Author Archives: HFuturist

Harnessing the Power of the Social Animal

I recently read “The Social Animal” by David Brooks. It’s a fascinating book that could hold the key to unlocking our greatest resource. Human potential. To give you a sense of what I mean by “Human Potential”, imagine a world where every adult has the equivalent of a PhD in their field of interest. Look at the advances that have been brought about with only a tiny fraction of the earth’s population being educated.

New York Times Columnist David Brooks gives a TED Talk about “The Social Animal”

So what does this have to do with “The Social Animal”? In this brilliant book, David Brooks discusses some of the latest findings in regards to human nature. They give us the framework to create that key to unlocking human potential. I will briefly list some of the findings that I found to be fascinating:

Each of us consists of at least 2 “different minds”. Our conscious and unconscious mind. And the conscious mind is not always in the drivers seat. The unconscious mind has vastly more resources at it’s disposal than our conscious mind. And maybe what makes us more intelligent than other animals is the ability of our unconscious minds.
“Emotion is the foundation of reason because it tells us what to value. Educating emotions is a central activity of wisdom. A brain is a record of the feelings of a life.” – David Brooks
Good attachment with parents, especially mothers, is essential for a head start.
There are quite a few ways that human beings can be intelligent and not all of them are easily quantifiable. I.Q. is only a measure of one type of intelligence. New words and phrases had to be invented to name these new types of intelligence. Here are a few examples: Mind Sight – The ability to really learn from people. The ability to enter into a person’s mind and extract what that particular person has to offer. Equipoise – The ability to read the biases and failures in your own mind. The ability to be open minded in the face of ambiguity. To be curios. The ability to adjust opinions based on evidence. Metis – A sensitivity to environment. The ability to derive a gist….to see patterns. Sympathy – The ability to work within groups because groups can be smarter than individuals. Blending – The ability to take disparate concepts and combine them. For example, when a child says “I am a tiger”. She is taking to very different animals and combining their concepts in a creative manner. A genius like Picasso was able to blend Western Art and African masks to create a new paradigm.

Picasso blended African Masks and Western Influences

I believe we have only scratched the surface on the number and variety of the types of intelligences that humans posses. I also believe that everyone was born with the ability to be a genius at something. People we know as geniuses were extremely lucky to be good at something that our society happened to value at the time. They were also lucky enough to live a life that eventually led to the fostering of their talents.

Had Albert Einstein been born to a pilgrim in early America, there is some doubt as to whether or not he would have come up with E=MC2 (squared). In fact, he may have lived his life as an average person making no world changing contributions once so ever.

If each person has their own genius, that means we need an educational society that actively engages children on an individual level. One-size-fits-all classrooms are quite possibly the exact opposite of what is needed. Mass production works well for cars, not so well for developing the talent of a brain. By educational “society” I mean the world culture at large. We want to develop individual genius while educating the emotions. A society with a well emotionally educated population does not wage war, it values reform over punishment, it measures it’s success based on GNP and the happiness of it’s population. We know happy workers are more productive workers.

A glimpse in to a world where we harness the power of human potential may look like this: Instead of a microchip or internet type of breakthrough happening every so often, it would happen every other day. There would be almost no lag between Science Fiction and science fact.

Intelligence as a Repeating Fractile Pattern at Different Scales

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I recently wrote a blog post “A Brain the Size of the Universe”. It got me thinking about fractals, a different kind of repeating pattern at different scales.

The interesting characteristic of a fractal is that it repeats a similar pattern over and over at different scales. As you zoom in or out, the pattern repeats itself. This video demonstrates the effect.

Fractals are a fundamental way that nature seems to organize itself. Fractals are every where we look.

Trees Grow in a Fractal Pattern

Leaves Have a Fractal Pattern

Sea Shells Have a Fractal Pattern

Coastlines Can Be Measured More Accurately Using Fractal Mathematics

Our Lungs and Blood Vessels Are Laid Out in a Fractal Pattern

Since fractals seem to be so fundamental to the way the natural universe works, it is reasonable to wonder if we ourselves are within a larger pattern. Is it possible that we live in an infinite continuum where there is no limit to how large things are and no limit to how small things are? Like in the video above, there is no beginning and there is no end to how large or small existence can be.

Maybe intelligence itself is a repeating pattern or outcome at different scales. A brain the size of the universe, a brain the size of ours and a brain smaller than a quark…and so on down, or up, the line it would go. Maybe intelligent life in the universe is not only separated by distance, it’s also separated by scale. Or maybe it’s only separated by scale and we are the only thinking beings to inhabit this particular scale of existence.

A Few Dyson Spheres in Every Galaxy

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A Dyson Sphere is probably one the largest artificial constructs ever imagined. What is a Dyson Sphere? There are a few variants on this idea proposed by Freeman Dyson. The variant of particular interest to me is the “shell” variant; a structure completely encapsulating a star so that all of it’s energy can be harnessed. The Dyson Sphere not only encapsulates a star, it also extends past the distance of the earth’s orbit around the sun.

Let’s get some perspective on this. The sun is massive. You could fit 1.3 million earths inside of our sun. Here is a picture to scale that shows the earth and the sun. Keep in mind the distances to the planets are NOT to scale. You may have to enlarge the photo to see the earth.

The Earth is Tiny

As I mentioned above, the distances of the planets from the sun is not to scale in the photo above. It is actually impossible to show both the sizes and distances to scale in one photo and still be able to see our planet. Here is a picture of earth’s orbital distance to scale.

At This Scale Our Sun is Also Tiny

Here is a scale diagram of a Dyson Sphere. The Dyson Sphere is an absolutely GARGANTUAN structure!

An Interior Surface Area Equivalent to More than 200 Million Earths

Why build something like this? Every second the sun produces enough energy to supply ALL of earth’s energy needs for 500,000 years. Imagine that. If we were able to harness all of the energy from our sun for only 1 second, human kind would not have to produce any energy for 100s of 1000s of years.

How Do We Build a Dyson Sphere?

Using conventional means of construction would be out of the question when tackling the engineering feat of building a Dyson Sphere. There is simply not enough matter on earth to create a sphere millions of times bigger than earth. If we combined all of the rocky planets in our solar system, there would still not be enough matter.

There was a Star Trek episode titled “Relics”, where the crew of the Enterprise encountered a Dyson Sphere. Their sophisticated sensors did not detect the structure because of the immense gravitational distortion it caused. Unlike a star or black hole, a Dyson Sphere probably would not emit intense radiation. Present day humans and humans from the year 2368 would have a hard time detecting it.

The Enterprise ends up inside the sphere, see below. Notice how the interior becomes the living surface area with land, water and an atmosphere clinging to the inside “walls”. But why bring up Star Trek?

Star Ship Travels Inside a Dyson Sphere – an interior surface area equivalent to 200 million earths.

Besides being a fan of Star Trek, the science fiction inventions pioneered by the show hold the answer to creating a Dyson Sphere. Einstein gave us E=MC2 (squared). Matter and energy are the same phenomenon only in different forms. Like water vs steam. In the Star Trek universe (and in our future) humans master converting energy to matter and vice versa. They use a device called a replicator. It creates food, clothing, building materials and just about everything else from energy. This is scientifically possible, but we have not discovered exactly how to do this…yet.

Eventually human kind will invent replicators, devices that create solid matter from energy. We already have manufacturing robots that can create more manufacturing robots which can in turn, create more and so on. When you combine the concept of a replicator and a self duplicating machine, we are one step closer to creating a Dyson Sphere.

Millions of self replicating, solar powered devises or factories could be stationed in orbit around a star. All of the energy needed to power and create these devises would come from the host star. However, we would not need to start with millions of these devices. We could start with 1-100. They would self replicate and their numbers would increase exponentially. Now, with a limitless supply of energy/matter, we can begin the task of building the Dyson Sphere.

If we have thought of it, chances are, other intelligent life out there, maybe thousands or millions years ahead of us has already created it. Given the fact that there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy and many more planets than that, I would bet intelligent life has arisen many times. There could be Dyson Spheres scattered through out our galaxy with trillions of life forms living inside.

Smell-O-Vision (4D TV) Coming to You Soon

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Smell-O-Vision will soon be a reality. You will be able to smell what is going on in your favorite movie or television show. Some refer to this phenomenon as “4D” since it adds another dimension to the 3D experience currently available.

Imagine watching TV at home and a commercial for McDonald’s comes on. You may be able to actually smell the Big Mac and fries. Or you may be watching Downton Abbey and catch a whiff of Lady Grantham’s perfume accompanied by a convenient button on the side of the screen that allows you to order her scent.

The Scent of Elegance

This new dimension in entertainment will remake and create industries. Especially once 4D TV makes it’s way in to a significant number of households. The perfume and cologne industry have much to gain from 4D. Food and dining establishments could also use this technology to promote their products. But what about the more subtle influences and uses of 4D TV?

Smell is a direct path to the emotional center of our minds. A familiar smell can spark an intense memory. A disgusting scent can cause instant dislike.

Smell Connects Directly to Emotion in the Brain

What would it be like to watch The President speak on TV and occasionally smell his after shave? That’s an endorsement Gillete might like to have! Or what if a political candidate decided to pipe in the smell of apple pie into your living room as you watched his speech? How might that effect the way you perceive that person? On the dark side of things, what if CNN brought you the smell of war and it’s aftermath? That memory might stick with you for quite some time.

In elementary school I did a science project that explored the link between scent and taste. I will never forget how participants in the project could be induced into having taste hallucinations simply by introducing a smell while they were eating. Smell has a big influence on how many of us perceive the world. The power of smell should not be underestimated.

Google to Offer Instant Search Results in Your Mind

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A former classmate of mine from the George Washington University attended a meeting hosted by Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, some months ago.

One of the members of the audience asked Schmidt what to expect from Google over the next 20-30 years. Schmidt hinted that we may see instant Google search results via some sort of chip embedded in our brains some day.

The fact that most of us can take this at least somewhat seriously, shows how much technology is progressing. 50 years ago this would have sounded like science fiction. What happens when something like this becomes science fact?

Instant Google search results in your mind will be the first step on the road to immortality for human beings. On that journey to immortality, our society and culture will forever be changed.

By the time we perfect the brain to chip interface, Google will have gone through many many advancements in search methodology and results listings. Search results will probably look very different from the way they do today. The search results will be more accurate and instead of getting pages and pages of results, you may only get 2 or 3 links that match EXACTLY what you are looking for. That is good news. You would not want your mind cluttered up with SPAM search results. All joking aside, what in the world would an internal, brain interface with Google search results be like?

The Change to Our Society and Culture

The times will be a’changin’ for specialists such as lawyers, doctors, engineers and the like. With the sum of all human knowledge readily available in our minds, all of us will “know” just about everything we need to know in order to prosper in society. The information will most likely not take the form of lists or links to scroll through. Rather, knowledge (search results) will appear as needed, if you opt in. For example, when you type a search now at Google…before you finish typing, guesses at what you are looking for start to appear automatically. Something similar to this could happen in a situational context.

Let’s say you find yourself in a situation with a pregnant woman who is going in to labor. The knowledge of how to deliver a baby will “come to you” seamlessly and you will be able to deliver that baby yourself. Not only will the technical details of how to do it be in the forefront of your mind, there may also be a little wisdom thrown in. The experiences of doctors may also be available to you. You’ll be able to pick and choose the methods and techniques you use to deliver that baby based on what went right and what went wrong for others in your situation.

Lack of schooling will no longer be a barrier for most occupations. When everyone has instant access to all information and instant access to “enough” online wisdom, most jobs that exist today will be able to be performed by anyone. The major exception will be creative jobs….maybe. When anyone can perform almost any job, people will gravitate to occupations that they want to do, not what they HAVE to do. A woman who just turned 18, could have her chip installed one day and then practice neurosurgery or law, competently, the next day. In fact she could be a doctor, lawyer, engineer and computer programmer all with the same ease.

The Road to Immortality

What makes us who we are? Our brains. Information will not be a one way street when it comes to the chips in our brains. In order to do the searches, that chip has to be able to read our minds on some level. As the technology improves, that chip will become better and better at reading our thoughts, storing our thoughts and transferring our thoughts. Eventually, the line between chip and brain will disappear.

Imagine a situation where someone in the future gets “killed” in a plane crash. Their body and their chip are completely destroyed. Shockingly, the family does not mourn. Why? Because before the plane trip, their loved one did a brain backup at the airport. It is reasonable to assume that robotics, cybernetics and cloning will have reached a level where the human body can be duplicated. The Japanese have already begun this process.

Your New Body

That loved one who “died” in the plane crash will be reloaded in to her new body. She will wake up with the memories of everything up until her backup. She may open her eyes and insist that she has a plane to catch.