The Voyager Spacecraft

Saving the Planet, One Scientific Steak at a Time

In-vitro meat (IVM) is one of those subjects that could quickly get out of hand in the minds of an uninformed public, and this post is my small part in countering the entropy of reason. Hmm, is it still entropy if the reasoning was never there to begin with?

In my discussions with those unfamiliar with it, the first reaction seems to be one of disgust. Maybe due to the increasing familiarity with Genetically Modified Foods (GMO), especially with the increasing notoriety of Monsanto (as if they were the first and last step in GMO). But, as in any foray into the unknown, as Bertrand Russell puts it: first you must begin with the facts, and move on from there. So let’s get to the facts of meat today, and then with those of IVM. One thing we must get out-of-the-way before we begin: human-beings will not just stop eating meat, so any philosophical or personal objection to the practice of meat-eating is bunk. One person’s (or even a billion persons) objection to the practice of eating meat is irrelevant, it’s simply a part of life and must be dealt with.

Immortality and Life’s Purpose

I’ve been recently reading and watching the works of futurists Ray Kurzweil and Jason Silva, and I am ecstatic about their optimistic predictions for the human race in the coming decades. I’ve also been coming across the claims of their detractors, and I want to highlight the most consistent statement made in response to the prediction that life will become indefinite as a result of advancements in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and information technology in the coming decades; that people’s finite lives give meaning to their existence, and thus, immortality would rob us of the urgency of purposeful living. An existential crisis, in reverse if you will…

A Future of Medicine and Health

Medicine is a beautiful thing and being healthy is among the most liberating of foundations that one can possibly have. The science, or understanding, of the human body in the last century has resulted in the saved life’s of literally, hundreds of millions of people, if not more. From a reduction in maternal mortality and infant deaths, to correction of malnutrition, new vaccines, and hundreds of initiatives that have all resulted in a vast increase in the length and quality of life for billions around the world.

In researching a chapter in my just released book, I came across many medicines and technologies that will be essential to our health someday. Everyday we discover new things about the human body that will aid in the search of greater health and I’m putting this post together in my head as an experiment to what the future of medicine and health could look like in the future.

Tracking the Trackers

TED Talk: The Other Inconvenient Truth

Major iPad Disruptions Coming

One of my first posts on this blog, was ‘Which Industries Did The iPad Disrupt?‘. I thought I was smart listing out a few industries here and there, but it never hit me just how huge the disruption of the iPad is really going to become, like this article from cultofmac titled ‘Why the iPad is the Most Hated Gadget Ever‘ suggests.

– Millions of toys might never be purchased
– Millions of tonnes of paper flight manuals won’t be printed
– Tens of millions of Netbooks won’t be made
– Millions of Restaurant menu’s will never be made as apps are developed and an iPad is shoved into the middle of the table.

The list goes on and go.

I for one, think this is a positive development. Yes, there will be lots of pain felt in these industries, and undoubtedly many layoffs, and while I feel for these people. This is the cost of human progress.

Short term pain = Long term gain.

Of course, that doesn’t mean people will see it that way, especially politicians but lets leave that subject alone for now. I am very exciting about the merger of all these industries into one device (maybe not just the iPad, but eventually other tablets too like Android. Monopolies suck).

Think of the efficiency gains that will be made, the energy savings, the millions of trees that won’t need to be cut down to make millions of flight manuals and hundreds of millions of books. The millions, perhaps billions of tons of oil that won’t need to be converted into plastic to create toys and cheap netbooks.

And of course, the cost savings. We all know money talks, and all else simply falls upon deaf ears. No wonder 92% of Fortune 500 companies are currently using the iPad, or testing it for potential deployment. That a lot of the top hospitals around the US are using iPads, and it is becoming an increasingly used tool in schools. It saves you money, both in terms of resources and huge time savings. Colour me impressed!

Now, think on the backend. The millions of toys and netbooks that we won’t have to throw away into overflowing landfills, contaminating our planet with chemicals. Of course, tablets might replace a part of that landfill, but any downhill movement in terms of pollution and waste is a win, and just a step on the way to zero waste.

The future is beginning to be realized, and I think it is going to be brighter than anyone of us can imagine. Yes, there will be huge pains on the way, especially economic pain, and social unrest resulting from this economic pain, but I have high hopes for the technology that will alleviate us from the woes of the 20th century.

What Pisses Me Off About Hollywood

Hollywood is a major pain in the ass. I can’t emphasize the disdain I have for the corporate side of Hollywood. Sure, I love movies, nothing beats watching a great movie on a sunday night, or any other night for that matter. But what pisses me off about Hollywood is the lengths they goto to remind you that you don’t own the piece of media you are about to watch on DVD or Blu-Ray.

It’s incredible. You just spent between $10 and $50 on your favourite movie, and one of the first things it tells you when you pop it into your machine, get comfy on the couch is that you can get fined $250,000 and spend up to 5 years in prison for showing this in public, a friend’s house or making a copy of something you bought and paid for with your hard-earned money.

As more and more of our movie watching experience is moving online, they are taking the same steps as the music industry, and we know how badly those guys screwed up. Luckily, at the time we had Steve Jobs to drag them into the future kicking and screaming. This time, I’m afraid we don’t have anyone strong enough to arm wrestle them into submission. I don’t think Tim Cook will do it, but if anyone was going to do it, I think it would be him or someone else at Apple just from the huge amount of pull they have now in the media business and when their Apple TV comes out next year, but I doubt it.

Online movies, in my opinion, will stay DRM’ed, be watchable in only a specialized program (i.e. iTunes) and won’t be transferable to other formats and you won’t even own the movie, just a license to watch it. That to me, is the most infuriating part about all of this, if I give you money for something, I own whatever it is that I receive in return, no questions about it, but that’s not the way it works these days. These big media behemoths go out of their way to lobby governments for copyright protections above and beyond what was already codified into law, despite the fact the existing framework worked perfectly fine, and that pirates wouldn’t be buyers if they did not have the option to download it illegally.

Now they are trying to release SOPA (The Stop Online Privacy Act) which pretty much leaves it up to the media holders, and the US government what constitutes privacy or not. In other words, if this bill passes then internet censorship will be legalized, and be placed in full control of the US government and these Hollywood types. Buh bye democracy. Luckily, SOPA just got rebuffed on the first go around but the next scheduled hearing is on the 21st Dec, so hopefully it will be defeated once and for all.

I just read this over at business insider, and I couldn’t agree more. This is disgusting and pathetic, but we bought it on ourselves.

This is the way Hollywood should handle themselves. C. K. Lewis recently did his own show, released it online DRM-free, and charged only $5 for it (as opposed to the usual $20 that a corporation would), and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. When there is very little difference in effort between buying the legitimate copy that will benefit the artist, and downloading it free, then consumers generally tend to pay the money. What Hollywood does is treat everyone as an illegal downloader, DRM the crap out of it all, remind you they will try to put you in jail if you violate the terms of service, and charge you a ridiclous price to boot, with the majority of the profit going to the studio itself instead of to the artists. And they call illegal downloaders thiefs!

Whatever happens to the future of the industry, they bought it on themselves, and I will happily say, suck it!

This news article is just the icing on the cake. Hollywood IP addresses used to download via bittorrent movies and tv shows illegally. So Hollywood, please come meet us in the future, or you might get teased for being that stupid kid still playing his Atari while the rest of us talk to Siri, watch blu-rays on our Playstation 3s. They are a bunch of dinosaurs, and not the cool kind.

What Industries Has The iPad Disrupted?

Ever since the iPad came out, entire industries have been shaken, stirred and disrupted. Some of these industries will be completely different in a few years, some might go under and some still might survive in limited ways. I wanted to see how many industries I could think up that were disrupted by the iPad. A little exercise in racking the brain.

The first industry that came to my mind was Magazines. I myself have an iPad, and the Zinio app which is remarkable. All your previous magazines that you used to buy at the News Agency or Bookstore, are now online. I’m not sure if all of them are electronically available, but the major ones are there, and there are hundreds to choose from. National Geographic, Time, Popular Science & Mechanics and so on and forth. In a few years, there might be no such thing as hard copy magazines, except as collectors items. Book stores are going to take a hit, as well as news agencies. Book stores are also being assaulted by the Kindle.

Web browsing is going through a large transition now as more and more web pages are viewed on mobile devices like the iPad. After the iPad was released, and started selling tens of millions of units, the netbook category took a nose dive in the amount of units sold. It seems as if people were choosing between a netbook and an iPad. At the end of the day, they seem to go after the same market. Neither of these two devices are supposed to be a primary device. They are mainly for content consumption instead of creation. Choosing between a cheap plastic, overly cramped keyboard with an operating system that makes tortoises seem to move fast, and a slick aluminium, thin designed piece of hardware with a custom made OS designed to leverage the hardware. It’s almost a no brainer. The iPad will win almost every time, provided the end user can afford it of course. The cheapest iPad is usually more expensive then the majority of net books. I sit here myself typing out this blog post on an iPad 2.

As we transition to an increasingly electronic society, is the demise of newspapers. There are thousands of apps on the App Store, for both the iPad and the iPhone to deliver news content in personalised, or generalised formats. CNN, Fox News, The NY and LA Times all have apps to deliver news directly to mobile users. Come a few years from now, maybe a decade or so and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that newspapers are gone altogether and we receive our news completely electronically via mobile devices, tablets and our computers. Journalism by any case will not become less important, but it may become much more competitive as the time between event and news story becomes ever smaller. Competitiveness in an industry that requires truth and honesty is not a good thing in my opinion. People start to take shortcuts. So it remains to be seen how that will play out. I sure do hope I’m wrong.

There is also a brand new type of app that has the potential to wreak much havoc almost everywhere, the Augmented Reality App. These type of apps have the potential to displace or make irrelevant many travel apps, as just the first example that came to my head. I’m sure other more imaginative people can think of more industries these type of apps will disrupt. I travel regularly, I’ve visited 23 countries, and well over 100 cities. There was a time when to travel somewhere, and really know the lay of the land. You either had to have a friend give you all the tips, before the web you had books like the Lonely Planet series, or you checked wikitravel.org (That’s what I do) or various other websites. But with an iPad or iPhone, you can download augmented reality travel apps that use your GPS position, camera, axis tilt and other sensory information to tell you the closet landmarks, show you pictures, how popular they are, the route to get there via walking, car or public transportation. You can decide before you have exerted any energy whether to go check it out or not. Its incredibly useful and saves you lots of time, in the pre-planning stages, and while on the ground. Just pack your stuff, download the app, and once you get there, load up the app and decide what you want to do. I have used these types of apps in Greece, Spain and Italy. Makes travelling a much more pleasant experience.

As more and more time goes on, I imagine more industries are going to become disrupted by the iPad and other tablets. Hulu is just hitting its stride, and it can do to movies and TV what Apple did to music, or the rumored Apple TV next year might usurp it.

At the end of the day, I think this is all a good thing. There will be job losses, and I feel for those people but the more electronic we make things, the more energy and greener we become. Besides, the people who are in the above fields are usually highly educated folk, and shouldn’t have much trouble finding a new job. But pain is the name of the game when it comes to change, I don’t think there is anyway to avoid it except to get through it as fast as possible.

Here’s to a rational future!