Accelerating Future

All living things on this planet come into existence through a self-copying process known as reproduction. In sexually reproducing organisms, the copy isn’t exactly the same as what created it, but it does bear some similarity. In asexually reproducing organisms, the progeny is more or less a clone of what made it.

Our planet is kept in relative balance by millions of years of the mutual push-and-pull of competing organisms, organisms which have adapted to cope with each other. Also helpful is that organic proteins used by every organism in the Kingdom of Life have similar material properties relative to inorganic materials, such as say, steel or fullerene. So the incremental evolution of an organism that can overrun the Kingdom of Life with superior properties is unlikely.

However, the phenomenon has occurred at least once, in a limited context. After the Permian-Triassic extinction, 251 million years ago, about 70% of terrestrial vertebrates, including most the giant amphibians, went extinct. Most vegetation was completely wiped out, with rivers changing from a meandering to braided structure. However, one species rose above the destruction and became dominant: Lystrosaurus, a pig-sized animal with a shovel-shaped skull and massive forelimbs for burrowing. In some fossil beds, the animals makes up 95% of all vertebrate fauna. It is the only time that a single animal has dominated the world to such an extent.

The reasons for Lystrosaurus‘ survival are uncertain: some point to its barrel-shaped chest, which probably contained massive lungs suitable for extracting oxygen from the poisoned atmosphere. Whatever the case, it was the complete winner of the time by evolutionary standards, and dominated terrestrial faunas for millions of years in the early Triassic, many hundreds of times longer than human history.

If a single organism could dominate the planet to such an extent then, due to mere evolutionary chance, then in the future could we engineer organisms that can overcome the biosphere during an episode of weakness, or even at its strongest? I do think it’s possible, but the organism would either need to be smarter-than-human or reproduce more quickly than we can manage. A microbe that exploits new non-biological materials for its defensive or offensive strategies might do the trick, or perhaps Artificial Intelligence with the ability to trick humans into doing its bidding.

A reproductive threat could even come from humans alone. If scientists could find a way to accelerate the process of human maturation, a single country with the technology could overwhelm others in a historically short timeframe. This possibility seems to be frequently overlooked in discussions regarding genetic modification, which focus on mental or physical enhancement rather than acceleration of pre-existing processes like reproduction.

The current tenuous balance, where everyone reproduces at pretty much the same speed, is likely to be toppled this century by new technologies that accelerate reproductive speeds for microbes, plants, and animals, including humans. Some people have worried about overpopulation due to life extension, but to me, modifying the exponent is a lot more significant than extending the lifespan of each individual member in the self-replicating set.

I present this idea as a counterpoint to a frequent transhumanist refrain about “progress! forward! ho!” that seems to wholeheartedly embrace every conceivable enhancement technology without considering the encyclopedia-sized list of potential downsides that we must anticipate and address in advance.

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I am still buzzing about Yves Rossy’s historic flight last Wednesday over the Swiss Alps. In his honor, here are some pictures from the Daily Mail:

(More pictures from Impact Lab.)

I am so excited by this endeavor because it fuses together cybernetics and aerospace in a way that has never been seen before. See this excerpt from the Daily Mail article:

After one last wave to the watching crowd, Rossy dipped his wings as he prepared for the piece de resistance, a manoeuvre he hadn’t tried before…He flipped onto his back and levelled out again, executing a perfect 360-degree roll that even a bird would find impossible.

“It’s like a second skin,” Rossy said later after landing on the shores of Lake Geneva.

“If I turn to the left, I fly left. If I nudge to the right, I go right.”

He remarked that he couldn’t enjoy the view because he had to keep so concentrated. As Bob Mottram remarked in the comments section, if the flight surfaces were computer-controlled, this would simplify matters and eliminate the stress factor for the flier. The parachute could be triggered to automatically open in case of an emergency.

Here’s some specs:

The four Germanbuilt model aircraft engines he currently uses provide 200lb of thrust each, enough to enable the 110lb foldable carbon wings, and Rossy in his 120lb flying suit, to climb at 200ft a minute.

I can only imagine the performance increases if the weight of the wings could be decreased by several times, which could be possible in the next couple decades through advances in materials science. For instance, the cost of bulk diamond is plummeting, making it conceivable that it could be employed as a construction material for aerospace applications in the 2020s.

What are Rossy’s future plans?

With his first big test under his belt, Rossy, 48, is ready for bigger challenges: he plans to cross the English Channel later this year, before attempting to fly through the Grand Canyon.

To do this, he will have to fit more powerful jets to allow for greater manoeuvring.

Flying through the Grand Canyon on one of these? Reminds me of rebel pilot training in Star Wars.

Rossy was able to reach speeds of 190 mph in his flying wing, exceeding the maximum speed of the Pilatus PC-6 he jumped out of, which is only 150 mph.

I wonder: how fast will these things would be able to go before they run into some fundamental limit? Could one of these potentially break the sound barrier (652 mph), or would it be ripped to shreds?

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Press release from PhysOrg:

(AP) — A Swiss pilot strapped on a jet-powered wing and leaped from a plane Wednesday for the first public demonstration of the homemade device, turning figure eights and soaring high above the Alps.

Yves Rossy’s performance in front of the world press capped five years of training and many more years of dreaming.

“This flight was absolutely excellent,” the former fighter pilot and extreme sports enthusiast said after touching down on an airfield near the eastern shore of Lake Geneva.

Rossy, 48, had stepped out of the Swiss-built Pilatus Porter aircraft at 7,500 feet and unfolded the rigid eight-foot wings strapped to his back before jumping.

Passing from free fall to a gentle glide, Rossy then triggered four jet turbines and accelerated to 186 miles per hour, about 65 miles per hour faster than the typical falling skydiver. A plane that flew at some distance beside him measured his speed.

The crowd on the mountaintop below gasped and cheered.

Rossy’s mother, who was among the spectators, told journalists she felt no fear.

“He knows what he’s doing,” Paule Rossy said of her son, who now flies commercial planes for Swiss airlines.

Steering with his body, Rossy dived, turned and soared again, performing what appeared to be effortless loops from one side of the Rhone valley to the other. At times he rose 2,600 feet before descending again.

After one last wave to the crowd the rocket man tipped his wings, flipped onto his back and leveled out again, executing a perfect 360-degree roll.

“That was to impress the girls,” he later admitted.

Rossy said after Wednesday’s five-minute flight, he is ready now for a bigger challenge: crossing the English Channel this year.

The stunt, which will be shown on live television, will test his flying machine to the limit. Rossy said he plans to practice the 22-mile trip by flying between two hot-air balloons.

“I still haven’t used the full potential,” he said.

Rossy told The Associated Press that one day he also hopes to fly through the Grand Canyon.

To do this, he will have to fit his wings with bigger, more powerful jets to allow for greater maneuverability. The German-built model aircraft engines he currently uses already provide 200 pounds of thrust, enough to allow Rossy and his 120-pound flying suit to climb through the air.

“Physically, it’s absolutely no stress,” Rossy said. “It’s like being on a motorbike.”

But on this ride, even the slightest movement can cause problems. Rossy said he has to focus hard on relaxing in the air, because “if you put tension on your body, you start to swing around.”

Should things go wrong - and Rossy says they have more times than not - there’s always a yellow handle to jettison the wings and unfold the parachute.

“I’ve had many ‘whoops’ moments,” he said. “My safety is altitude.”

Rossy wears a heat-resistant suit similar to that worn by firefighters and racing drivers, to protect him from the heat of the turbines. The cooling effect of the wind and high altitude also prevent him from getting too hot.

Rossy says his form of human flight will remain the reserve of very few for now. The price and effort involved are simply too enormous, he says.

So far Rossy and his sponsors, including the Swiss watch company Hublot, have poured more than $285,000 and countless hours of labor into building the device. He would not estimate how much his device would cost should it ever be brought to market.

But, he believes similar jet-powered wings will one day be more widely available to experienced parachutists ready for the ultimate flying experience.

That is, if they don’t mind missing out on the breathtaking panorama above the Swiss Alps.

“I am so concentrated, I don’t really enjoy the view,” Rossy said.

—

On the Web:

Yves Rossy: http://www.jet-man.com/prod/index-en.html

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Some of you may have heard of the Seasteading Institute, which announced its existence with a press release a month ago. Basically, Peter Thiel is giving them $500,000 to get started on building an awesome seastead right here in the Bay Area. Sounds like a great idea, I’d love to visit, but it could take a decade or so until we have hundreds of people living on these things. (Even so, it’s a worthy cause!)

I caught up with the Executive Director, Patri Friedman, an acquaintance of mine, and asked him a few questions about this new org.

Michael Anissimov: Will $500,000 be enough to build a “safe, cost-effective, gorgeous” seastead? If not, how much will it cost?

Patri Friedman: Nope. But it should be enough to do the design and engineering work for a small (bay/coast-sized) seastead, and get our research program started. We think it will cost another $500K - $1.5M to build a nice Baystead. We’ll know a lot more about the costs after we’ve hired an engineer and done some initial design work.

MA: How many people will live on the first seastead?

PF: It depends on what the best initial application turns out to be. If it looks viable to build small seasteads as replacement yachts (much roomier, safer, and slower), then it could be as small as one family. If the initial business is aquaculture, perhaps a crew of a dozen. If it’s a resort, then more like hundreds.

MA: How many people will need to be there before it’s economically self-sustaining?

PF: This is tough to answer because seasteads are a form of real estate, so it really depends how they are used. We don’t expect our houses to be economically self-sustaining, after all.

I’m also not sure that it’s a good way to evaluate success. If one person lives on a seastead and makes a living telecommuting, that’s technically economically self-sustaining. If 100 people live there as a retirement community, and pay for it with investment income, then it’s technically not economically self-sustaining. Yet the latter would look much more like success to me.

I’d rather evaluate success by average population and the number of people who are able to make a living onboard.

MA: You say the notion of seasteading will be useful as a testing ground for various political systems, and that’s true, but historically, the concept is associated with libertarianism. Will the first seastead have a libertarian form of government?

PF: It seems likely, at this point, since the initial group is mainly libertarians. However, I think it will be quite awhile before seasteads are large enough to be truly thought of as countries with forms of government. For example, the single-family seastead mentioned earlier doesn’t really have a “government” per se, nor does an aquaculture farm with a dozen crew.

Even a resort with hundreds of people will most likely be owned and operated by a single corporate entity. That entity will want to have a system for administering justice and resolving disputes, and that system is likely to be pretty libertarian, but I’m not sure I’d call it a government. It’s more like Neal Stephenson’s Franchise-Owned Quasi-National Entities from Snow Crash.

I’d say the first place you are likely to get something like a government is when you have the first residential/multi-use seastead (or gathering of seasteads). And that’s far enough off in the future that it could be a different group of people.

MA: In 1971, a group of people calling themselves the Republic of Minerva brought sand from Australia and dumped it on a reef until it rose above the water level, creating new land. Why is this not the Seasteading Institute’s approach?

PF: Well, they did fail, after all :).

But more importantly, our vision is much more ambitious. We don’t want to just make one sandy island, we want to bring competition to the governing industry by creating an affordable technology so that anyone can buy/build a seastead and start their own new country. Their method has two major flaws from this viewpoint:

1) It doesn’t scale. Every piece of rock which is above water at high tide is claimed by a current nation (because it extends oil, mineral, and fishing rights). There are very few places where reefs get high enough to make good island bases, yet are low enough to not count as existing land. So there are very few places where this technique works. Whereas if we can make seasteads affordable, there are tens of millions of square miles of empty oceans available for them.

2) It doesn’t take advantage of the ocean’s dynamic geography. We think it’s important for any new country venture to think about why the government will be better than it is on land. The US started with limited government, but there seem to be very robust effects which make small government not an equilibrium for large countries. Modular seastead communities fundamentally change the incentives facing government. Fist, they loweri the barrier to entry for starting new countries. Second, they reduce customer lock-in (since you can leave by floating your home away at any time). Together, this means they are almost guaranteed to make government work better (any government, not just a libertarian one). A new island has no such properties.

MA: In a few sentences, summarize how a seastead might get electricity, food, and generate money.

PF: Two words will suffice: “Cruise Ship” :).

Floating cities are already real - millions of people take cruises every year, and they’re cheaper than the cost of living in some US cities. We have many differences in mind, but cruise ships prove that the idea is possible. Now we just have to make something safer, stabler, more spacious, more modular, incrementally built, cheaper, permanent, and worth visiting even though it mostly stays put!

MA: On your site, all the pictures of seasteads show them suspended above the water. Why is this? What if I want to go to the edge and dip my feet into the water?

PF: We have two designs in mind. The one you saw uses tall spars to elevate the living space above the waves. This minimizes waterline area which helps disconnect the structure from the waves, making it safer and more stable. We currently believe this is the best shape for a permanent structure in areas with big waves. This is how most oil platforms are designed, after all.

If you don’t have to deal with waves, you can just make simple platforms, like hollow concrete boxes. This could be done near the equator (the doldrums), where waves are much smaller. Or for a large community, it could be done inside a circular breakwater.

MA: The practice of using a “flag of convenience” is frowned upon politically. Do you plan to use them for your seasteads?

PF: Wait, why is making politicians frown a bad thing? Besides, if flags of convenience are good enough for half of the world’s tonnage, they’re good enough for us!

Seasteading may be a weird idea, but we think our chances of success are highest if we use as little innovation as possible. Flagged vessels are an existing category in international law which will give us a simple, clear legal status that should get us pretty much left alone. At least, that’s what our preliminary research shows - we have a volunteer who worked on the Law of the Sea treaty negotiations for the US under Reagan who is researching the subject for us.

~~~

Well, that was interesting. I’ve been interested in seasteading ever since I read Marshall T. Savage’s The Millennial Project in the mid-90s. Go seasteaders!

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Read about the new Cyber Goggles over at Pink Tentacle. I see this innovation as an intermediary step between a Palm Pilot and an ocular implant that offers full-fledged augmented reality and records whatever you want it to.

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“..so many centuries after the Creation it is unlikely that anyone could
find hitherto unknown lands of any value.” - committee advising Ferdinand
and Isabella regarding Columbus’ proposal, 1486

“I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones
fell from the sky” - Thomas Jefferson, 1807 on hearing an eyewitness
report of falling meteorites.

“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You’re crazy.” - Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his
project to drill for oil in 1859.

“Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.” - Pierre
Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

“The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the
intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.” - Sir John Eric Ericksen,
British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria
1873.

“Such startling announcements as these should be depreciated as being
unworthy of science and mischievious to to its true progress” - Sir
William Siemens, 1880, on Edison’s announcement of a successful light bulb.

“We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.” -
Simon Newcomb, astronomer, 1888

“Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody
will use it, ever.” - Thomas Edison, 1889

“The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have
all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new
discoveries is exceedingly remote…. Our future discoveries must be
looked for in the sixth place of decimals.” - physicist Albert. A.
Michelson, 1894

“It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two
or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying
machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.”
- Thomas Edison, 1895

“The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known
forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a
practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through the
air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the
demonstration of any physical fact to be.” - astronomer S. Newcomb, 1906

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” - Marechal
Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1911

“Caterpillar landships are idiotic and useless. Those officers and men
are wasting their time and are not pulling their proper weight in the war”
- Fourth Lord of the British Admiralty, 1915, in regards to use of tanks
in war.

“Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and
reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against
which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily
in high schools.” - 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert
Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work.

“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who
would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” - David
Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the
radio in the 1920s.

“All a trick.” “A Mere Mountebank.” “Absolute swindler.” “Doesn’t know
what he’s about.” “What’s the good of it?” “What useful purpose will it
serve?” - Members of Britain’s Royal Society, 1926, after a demonstration
of television.

“This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd
lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists.”
-A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” -
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be
obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at
will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932

“The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who
expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is
talking moonshine” - Ernst Rutherford, 1933

“The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]…presents
difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the
notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author’s insistent
appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility
of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished.” Richard
van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing P.E. Cleator’s “Rockets
in Space”, Nature, March 14, 1936

“Space travel is utter bilge!” -Sir Richard Van Der Riet Wolley, astronomer

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” - Popular
Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

“I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked
with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a
fad that won’t last out the year.” - The editor in charge of business
books for Prentice Hall, 1957

“Space travel is bunk” -Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of
Britain, 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik

“There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be
used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio
service inside the United States.” -T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, 1961

“But what… is it good for?” - Engineer at the Advanced Computing
Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” - Ken
Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,
1977

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Anything that truly impacts the world either self-replicates, has existed in abundance for a very long time, or depends on self-replicators to produce it. Some obvious examples are humans and wheat. The relatively low cost of food products is attributable to their self-replicating nature.

Non self-replicating objects, such as most appliances, furniture, land, and most other forms of property tend to be more costly and scarce than self-replicating objects.

If we could move some of these costly items from the non self-replicating category to the replicating category, or better yet, develop a general-purpose factory that is self-replicating, we would remove most technological barriers to post-scarcity, and greatly improve human prosperity, particularly for the very poor. The condition where a society can quickly and economically fabricate a wide range of useful items, on demand, from inexpensive feedstock, has been called superabundance. A transition to a superabundant society is the next logical step in the progression from manual-labor dependent manufacturing to fully automated manufacturing.

The underlying manufacturing technology and building materials of an era crucially determines the social and political contours of a culture. This is why human prehistory is broken down into the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. Neal Stephenson has proposed that the next age might be called the Diamond Age, anticipating the use of covalently bonded carbon as a primary raw material for products. It is not implausible that human civilization will enter the Diamond Age well before the century’s close.

When a reprogrammable factory is built that can self-replicate from raw or abundant materials, it will probably be viewed in retrospect as one of the human species’ most significant milestones, even more notable than the Moon landing or the use of fire.

An important question: how difficult is it to build a self-replicating factory? Bacteria and other relatively simple prokaryotes self-replicate with ease in a variety of nutrient-rich environments, performing their metabolic tasks largely using just their cell membranes, without dependence on organelles except for ribosomes. They contain all the fundamental necessities of a self-replicating system: blueprints for a copy (DNA), fabricators (ribosomes), a means of processing raw materials into metabolic feedstock (cell membrane), a fabrication medium (cytoplasm), and a shell (cell wall). To reap the economic benefits of self-replication, we must create an artificial construct with all the same basic components and the capability to produce useful outputs from common raw materials such as iron ore or organic detritus.

A recent study on robotic self-replication successfully built self-replicating robotic systems using simple feedstock blocks called Molecubes. In their press release, the Cornell team emphasized that simplicity of building blocks may be the key to robotic self-replication, and pointed out that biological variation is all ultimately founded on different configurations of 20 basic amino acids. Instead of making self-replicators that can reproduce using common chemicals, it might be slightly easier to use cheaply mass-produced feedstock building blocks, at least at first.

Many scientists looking at the challenge of robotic self-replication look to the substance of carbon as an ideal candidate for a basic building block. Carbon, particularly carbon nanotubes, have many useful properties - they can be opaque or nearly transparent, strong or weak, brittle or springy. Using a single type of highly abundant and versatile element for a self-replicating manufacturing system would simplify its design.

Self-replicating machines are one of those interesting research areas that we should be looking for signs of in the daily technology and science headlines. It may be research for space-based applications that kicks the thrust for self-replicating robotics into high gear, as prohibitive launch costs are an excellent motivator for devising systems that make the best possible use of on-site materials.

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