Category Archives: Technology and Society

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

AI

29 Comments

The huge economic issue that no one in Washington is talking about:

Driverless trucks delivering goods to fully automated warehouses and loading docks. Drones delivering everything from pizza to furniture. Offices will become almost fully automated as work is farmed out to smart machines. There’s even speculation that AI could take the place of reporters and editors, writing copy with more speed and less bias than humans.

Most of these innovations are not far off. What’s worse, our schools are stuck in a time warp, teaching kids as if it was the 1970s, sending them to college where they major in English Lit or Environmental Management. How many of these young people would be better off going to a trade school and learning a valuable skill that would be useful in the new economy?

What’s needed is a revolution. Not rage against the machines, but a clear-eyed recognition in society from top to bottom that we can’t go back. The days when you could graduate from high school and go to work for 40 years in the local plant, earning a good middle-class wage and being able to buy into the American dream, are gone forever. Donald Trump can’t bring them back. The Democrats can’t bring them back. The unions can’t bring them back.

Nope.

Business, Technology and Society

One More Night In DC

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I took the Silver Line out to Wiehle, to get to the last mile to Dulles. I admittedly didn’t provide enough margin, but I could have made it if Uber hadn’t screwed me over. The driver was driving all around, showing close to me on my phone, but I couldn’t see him in a big parking lot. He kept wandering on my screen, and never called me to ask where I was. I couldn’t call him.

After the official five minutes, he canceled me, and I was screwed, missing the last flight of the day to LA. I had to rebook from DCA the next morning (no way was I going to try Dulles again), and had to use miles to avoid who knows how many hundreds of dollars in change fees and fare changes, plus a hundred bucks for another night’s stay.

And for this “service,” and to add insult to injury, Uber charged me five bucks for the driver that I didn’t cancel. And when they did so, they said if I had an issue, to go to a web site that had no information whatsoever as to how to deal with it.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The New “Climate Denial”

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This is the ongoing game of the warm mongers, to continually redefine and conflate terms, but Judith Curry gets right down to it:

exactly what is being ‘denied’? As far as I can tell, here is what is being ‘denied’: that the policies put in place under the Paris Agreement will on net be beneficial to global societies and ecosystems, and that they will have any kind of impact on the climate of the 21st century.

Climate denialism is no longer about science; its about action versus inaction – in particular, the UNFCCC’s preferred actions. It doesn’t seem to matter that the emissions targets are woefully inadequate for preventing what they expect to be ‘dangerous’ climate change; emissions targets are unlikely to be met; and the climate will show little change in the 21st century even if the targets are met.

Let me take this opportunity to redefine climate denialism: denial that the UNFCCC policies will accomplish anything significant regarding improving the climate as defined by increasing human welfare and the health of ecosystems.

I’d restate it as denial that we can have sufficient certainty at this time to think they will to justify implementing them.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Space, Space Science, Technology and Society

To The Moon, Alice!

8 Comments

OK, actually, it’s to the moon, NASA. Bob Zimmerman has some thoughts.

In my opinion, this is a completely unrealistic goal, absent a) considering alternatives to SLS and b) being willing to risk astronauts’ lives. A seventy-ton SLS isn’t going to do that job, and that’s all they’re going to have (at best) by 2020. And putting up sending astronauts to the moon (even just around, and it’s not clear what the value of that is) on its first, or even second flight would be much sportier than Apollo 8 was, back when it was actually important.

FWIW, I also think that the reporter should have talked to someone besides Casey Dreier, The Planetary Society is hardly an unbiased source about human spaceflight.

Health, Law, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Progress On Aging

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…and the resistance to it. I think he’s right that it’s not based on science or logic, but philosophy. Some people (including Isaac Asimov) think that death is necessary, almost to the point of ultimately worshiping it. Of course, some of it could be a recognition, conscious or otherwise, of the supreme disruption to many accepted institutions that it would entail, including pensions, life-time appointments, death taxes, etc.

And I hate when they use the word “immortality.” I think an eternal life would be far worse than death, but that’s not the goal; it’s simply living as long as we want to continue to live.

Update a couple minutes later]

Sort of related: GM Salmonella cures cancer. Cool. But the anti-science left will oppose it because GM.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

OCST And The FAA

The biggest news from #CST2017 yesterday was probably Jim Bridenstine’s speech at lunch. Keith Cowing has a list of notes from it. It was a good speech, but to my ears, this was the only one that was news:

FAA office commercial space has battles within FAA. Reorganization needed. Looking for Trump to elevate office

To elaborate, while he floated this idea as a possibility in the Space Renaissance Act, this is the first time (AFAIK) that he clearly stated publicly that he wanted to see the president reverse the Executive Order in the Clinton administration that had folded the Office of Commercial Space Transportation into the FAA, and restore its original location, reporting directly to the Secretary of Transportation. I explained in my book why I thought this was a good idea. He only mentioned the fact that it would have more clout in budget battles, but the other point is that, since the ValuJet crash in the Everglades in the late 90s, the FAA lost its role as a promoter of the aviation industry, and I think this has resulted in a culture clash with OCST, which retains it, having to balance it against safety uber alles.

I talked to the Congressman briefly after the talk, and he told me he recalled my giving him a copy of the book three (!) years ago, and said he’d read it. Maybe he’ll go back and re-read it now. If so, given that he heartily endorsed SLS/Orion, I hope he’ll go back and re-read the appendix on that subject, but it may be that his endorsement had the same intended purpose as Alan Stern’s.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

CSF And SLS

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Keith Cowing made a big deal of Tuesday’s announcement at the Space Transportation Conference by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation that it supported SLS.

I didn’t actually talk to Alan about it, but I just see it as politics; they view it as the danegeld they have to pay to keep the SLS vandals (to mix historical metaphors) from attacking commercial space and public/private partnerships in the new administration. This is the key passage, if you read between the lines:

Stern said he was not worried about endorsing a vehicle that could compete with those commercial alternatives. “The market will sort that out,” he said.

Emphasis mine. I’m not saying that Keith is wrong. Alan may not have “taken the issue off the table,” but I see no big harm in trying right now, with all the policy ferment. There will be plenty of other people (including Yours Truly) making the case against it.

[Update a while later]

Marcia Smith has a comprehensive overview of the conference. I haven’t read all yet, but may comment further after I have.