Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "technology"

Nuclear Power: Both Sides:The Arguments For and Against the Most Controversial Technology by Michio Kaku and Jennifer Trainer Thompson (Editor), Norton, 1990.

This is a collection of twenty-one essays, written by authors with differing opinions about the dangerous effects of radiation, waste disposal, reactor safety and nuclear economics. Solar, fusion and breeder reactors are also discussed.

For the Christian Science Monitor, I noted that with few exceptions, facts were presented fairly and opinions made clear without self-serving exaggeration. Chapter are preceded by useful introductions. In view of our current energy concerns, this book may have more than just historical significance.

Michio Kaku, professsor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York, is also author of a fascinating book Physics of the Future--How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100. I'm referencing this book for my realistic scifi, modeling how we might secure the future. See http://archivesofvarok.com

In the Introduction, Gore summarizes the current trends that provide challenges for how we make choices for the future: the global economy, electronic communications, a new balance of political, economic and military power, unsustainable growth, powerful new science technologies, and the emergence of a new relationship between human civilization and Earth's ecology.

The details he provides in the first 100 pages range from new technology to internet influences and the problems with current economics and Citizens United. Looks like this will be a valuable resource for anyone writing about our prospects for the future.

I'm especially encouraged by his understanding of how complexity impacts these issues and by the extensive Bibliography, Index and Notes he provides.The Future: Six Drivers of Global ChangeAl Gore

The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change by Al Gore: New York, Random House, 2013, a New York times bestseller. As former Vice President and member of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as author of An Inconvenient Truth, a member of Apple Inc. board of directors, chairman of Generation Investment Management, chairman of the nonprofit Climate Reality Project, al Gore is no stranger to business, government or environmental concerns.

This latest book provides a treasure for anyone concerned about our current dilemmas. In unvarnished, direct language, Gore explores environmental, economic and political issues. He presents the facts, sometimes a brief history, and digs deep into the reasons behind our failure to agree on solutions that he believes, passionately, must be implemented soon. The consequences of inaction are made clear, and they are dire.

This book was in development for eight years by Gore, his research team, business associates and distinguished reviewers, including Jared Diamond, E. O. Wilson and Herman Daly. Besides 373 pages of compelling text, the book includes an invaluable eight pages of Bibliography, 144 pages of usefully titled Notes, and a detailed Index.

The credibility of Gore’s arguments are enhanced by his understanding of complex systems and a balanced approach to each topic. He makes his own views crystal clear while exploring relevant evidence without overloading the reader with data. An example is his description of Earth’s wind and water currents that are involved in the experience of climate change (pages 305-311). Gore argues that though we prohibit “...human experimentation that puts lives at risk...”, we are engaging in a deadly global “unplanned experiment” as we continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere.

Of particular interest to me is his analysis of why we cannot agree on such important issues. He covers many. A brief look at the Index can tell you if your topic of concern is
covered. The range of possibilities for the future is huge, introduced in each section by extensive topic organizing diagrams. The concluding paragraphs “So What Do We Do Now?” (page 367) recap his most urgent tasks, if we face the fact that we humans are now “...a geologic and evolutionary force...” on Earth.

If the United State of America is to provide leadership to the global community, Gore insists that we must reform “...legislative rules that allow a small minority to halt legislation in the U. S. Senate” and “...limit the role of money in politics...”. The latter is a positive feedback loop, a recipe for disaster well known in physics and studies of complex systems.

New York, Henry Holt, 2015

The author, founder of Skeptic Magazine, makes a good case for the rise of human morality over human history. The reason? Increased understanding due to the finding of science, information confirmed by being open to testing. Presenting precise definitions and detailed analysis, Shermer reviews ancient religions and morality, explores cognitive dissonance and the principle of interchangeable perspectives, animal rights, free ill, the death penalty , and prospects for future city-states and new technologies.

After all this convincing precision and analysis, Shermer claims that in the past 1000 years we were living in a zero-sum economics. Now its a nonzero world, when technology means "the gain of one often means the gain for others and ...an abundance of food and resources."

Seems to me he's got it backwards, given the current knowledge of resource limits, water shortages, global warming, and population overload. Shermer also gets carried away painting the future--forgetting the time, space, and energy required when he makes the outdated scifi case for the human colonization way beyond Earth throughout the galaxy and beyond. I hope this section doesn't turn readers away from his uplifting conclusions.

He makes a powerful case for his moral arc, convincing the reader with many examples and lots of data, how our ethics are truly realized at a higher level than ever before in history, because we depend now on good, tested information, not superstition and ancient thought patterns.

“Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction” by Chris D. Thomas, New York, Hatchette Book Group, 2017.

We can only hope that the author is right about what is thriving on Earth: In spite of the damage we humans have done to our home- (and most likely only) planet, we have created new homes for other life and stimulated their evolutionary creativity.

An award-winning professor of conservation biology at the University of York, UK, Chris Thomas gives us a rare glimpse of hope for Earth’s future, in spite of the excesses of technology and human over-population. Earth was once quite warm (three million years ago) and the continents’ future coming together again will change all Earth’s species’ options eventually, in spite of any human impact.

Meanwhile, ocean-going containers move species around so that “many microbes…have near-global distribution. It makes our “neophobia” and “hatred of foreign species” in our locales seem a little silly--certainly not worth a “costly control and eradication of…alien species.”

“Life is a process, not a final product, “ the author says. Therefore, maintain flexibility for future change. Humans are as normal as anything else that lives. Accept the fact that we must “..live within our planetary boundaries.”

What to do? Read pages 230 to 242, if nothing else. There the author tells us: 1) “…accept change” and prod it in a “desired direction.” 2) “…maintain flexibility for future generations,” for we cannot imagine their world. We should encourage “as many species as possible in minimizing extinction.” 3) Our evolution and presence “are natural within the Earth system…We should encourage “as many species as possible. Genes, like species, survive because they keep track of the changing world.” Specific options are suggested on page 240, following a thoughtful discussion of whether or not to resurrect those who have recently gone extinct. 4) “…create near biological success stories by whatever means” by helping “…direct the evolutionary process.”

The End of Normal: Why the Growth Economy Isn't Coming Back-and What to Do When It Doesn'tThe End of Normal by James K. Galbraith, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2014.
Galbraith begins by mentioning books published as a result of the 2008 debacle—“misfeasance both in government and in the banking sector.”

Galbraith reviews our economic theory, its history and the current worries about capitol takeovers and continuous upgrading, while insisting on growth as the world’s fix-all. He describes calls from both D. Meadows and Herman Daly for recognition of the limit to resources, but he dismisses them as forgetting the “power of new reserves, new technology, and resource substitutes.” He concludes that we must “preserve slow growth…below what cheap energy and climate indifference once made possible,” forgetting that nothing material can grow forever.

It will require “…careful investment and persistent regulation.” Decentralized banks should only “…support household consumption or business investment…in low-cost ways.” To avoid the winner-take-all inequality of high growth, the low-growth economy should be “…based on more decentralized economic units…supported by a framework of labor standards and secured protection. Then all could enjoy value…education, health care, elder care, art and sport.

It’s not Herman Daly’s carefully crafted steady-state ideal, but it is close. The driving force and stress coming from continually growing human populations could easily overwhelm his slow-growth, equitable economic plans.