Paradigm Shift and New Horizons

Embrace the Singularity

What matters most is the decision we make every second to live to our fullest.  Our age is the age of heros.  The choice is constantly upon us.  There are a couple of definitions of ‘the singularity’ out there.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity.  This is the idea that computing will surpass human intelligence.  Then there is the idea of gravitational singularity–that black hole hypothesis that not even light escapes from a star collapsing upon itself.  Well, my layman’s understanding anyway.  Then I like Vernor Vinge’s description: “It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules.” http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html. This in reference to the technological singularity. In my own mind I mash it up to define it: the point when all of our assumptions are no longer valid.  Of course apocalyptic’s like to point to the end of the Mayan calendar–2012 for a specific date.  Even this smells too much like Christian tag sale mentality, like we have in the White House right now: a devaluation of life.  Pointing into the future makes it easy to postpone action.  The future is now.  So the singularity, then, is also now.  It is a spiritual state of being that demands we live in the fullness of the present realizing our assumptions are conveniences. We have to trust gravity in order to move around and go up and down the stairs.  But what is occurring around us is the continual creation of being mutually agreed upon.  These are the implications of quantum mechanics sometimes expressed asconstructionist theoryor ontogeny: the simultaneous creation of being.

I am trying to embrace the singularity.  The largest window that has opened to glimpse the event horizon is peak oil. I am  as addicted as the next American.  But I see dissolving all around me the assumptions that make this American life possible.  40% inflation–the tip of the ice berg, and totally denied by everyone.  3 days of food on the grocery shelves without the Mac truck spewing forth its fumes.  The prospect of frozen bodies unable to pay for Big Oil deliveries.  The incremental erosion of the ability to move around our estranged suburban landscape.  The idea that the housing market will come back up.  How about tourism?  Think about that: sustainable tourism–well, if you have a sail boat I guess, or you can walk there.  But you see, I’m not a pessimist.  That’s why I am trying to embrace the singularity, in all of its definitions.  Mind melding in the good old Vulcan way with my computer contributes to the technological event horizon.  But the side effects are well worth it: emergence.  Just the act of trying brings you around to the moment between worlds.  I open up and receive all of your thoughts.  Well, not too many comments–but the thoughts are there and this alters the universe. I can feel it. We continually build the universe together and so have the choice to change it for the better. I am not alone. It is the urgency some of us feel that matters.  As they say the effects of climate change will be unequally distributed around the globe–just as wealth and just as intelligent choices.

Renewable Energy Futures: A Question of Scale

allan-baer-renewable-energy-scenario1I am totally amazed and at times overwhelmed at the number and diversity of alternative energy technologies popping up. Daily claims by solar cell companies of new and improved efficiency, fantastic innovations, open sourcing such as the APIX initiative, the OSRAM recharging station in Africa– are exciting developments. But how do we make sense of these? How to aggregate them into a meaningful plan of action. Certainly social networking sites like this one hold much promise. if you know of an aggregator site that focuses on a sustainable energy future please share it. Each biome has its own unique resources, needs and opportunities. But then it becomes a question of scale. A recent alternative energy analysis by Allan Baer of Solarquest points to the magnitude of the situation: See his full presentation at; <a href=>http://www.vecgreenvalley.org/</a> I choose these two attached slides to illustrate my point. Investments in alternative energy will require trillions in a time frame never attempted in human history. And with the current cost of renewable energy at twice the cost of fossil based fuels there is little incentive for a profit based business. So how do we bring it to scale to avoid cataclysmic climate change? One scenario would be a complete re-tooling of our economy much like the US did during WWII. Or Al Gore’s suggestion of replacing the income tax with a carbon tax, ie., that you would be taxed on the amount of carbon you and your company expends. Another possible route might be an element of the social networking and internet phenomenon; viewer supplied content. More accurately put, a dispersed, non- centralized grid of millions of micro-energy producers. Forgive me if I’m not stating this concept clearly. I find it curious that many charts displaying things like carbon emissions, global warming, population, internet users –there are many more–follow a steep curve pointing toward what is called the singularity, ie., the point at which the basis for our assumptions is no longer valid. And one very curious curve accompanying these other steep curves is the evolution of communication, spurred by the internet. It is the idea of smart mobs, or the power of opinion spread virally; the idea of participatory thinking, collaborative–and emergent. It is the idea of YouTube, not Brad Pitt, if you will. As I try and get this idea out there I’m staring at the ‘Book of the Week’ beside this text box. And this is no accident either. I’m reading Muhammad Yunus currently. It occurs to me that he presents the solution to the funding mechanism that I began this post with: how do you replace the paradigm of fossil fuel with renewable energy at scale? The idea of social business seems to me to be one of lateral wealth. A chart line that returns the steep, relentless curve to cataclysm to a sustainable human scale. And this idea goes hand in hand with web 2.0–where a monopoly of knowledge is not held by a few, a monopoly of wealth is not held by a few–but that we all have our part to contribute of equal value in the whole. To bring my rant back to earth, keep contributing. One aggregator group in FaceBook that warrants your attention is the group: Sustainable Energy Futures: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6763501129. They have a contest going on with accompanying videos that displays an impressive collection of renewable energy technologies.

allan-baer-renewable-energy-scenario

How the Humanities could contribute to Carbon reduction

All of the disciplines need to be engaged in raising our awareness of our contribution to carbon emissions.  Each has a responsibility and vehicle for raising our awareness.  I have to be radical and say each has the responsibility to. Urgently.  Refocus your curriculum to make it relevant to the crisis. The students are eager to be involved, to make it relevant. They tell me when they have the option they write about climate change, re-newables, global warming.  But they need our guidance desperately. But when we talk about their future–our future–their eyes glaze over.  It is so overwhelming.  Our entire life style has to transform.  The things we take for granted are at risk. For the freshman there will be no polar ice when they graduate in 2012.  One student asked me what I thought of 2012.  I discussed the singularity.  What does it mean?  How is it relevant to theater or technical theater? 

It slays me that we rehash the same old plays and stories from our past when the future is in dire need of creation.  As a generation it is beholden upon us to write the epics of tomorrow. And the amazing thing is that we have the tools–the collective mind–web 2.0.  Sure, an electromagnetic pulse could put us back into the stone age. But while we still have electricity, connectivity, our tiny little synapses are busy twittering away collaborating in the effort to reach emergence of the holy kind. Dang its hard, especially when no one replies.  But I reply, and you, after all, are reading this.  I see it happening everywhere.  Open source, open code–sharers.  That’s the hope. Now bring it back to the humanities.  Our collective digital stories, snipets of life on earth as we know it, as we are just now discovering its preciousness, it irreplaceableness. Some of academia is on board, you bloggers and early adapters. Business is starting to get on board, smelling profits.  And then there is Muhammad Yunus. It seems each step is conceived just as we need it if we could perceive it.  How do you fund a transition at scale?  Social business!  Wow!

Start the epic, be the hero of Al Gore’s admonishment. The ground is swelling and the hoarders will be swallowed.  It starts with tiny steps in every classroom.  I have total faith in the youth, their energy and resolve. 

 

 

 

Hoarders and Sharers

Always will be, perhaps.  Business as unusual.  Secrets kept.  Visions shared. Squirreling away nuts for winter.  Atomic winter. Opened, revealed, vulnerable, linked. Smartly mobbing everyman woman the dawn of our last gasp. A collective exhale where only little eddies survive fumigation.  Where are the barn swallows now that the snow has gone? The symphony has altered, the cry of the sea turtle remains twittering.  A canary in the coal mine no one could capture.  Complete deglacialization prior to freezing over.  The ringing in my ears insects looking to land somewhere. Hoarder’s wealth entombed knowledge, museums no seeums.  I reached out to touch the finest skin, their voices a growing chorus.  We shared and broke bread, touched the quantum fringe that we could detect.  Already within us the power only shared.  Not mine but ours.  The hour glass vessel half empty running energy became full.   An ark of awareness. This is wealth, lateral, micro molecular.  Young eyes see, listen for our voices that we must share for them to breath. Sharers groundswell a backwards tsunami of hope I hope. The fossilized fuel thinkers think business as usual to their impoverishment.  The underlings will remain, in pockets, eddies of sustainability. Because they shared.