Science fiction uses the future as an arena to explore and extrapolate from the problems of the present, with technological change and sociocultural change alternating in the role of dependent and independent variables. A broad overview of the trends in 20th and early 21st century sci-fi (or, more honestly, a quick once-over of the books that came to mind when I thought this up in the shower) suggests that the interplay between these variables in our own time determine the predominant “mood” of that era’s sci-fi.

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

Barath Raghavan and Bruce Schneier have written a piece proposing an AI dividend. I like the idea, and I’d like to riff on their pricing strategy a bit.

Science is a people and a place at a time #

Academia has lost some of its lustre lately, and people are speculating about What Comes After the Academy.

I come not to bury the academy, but to examine it – and maybe even to praise it. Why did we decide upon this particular institutional form to house our scientific apparatus? Are universities generating a good ROI on or research dollars?

What happens when attention becomes an even scarcer resource?