wake-up call on tech everywhere. Out of sight of virtually everyone in the US, these machines are doing things that textbooks here still say are decades off. For examples, go to the following pages on my Plyojump website - click on the pictures for QuickTime or Windows Media video:Robodex 2003 - http://www.robodex.orgFor me, watching these things **walk** around was a turning point. No little man inside. No offscreen person "puppeting" their movies. Autonomy. A machine that can walk up to my door, climb the stairs, and turn the knob.----------------------------------------------------A couple of key technical points about these systems:1. They aren't being made in the US. In fact, nobody has ever demonstrated anything remotely comparable in the US. Very few people in the US have ever seen them. At classic "artificial intelligence" centers like MIT they're just starting to have them demonstrated to their students. In Asia, advanced robots are currently being created in Japan, Korea, mainland China, and even Singapore.2. A technology threshold has been crossed. Current computer chips are fast enought to allow robots to accomplish real-world interaction, unlike the fizzled robot "booms" of the late 1960s and early 1980s. According to Hans Moravec, we are now reaching the point where a doubling of computer speed will roughly double the performance of robots. Until recently, no portable computer was powerful enough to allow meaningful robotic behavior.3. Big money is involved. Honda has spent over $200 million on the Asimo project thus far, and they have a 10-year plan for commercialization.4. A mental threshold has been crossed by creating robots that can walk, go up stairs, stand up and like down, operate power equipment, etc. There's a major "wow" factor - and it will be easier for the public to understand than microcomputers were.5. Software standards, specs are starting to appear - from the "open source" OpenHRP to Sony's robot software spec. This will make it easier to create them.6. Realistic uses have been identified. US media often mentions trivial tasks like "getting a beer from the refrigerator" but the Japanese press points out two primary areas: hospitals and retirement communities. They explicitly tie this to the low birthrate and rapidly aging population of Japan - these machines will replace the "missing" workers that haven't been born.7. The Japanese systems all have *style." They aren't just bags of wires, like many US projects. They look good. Art and craft are involved, as well as technology.8. Robotic components, including movement, senses, and power supplies will all benefit greatly from nanotechnology. Nanotubes show features, for example that could be used to create artificial muscles. Fuel cells are already being developed for Japanese robots - one can imagine them chugging bottles of Everclear to power their ethanol-based fuel cells as they work. Biotechnology can also help develop advanced robots, providing ultra-sensitive environmental sensors.--------------------------------A couple of social points - these are the very BIG ONES. In my opinion, current trends are likely to cause the US -- particularly the West Coast Internet/PC industry -- to be blindsided by the "next big thing" as throughly as IBM was in the 1980s.1. The technology is climbing a wall of disbelief. Reaction to Robodex 2003 at Slashdot (the biggest programmer/hacker community on the web) was smug. Virtually everyone made fun of the robots, not remembering that people used to make fun of computer geeks and their "useless" hobby at the end of the 1970s. There is virtually no mention of robotics in Silicon Valley tech news, except as a "comic relief" afterthought. There are small bits of praise for robots that can access the Internet. Silicon Valley is showing willful ignorance.The US tech industry sent just one company to Robodex (Evolution Robotics in Pasadena). The rest of the industry comforts itself that these machines can't do anything yet - forgetting the humble abilities of early PCs. Where would Silicon Valley be if we had expected PCs to run high-resolution surround-sound movies during the 1980s? Who could have predicted that web-surfing would be the dominant us of most PCs?I suggest we don't even know the dominant use for robots yet - and it won't be raiding the refrigerator.2. The image or robots in the US is one of "unnatural" creations, which (since they result from tampering with nature), start out as evil slaves who revolt. A human-created robot can't have a soul or emotions (which only God can make) so it is by default evil. This "Terminator" idea has so permeated our popular culture that alternate depictions -- e.g. "A.I." movie from 2002 -- fail to move the public.In contrast, Japanese and other Asian groups repeatedly identify robots with innocent children. The theme of Robodex 2003 - Astroboy's birth - shows this. A generation of roboticists have been inspired by this 50-year old comic about a child robot brought to life, replacing a "real" boy killed in a car crash (sound like A.I.?).Here's a link to an Astroboy pic:An article I found on the "Pino" robot translated in Babelfish as "let no one not call them our children".Robots are also connected in Japan to nature worship tradition. After all, if the rocks and water are alive, so surely a robot formed of these things has a spirit as well! Making a robot to "concentrate" nature spirits is good, rather than evil. One group over there is actually playing around with making BIG (40-foot tall) robots - a partly conscious attempt to make the nature elementals real."A.I" was one of the top movies of all time in Japan, while it bombed in the US. US audiences can't even begin to see themselves as the bad guys and the robot as an abused innocent. Not so in Japan. Robot engineers in Japan have focused on making a "childlike" robot which learns from its environment and people. In the US, the tendency is to put humans in control of the potentially rebellious robots, making the robot a big electric puppet like the Predator drone aircraft. US emphasis on military uses will strengthen human control and reduce attempts to produce autonomous devices.A side aspect of this is that we the public don't have any real-world examples of robots here - we're lost in a Hollywood fog of fantasy speculation. For most people, robots are no more real than elves or gnomes, just another cool computer animation in the latest feature (e.g. "Terminator III"). Honda has run a commercial featuring their Asimo robot in the US, but people here often assume it is a computer animation. In contrast, in Japan, everyone know the robot is real. Honda currently has the Asimo on tour to US schoolchildren to correct this misperception.3. Most US roboticists continue to insist that making a highly specialized robot (e.g., robo-vacuum) is better than making a general-purpose robot that walks around. They tend to brush aside the progress made with general-purpose robots in Japan. There are lots of projects in the US to make robo-vacumn cleaners. US researchers smirk at the HRP robot in Japan operating a backhoe - why not just automate the backhoe? However, similar special-purpose arguments were made about personal computers. In the early 1980s, many people insisted that a special-purpose electronic device could always be created which could outperform a computer -- so PCs were useless in the home. True, we have special-purpose computers in our DVDs, but general-purpose computers can play DVDs as well. The general-purpose computer drove the tech boom. In a similar way, general-purpose robotics could drive the next boom.Circa 2015, the US could be cranking out elaborate vacuum cleaners while the Asian general-purpose robots are walking off container ships in Long Beach. This would be a neat inversion of the 1980s, when US companies created ever-faster CPUs like the Pentium and Power PC, while Asian companies specialized in much simpler RAM memory.4. Robots have be created out of matter rather than electrons. This means that the skill in creating virtual worlds found in the current US tech industry will matter little. Instead, "rust belt" technology for creating physical products (i.e. robots) is what is needed. One feature of the Japanese projects is that they emphasize making highly reliable robots that can be mass-produced. Honda has created the most advanced robot in the world and they are a car company. They felt confident letting several of their creations run around during Robodex 2003, climb stairs and kick soccer balls for hundreds of hours at Robodex without any failures. Sony had several of its SDR robots dancing round for a hour or more - again without mechanical failures. This is rust-belt expertise.This attitude is utterly lacking in the US, where the typical "robot" is actually a special-purpose test of a few components for a graduate student's thesis. The US systems only have to work for a couple of seconds for someone to get their doctorate. Hence, few of them really work at all.It turns out that one town, Pittsburgh is beginning to think differently. A recent article ran in newspapers there advocating a new technology area specifically for robotics called "roboburgh." The rust-belt heritage of Pittsburgh is seen as an advantage, not a liability in this new tech arena.The reason for this is the close connection between the town and Carnegie Mellon University - one of the few places where practical robotics are being pursued in the US. It seems possible that robotics could cause a decline in "West Coast" cyberspace-linked tech, while reviving the old "East Coast" rust belt.------------------------------------------In any case, here's my timeline for the "anti-Matrix"2003-2007 - Japan and other Asian countries (Korea, China, Singapore are building similar robots) continue to improve the technology even as their economies sink. The US continues to hold onto the fading cyberspace vision of computing. Japanese begin making robot movies that seem strange to the US - not monsters, but just part of the environment. US commentators are surprised at the lack of Japanese interest in the latest chip, VR goggles, cellphone games, and the like.2010+ - As robotics become more practical, they become a new engine of economic growth in Asia. The initial area of practical use is in hospitals and retirement communities for the swiftly aging population. There is a rapid rise in "rust-belt" style consumption of physical product in Asia, fueling a real boom. The robot industry drives secondary technologies such as fuel cells and nanotechnology to new heights, reinforcing the boom. At the same time, continued economic decline in the US spawns a cultural revolt against cyberspace, in particular virtual reality and "Matrix" type computer technology associated with the "wasteful, trashy" end of the 20th century. The focus of tech begins moving east to Pittsburgh and other areas experience in making objects rather than electron patterns. But in the US, most technology spending is directed to life extension of the increasingly creaky Baby Boomers.2012 - Asian countries embrace a new "real world" ethic for computing. Machines made in Asia must come to humanity rather than requiring humanity to enter their virtual world. Robotic technology becomes the next big thing, and grows at rates comparable to PC technology in the 1980s. Robotic technology permeates all machines, making Asian systems smarter than our current "Matrix" style computers conjuring up virtual worlds. Robots are trained rather than programmed.2015 - The US finally "wakes up" out of its Hollywood fog to discover the robots rising fast. However, since the US has a relatively young population, robots aren't needed as spare workers and local adoption is very slow. Instead, the primary expansion takes place in Japan and Europe, attending to the aging population.2020+ - Robotics and biotech begin to merge, making systems capable of using new energy sources independent oil-based power.Note I don't say anything about "intelligence" or "rights" of humanoid machines - the usual preoccupation of people who write about robots over here. My guess is that practical robots will be more like simple animals rather than HAL for a very long time. But something as smart as a dog or even a rat would spawn a revolution. While we pontificate on the philosophical "meaning" of humanlike robots, people are building the next thing elsewhere.Dr. Pete Markiewicz
pete@indiespace.com
Pete's point is well taken: I managed to write 95% of this week's report again using Dragon SpeakingNaturally, and we're seeing the slow merging of computer horsepower with peripherals and minimal effort interfaces. For most folks, it's easier to speak than to type, easier to click than to keyboard, and as computing power continues to grow after Moore's law, (which says essentially that computer power doubles every 18-months or so), we will see a general migration to "easiest use". Over time, we'll no doubt get to the science fiction image of thought-controlled surrogates doing our work for us.
For now, it's not a robot, but a computer that can write and respond to my speech commands is one hell of a practical step, modestly priced, yet most people aren't migrating in that direction yet. For some reason, taking the time to properly train a speech recognition engine, or to relearn to read using www.eBrainspeed.com technology are steps most people aren't willing to take just yet.
Despite laziness of users, Moore's Law and transportable code (as in C) libraries, will eventually make products so overwhelmingly easy to use that they will be quite irresistible.
Hopefully it will come about in time to pull us out of the backside of this subtle Second Depression we're drifting into right now.
On to the Charts!
"Write when you get rich...."
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George Ure (click here to email a note)