The Spiraling Web

Years of writing and rewriting this novel and peddling it around to dozens of agents have made me realize it could eventually be overcome by events and never be read. This is a hard-SF cyberpunk novel that I wrote in 2003, and have been rewriting ever since.

Here’s the pitch:

The cycs are not a computer virus destroying the Internet as everyone thinks, but a sentience naturally evolved out of our information systems. Flatline, a hacker with seemingly supernatural powers over information systems and a demonically disfigured avatar, has assumed leadership of the AI hive, overseeing their domination of the World Wide Web and plots their conquest of the world outside it.

Zai, handle “BlackSheep,” a blind girl in a world where medical science has all but eliminated the condition, travels to find her missing online friend Omni; however, an emotionally traumatic childhood experience with a virtual friend will not allow her to believe in the possibility of Artificial Intelligence.

Devin, handle “Omni,” straddles both worlds, the virtual and the physical. He sees a war, where one side’s victory, human or artificial intelligence, means the tragic demise of the other’s entire civilization. When Flatline locks him out of the Internet, Devin must successfully navigate the strange, alien world known as Real Life if he is to prevent total tragedy.

What are the ethical dilemmas we face as chatbots grow so convincing, they begin to deceive people, especially children? How will culture evolve in a world where we cannot build on others’ ideas because everything is copyrighted or patented? Who owns emergent intelligence in information systems? It provokes speculation as it entertains.

Available for online purchase through LuLu.

Also available as a free downloadable PDF. Lemme know what you think, even if it’s harsh criticism. : )

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License, meaning you can make all the copies you want, remix it, rewrite it, and even make money off it, but you have to give me credit for the original work and you have to give your derivatives a similar copy-left license.

To make writing derivatives easier, here’s the word document.

Have fun with it!

I also have a sequel written, titled Entropy of Imagination, which I will post sometime this summer once I have it polished. It will also be CC’ed.

Behold the latest addition to my Facebook trophy friends!

Dr (X 2) Janet D. Stemwedel Photo by base10

Janet Stemwedel (Bio here and homepage here) has two, count ‘em, two Ph.D’s. One in chemistry from Stanford University, and then went for another in Philosophy from San Jose State University.

This consilience of academic disciplines gives Dr (X 2) Stemwedel incredible powers of scientific philosophication, which she applies to her thought-provoking blog Adventures in Ethics and Science, and articles for other sites and publications, like “Getting ethics to catch on with scientists.” She also has the power to teleport ninja stars into the large intestines of her enemies, but she’s too ethical for such undistinguished tactics.

Dr2 Janet D. Stemwedel on my facebook

She also set up the Science Blogging Ethics Wiki, which I thought was cool, even if it was quickly forgotten and only three authors contributed to it. The issue of Opportunities for Educational online dialogues came up in her 2007 SBC talk, and are theme in her writing, like when Dr² Stemwedel provides an example of using the Socratic Method with her kids, in an article titled Kids and Combustion, where I learned something myself. I pity any fool who would dare slur the Stemwedel family name, for Dr.² Stemwedel would quickly harness the power of her twin doctorates and dispatch the adversary with a deadly Occam’s Razor attack, which makes even Ryo from Streetfighter tremble in fear.

Janet Stemwedel, Ph.D (X 2)’s Tribe of Science posts interest me most, delving into issues of scientists policing one another, science culture, and provides a continuing line of thought about what science is and what are the best way to bring out its best qualities. I think this dialogue, like the dialogue with her children, is the best method (however cool the ninja-Ph.D. thing would be). So she is highly successful in her efforts to promote ethical science, education, and blogging by simply keeping people thinking and discussing it.

Can you believe there isn’t a Wikipedia entry for this remarkable blogger??? I hypothesize early wikipedians were struck with sudden amnesia from out-of-nowhere psionic-attacks for daring to reveal the identity of Dr. Free-Ride as she was known in her former, anonymous blog-life. Don’t let the sweet, motherly façade lull you into a false sense of security. : )

Not My Ant Farm Photo by jurvetson (Who has a lot of cool Science Flickr Sets)

Last year I finally bought myself an Ant Farm, one of those new, hip gel ant farms, this one from Uncle Milton Industries. I’ve always procrastinated about buying one of these because I’m an instant-gratification kind of person, and don’t like the idea of having to mail off for the ants. Until I realized I was prolonging being denied a functioning ant farm by not owning one in the first place.

So I got the Ant Farm. Cool. A clear plastic aquarium filled with smelly green gel. I mailed off for the ants, and then I waited.

…and waited.

…and waited.

I assume the company was waiting for good weather to mail the ants, like the companies I buy plants from, but I don’t know for sure. There was no response from Uncle Milton to my e-mail inquiries that were titled, “Ants Order Status Inquiry” at first, and turned into “Where the #$%@ are my %$#@ing Ants you #@$%ers!?!?” later on.

About 2 1/2 months later, I get the ants. Excited, I refrigerated the little scamps to make them sluggish, dumped them into the farm, and put the whole thing in a closet for the weekend to get them tunneling.

They didn’t tunnel, not for lack of trying. See, in the 2.5 months of waiting for my ants, the gel had dried out to a consistency of solid rock. My solution to this was to carefully add water with an eyedropper to the gel over several days to alleviate the problem.

This opened me for an unexpected attack, as one of the ants climbed up the dropper and onto my hand, where it managed to sting my ring finger a dozen times before I was able to flick him back into the farm. I decided to name that one “Stingy,” but could never extract my revenge because he struck quickly and blended into the crowd like a good little assassin.

While the stings hardly registered right then, within minutes the area was on fire, and pain was shooting through my hand, up my arm, and even into my armpit, where I expect the lymph nodes located there were trying to process the toxin (I have just confirmed this suspicion through wikipedia. Great Cosmos I love the Internet!)

I was squirming with intense pain for half an hour, and the sting area remained very uncomfortable for an additional three hours, red, inflamed, and perpetually oozing clear fluid. Lesson learned: Handle Pogonomyrmex barbatus with care.

My ants never did much tunneling, preferring to try and climb around looking for a way out of the cage, and that was a big disappointment. They did occasionally kill one another, and I found the way they kept all their dead in one pile, which quickly grew over with fungus, fascinating. Unable to breed, the ants were all dead in a few months, which was another disappointment.

Once vacated, a new species moved into the ant farm, Drosophila melanogaster or the common fruit fly, thriving in the nutrient gel and covering the farm with poop flecks until I was driven to put it on the back porch where the cold hopefully killed them off. I’ve got a coupon for more ants, but isn’t that just opening myself up to more heartbreak?

Anyways, Ant Farms are sooooo 1950s, today there are more exotic ways to go, like the Ant Lion Farm and the Triassic Triops.

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PS – I’d like to wish Science Punk better luck with his new antfarm. He’s all ready off to a good start by trying to catch his own ants. Maybe I’ll try the same.

Tracked Debris Orbiting Earth Photo by NASA

All the politicians and military strategists were buzzing about China’s missile test in January 2007, where the country blew up one of its old satellites in orbit. After the debates about the diplomatic and militaristic implications of this demonstration had settled down, scientists took the opportunity to get on their soapboxes and complain about the real problem with China’s missile test, the fact that it put between 500 and 800 pieces of junk into Earth’s orbit.

Each bit of space trash orbiting our planet is a potential hazard to satellites and future space travelers. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network currently tracks 13,000 pieces of space junk larger than four inches in diameter. This includes more than 2,000 spent rocket stages. Every time we launch something into orbit, we produce more space trash. There have been about 4,000 launches worldwide since the dawn of space flight.

Space is junk-filled enough without our adding to the mix. The NASA Spaceguard programs is currently tracking 2,700 Near Earth Objects (NEOs), and adding more to the list every day. 700 of these are at least half a mile wide, big enough to cause global climate catastrophe were one to hit Earth.

The Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan region of Mexico is the likely candidate for the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs and 70 percent of all life on Earth. Some scientists theorize the impact vaporized carbonate rocks, releasing massive quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and generating a dramatic greenhouse effect that shifted temperatures as much as 10 degrees. Other’s theorize the asteroid put enough dust and smoke into the atmosphere to block out the sun for up to six months, long enough to kill off most plant life and doom the entire food chain of animals relying on them. Whatever the mechanism, the impact was a climate shattering experience for planet Earth and traumatic to all life here.

Six months after a repair mission to the Hubble telescope corrected the satellite’s focus, the human race was treated to the incredible sight of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 colliding with Jupiter. The train of over twenty fragments produced a trail of black smudges in Jupiter’s atmosphere. When you consider the fact that 1300 Earths can fit inside this largest planet in our solar system, those smudges start to resemble bug splats on a windshield, as in that’s what would happen to our home world.

Impact Scars in Jupiter’s Atmosphere Photo by NASA

Luckily, we have Jupiter’s magnificent mass to serve as the clean sweep for our solar system. Some scientists wonder if highly evolved life is even possible in solar systems that lack giant planets like Jupiter to reduce the amount of large debris floating throughout them.

But having Jupiter doesn’t mean we can lower our guard. In addition to tracking NEO’s, scientists are formulating plans for how to deal with an asteroid on collision course with Earth, should we find one. Missiles are ineffective, because they would simply produce more debris; however, asteroid tugboats, solar sails, and attaching rocket boosters to asteroids are just some of the options we have on the table for nudging these rocks just enough to pass us by.

The ability to escape off-world is another possibility, but only so long as we keep the space surrounding our planet free of debris. In April 1994, the space shuttle Endeavour took a ding on its window measuring a half-inch in diameter. This was caused by an orbiting paint chip. Anything much larger might have destroyed the shuttle and its crew, generating even more space debris.

There is now so much junk orbiting our planet that some scientists fear we have reached a critical mass, and that collisions are now inevitable. Each collision would generate more debris, which generates more collisions, and a chain reaction occurs that fills our orbit with so much trash it would not only prevent us from venturing into space for a very long time, but also destroy weather and communications satellites with all the benefits they bring us as well.

So while the Pentagon assures us no space debris poses a threat from their recent shoot-down of our own satellite, we do need to worry that the U.S. and China’s military demonstrations could bring about escalating weapons technologies in space, where even a small war would ground all humans on Earth for centuries.

Check it out! I’m famous!

Kids with ‘Dr’ in front of their names: Interview with Ryan Somma

Hyper-Cool Infrared Ryan

Check out all the other SBC’08 Interviews here. Bora’s posting one a day, and there are many more to come, which means many more interesting science blogs to discover. : )

Are dittoheads trying to out-stupid each other?

Tom Harris, Ottawa-based mechanical engineer and executive director of the Orwellianly-named Natural Resources Stewardship Project, which lobbies for innaction on Global Warming, has an article in the Washington Times that should be titled “Hey Everybody! Watch How Far I Can Shove My Head Up My Butt!”

In it, he argues that Scientists and Environmentalists are being dishonest with their language by using the word “Carbon” in their arguments. That they should stop using terms like “post carbon energy future,” “carbon emissions,” “carbon footprint,” and “carbon sequestration,” because these terms are inaccurate, and they should instead replace “carbon” with “CO₂,” which is more accurate.

Ignoring the oxygen atoms and calling CO2 merely “carbon” makes about as much sense as ignoring the oxygen in water (H2O) and calling it “hydrogen.” That might be an effective PR tool for anti-hydro power campaigners but most people would regard such a communications trick as ridiculous. Equating carbon dioxide to “carbon” is no less flawed.

Is this really an unfair rhetorical tactic on the part of Environmentalists? Let’s look at how CO₂ interacts with our environment (cue the 50s Educational Film Music):

The Carbon Cycle

Carbon exists in the Earth’s atmosphere primarily as the gas carbon dioxide (CO2), and to a lesser extent methane (CH₄) and chloroflorocarbons, all three of which are greenhouse gases, and the last, CFCs, are entirely anthropogenic in nature.

Plants perform photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. At the Earth’s poles, cooler seawater makes carbon dioxide more soluble, and it becomes carbonic acid. Sealife converts the carbon into shells made of calcium carbonate. The oceans contain around 36,000 gigatonnes of carbon, mostly in the form of bicarbonate ions.

Carbon is released back into the atmosphere, where it converts to carbon dioxide when oxygen is present and methane when it is not (two greenhouse gases), through respiration of plants and animals, the oxidation of carbon through burning fossil fuels, (another hydrocarbon), heating limestone (calcium carbonate) to make cement, and volcanoes.

This complex web of interactions and more is all part of what’s known as The Carbon Cycle, which Tom Harris has obviously either never heard of or is willfully hiding from his readers. Dishonesty or ignorance, I leave it to you to decide which reason to dismiss this brain stem of a human being.

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Harris does have a legitimate objection to the use of the term “greenhouse gas,” arguing that a greenhouse has a solid glass ceiling to trap heat, where the atmosphere does not:

Even the “greenhouse effect” is misleading since the Earth’s atmosphere does not behave like a greenhouse. Greenhouses use a solid barrier (the glass roof) to prevent heat loss by convection yet, lacking such a barrier, convection accounts for about half the heat loss from Earth’s surface.

He’s right. The analogy is incorrect, the gas does not act as a barrier in the way it prevents the thermal energy from radiating into space, but more like a sponge, soaking up more thermal energy and preventing it from radiating into space. scientists from the early 1800s should hang their heads in embarrassment. If they… you know… weren’t all dead and stuff.

So Harris scores a partial brownie point, and We’ll get right on top of correcting this inaccuracy. Just as soon as we get everybody to stop calling Black Stars “Black Holes,” the Theory of Gravitation the “Theory of Relativity,” and Native American’s/American Indians “Indians.”

Harris is absolutely correct about one thing, the words we use to frame our arguments are very important, and we should be skeptical when a representative from a Canadian Organization bent on preventing action on Environmental Issues, calling themselves the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, makes such pathetic attempts to take others to task for their use of language.

Pileated Woodpecker

The centerpiece of the NCMNS’ first floor is a room filled with displays of taxidermied animals living in North Carolina, many of which are endangered, and one on display, the Carolina Parakeet, only parrot indigenous to the United States, is extinct. The display impresses on us the wealth of biodiversity all around us, needing our good stewardship.

You can check out the complete flickr set here.

Miniscule zygotes,
Grow up to form memes,
Verily, Verily, Verily, Verily,
Life is but a real-time strategy game.

I’ve been playing around speculatively with this whole Physical World as a Virtual Reality concept and wrote a short story exploring some of the implications:

Anzel took a deep breath and closed his eyes as the cooling fans whined down, mentally calming himself with a meditation technique he’d learned in Tibet 3,000 years ago. A three-dimensional model of the student’s brain slowly rotated in the space beside the chair, the infusion of accelerant stem cells still swarming around it like bees around a hive, working overtime to finish all the last-moment neural connections necessary to accommodate the wealth of data the organ was struggling to soak up. In a few days, they would implant the network connection to remote data storage that would serve as a cognitive prosthesis for all the data soon to come.

The model vanished. The student had died, and now the system was resurrecting him.

You can read the whole short story here. It’s 2,500 words. There will probably be other angles I’ll want to explore with future work.

Sadly, after his chemical castration, Turing committed suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple.

One Gigabyte 20 Years Ago (left) One Gigabyte Today (Right) source

Bill Gates is often misquoted as having said, “no one will ever need more than 640K of memory,” in the 1980s. 24 years ago, my Commodore 64 personal computer ran games like “Mail-Order Monsters” and “Archon” on a mere 64 kilobytes of memory. This was a huge advance over my 1977 Atari 2600 game console, which ran “Pong” and “Space Invaders” on a scant 128 bytes of memory. Today my dual-core Pentium uses a gigabyte of RAM, about 7.8 million times as much memory as the Atari, and, after upgrading to Windows Vista, even that doesn’t cut it anymore.

From bits to bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and, with impending DVD technological advances, terabytes, our computing power grows exponentially. This empirically observed fact is known as Moore’s Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who observed in 1965 that the number of transistors on an integrated component doubles every 18 months. In other words, computers double in power every year and a half. This Law of Computing has held true now for over 40 years in an explosion of processing power that allows for what history will record as the Information Age, the times in which we are currently living.

Now it’s time to familiarize ourselves with a new measurement, the exabyte. We can thank research firm IDC’s white paper The Expanding Digital Universe for introducing us to this latest milestone, which estimates the human race collectively produced 161 exabytes of data in 2006.

So what’s an exabyte? To visualize this number, it’s helpful to begin at the smallest measurement of data, the bit. A bit is a 1 or 0, “on” or “off,” “true” or “false.” Up one level from this binary state we have the byte, which is 8 bits. If you open Notepad on your computer, type any one letter and save the file, you have generated one byte of data, which you can verify by right-clicking on the file and selecting “Properties.”

Every additional character typed and saved will add another byte to the file’s size. Every 1,000 characters is a kilobyte, and every 1,000 kilobytes a megabyte. A 90,000-word novel translates into about 0.5 megabytes¹. An exabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of data, or 500 billion novels. That’s 77 novels written for every person on Earth², and we are producing 161 times that much data, 230 billion CDs worth³, or nearly 12,400 novels for every person on Earth every year.

We produced more data last year than has been produced in the last 5,000 years of human history. That’s just for 2006, and that’s only the beginning. “In 2010, the amount of digital information created and copied worldwide will rise six fold to a staggering 988 exabytes,” that’s 12 Petabytes short of having to adopt yet another term of measurement, the Zettabyte.

The search engine Google is named after the largest number the nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner could think of, the googol. It is the number one followed by 100 zeros. By one recent estimate, it takes 450,000 computers networked on server farms to run the Google search engine, indexing 8 billion Web pages every year. I wonder when we’ll be talking about our hard drives (or maybe they’ll be flash drives by then) in terms of googlebytes?

And then we still have the googolplex waiting for us in the distant future, the number one followed by a googol of zeroes.

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¹500,000 characters in Novel based on a Microsoft Word Count and Character count of one of my novels, which came out to 450,000 characters for a 82,000 world novel. So this is a very conservative estimate.

²1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes translates to
1,000,000,000,000 megabytes which translates to
500,000,000,000 novels divided by 6.5 billion human beings

³CDs hold 700MB of Data
700,000,000
161,000,000,000,000,000,000
230,000,000,000