technology – Page 3

Dance to the tension of a world on edge

December 31, 2016 — leslie dean brown

Have you ever noticed that we humans are becoming ever more stressed?

We live in a world where the tiniest provocative remark can result in the most horrific retaliatory acts of violence imaginable. Look the wrong way, say or do the wrong thing and you could be the next target. Why is that so?

But many of us still don’t know why. “He must be crazy”, they’ll say. Why are people so stressed? Many people still can’t answer this.

Sometimes it is said that society itself is decaying, but no one knows why. I know that even when I studied science, I could never figure it out. I could never seem to connect the dots.

And then one day while I was travelling in Tonga, I came across this book with an intruiging title called “future shock”. I read it in about two or three days. It completely altered my world view.

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Synthetic orange.

December 15, 2016 — leslie dean brown

Suppose we could obtain two different types of oranges:

Firstly, we can synthesise and assimilate the following chemical compounds:

limonene, myrcene, valencene, linalool, octanal, decanal, ethyl butyrate, α-ionone, citronellal, and α-sinensal, E-2-octenal, 1-octen-3-ol, Z-4-decenal, E, E-2,4-nonadienal, guaiacol, γ-octalactone, and m-cresol, O-glycosylated flavones, flavonols, phenolic acids, ethyl acetate, 6-C-β-glucosyldiosmin, 6,8-di-C-glucopyranosylapigenin, 6,8-di-C-β-glucosyldiosmin, 2-oxo-L-threo-hexono-1,4- lactone-2,3-enediol, beta carotene, 2-hydroxypropane-1,2,3-tricarboxylic acid and heteropolysaccharide.

This is my version of an artificial orange, a “chemical cocktail” by the way.
Secondly, we can grow a tree, harvest the fruit, peel the skin and simply eat the orange.

Do you think that these are essentially the same thing? I think that’s a very good question to ask. Do both sources of food essentially provide the same nutrients?

Because I think that although we can synthesise many many complex molecules such as these, we can’t actually ‘manufacture’ a wholly artificial fruit that is identical in every way to a naturally grown one. Can we?

And even though it takes an enormous effort to characterise these natural chemical compounds and synthesise them, and nature does it for free with soil, sunlight, air and water, we still try. Without a plant seed, or a tissue culture sample, or a DNA strand, there is no way we’ll be able to do it either.

What’s my point? Well, without any prior knowledge on the subject of the human digestion process, I’ll make an assumption that the structure of food is needed to aid in both the chemical breakdown of the food and the timely extraction of its nutrients. I’ll bet that introducing the same mixture of concentrated liquid chemicals simultaneously into your gut won’t do your stomach lining any good. Time has shown us that there is always a price to play for taking shortcuts, especially with concentrated synthetic chemicals. Indeed, cancer is now one of the greatest of all threats to our biology – in fact it is now common for people to suffer bowel cancer due to the lack of fibre in their diet.

You might say that my two versions of an ‘orange’ are both essentially the same thing. Certainly while the same constituents may be present in the artificial chemical cocktail, the microstructure of theis “artificial fruit” is completely absent.

But aside from that, who actually wants to eat synthetic food? Do we not have time anymore to simply peel an orange? Or is there something else going on? Something deep, dark and insidious? It is my belief that without even realising it, we’re creating an artificial world for ourselves, with almost no control or direction. As technology invades more and more of our lives it erodes the natural; every part, everything from our food to our transport and even our entertainment are now designed by other people. We seek to study everything and replicate it, including life itself. Why?

What am I saying here? Well, I am just saying that all things considered, I think the natural food sources will always be the healthier than the synthetic alternatives.

What can we all learn by this?

November 25, 2016 — leslie dean brown

I love it, indigenous people using technology against us.

Businesses, don’t start new pipeline projects and expect it to go to schedule anymore!

Investors, don’t invest in oil pipelines, because there will be delays! And you won’t earn as much as you think you will. Most people don’t want fossil fuels today, they want renewable energy alternatives. That’s what you should be investing in. That’s what I’d be investing in.

Governments, stop supporting the fossil oil industry! How many tax dollars are you spending on those military police to be there for all this time? Why isn’t that cost factored into your energy/cost calculations?

Citizens, don’t drive your car as much, buy less plastic!

Meanwhile… mainstream media falls strangely SILENT.

What are they going to do on December 5th? Bring in tanks and armoured personnel carriers?

Two words come to mind: Tiananmen Square. 1989. People don’t forget that shit. The more brutal the tactics get, the more the media will follow.

The media today cannot be controlled like network TV, because news is now a social media phenomenon.

If I was there I would be standing my ground.

What is the goal of humanity?

November 17, 2016 — leslie dean brown

What exactly are working towards?

Is the ultimate goal happiness? Or just to survive? Or something else?

This seems to be a popular question on the quora and TED forums. I’m sure most people don’t even stop to think about it.

It seems strange that your average doughnut factory has more of a business plan than the whole of humanity.

I think it’s because there seems to be some unspoken notion that at the rate we are going we won’t really even last more than about 300-500 years, let alone 50,000 or more years. So why bother thinking about it?

Talking about our long-term future is almost a taboo subject with some people. Why is that? Is it because we have no fucking idea at all what we are doing? Is that it? Are we embarrassed? Is it because we already know that we are ‘doomed’? No? Then, what?

If we are going to survive, I think it is worth thinking about. Otherwise you have to ask yourself “why are we working so hard now?” What’s the point of it? If we’re all so doomed already, why do we bother still going to work forty or more hours a week? Eh?

So we must be working towards something. We just don’t collectively know what it is (yet). And note that I’m not talking about an ‘afterlife’. I’m talking about what will become of humanity, the world, in one million years’ time.

Assuming something terrible doesn’t happen, wouldn’t it make sense to have a “humanity plan” that we can all refer to? A humanity plan might even give us a reason to avoid WW3, WW4 and WW5. A reason to exist.

We don’t really know what we are doing let alone why we are doing it. People are feeling lost, hopeless and depressed. I think that’s why there were so many volunteers on that Mars one space mission.

The hugely controversial Dutch-based Mars One mission has admitted that only 4,227 people actually completed its application form properly, rather than 200,000 … 202,586 applicants registered their interest online in 2013.

I think the first thing we need to do is not let go of our hope. Because that’s what most people [adults] tend to do in fairly hopeless situations, isn’t it? They lose hope and then they give up. I think we need to try to remain optimistic about the future. Hope is what normally keeps us going. Hope is what motivates people. So let’s start by hoping for a better future, not a worse one. I personally think that there is hope. Not a lot of hope, but maybe –perhaps– just enough.

Hope starts with an idea. A dream, if you will. Visionaries inspire us all. Because now is the time to choose. Are we even working towards the same goal?

I ask google and the people who are asking these questions are individuals. Not governments, but individuals. Shouldn’t there be some kind of a long-term “mission statement” for each country?

Even the ancient Egyptians had more of a plan… build pyramids…

I think we need a one year plan. A ten year plan. A hundred year plan. A thousand year plan. A ten thousand year plan. A hundred thousand year plan. A million year plan. It surprises me that our entire civilisation is wandering almost completely aimlessly through time.

For example, do we want to be so addicted to technology? Won’t we become a bit borg-like if we continue unabated down that path? Is it even sustainable? Can we even know? Do we need to know? Can we still have a plan that encompasses future discoveries and inventions?

To answer this question, I think we need to ask ourselves a very important question: What de we want to become? What makes us happy? If we didn’t have to work, what do we want to do in our spare time? As soon as we know that we will know how we are going to get there.

What do you, the reader, think the goal(s) of humanity should be?

A word about forest efficiency

September 25, 2016 — leslie dean brown

Scientists are hard at working devising new ‘technologies’ that can strip carbon dioxide out of the air. There is even a prize for the most efficient inventions that can capture this carbon and put it to good use; twitter is abuzz with the hashtag #reimagineCO<sub>2</sub>. But you know, I already know that the most efficient, sustainable oxygen factory (that also happens to double as a carbon sink) is none other than a natural forest:

Imagine this robotic-like device that can adsorb CO₂ molecules at the ppb level directly out of the Earth’s atmosphere through a process of reverse-osmosis and then transmorgify those carbon atoms into stiff and lightweight fractal-laminar-nano-composite material that is 100% biodegradeable, 100% compostable and 100% renewable! Once the carbon dioxide molecules are split into their atomic components, one of the only gaseous waste byproducts is diatomic oxygen²!! It gets better. It’s solar powered, of course!!! And believe it or not, but it uses *self-assembling technology*!!!! Really — this thing, it just unfolds itself to the final shape in front of your very eyes!!!!! Literally all you do is wait and let it do its thing!!!!!! And did I mention that it is self-repairing? Meaning it will heal its own damaged components!!!!!!! It’s that simple!!!!!!!! And it works!!!!!!!!!! It actually works!!!!!!!!!! This incredible machine, okay, will keep on going even if sections of it are completely hacked off!!!!!!!!!!! And it is like a 3D printer, so it will literally print practically unlimited copies of itself!!!!!!!!!!!! I am going to be the world’s first trillionaire!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have almost lost count of how many exclamation points I am using here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ²And if you’re paying atttention, even the fineprint is good—the only other byproducts are aromatic hydrocarbons that are shown to enhance mood levels in the general human population.

I might be wrong about this but I’m willing to bet that the more biodiverse a forest is, the more carbon it can absorb. Simply because a dense tropical rainforest has more biomass than a ‘monoculture’ crop (soil is another matter).

So. We already have the ‘technology’ in the form of trees. All we have to do is reverse the landclearing. That’s why when someone tells you the best advice they can give is to “plant a tree”, they are almost certainly correct.