Memia 2022.12: 🇺🇦✊// permacrisis🧿// not-so-super-EMP?💥// gigabight💨// pair programming in 2022🧑💻🤖// 1 billion proofs of human?👁️// smartclothes👕// memetic lexicon🧠
$1,000 to successfully inject advertisements into her dreams
Kia ora,
Welcome to Memia, your regular scan across emerging tech and the future as it’s unfolding. As always, thanks for reading!
Reminder: iPhone users can take a read of this week’s edition in the new Substack iOS App:
Weekly roundup
The most clicked link in last week’s edition (by far: 11% of openers each) was the domino-effect paving stone laying. Skills.
🤦Priorities
The incumbent hegemonic power of the Hollywood
entertainmentadvertising revenue factory on full display this week. More important matters are afoot, however:
🇺🇦✊#standwithukraine
Still omnipresent at the top of mind right now is the ongoing war in Ukraine. A perpetual Kia Kaha to everyone affected directly and indirectly. I struggle daily to imagine what it must be like to be living through this war. Ukraine will rebuild.
This extensive recent Economist interview with Ukrainian President Zelensky starkly contrasts his values against the indiscriminate Russian bombing of civilians and lack of concern for their own young conscript soldiers:
“Victory is being able to save as many lives as possible…because without this nothing would make sense. Our land is important, yes, but ultimately, it's just territory.”
Anyway… I’m taking a break from sharing more links directly related to the Ukraine situation. This week I’ve been forced to reflect how, in trying to keep up with this information deluge - constantly scrolling through social media / news feeds to get updates … more updates… any updates…, it actually becomes harder to accurately assess what’s truly happening in Ukraine - especially when you start second-guessing how much of an echo-chamber you exist in and how the Twitter algos are constantly curating your feed to maximize attention and ad revenue. Plus, tbh, mainlining war tweets for hours doesn’t do a lot for one’s mental wellbeing…
So, since this newsletter’s theme is mostly about interpreting emerging tech and trying to make sense of the medium-long-term future, I’m going to focus back in on what I’m better at and leave the week-to-week Ukraine commentary to those more qualified than me. Hope that’s ok with you readers… please reach out if you’ve got an opinion one way or the other.
🧿Permacrisis
…However, related: if you missed the video conversation below that I shared on Sunday, I really recommend investing the time to watch it through (1 hour at 1.5X speed). It’s a radically meta discussion of “posthuman-AI” interpretations of the current information overload we’re living under.1
In particular, futurist John Robb uses the term “Permacrisis” to describe the heightening intensity of online discourse: Trump → QAnon → Covid → BLM → Anti-vaccine protests → Ukraine war →…. Q: what next…? A: whatever is most viral. Certainly a credible lens to interpret the current misinformation epidemic and Western “swarm” response to Russia.
💥Not-so-Super-EMP?
Unfortunately I can’t quite stay off the war theme…the first “Space War” may not be far off…
Kim Dotcom (remember him…? currently living the life in Glenorchy…and *not* a fan of the US…) raises the topic of Super-EMPs with typical hyperbole:
Super-EMPs? Also known as High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) weapons, they involve a massive nuclear explosion between 30km and 500km above Earth, designed to wipe out electricity and communications infrastructure on the ground at continent-scale (while not causing any immediate impact to life on Earth).
There’s an alarmingist Jan 2021 report from the US-based EMP taskforce, an “official Congressional Advisory Board”: RUSSIA: EMP THREAT which covers “Russia’s Military Doctrine, Plans, and Capabilities for Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack”.
(It’s available on the US government Defense Technical Information Center dtic.mil website which I am assuming gives it *some* credibility … although it all reads a bit too zero-sum/cold war/pork barrel/defense lobbyist to my untrained eye…)
(This is the same group responsible for unsubtle headlines predicting 90% loss of life within a year of an EMP strike from electricity grid failure).
Anyway, it’s a detailed and strongly worded report, framing a HEMP attack as “cyber” warfare, not nuclear, from Russia’s point of view:
“Russia has “Super-EMP” weapons specialized for HEMP attack that potentially generate 100,000 volts/meter or higher, greatly exceeding the U.S. military hardening standard (50,000 volts/meter). As a result of its HEMP nuclear tests, the Soviet Union, and today Russia, probably knows a lot more about HEMP effects than the United States. Super-EMP is a…first-strike weapon”
Perhaps a more sober analysis is this 2017 video from the US Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), which takes a look at how the potential weapons would work (“3 pulses”) and how to design electricity grids to defend against them.
Two years later, the EPRI published research in 2019 which summarises (my bolding):
“Key findings for the initial pulse include
Transmission electronic equipment damage or disruption can result from induced voltage surges in connecting cables, as well as by direct exposure to the initial pulse.
Digital protective relays – devices that help detect faults in the electric system – were generally resilient to direct exposure to the initial pulse but were found to be vulnerable to the surges induced on control and communication cables.
The research indicated that initial pulse impacts could be mitigated through various options…
…The research also showed that the combined effects of the initial and late pulses could trigger a regional service interruption but would not trigger a nationwide grid failure. Recovery times are expected to be similar to those resulting from large-scale power interruptions caused by other events provided that mitigations specific to the initial pulse are deployed. Possible damage to large power transformers was found to be minimal.”
Takeaways
Personally, just processing all of this for the first time… I’m sure there are people in the world who have been studying these wargames for years. But Dotcom’s strategic read is at least credible, something like:
If the war escalates outside Ukraine, Russia could launch a series of super-EMP attacks over US and NATO territory…
…Even if US nuclear weapons systems survive this, would the US risk launching a counterstrike?
…It would certainly be one explanation of Putin’s apparent "lack of judgement” going into Ukraine…and Biden’s reticence to escalate.
But given the EPRI research above, the potential destructive power of a Super-EMP has perhaps been overstated by an over-zealous cold-war-mentality defence think tank?
(I also note that Super-EMP strategic warfare would present a far more humane (in terms of immediate lives lost) and far less environmentally destructive mode of warfare than dropping thousands of shells — or nuclear warheads — on each other…plus it would stop the world mainlining social media…)
Final word from the Quora community: How long would it take humanity to recover from massive EMP attack (not nuclear war) that would disable most, if not all electronics world-wide?
“…the most serious danger from an EMP attack would not be the attack itself, but the nuclear exchange that it would be the prelude to. It’s a virtual impossibility that US submarines and nuclear-armed units at sea and in foreign wouldn’t respond to such an attack with such force that it would almost certainly destroy the military structure and most of the major cities of any likely attacker.”
😨Sometimes hard to believe we’re thinking through these chess games again all over again, 60 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
(See also just out yesterday: Noah Smith, Nuclear game theory and its limitations).
[Weak] signals
On to more optimistic topics. A top crop of tech signals from the future this week.
Gigabight
Yesterday the NZ Super Fund and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners announced plans to establish a 50/50 joint venture to bring a large scale offshore windfarm to the South Taranaki Bight:
“…subject to feasibility, an initial planned 1GW development would represent over 11 per cent of New Zealand’s current electricity demand capacity and could power over 650,000 homes. The partners believe the project could later expand to 2GW”
This would be a significant step towards achieving Aotearoa’s 2030 renewable energy ambitions, plus delivering a “clean energy transition” for the fossil-fuel-dependent Taranaki region. Bravo.
(See also: IEEE Spectrum, Wind Turbine Blades Destined for the Afterlife: Siemens Gamesa’s new RecycleBlade manufacturing process ensures that 81-meter-long wind turbine blades can eventually be chemically recycled after 20-30 years of active duty.
🧑💻🤖Pair programming in 2022
Last year in Memia 2021.32 I covered OpenAI’s launch of Codex, a code-writing generative AI tool based upon GPT-3. Now OpenAI have collaborated with GitHub to launch Copilot - a tool which suggests whole lines of code - or entire functions - right inside your editor. (Effectively: auto-complete for code). (h/t Andrew Dotchin who is a user!)
So a couple of philosophical questions:
Are you allowed to take technical interview tests with Copilot
Does this make developers who use Copilot less valuable - or more valuable - in the market?
Proof of not-human
I’m sure that like me you regularly receive connection requests on LinkedIn from a random profile with 5-10 mutual connections but you’ve no idea who they are. NPR uncovers the common practice of creating ready-made “Avatars” with AI-generated faces and made up career histories - which sell for US$hundreds a time. (Apparently last year LinkedIn removed more than 15 million fake accounts in the first six months of 2021 and are in a constant arms race).
1 Billion proofs of human?
Worldcoin, the Crypto UBI project aiming to airdrop cryptocurrency to anyone who willingly gets their iris scanned using the “Orb” scanning device (see Memia 2021.42) has raised another US$100M of investment at a US$3Bn valuation from major Silicon Valley investors including A16Z and Khosla Ventures.
So far over 130,000 people around the world have “gazed into the Orb” to receive their Worldcoin - and with this investment the intend to accelerate the rollout by manufacturing 50,000 “Orbs” per year: their models expect 1 billion people to be enrolled by 2023. (That’s a lot of growth…!)
Interview with co-founder Alex Blania here:
“Blania told CoinDesk the amount each person receives depends on how early in the project’s roll-out they got involved, with the amount diminishing as more people are onboarded, but that the amount is roughly valued at between US$10 and US$200. This amount is doled out over two years, with 10% available immediately in a wallet app generated by the Orb.
Worldcoin, which is built as a layer 2 system that works on the Ethereum network, has a cap of 10 billion worldcoins. Blania told CoinDesk that 8 billion of those will be distributed globally – the company’s stated goal is to give worldcoin to “every human on earth” – while 2 billion worldcoin will be reserved for the soon-to-be-set-up Worldcoin Foundation and for investors.”
Clearly Worldcoin is another leading contender for Layer 2 payments solution - going up against Lightning Network (Layer 2 over Bitcoin) and others over Ethereum… feels a bit like Libra/Diem all over again but this time with a shiny silver ball… and whether they can overcome the dystopian vibe around gifting your biometric data in exchange for a QR code representing $20 worth of imaginary money…
(But at the same time think of the pain and privacy invasion you have to go through these days to get through any conventional AML / KYC process in the mainstream financial system!! A 1 second iris scan is nothing.)
BYOJ… for $15,000…please?
I covered the concept of “Bring Your Own Job” earlier this year in Memia 2022.04.
In the US, more than 40 places in the United States are giving people money to relocate: shrinking towns trying to lure remote workers with cash grants - up to US$15,000 in one case. But apparently there still aren’t many takers:
“These programs “are a zero-sum competition,” says Cristobal Young, an economic sociologist at Cornell University who studies how states use taxes to attract residents. When the programs are publicly funded, he told me, it’s “bad policy that just takes money from settled residents and gives it to people who are more mobile.” Even when they’re privately funded, the risk is that the programs put pressure on peer communities to hand out their own incentives, spurring a race to the bottom.”
Hmmm.
COR
A glimpse at the future of personal health management: COR is “unsupervised machine learning for consumers, where individual response to validated lifestyle practices becomes a new class of data, beyond biomarkers, observed entirely in the home”.
It’s an at-home infrared spectrometer, paired with a mobile app and a data analytics model “based on tens of millions (and growing) data points.”
The concept: experiment with a variety of diet, lifestyle and fitness practices and then track progress using the mobile app and then corrrelate to markers in a weekly blood sample fingerprick.
The COR device analyses the blood samples and over time trains an individualised AI model marking out the most healthy diet and lifestyle choices for you individually. All without leaving home. (h/t spotting Stephen Canning).
👕Smartclothes
I’ve been doing a dive into the latest advances in wearable technology this week, some pretty significant new advances recently, sharing some links below. Pretty soon the next generation of sensors and devices will just be invisibly integrated into “smart clothing”.
This novel fabric can 'hear' your heartbeat: new research which has created "listening” fabric which could potentially pick up many acoustic body signals such as heartbeats or lung function.
The Brooklyn-based startup Nextiles has conceived is an innovative way of recreating sensors in fabric by weaving circuitry into clothing or other material to imbue it with electrical properties. Their first product is this baseball elbow sleeve sensor:
Aotearoa-based startup StretchSense are among the leading players worldwide making motion-capture gloves:
A Korean research team has developed a soft, mechanically deformable, and stretchable lithium battery which can be 3D-printed into wearable fabrics.
Advances in wearable solar power, to the point where wearable photovoltaics are invisible:
💭🤑Dream ads
Finally, this is a Dark Mirror episode, surely?
Mind expanding
I came across this piece of ancient history (well, 1990)…
🧠Memetic lexicon
In the original “Principia Cybernetica Web” (in many ways a precursor to Wikipedia used by an international community of scientists interested in “cybernetics”), the Memetic Lexicon is a short dictionary of terms used in the early development of meme theory.
(As someone who first encountered memetics as a undergraduate studying Philosophy of Mind in 1993 and (clearly!) has carried the flame ever since… amazing to go back to this after so long.)
Digging up just a few definitions:
bait
The part of a meme-complex that promises to benefit the host (usually in return for replicating the complex). The bait usually justifies, but does not explicitly urge, the replication of a meme-complex. Also called the reward co-meme. (In many religions, "Salvation" is the bait, or promised reward; "Spread the Word" is the hook. Other common bait co-memes are "Eternal Bliss", "Security", "Prosperity", "Freedom".) (See hook; threat; infection strategy.)
censorship
Any attempt to hinder the spread of a meme by eliminating its vectors. Hence, censorship is analogous to attempts to halt diseases by spraying insecticides. Censorship can never fully kill off an offensive meme, and may actually help to promote the meme's most virulent strain, while killing off milder forms.
co-meme
A meme which has symbiotically co-evolved with other memes, to form a mutually-assisting meme-complex. Also called a symmeme.
The Principia Cybernetica scientific cooperation movement eventually fizzled out in the early 2000s. According to Wikipedia:
“By 2020, researchers of cultural evolution have come to regard memetics as a failed paradigm superseded by dual inheritance theory.”
Still find it a compelling allegory, though...
Rollcall
A serious shout out around the motu this week:
Mark Pavlyukovsky is a partner in Aotearoa venture capital firm NZVC - but originally from Kharkhiv, Ukraine. He has written a heartfelt article where he talks about the damage that Putin’s war is doing to his home country, and how people here can help:
“Those who also want to offer support can hire Ukrainian and Russian citizens and sponsor their move to the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Some of the best talent is fleeing amid the humanitarian crisis, and they are looking for stability abroad. For many, this unplanned relocation is scary and traumatic. Hiring, relocating, and integrating Ukrainian and Russian talent into Western companies is one way the rest of us could help in a small way. I’ve partnered with colleagues here in New Zealand to help companies recruit, hire, and relocate talent by connecting them to companies in New Zealand, US, Canada, and Australia. If you or your company would like to register your interest and find candidates across different sectors please leave your details here.”
Gems
To end with, some light relief - four tweets worth sharing caught in my net this week:
Living underground
This is a fascinating story of an amazing archaeological discovery in Turkey in 1963: a subterranean city which housed up to 20,000 people, up to 18 stories and 280 feet deep in places, probably thousands of years old:
Software developer jokes
Dogball
(h/t Bernard Hickey for spotting), lovely.
Thanks as always for reading, and especially to everyone who reaches out with feedback and links - appreciated!🙏🙏🙏
Catch you again on Sunday.
Ben
If you can, try to ignore the lack of ,er, *phenotypic diversity* among these four North American cis male uber-thinkers… where are the futurists from other backgrounds!?
Thanks again Ben for another great read. I find it fascinating that your interest in memetics dates back to 1993. I spent a year in 2007 writing my Masters thesis on memes, here's the link: https://openaccess.wgtn.ac.nz/articles/thesis/Human_Culture_and_Cognition/16926685 and also the link to a peer-reviewed paper that came out of it:https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1162/biot.2008.3.4.305.pdf (note for a few years when I was married my surname was Gers, hence the authorship) Like you say, different approaches to cultural evolution have superseded (as I hint at in the paper by identifying memetics' incompleteness) but the core concept that wherever there is variation, heredity, and differential fitness you will get evolution by natural selection of any population (genes, computer viruses, ideas, religions) remains illuminating, coupled with the idea that fitness for replicator is not the same as fitness for host.