The World Brain
Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943):
When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain …
We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance.
Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone.
A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.
We shall be able to witness and hear events —— just as though we were present.
- the inauguration of a President,
- the playing of a World Series game,
- the havoc of an earthquake or
- the terror of a battle
(When woman is boss, Colliers, 30 January 1926)
Alan Kay (1940):
A combination of [a] ‘carry anywhere’ device and a global information utility such as the ARPA network or two-way cable TV will bring the libraries and schools (not to mention stores and billboards) to the home.
(A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages, Proceedings of the ACM Annual Conference, 1972)
Walter Isaacson (1952) [University Professor of History, Tulane University]:
Over the course of more than three decades, the federal government, working with private industry and research universities, had designed and built a massive infrastructure project, like the interstate highway system but vastly more complex, and then threw it open to ordinary citizens and commercial enterprises.
[The Internet] was funded primarily by public dollars, but it paid off thousands of times over by seeding a new economy and an era of economic growth.
(The Innovators, 2014, p 403)
Jimmy Wales (1966):
Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.
(Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Responds, 28 July 2004)
Timothy Berners-Lee (1955):
The design of the Internet and the Web is a search for a set of rules which will allow computers to work together in harmony, and our spiritual and social quest is for a set of rules which allow people to work together in harmony.
(The World Wide Web and the "Web of Life", 1998, emphasis added)
Price of a Pocket Calculator(Walter Isaacson, The Innovators, 2014, p 182) | |
| 1967 | $150 |
| 1972 | $100 |
| 1975 | $25 |
| 2014 | $3.62 |
Vannevar Bush (1890 – 1974)
Director, Office of Scientific Research and Development
The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more.
Moreover, they will be far more versatile than present commercial machines, so that they may readily be adapted for a wide variety of operations.
- They will be controlled by a control card or film,
- they will select their own data and manipulate it in accordance with the instructions thus inserted,
- they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and
- they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation.
One of them will take instructions and data from a whole roomful of girls armed with simple key board punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes.
There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things. …
Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. …
A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.
It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works.
On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading.
There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. …
Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. …
Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race. …
The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein.
They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons.
They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience.
He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good.
Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which
- to terminate the process, or
- to lose hope as to the outcome.
(As We May Think, The Atlantic, July 1945)
Charles Babbage (1791 – 1871)
It is the science of calculation — which becomes continually more necessary at each step of our progress, and which must ultimately govern the whole of the applications of science to the arts of life.
(p 114)
[If, in the future, any man should succeed in] constructing an [analytical] engine embodying in itself the whole of the executive department of mathematical analysis upon different principles or by simpler mechanical means, I have no fear of leaving my reputation in his charge, for he alone will be fully able to appreciate the nature of my efforts and the value of their results.
(p 123)
Every shower that falls, every change of temperature that occurs, and every wind that blows, leaves on the vegetable world the traces of its passage; slight, indeed, and imperceptible, perhaps, to us, but no the less permanently recorded in the depths of those wood fabrics.
(p 121)
(James Gleick, The Information, Fourth Estate, 2011)
Augusta Ada King (1815 – 52)
Countess of Lovelace
[Imagination] is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of Science.
It is that which feels & discovers what is, the real which we see not, which exists not for our senses.
Those who have learned to walk on the threshold of the unknown worlds … may then, with the fair white wings of Imagination, hope to soar further into the unexplored amidst which we live.
(James Gleick, The Information, Fourth Estate, 2011, p 112)
The distinctive characteristic of the Analytical Engine … is the introduction into it of the principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by means of punched cards, the most complicated patterns in the fabrication of brocaded stuffs …
We say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.
(Eugene Kim & Betty Toole, Ada and the First Computer, Scientific American, May 1999, p 80)
[The] Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere 'calculating machines'.
It holds a position wholly its own …
In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols, in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science.
A new, a vast and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind …
Thus not only the mental the material, but the theoretical and practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other.
We are not aware of [anything] hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine.
(1842)
London Examiner:
With an understanding thoroughly masculine in solidity, grasp and firmness, Lady Lovelace had all the delicacies of the most refined female character.
Her manners, her tastes, her accomplishments, were feminine in the nicest sense of the word; and the superficial observer would never have divined the strength and the knowledge that lay hidden under the womanly graces.
(Jack Rochester & John Gantz, The Naked Computer, Morrow, 1983, p 44)
Contents
The Greatest Generation or the Most Narcissistic?
How to Shave a Bundle Off the Deficit: Spend Less on Nukes
The Atlantic
- Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid, May 2022.
Jonathan Haidt (1963): Henry Kaufman Visiting Professor, Stern School of Business, New York University. - Jonathan Haidt Is Trying to Heal America’s Divisions, 24 May 2020.
Peter Wehner. - How America Ends, December 2019.
Yoni Appelbaum: Senior Political Editor.
A conservatism defined by ideas can hold its own against progressivism,- winning converts to its principles, and
- evolving with each generation.
The GOP’s efforts to cling to power by coercion instead of persuasion have illuminated the perils of defining a political party in a pluralistic democracy around a common heritage, rather than around values or ideals. - President Trump and the Unnatural World, 21 December 2016.
Robinson Meyer.
David Biello:
[The] Chinese, who are ostensibly Communist, are going to have the world’s largest carbon-trading market, while the United States, which is ostensibly capitalist, can’t fathom the idea of a free-market solution to our climate-change challenge. …
Most members of the [Chinese] government have been trained in science, and they don’t have a problem with climate change the way [we] do.
There is no debate over the reality of climate change.
And … they are aware that climate change poses even more significant challenges to China than it does to the United States … - The Coddling of the American Mind, September 2015.
Jonathan Haidt (1963): Henry Kaufman Visiting Professor, Stern School of Business, New York University. - Millennials: The Greatest Generation or the Most Narcissistic?, 2 May 2012.
Jean Twenge: Professor of psychology, San Diego State University.
Two large datasets — the Monitoring the Future survey of [half a million] high school students and the American Freshman survey of [9 million] entering college students … showed generational increases in self-esteem, assertiveness, self-importance, narcissism, and high expectations [indicating] a clear cultural shift toward individualism and focusing on the self. …
Millennials [born, roughly, 1982 to 1999] were less likely than Boomers and even GenXers- to say they thought about social problems,
- to be interested in politics and government,
- to contact public officials …
- to work for a political campaign. …
- to say they trusted the government to do what's right [or]
- to say they were interested in government and current events. …
Volunteering rates did increase, the only item out of 30 measuring concern for others that did.
However, this rise occurred at the same time that high schools increasingly required volunteer service to graduate.
[Rates] of teen pregnancy, early sexual intercourse, alcohol abuse, and youth crime have continued to decline.
However, these behaviors aren't [just related] to civic orientation …
They are also determined by [other factors] such as demographics, drug wars, policing, birth control availability, and … the legalization of abortion. …
The survey data … captured what Millennials said about themselves …
If we're going to understand our culture and how it's changed, we need to listen to what [they] say. - How to Shave a Bundle Off the Deficit: Spend Less on Nukes, 13 July 2011.
Cirincione, Joseph: President, Ploughshares Fund.They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation.
The government is set to spend almost $700 billion on nuclear weapons over the next 10 years …
(Isaiah, 2:4)
President Obama is struggling to implement the updated nuclear strategy agreed upon by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Department of Defense in last year's Nuclear Posture Review. …
As Forbes recently noted,Barack Obama is likely to spend more money on the US nuclear arsenal than any US president since Ronald Reagan.
Right now, the United States spends about $54 billion each year on nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs.
President Obama has pledged to increase the budgets by about $2 billion a year for new bomb factories, plus spend about $12 billion more per year over the next decade to develop a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, submarines and bombers.
Some of these programs are essential.
Many are not. …
The Pentagon budget includes funds to develop a new fleet of 12 nuclear-armed submarines with an estimated cost of $110 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Also planned is $55 billion for 100 new bombers, and a new missile to replace the recently upgraded 450 Minutemen III intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Meanwhile, the Department of Energy is planning to add new military capabilities to nearly every warhead in the active nuclear stockpile, with programs stretching beyond 2030. …
Typically, contractors and military services low-ball initial estimates to win program approval.
Once budgets are locked in, programs build constituent support, thwarting cancellation even as costs double or triple. …
The Navy subs alone would be able to carry roughly 800 nuclear bombs through the middle of the century. …
This is where Congress comes in.
Members should not approve any of these new programs without a nuclear roadmap. …
As the Nuclear Posture Review says,Our most pressing security challenge at present is preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, for which a nuclear force of thousands of weapons has little relevance.
Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov recommend that the US and Russia reduce from the current 1,550 strategic warheads each side can deploy to no more than 1,000.
This could save billions annually.
In 2006, Steven Kosiak, now at the Office of Management and Budget, estimated that the United States could sustain an arsenal of this size for one-third the current annual cost.
Would you like to know more? - Dismal scientists: how the crash is reshaping economics, 16 February 2009.
Gregory Clark (1957): Professor of Economics, University of California, Davis. - The Capitalist Threat, February 1997.
George Soros.
