Cosmic savages?

Imagine a prehistoric tribe of savages, who only recently became brave enough to get for themselves a fire that falls from heavens, bring it into their cave and domesticate. When it's cold and dark outside, they all huddle together around their helpful but dangerous protector, humming their proto-songs, fixing their proto-clothes and probably munching their proto-processed food until most of the tribe falls asleep and only the guards would spend their shift watching over the fire, lest it died or tried to spread too far around.

Now imagine that this tribe begins to be interested in establishing contacts with another tribes. May be they hope to kick the other tribe out of their territory and take their women and stocked mammoths, may be they are afraid that the other tribe would do the same thing to themselves, or may be they are just curious to meet new friends - who knows? In any case, how are they going to look for the new tribe? What would they be looking for?

I can only guess how the savages might think, but I guess that they would probably be looking for an inhabited cave (may be larger and cleaner than their own) with a fire in it (may be larger and mightier than their own). So any time they pick up some fire in the distance, they might send some scouts to find out, if there is any tribe gathered around this only possible source of energy.

Next question, what if somewhere nearby there is a little village where much more advanced civilization lives? (Let's not think how come that the more advanced civilization would not try to bring the savage one to their own level, if only for their own security, by tricking them into selling their savage freedom in exchange for cheap drugs and filling up the lowest possible niche in that other society, being simultaneously a recognized sore spot and a symbol of spiritual simplicity, etc). 

This other civilisation, in any case, doesn't need to live near an open fire. They have their fires far away, called electrostations (nuclear or otherwise) and although some people have still work in shifts to watch over the big fire, lest it died or spread out, the majority of these more advanced people gets the energy via almost invisible wires and uses it to power their TV sets, microwave ovens, refrigerators and other devices without which no true civilisation is ever thinkable of.

Imagine a savage scout entering such village at night, when all lamps are out. He (or she, may be it's a matriarchal society) would see strange forms which are impossible to place, occasionally here and there some tiny fires which seem to be too little to warm up anybody, no half-eaten carcasses lying around, no caves with entrances covered by bear- or tiger-skins, no people gathered around a shaman humming some story about afterlife, nothing at all. Only darkness and those spooky lights.

I can suggest that such scout would later tell, "I have come to some dark places. It looks like they take the majority of the territory around us. It's nothing there we could recognize. We might be utterly alone all the way to the end of the world." - end of the world being how far they can go and return before running out of food.

The funny question: what if we are the savages and whatever we now call the dark matter is the infrastructure of some super-civilisation which we can't ever comprehend?

So far, we tried to find the tribes dwelling near the fires of big stars, just like us. But what if there are only the super-civilisations around, and they no longer have to dwell near stars, just as we no longer have to dwell near the open fire, because it would be too risky?

In that case, naturally, taking into account how more advanced that other civilisation must be compared to us, we'll probably spend aeons before ever finding out, all this time possibly being watched ourselves without ever noticing it.

This is completely speculative idea, but so is dark matter at the moment :)

So much for dark matter, as seen from science fiction prospective!

Babylon 5, Vorlons and their riddles

One of random thoughts due to (re)-watching Babylon 5 (very decent SF series, thanks to Michael Straczynski, the author, keeping true to his policy of "no cute robots or kids" and having the arc of the whole story prior to starting the project - very recommended for those who are into this type of stories).

In the series, there are different alien races represented, some of them "good", the others "evil" (the notions of "good" and "evil" prove to be somewhat fluid). One of the most cryptic races are the Vorlons, who are always wearing space suits, looking like little moving fortresses, can take any appearance depending on who sees them (but would rather not to), do not talk a lot and when they do, it takes a while to understand what they actually meant to say. Every phrase sounds like a prophecy and most of the time the characters (and those watching them) are left to wait until time decodes the messages.

It may well be, that the Vorlons were speaking so little, and then always in riddles, because they haven't been supposed to be using spoken language while communicating with their own kind. From the series it follows that they were using some sort of telepathy to convey information not only between themselves, but also to those who were "enhanced" by them (like Lita, a human telepath; the human telepaths story, by the way, seem to be at least partially borrowed from Alfred Bester's book "The Demolished Man" and one of main human telepathic characters in B5 is also called Bester). Also, even the way the Vorlons looked doesn't suggest that they even had any organs capable of producing speech (which may be one of the real reasons for them always wearing space suits outside of their own quarters).

Therefore, when they used any language, they were literally struggling with the foreign media. Very clever of Straczynski to make the species who do not normally use language talking in riddles... one can imagine that if they were conveying information to each other directly, and if they all shared common source or generic knowledge (some Vorlon Wikipedia everybody could tap into?..), then almost the only issues they might be willing to communicate to each other would be their feelings and points of view. How else to describe the feelings but via metaphors? But how can the other understand, if they don't feel what you feel, and you are not accustomed to describing your thoughts?

Of course, Vorlons are imaginary subjects living in imaginary world, but one might start wondering, what would become of humanity if we will ever acquire ability to communicate with each other bypassing slow http speech protocol? Would we also, in the end, forget how to use speech properly? Would we have to translate old literature individually for every person, depending on his, her or _its_ neuron structure? Would there be any individualities left at all if everybody will always be connected to everybody, or the humanity will change into a sort of humanhill, superintelligent only as a whole?

In English: "feeling blue" and "black dog"; in Russian: "green ennui" (тоска зеленая). What if the same book in different languages spawns different feelings, due to the different color perceptions of the readers - even if we assume 100% identical "to the letter" translation? (If one can talk about identical translation in this case at all)

It might be interesting to map the unconscious perception of the same text (e.g. from the colors mentioned in it and their associations) across different languages and see if that has any influence on how the book is received...

Speaking about positive associations: in Russian the word for "red" (красный) is also an ancient form of the word "beautiful" (прекрасный). "Красна девица" (literally: "red maiden") is a set fairy-tale phrase meaning "beautiful damsel". So everything which is "red" for a Russian speaker might unconsciously be perceived as positive, being associated with beauty. ("Light-blue" (голубой) has in fact several associations  - some of them I won't elaborate upon - but none of them is linked with sadness at all.)

Positive aura of red in Russian is also spread on other red-like colors: "малиновый звон" (crimson ring/jingle, literally in fact "raspberry ring" because the word is derived from the raspberry color) is an expression describing the sound of many church bells around the time when the sun rises or sets (yes, there is a special expression for that) and is supposed to bring into mind the image of peace and tranquillity all over the world. I am sure every language has such very special phrases which can be explained, but not directly translated. 

On the other hand, when you are called "white-handed" in Russian, you are accused of being too lazy (or at least, too cherry-picking).

The question is, in view of all that, is there any hope that one day two people speaking different languages and living in different parts of the world, would be able to understand each other fully, due to some arcane technology? As far as I can see, not without being able to place oneself in the other's mind... In any case: passive understanding of new or alien concepts, without any additional effort, seems to be very unlikely...

Robots, robots...

Just imagine what sort of trouble might household robots bring to the real life, when they will be ubiquitous, connected to Internet and (very possibly) some of them running under Windows. Therefore, virus-prone. (Even if Windows will die under the layers of dust, some other OS might somehow become a virus farm).

Just lo and behold: some 14-year-old h@ck3r bullied by more physically advanced friends, as a revenge, decides to infect the automaton servants of the hostile household. Instead of vacuum-cleaning the carpet, one of the robots suddenly tries to vacuum-clean the kids of house owner, following them everywhere. A cooking robot sprinkles the steaks with 10 times the amount of pepper (let's assume it would not know where to get the laxative). And I would not even begin what the one armed with a lawnmower could do...

First law of robototechnics you say? Yes... only it might well be that the ubiquitous robots, when they arrive, would not be produced by clean and optimally conditioned Western enterprises. Instead, some snotty underpaid kids working their wits out on sweat factories in Eastern Asia (or may be, in Africa... no, that is out of the realm of science fiction already) will bless these devices with a gift of existence. What chances will be that no corners would be cut off in the all-encompassing race for profit? I remember myself walking around the electronic expo in Hannover several years ago. It was the time when navigation devices already started to become mainstream. There was zillion of Eastern Asian shops demonstrating the products which they have essentially copied, more or less well, from somebody else's work. They didn't like their stuff to be photographed, and some of these participants were kicked out after the holders of the original gadgets recognized their offsprings behind the turbid glass... Same happens now with tablets. You can buy a 7-inch sorta-tablet for sorta-money which will sorta-work. Robots will not be an exception.

Of course, the assumptions involving the current social structure are the most error-prone. Social changes are the most difficult to predict: most of fantasy or science fiction writers would rather desribe in as many details as possible the system of fancy clans in some parallel world or the structure of the spaceship having a warp drive at its core, than to go into details of how the society would change. (Stanislaw Lem is a great counterexample). May be in the future there will be no snotty kids providing the rest of the world with cheap devices, sweets and clothing. Or may be, spreading the virus working on robots would be considered a major crime, the graviest thing anyone can do. The human society quickly adapts to prevent itself from self-destruction, and until now it managed to survive...

Nevertheless... I have to confess, imagining the vacuum-cleaning prank made me giggle. Of course, I would rather not be hunted!

Theoretically, it seems possible to run the social networks like Facebook or Twitter in a decentralized way. Much less so for financial payment providers, like Paypal.

In practice, though, only a small percentage of people are technically able to implement such network (or even just deploy), and only a small percentage within those could be able to do it without consulting Internet. Which does not render this idea very viable.

From the other side, we all already have absolutely decentralized and absolutely viable communication network: its protocol is called language. Every normally developed adult can support this network and even teach the others to support it.

Also, although many of us have never spinned wool or hacked wood, we can more or less confidently visualize how such things could be done, recognize when they are being done, and do them if in dire need.

When (if ever) the ability to make a radiotransmitter, a photocamera, or to establish a server for a social network will be like wool-spinning or wood-hacking, then the world would truly become a different place. Or so my wool-spinning-vaguely-aware mind figures.

Daemons and their powers...

I have just come across an article on New Scientist site, mentioning Maxwell daemon and its possible real-life implementation.

One thing that bothers me about it (don't I see the obvious?..):

Conceived by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867, the demon exploits the random thermal motions of the microworld. It might watch a tiny ball on a spiral staircase, waiting for it to randomly hop up a step and then slam in a barrier to stop the ball moving down again. If the demon keeps doing this the ball keeps climbing. The potential energy of the ball could then be used to drive an engine.

and regarding the implementation:

Finally, enter the demon, whose eye is a camera and brain a computer that controls the electric field. Whenever the rotor makes some progress in turning against the torque, the demon shifts the electric field so that the rotor suddenly finds itself nudged onto the top of that "step". This keeps happening, and the overall effect is to gradually climb the staircase.

As it does, the rotor gains energy. Crucially, though, the demon need pump no energy into the rotor, only information about the position of the rotor, which it uses to switch the field.

Doesn't shifting the field or slamming a barrier also mean that you make some work? You need to spend some energy to move that barrier and then to lift it again. These two movements cannot cancel each other in the real world because of friction (unless we operate in a real vacuum). Same about the shifting the electric field... Do they really mean that we can disregard friction-like effects in that case?

Regarding e-readers...

I had some other post in mind, but now I don't remember what it was, so I can at least write this one down :)

I think there are going to be the following use cases for e-readers:

•  manuals and other tech books (like the ones which can be currently read online at http://safari.oreilly.com ) - these are the books which need to be updated ASAP in case of errata, benefit a lot from having full-text search and community feedback, and many of them aren't relevant after 5 years or so. 
• Other thought regarding manuals - taking into account popular community projects like - I'll name two I had to look at recently - PHP manual or Programming Scala where community feedback essentially becomes part of the document itself - we can expect that the role of document author will be replaced by the role of project leader, who establishes the guidelines for the documentation and writes first draft, and then moderates the community feedback when necessary. It seems to be natural for a technical documentation to be that open-source.
• Now, what else can be great content for e-readers, apart from tech or other manuals? (Foreign language ones can be a good fit also, especially if e-reader also has audio capabilities). I would suggest magazines. Many of us have this situation, when we are subscribed to this and that, we are getting the glanced-paper exemplars bi-weekly or monthly, read them (or not) and discard them afterwards. Daily journals are falling under the same category.
• To the same category I'd also put so called "beach literature": the books which can be read only once, like some sort of canned conversation when you can't have one. It's a pity to spend expensive paper on those.

At the same time, I don't think that the paper books are going to die. After all, paper book has life span which is way longer than any e-reader, and it's a medium proven by millennia of human experience. But I do think that spreading of e-readers, along with internet, might significantly reduce the amount of printed information.

At the extreme end it might be even like that (and I would quite like it to be like that): everybody can access the whole body of human knowledge either absolutely free or for some fixed rate (may be a set of rates could be available for different sets of content), and everybody could order a certain book, magazine or journal to be printed out (which would cost extra) - in case he or she wants to have a hard copy. This could be the way to get the advantage of both worlds: not wasting paper on things which are expendable, but preserving information that feels like to be preserved.

Probably, under this model, the books which are ordered often, would still be printed en masse (thus being cheaper). The danger here is that some information might never be printed unless you happen to run across it and appreciate it, and we are losing the possibility to go to a bookshop and rumble through the books, discovering what we have never seen before. We might hope that some publishing houses will still be taking the risks of ordering hard copies of the literature works which they deem interesting. We also should hope that books, as such, will not become a luxury. 

At least, I do. By the way, how many new books have you read the last month?.. ;)