“DAEMON is better than early Tom Clancy…The tech is invoked with inside knowledge, the writing is better, and deeper issues are explored with greater imagination.”
- Stewart Brand

Daniel Suarez’s DAEMON, (Dutton, January 8, 2009; $26.95) brings readers on a harrowing journey through the dark IT spaces of the modern world. It’s a high-tech thriller that explores the convergence of MMOG’s, BotNets, viral ecosystems, and corporate dominance—forces which are quietly reshaping society with very real consequences for us all.

Originally self-published in 2006 under the anagram/pseudonym Leinad Zeraus, DAEMON quickly became an underground sensation and a favorite of the tech sector and its bloggers. According to Wired magazine, Rick Klau, head of publisher services at Feedburner was so “electrified by Daemon’s all-too plausible IT scenario, [he] began pushing the book on anyone who would listen. ‘I just felt it would be a travesty if a lot of people didn’t read it,’ Klau says.”

The book has now sold close to $1 million in foreign rights, and has garnered endorsements from industry giants like Craig Newmark of Craigslist and Billy O’Brien, director of Cyber Security at the White House.

Sunday’s reading will also have a Q&A session where you can ask the author more about his ideas and concerns about our current IT situation.

Last Friday I attended the Prediction Markets Summit here in San Francisco.  I met Robin Hanson there who clued me into an article published in Science (subscr. req’d.) on the Psychology of Transcending the Here and Now.  Most impressive is that the study itself seems to span several decades.  Hanson wrote this up on his blog here, and takes the idea further here.  This is the first serious study I have seen on how humans do long-term thinking, and it makes me realize that I should pay more attention to the world of psychology.

Abstract:

People directly experience only themselves here and now but often consider, evaluate, and plan situations that are removed in time or space, that pertain to others’ experiences, and that are hypothetical rather than real. People thus transcend the present and mentally traverse temporal distance, spatial distance, social distance, and hypotheticality. We argue that this is made possible by the human capacity for abstract processing of information. We review research showing that there is considerable similarity in the way people mentally traverse different distances, that the process of abstraction underlies traversing different distances, and that this process guides the way people predict, evaluate, and plan near and distant situations.

The latest Seminars About Long-term Thinking are now available as audio downloads or podcasts and in hi-res video for Long Now members.

*Saul Griffith on “Climate Change Recalculated” – video now available

If Rick Prelinger didn’t dig deep enough for you, local lecture series Ask A Scientist presents Douglas Long, Chief Curator of the Department of Natural Sciences at the Oakland Museum of California:

The hamburger joint on my corner has been there forever…or has it?? Set your time machine back to the most recent ice age, 10-20,000 years ago, and you’ll find yourself in a San Francisco you would scarcely recognize. You might think you’d been transported to the African plains, a grassy landscape teeming with mammoths, mastadons, saber-toothed cats, camels, llamas, and lions. Our familiar local geography would be unrecognizable as well. While much ocean water was locked away in ice masses to the north, lower sea levels exposed miles of land off of our current coastline, and the Bay Area had no bay — in its place was a vast, lush valley with a massive river running through it. Join us on a trip backwards in time with the Oakland Museum’s Douglas Long at the helm. Tonight’s event is presented in collaboration with KQED’s QUEST Science and Environment Series. We’ll start the evening by watching QUEST’s “Ice Age Bay Area” video.

Douglas Long in the field:

Check it out at Axis Cafe, 1201 8th Street (btw. 16th & Irwin) San Francisco on Tuesday, February 3rd.

Ask a Scientist is an informative, entertaining, monthly lecture series, held at a San Francisco cafe. Each event features a speaker on a scientific topic, a short presentation, and the opportunity to ask all those burning questions that have been keeping you up at night. No tests, grades, or pressure…just food, drinks, socializing, and conversation about the universe’s most fascinating mysteries!

Please note that indoor seating is limited, but weather permitting, a projector and screen will be set up outside on the patio so latecomers can still see and hear everything that’s going on inside. Bundle up!

The latest Seminars About Long-term Thinking are now available as audio downloads or podcasts and in hi-res video for Long Now members.

*Saul Griffith on “Climate Change Recalculated” – audio now available

The Terawatt World

Engineer Griffith said he was going to make the connection between personal actions and global climate change. To do that he’s been analyzing his own life in extreme detail to figure out exactly how much energy he uses and what changes might reduce the load. In 2007, when he started, he was consuming about 18,000 watts, like most Americans.

The energy budget of the average person in the world is about 2,200 watts. Some 90 percent of the carbon dioxide overload in the atmosphere was put there by the US, USSR (of old), China, Germany, Japan, and Britain. The rich countries have the most work to do…

Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary

 To those of you following the Leibnitz – Newton “who discovered calculus kerfuffle“, a  newly re-discovered Archimedes text has revealed that he actually had documented several calculus principles over 2,200 years ago.  More over at Science News on the riveting story of how x-ray fluorescence imaging revealed the underlying text after a 13th century Monk scraped the pages clean in order jot down some prayer...

“Archimedes computed the area of the curved figure (left) by enclosing it in a bigger one with straight edges (right). He then examined random slices to compute the volume—using the concept of actual infinity. “

Two sand calendars…  One year “hourglasses”, each claims to the the largest.  I really wonder how those bearings are holding up on the Timewheel. (More from Oddity Central with more pics.)

The Timewheel is the world’s largest hourglass, situated in Budapest, Hungary next to City Park, right of Heroes’ Square and behind the Palace of Art (Műcsarnok). It is made of granite, steel, and glass, and weighs 60 tons. The “sand” (actually glass granules) flows from the upper to the lower glass chamber for one year. – Wikipedia

And the other one from Japan filled with ‘”singing sand” at the Nima Sand Museum in Kotoga Beach:

Birds, long-term information storage, and poop. Two of my favorite things, and one of my not-so-favorite things are all brought together in this Genetic Archaeology piece about the valuable information retrieved from the feces of giant, extinct birds. According to the article, palaeontology researchers have been able to analyze “plant seeds, leaf fragments and DNA from the dried faeces,”  and from this, they have been able to start building a model of the ecosystem during the time which these birds were living.

Alexander Rose has pointed out that “this is also the case with Pack Rat middens,” which are towers of amberized feces and urine.  Interestingly, dendroclimatologists use the same type of ‘data forensics’ on the  bristlecone pines on the Long Now property which was purchased for the Clock project.

Valuable information which informs our understanding of the world can come in surprising packages. Where this example may not provide obvious answers in preserving our own (digital) cultural record,  it is an interesting take on how information has been preserved in a static state beyond 10,000 years. This isn’t exactly a new idea; we’ve been studying rocks and fossils, which provide data from millions and billions of years ago, for centuries.

What is interesting to think about here, is what would post-human ‘scientists’ discover about us if we were to become extinct? If all of our information suddenly had no one to care for it and to keep it moving and living through time, what would they be able to discover about us? What would they find in OUR poop?

For more information on the bird feces research, see the original article from The University of Adelaide, or download a pdf of the researchers findings as published in Quaternary Science Reviews. See this article for more on pack rat middens.

Photo Copyright: PLoS Biology (an open-access journal published by the nonprofit organization Public Library of Science)

 Stewart Brand sent me this interesting bit on a couple of potential long term building materials that have recently been discovered to be improving rather than degrading their environs:

Recently a new building, the Dives in Misericordia Church in Rome, seemed to be reducing the concentration of urban pollutants in its immediate vicinity (36). Upon investigation, it was discovered that the titanium dioxide coating on the large concrete walls of the church was reacting with nitrogen oxide pollutants in a photocatalytic reaction, resulting in a decrease of pollutants in the area. Although the TiO2 was originally specified for its visual qualities and self-cleaning properties, its effect on local pollutants was a surprise to the architects and engineers of the building. Further research is needed to determine efficacy and real benefits, but proposals are already surfacing for the use of photocatalytic coatings in sidewalks and roads to neutralize the concentration of pollutants found in dense urban conditions.

Also, a “new” material-polyamide, or nylon-has emerged in applications as a “smart” vapor barrier in exterior envelopes. Its water vapor permeability increases by a factor of 10 in conditions of very high humidity. This is particularly useful when moisture is trapped inside a wall assembly. The vapor barrier becomes more permeable and allows moisture to escape, reducing the risk of corrosion, rot, and the growth of mold and mildew. Although nylon was discovered in 1931, its properties as a vapor barrier were not described until 1999, and it was recently commercialized for this purpose (37)

Science 30 March 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5820, pp. 1807 – 1810
DOI: 10.1126/science.1137542

Materials for Aesthetic, Energy-Efficient, and Self-Diagnostic Buildings
John E. Fernández