Isaac Asimov should have been a VC

Isaac AsimovVisiting New York’s 1964 World Fair, Isaac Asimov imagines what it would be like 50 years hence.

Here are some of his predictions:

Mostly right

One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better.

Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas — Arizona, the Negev, Kazakhstan.

Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with “Robot-brains”*vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.

Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books.

Probably in my lifetime…and I can’t wait

Electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.

Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare “automeals,” heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be “ordered” the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning.

The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes.

There will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air*a foot or two off the ground.

For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections.

Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. The 2014 fair will feature an Algae Bar at which “mock-turkey” and “pseudosteak” will be served.

Asimov predicted the internet…yet he thought boredom would be mankind’s greatest disease!

Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.

The most errant Asimov predictions involve human colonization (by 2014, he foresaw Moon colonies and underwater housing settlements) and unchecked population growth (still a concern, but who could have guessed that economically-developed countries would stop having babies?).

Sidebar: it seems that we humans consistently underestimate the power of exponential growth, but once we’re convinced of it, we then — with the same consistency — overestimate how long it will last.

His original article is here.

The failures of kindness

George Saunders, NYTThere is no time like college graduation — the propulsion of thousands of fresh-faced, exuberant 21 year-olds into the “real” world — to believe anew in the possibilities of mankind and the human spirit.

Great convocation speeches capture that energy and — to paraphrase Pico Iyer — help us become young fools once again. And George Saunders delivered a great one to Syracuse U’s Class of 2013.

Some excerpts:

So: What do I regret? Being poor from time to time? Not really. Working terrible jobs, like “knuckle-puller in a slaughterhouse?” (And don’t even ASK what that entails.) No. I don’t regret that. Skinny-dipping in a river in Sumatra, a little buzzed, and looking up and seeing like 300 monkeys sitting on a pipeline, pooping down into the river, the river in which I was swimming, with my mouth open, naked? And getting deathly ill afterwards, and staying sick for the next seven months? Not so much. Do I regret the occasional humiliation? Like once, playing hockey in front of a big crowd, including this girl I really liked, I somehow managed, while falling and emitting this weird whooping noise, to score on my own goalie, while also sending my stick flying into the crowd, nearly hitting that girl? No. I don’t even regret that.

So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions that are probably somehow Darwinian. These are: (1) we’re central to the universe (that is, our personal story is the main and most interesting story, the only story, really); (2) we’re separate from the universe (there’s US and then, out there, all that other junk – dogs and swing-sets, and the State of Nebraska and low-hanging clouds and, you know, other people), and (3) we’re permanent (death is real, o.k., sure – for you, but not for me).

So, quick, end-of-speech advice: Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf

Full speech here.

Random Quotes: “A point of view is worth 80 IQ points” – Alan Kay

Happy 2014, year of the horse and all that, people. Best wishes to you and yours.

If people in your life aren’t uncomfortable then you’re not really writing – Chris Rock quoting Quentin Tarantino

When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful – Eric Thomas

The video source is inspiring.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. – Max Ehrmann

If you’re passionate about something, then you can be a good fan…if you’re passionate about something and you’re good at it, it can be a hobby – Tina Seelig

From Tina’s ETL talk. Didn’t expect her to reach this true but tiger mom-like conclusion.

She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her… I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her… – Antoine de Saint Exupery in The Little Prince

So beautiful, this…

A point of view is worth 80 IQ points – Alan Kay

Apparently Jeff Bezos is a big Alan Kay fan.

Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place – Nassim Taleb

Am reading, and struggling with, Antifragile. More on that later…

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. – Flannery O’Connor

Yes. To paraphrase Virginia Woolf, you write to find out what you know, which usually isn’t much.

before enlightenment chop wood carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood carry water. – zen saying

People are not machines, but in all situations where they are given the opportunity, they will act like machines – Ludwig von Bertalanffy

Machine actions are essentially programmed routines. Human actions are essentially developed habits. Routines = habits. Humans = largely self-taught, slowly-evolving machines (emphasis on ‘slowly’).

You know what fine stands for? Freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional. – Mark Wahlberg in Italian Job

We travel, in essence, to become young fools again – to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. – Pico Iyer

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. […] If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. – Henry David Thoreau, in Walden

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see. – G.K. Chesterton

To begin a new novel, I look for the biggest problem in my life that I can’t solve or tolerate. Something that drives me nuts, but I can’t fix. Then I find a metaphor that allows me to explore the problem, exaggerating and expanding it beyond reason. I build it up to the worst scenario possible and then find a way to solve it. By the time the book is done, I’ve exhausted all of my emotions around the original problem. Whatever it was, it no longer bothers me. And typically, during the time of writing, the problem has resolved itself. It’s like magic. Try it. It will keep you alive in this world of bullshit. – Chuck Palahniuk

My complete list of quotes is here.

Recommended books: George R. R. Martin, Rick Strassman, and Andrew McAfee

Here are books I finished in December. I finally decided to jump into the Game of Thrones series…

A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin
A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

Books 3 and 4 in the series. HBO is midway through Book 3 and has faithfully followed the timeline and stories, but both will increasingly diverge from here.

Be Slightly Evil by Venkatesh Rao

I enjoy his blog and read 1/2 of this book. I stopped reading it one day and just knew I wouldn’t come back to it, so it’s listed here for record-keeping.

DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman

Wow.

Race Against The Machine by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson

We are seeing a socioeconomic transformation — driven by computers and this internet thing — that has not been seen for decades, perhaps as far back as the late 1800s. This book gets at the why and the how and its implications for individuals and companies.

That’s it for December. What books have you enjoyed reading? Not that I need to send Amazon more money, but I will.

There are two ways to succeed: do very good work, or cheat

G.K. ChestertonI loved this article by G.K. Chesterton, an English writer, poet, and man of letters.

More than 100 years ago — before motivational posters, TED talks, and Tony Robbins — Chesterton complained about the excess of self-help books.

On every bookstall, in every magazine, you may find works telling people how to succeed. They are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books.

For him, there were only 2 roads to success: do very good work, or cheat.

If you are in for the high jump, either jump higher than any one else, or manage somehow to pretend that you have done so. If you want to succeed at whist, either be a good whist-player, or play with marked cards.

He simplifies for entertainment’s sake, but his insight is valuable: for example, he believes we are obsessed with self-help because we mystify money and millionaires.

The writer of that passage did not really have the remotest notion of how Vanderbilt made his money, or of how anybody else is to make his. He does, indeed, conclude his remarks by advocating some scheme; but it has nothing in the world to do with Vanderbilt. He merely wished to prostrate himself before the mystery of a millionaire. For when we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity.

And his remarkable conclusion, that this obsession makes us snobby. It appeals to our baser, meaner values.

They do not teach people to be successful, but they do teach people to be snobbish; they do spread a sort of evil poetry of worldliness. The Puritans are always denouncing books that inflame lust; what shall we say of books that inflame the viler passions of avarice and pride?

Some food for thought as we enter 2014. Here’s a running list of what I’m reading, thanks to Postach.io.