The border between environment and society is blurring. Natural scarcity may not be reflected in prices because of temporary subsidies, but economics is adjusting to new equations based on population, climate and urbanization. Science is directed to reveal all of the parameters and relationships. Development looks at reuse and hazard reduction. Biotech has a global market base. Computation puts the expanding data into perspective. Technological determinism adds network archaeology. Society learns how to respond constructively to challenging events.
Recent links (about 30):
academic Welcome | MIT150 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology 150th anniversary
biotech The BioBricks Foundation
books
The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, Evan Marshall, 2001 Writing the Blockbuster Novel, Albert Zuckerman, 1994 Dynamic Characters, Nancy Kress, 1998
The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, Evan Marshall, 2001
Writing the Blockbuster Novel, Albert Zuckerman, 1994
Dynamic Characters, Nancy Kress, 1998
climate Climate Change: A Software Grand Challenge | Serendipity
computer Dr Dobbs - IBM Claims World's Fastest Microprocessor
disaster World Natural Hazards Website | Natural Disaster Management | Disaster Agency Hawaii - PDC
environment
Technology Review: Robotic Storm Tracker Gets a Big Test with Earl Weather conditions tie fires in Russia to floods in Pakistan | Environment & Development | Deutsche Welle | 01.09.2010 The Deepening Crisis: Scientific American Hurricane Earl Weakens to Category 3 Storm - WSJ.com Environmental Hazards: Assessing Risk and Reducing Disaster, Keith Smith, 2004 YouTube - Johan Rockstrom: Let the environment guide our development
Technology Review: Robotic Storm Tracker Gets a Big Test with Earl
Weather conditions tie fires in Russia to floods in Pakistan | Environment & Development | Deutsche Welle | 01.09.2010
The Deepening Crisis: Scientific American
Hurricane Earl Weakens to Category 3 Storm - WSJ.com
Environmental Hazards: Assessing Risk and Reducing Disaster, Keith Smith, 2004
YouTube - Johan Rockstrom: Let the environment guide our development
mathematics Impossible Soccer Kick Leads to New Physics Equation | Playbook
mobile Mobile App Helps Emergency Crews Assess Damage During Disasters
network Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: The New Science of Network Archaeology
publishing
Subutai Corporation Moving Tales - Bringing Stories to Life on your iPad
Subutai Corporation
Moving Tales - Bringing Stories to Life on your iPad
robotics
IEEE Spectrum: NASA Ready to Send Humanoid Robot to Space Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: Robots Take Out the Trash
IEEE Spectrum: NASA Ready to Send Humanoid Robot to Space
Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: Robots Take Out the Trash
science ScienceDirect - Home
semantic The Semantic Puzzle | Why SKOS thesauri matter - the next generation of semantic technologies
sports IBM at the US Open - Analyzing Every Volley, Serve and Overhead Smash - ReadWriteCloud
statistics The Big Data Explosion and the Demand for the Statistical Tools to Analyze It - ReadWriteCloud
telepresence IEEE Spectrum: Telepresence: A Manifesto
urban
How Can Los Angeles Adapt to Coming Climate Change?: Scientific American Augmented Reality Coming to DC Bus Stops Today (Photo)
How Can Los Angeles Adapt to Coming Climate Change?: Scientific American
Augmented Reality Coming to DC Bus Stops Today (Photo)
video New Microscope Enables Real-Time 3-D Movies of Developing Embryos [Slide Show]: Scientific American
Book review:
Biology Is Technology, Robert H. Carlson, 2010
This is a study of the economics of biology. It reviews the trajectory of technology, biotech, genetic engineering and industrial projections. Gene-sequencing already has international sites and a critical mass is evolving for a growth in synthetic parts exchange. Opensource is creating a participative market. Current applications include biobricks, iGEM, biofuels, and instant vaccines among many others. The turning point is that the human has become a product which redefines the producers and consumers themselves and increases the complexity of behaviors. Limits on innovation concerning rights and patents are discussed. There are risks of runaway effects which need to be better understood and monitored where possible. The opening questions about what biology is, and what biological engineering will be, are ongoing. Readers interested in bioinformatics would need additional sources.
Sustainability issues grow as large urban centers add a million people, or or up to about 5%, per year. Social responses to acts of nature need to be tempered in order to prevent environmental disasters. Demand increases for tech solutions. Automation extends to robotics and space.
Recent links (about 23):
ai "The Age of Assistants": The View From Inside SRI
augmented-reality "What Mountain is That?" New App Takes AR Outside the City Limits
disaster
Database | EM-DAT International Strategy for Disaster Reduction International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) Death to Humans! Visions of the Apocalypse in Movies and Literature: Scientific American
Database | EM-DAT
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR)
Death to Humans! Visions of the Apocalypse in Movies and Literature: Scientific American
email HOW TO: Undo "Send" in Gmail
emotion EmoRate
events Online Event Registration – Sell Tickets Online with Eventbrite
robotics IEEE Spectrum: Cyborg Fly Pilots Robot Through Obstacle Course
security David Ignatius - Pentagon's cybersecurity plans have a Cold War chill
smartgrid IEEE Spectrum: $25 Billion European Smart Grid Market by 2020
space BBC News - Alien hunters 'should look for artificial intelligence'
ui Make: Online : Multitouch robot swarm controller
World's Fastest-Growing Megalopolis Hides in Fog | Raw File Reinventing the City to Combat Climate Change
World's Fastest-Growing Megalopolis Hides in Fog | Raw File
Reinventing the City to Combat Climate Change
visualization David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization | Video on TED.com
Book reviews:
Urban Risk Reduction: An Asian Perspective, Shaw et al, 2009
Urbanization is outpacing general population growth in Asia. Case studies are described for localities and types of environmental disaster. Urban issues range from household, community, city, region, to nation. Lifestyles create hazards which induce, or worsen natural, events. The culture can be built on safety and resilience. Action planning may require assistance of specialized agencies. Pilot cities demonstrate projects such as local resource organization, citizen empowerment, and smaller units and chain of command. Lessons are learned from disaster recovery. A management information system was useful in at least one case. The decision-making pyramid includes global, national, city, building, and individual. Environmental issues include air and water pollution, waste and sewage, noise, land use, drainage and transport congestion, slums, flood and other common issues such as disease, fire, or crime. Strategies are sensitive to survival, peace, innovation from tradition, and sustainability. The disaster management cycle has its own information and communication issues in each phase, non, before, during and after. Risk reduction involves knowledge, perception, deepening, preparedness and dissemination. Surveys measure public awareness. Frameworks are provided by Millennium Development Goal, Hyogo Framework for Action, and UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. There are eighteen chapters, two parts, twenty-four authors.
Disaster Risk Management Systems Analysis: A Guide Book, Baas, 2008
This book has a toolset for the characterization and strengthening of DRM at the international, national, province/district/municipality, community and institution layers. A framework enumerates initiatives for each of the periods for disaster risk reduction, response, and recovery. Preparedness links both development, through mitigation and prevention, and humanitarian assistance, through relief and recovery. Another framework for sustainable livelihoods indicates which households are most vulnerable. There is a list of key questions for leaders. A form is shown to document the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats across levels. There are six modules, two annexes and many figures, relational maps, and checklists. It can be downloaded as a PDF from the web.
Ecological Engineering: Principles and Practices, Patrick C. Kangas, 2004
Humans stress natural ecosystems through simplification of species and metabolic shifts. Research in emergent ecosystems includes agriculture, urban, and coastal or estuarine. Since prediction is limited, engineering epistemology requires building improvement based on design and test. Future directions include ecological nanotech, terraforming, biosensors, ecosensors, universal pollution treatment, and aquaculture. Technoecosystems maintain a balance between living and hardware systems. Since the laboratory includes the environment, the hacker code of ethics applies to ecological engineering. Treatment reduces costs of pollution. Ecological economics adds measures of emergy or embodied energy, natural capital, sustainability, carrying capacity and many types of ecosystem services to improve life-support value. Sold waste management discusses landfills, composting, and industrial ecology. The energy value of the waste is the same as that used to make the product. Wetlands are used for wastewater treatment by spiraling. An identical decay equation for decomposition evolved in parallel, linking design intuitions for both biodegradation in ecology and wastewater engineering. Restoration ecology connects to succession and is explained for salt marshes, artificial reefs, and educational exhibits. Microcosmology includes living models and replication issues. Soil bioengineering is shown for urban imperviousness, stormwater management bioretention and agricultural erosion control. This realm includes beavers, coastal vegetation and self-building machines. Biodiversity is increased by exotic species. The food web describes feeding interactions. The series of multiple states in catastrophe theory is used to explain invasion. Control theory ranges from machine analogies to biotech. Circuit symbols are used for ecosystem models. H T Odum coined a lot of the names of new ecosystems. Principles include energy signature, self-organization and preadaptation. There are nine chapters
Building Safer Cities: The Future of Disaster Risk, edited by Kreimer et al, 2003
Actual and new types of disasters are discussed, e.g. due to rapid urbanization or climate change. Impact and preparedness affect several geographic scales of security, environmental and human, including economics. politics, and society. There are several major worldviews. The main concerns are globalization, environment, social vulnerability, and protecting infrastructure. The various methods of balancing costs of risks include privatization, government taxation and globalization. Africa often suffers export losses, which leads to tens of thousands of youth mortalities, when other countries have disasters. Hazard reduction involves robust design, flexible and adaptable systems, reversal of vulnerability trends, and societal preparedness. Coastal zone classifications include protect, retreat and accommodate. Resilience measures how much disturbance can be absorbed, and the capability for self-reorganization. Regional analysis, management and action are required for flooding. Study approaches include scenarios and consequences. The fact that life support networks, e.g. utilities, affect eachother as external technological causes has not been taken into account traditionally. Critical infrastructure includes telecom, power, energy, storage, transportation, water, financial, emergency services, and government. Buildings can be retrofit using new tech for earthquakes risk. These were papers for a conference of international financial institutions. There are four parts, twenty chapters, twenty-six authors. They may develop literacy for the terminology. Most chapters have conclusions or recommendations. The web had PDFs and Google books has full content.
Counting Heads, David Marusek, 2005
This novel is a scifi cyberpunk mystery. There are three parts, forty-five chapters, and an epilogue. Chapters are numbered, e.g. up to 1.3 or 2.29. Part 3 adds days of the week to the titles up to Friday 3.13. It begins in first person for part 1 which was originally a short story. The year is 2092. There are a pair of main characters. Tech includes nanotech, clones, robotic insects, friendly AIs, wearable valet processors. holopresence conferences, and high velocity surface travel. HomCom is the initial antagonist. There is a realistic world. The rest of the parts are told in third person after forty years have passed. The point of view changes among several main characters. The antagonist may be an AI. A glossary would be appropriate. The title refers to heads for which the body can be replaced. A sequel was published, Mind Over Ship.
The real world gets a game layer, iris scanning, risks, relief, aquabatics and solar sails. See new AI, telepresence and climate control videos. Smartphones support sign language, and publishing does augmented reality. Economists seek new values amid a network of cities. Machine learning gets a prediction API. Semantic web and simulation get faster. Cyberpunk titles get reviewed.
Original scifi Streetseekers and mystery Casadrome added to previous Last of the Humans. Also from Amazon.
ai
YouTube - Eliezer Yudkowsky - The Challenge of Friendly AI (1/3) YouTube - Peter Molyneux demos Milo, the virtual boy
YouTube - Eliezer Yudkowsky - The Challenge of Friendly AI (1/3)
YouTube - Peter Molyneux demos Milo, the virtual boy
augmented-reality Can Augmented Reality Help Save the Print Publishing Industry?
books Global Catastrophic Risks, edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkovic, 2008
crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing Disaster Relief
economics America's Lost Decade(s) - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review
games YouTube - Seth Priebatsch: Building the game layer on top of the world
internet Technology Review: Blogs: Mims's Bits: The Fear-Based Psychology of the "Internet Kill Switch"
machinelearning Google Prediction API - Google Code
mobile Better Than FaceTime? Researchers Test New Mobile Technology for Deaf
nanotech YouTube - The Weather Machine: Nano-Enabled Climate Control for the Earth - 1
ocean Innespace
optical Technology Review: Blogs: Mims's Bits: Using Einstein's Relativity to Speed up Supercomputer Simulations 10,000%
satellite NASA - Sailing Among the Stars
scifi
Infoquake, David Lewis Edelman, 2006 Halting State, by Charles Stross, 2007 The Mirrored Heavens, David J. Williams, 2008
Infoquake, David Lewis Edelman, 2006
Halting State, by Charles Stross, 2007
The Mirrored Heavens, David J. Williams, 2008
search The Future of Internet Search - Project Syndicate
security Iris Scanners Create the Most Secure City in the World. Welcome, Big Brother | Fast Company
semantic-web Dr Dobbs - Semantic Web Bottleneck
social-networks Flowr. Real-time Collaboration, knowledge exchange and smart information flow.
telepresence YouTube - John Delaney: Wiring an interactive ocean
urban Beyond City Limits - By Parag Khanna | Foreign Policy
The internet wants to be the answer. It has tied together all of the testimonials and provided search to find sources, and rankings to reveal the best. Women can review unbiased medical advice, and patients all of their records. It can reshape itself from smartphones if needed. Show sensors tell people what to hear. Robotics reports progress in batteries, walking, emotions and space travel. The brain is almost mapped. Beyond scifi, the imagination is also scenic, intriguing and mysterious.
Recent links (twenty-two):
Sprouter Swingly | It's time you got some answers.
Exploring How to Build a Cloud With Smartphones - ReadWriteCloud IBM's Cloud Computing Coming to a Hospital Near You 4 Tools for Assessing Cloud Performance - ReadWriteCloud
FindTheBest.com | Find. Compare. Decide. The Best Top 10, Top 100 & More Lists: List Making is Easy at Ranker | Ranker - A World of Lists
Boston-Power heads to the moon - Boston Business Journal A Robot Capable of Developing Bonds and Showing Emotions IEEE Spectrum: Iran's Humanoid Robot Surena 2 Walks, Stands on One Leg (Video) Robot to escort on space shuttle mission: NASA - International Business Times
Kraken, China Mieville, 2010 Terminal World, Alastair Reynolds, 2010 The Dervish House, Ian McDonald, 2010
Society seems to be in the midst of another big shuffle. Part of it is seasonal, but there are major ideological shifts as previous institutions shed the characters that embodied them. Despite oft-repeated scripts, new contacts made online or in person are superficial and find it difficult to pierce the compartmentalization of previous history or biography quickly enough. Discontinuities in authority may occur. Risk mitigation strategies then need review. A tag or stereotype invites examination.
Recent links (about sixty): grouped using Bookmarks2LiveWriter which plugs into the windows live writer app and downloads delicious bookmarks for a date range, which can then be sorted by leading tag. Manually edited to skip newline for single entries.
MathOverflowFluther: Tap the Collective
AnthologizeWho’s in the Blogosphere? / Flowtown (@flowtown)
Defending the Undefendable, Walter Block, 2008Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, Roy Peter Clark, 2006
IDS Readies Data Centers on Ships « Data Center KnowledgeA sneak preview of enterprise IT in 2020 - Computerworld Blogs
Par4AllCollaborative Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, available soon under GPL
Young Engineer Uses Webcam, Laser to Build Budget 3-D Scanner | Gadget Lab | Wired.comTechnology Review: Computing at the Speed of LightMedical Daily: Purple light means go, ultraviolet light means stop
Scientists provide a new angle on quantum cryptographyPhysicists develop model that pushes limits of quantum theory
IEEE Spectrum: Engineers Turn Robot Arm into Formula 1 SimulatorThe University of Utah: Mechanical Engineering:Remote controlled, multi-tasking climbing machineTechnology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: A Strange New Take on Telepresence
The Fuller Memorandum, Charles Stross, 2010Mech, B. V. Larson, 2010Containment, Cantrell, 2009Living Digitally: Fiction by Christian Cantrell
6 Ways Eye Tracking Is Changing the WebInjecting Errors for Fun and Profit - ACM QueueDr Dobbs - Time and Testing: The Biggest Developer Headaches
LoiLo incLight Reading - Service Provider IT - Verizon Tailors Video to Criminal Justice - Telecom News Analysis
Poynter Online - Writing ToolsThe Soulmen | We Got It! Ulysses 2.0Welcome - OmmwriterThe Organized Writer17 Fantastic Apps Made Especially for Writers | tripwire magazine