An Imaginary Garden

An article in this week’s Space News notes that “the coming surge in supply of commercially produced high-resolution satellite imagery threatens to siphon talent from U.S. and European defense departments.” Once upon a time, those incredible close-ups belonged to intelligence agencies. Now, anyone can buy them. But the data doesn’t speak for itself. With 28 [...]

In the television game show Jeopardy, contestants are given answers and asked to come up with the right questions. Wired Magazine provides a similar feature, juxtaposing statements by dead technocrats – a recent issue interviewed Nikola Tesla, for example – with modern questions. At first it felt like a disconnect, plugging questions into answers. But [...]

An email friend asked, “How’s your spiritual journey?” Then a friend called who I had just seen at a National Speakers Association convention. NSA is a huge circus tent into which all of us talking animals come prancing and dancing and making our various noises. One of the “center ring” presentations was overtly religious, and [...]

The earth is one huge dysfunctional family and now and then it just has to act out. Most of the time, our species more or less manages. Yes, there are excesses, but the lack of immediate feedback lets them persist. We keep sweeping dirt under the carpet and walking uphill. Humanity lives inside a great [...]

We know the Y2K flood is coming, but who is building the right ark? Back a thousand years, Christendom went crazy. Humans convinced themselves that calendars, an arbitrary measure of the flow of the universe, were linked to the Truth with a capital T. They predicted the end of everything, and lots of people took [...]

My friend, Sue Ashton Davies, wrote a story for The Australian about a test performed by one of Australia’s largest manufacturers. They reset the clock of their computer system to January 7, 2000, and ran a routine batch job involving 800 custom-built programs. The team had sifted through millions of lines of code to fix [...]

I used to be amused when I was an Episcopal priest that people thought of ministry as detached from “real life.” The truth is, one hears just about everything, from the biting stings of an overly scrupulous conscience to obvious denial that enables people who commit murder to sleep peacefully as if they have done [...]

In response to my communication that my wife’s mother had died, many of you responded with sympathy and wisdom. The web of electronic support touched us deeply. Many shared visions of the relationship of this life to “the next” or the body to the soul. There was a wonderful variety of images with which to [...]

I have a dear friend whose mother is all freaked out about the computer 2000 thing.  She is thinking about shutting down bank accounts, accumulating cash, and taking other drastic actions because of stuff she’s heard on late night talk radio. Is my friend’s mom going overboard or are her fears justified? Dear Reader: I [...]

One of my children did not like the way the undergraduate majors at his university structured his learning, so he asked for permission to create an “ad hoc” major. He combined courses from artificial intelligence, computer science, math, philosophy, and psychology into Symbolic Systems Studies and integrated the necessary coursework into a coherent framework. When [...]

Now that the world is wired, we see the word “ubiquitous” everywhere. Just a few years ago, you hardly ever saw that word. Now it’s ubiquitous. The habits of thinking that focus our view of the world change slowly. Stephen Hawking may say that the next generation will understand the world of quantum physics as [...]

That’s the question asked by Deckard, the bladerunner in the movie of the same name: how could the latest humanoid replicants not know they were machines? The answer in the film involved memories and the fragility of the subjectivity we take for granted as our field of identity. Now that genetic engineering and ubiquitous connectivity [...]

Genetic engineering can’t come fast enough. Imprinting is difficult to erase. The brain is built to live life based on our earliest experiences. That made sense when our life spans were shorter. Psychotherapy is one way to learn how to short-circuit stimulus-response routines and make different choices, but that won’t work as longevity increases and [...]

Hackers apprehended by authorities often wanted their exploits to be acknowledged. They showed trophies to their pals, basking in digital clapping, and who can blame them? The respect of our peers matters much more than anonymous applause. It’s an anchor for an ego that wants to know it has a home. A 23 year-old Argentine [...]

‘In theory, theory and practice are the same thing, but in practice, they’re different.’ That insight has been attributed to so many people that, like some of the sayings of Confucius or Yogi Berra, we’ll never know who said it first. Nor does the author matter. The notion that there is an “author” who “owns” [...]

“There’s a disturbance in the force,” Obi-wan Kenobi said as a “Star Wars” planet exploded. Closer to home, when someone who is part of our community dies, people and resources flow toward those who remain like white blood corpuscles. We stop what we are doing and bring food or flowers or otherwise communicate concern. The [...]

“We used to spray for roaches from the chest down,” said a veteran bug killer. “After a few years, though, the only place we found roaches was in the ceiling.” “Bugs are older and smarter than we are. The best we can get is a stand-off.” The same might be said of computer bugs. Hey, [...]

Now and again the all-too-human propensity to take something partially true and make it  Absolutely True explodes in an obvious way.  When the smoke clears, we usually see that people with responsibilities just a teensy bit beyond their abilities have tried to find a one-size-fits-all panacea to work place woes. One of the great “told [...]

From yin/yang to gods and goddesses, the complementarity of masculine and feminine principles percolates through our thinking. (Someone suggested I explain the word “percolate” for younger readers who never saw a “percolator.” Well, I won’t. We learn more if we look it up ourselves.) (oh. “look it up” is equally archaic. my idioms seem to [...]

The older we get, the more often we experience deja vu. A friend recently described Stephen Brill’s plans for a new magazine, “Content,” that will monitor the mass media. Consolidated in fewer and fewer hands, delivering more features and less news, speaking increasingly with a single voice, the media have created the need for alternative [...]

The middle-aged man sitting across from me at breakfast was not what I expected. Based on our email conversation, I expected him to look more like the dark-haired, bright-eyed teen-age son sitting beside him. This guy is my age and looks it. He worked at JPL when the Viking missions went to Mars. Contributing to [...]

The immense masses of data on the Internet makes a need for filters compelling. Yet filters always filter in and filter out. A filter that lets everything in is not a filter, but once things are excluded, we run the risk of missing something important. ‘Before I built a wall,’ wrote Robert Frost, ‘ I’d [...]

The late great community organizer Saul Alinsky was practical and idealistic. I loved the way he used whatever was lying around to empower people, teach them how to organize themselves, learn to take action. Alinsky was unorthodox, controversial, and very effective. Invited to address a graduating class of Episcopal clergy, Alinsky asked a single question: [...]