The Idealist 004 - The Future 🚀
The Idealist 004 - The Future
It’s been just a short time in the grand cosmic calendar since I last wrote… and, while trying to maintain a veneer of the relentless positivity I was espousing last time around, it’s been rather difficult as the last weeks have thrust Nazis, nuclear war and natural disasters back from the past and into our present.
Therefore, I’ve been escaping into the future. As any time traveller worth their salt* knows, keeping on top of your emails is a bit hard.
That accelerating pace of change shows no sign of letting up and so instead of just reading I’ve been trying to embrace the future as fast, and yet as simply, as possible. I’ve bought my first cryptocurrencies, invested in a UBI trial and tried the wacky world of Augmented Reality.
More on those and other things here, in this dose of the future for your very present day:
- 💲 I am a recent convert to the church of the Blockchain (thanks to a few persuasive subscribers to this newsletter). The potential for seismic changes to our global infrastructure (both technical and sociological) interests me far more than the opportunity to make a few euros from speculation… but the only way to understand a virtual currency is to buy it. So I’m currently the proud owner of just over 200 euros (depending on when you read this newsletter) worth of BTC and ETH.
- 💰 Universal Basic Income (UBI) may appear to be a trendy panacea for all the ills of modern life and the impacts of globalisation and automation.... but it is gaining popularity. The majority of trials done so far show positive results and the faster we can get more positive results, the faster we can potentially implement something that would radically change our lives and society. That’s why I’ve decided to help fund a trial in Kenya by donating to GiveDirectly, the largest existing open trial of UBI.
- 🐦 From the commendable to the comedic… with the release of iOS11 comes ARKit and with it, the rise of Augmented Reality. Having played with a few of the first apps (which include chasing pigeons, dumping sofas in the street, measuring your apartment and drawing graffiti phalli in virtual space) I think we can safely say we’re in the experimental phase of this technology. It reminds me somewhat of the early days of the App Store with all kinds of random use cases being tested to see what actually sticks. I remain bullish on AR so until Magic Leap actually releases something for us to talk about, we’ll have to embrace the randomness.
- 🤖 In a shameless act of self-promotion, I’m going to link our latest THE MONTAGE podcast, where we discussed the question of a new theology, brought about by the Singularitarians relentless drive for Futurism and the quest for eternal life, with this Wired profile of Anthony Levandoski who has recently founded a church for tomorrow, the so-called Way of the Future. The purpose of this quasi-religion is to create and recognise our future AI (over)lords and, somewhat predictably, this leading prophet appears to be the epitome of Silicon VAlley’s worst traits of wanton disruption and maniacal technologism. Since any ASI will likely have the values of it’s programmers, it matters who gets there first. I’m not sure I want it to be this guy….
- 🏙 There’s an argument going on at (the very, very good) Aeon about the next model for civilisation. While it’s relatively clear to me that it’s going to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland where we rummage through the garbage searching for space weevil to roast, their rather higher brow debate is whether the city or the nation state will become/remain the dominant organising model. Read both perspectives before queuing up with me for your tickets to the Mars colony.
- 🐟 The Babelfish is finally here! As a kid, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy was my favourite book (and remains near the top of the list to this day). A curiosity about language (later reinforced with years of feeling remarkably stupid in various different places around the world) meant the Babelfish was one of my dream gadgets for the future. And now Google have made them, available as the Pixel Buds soon. This is no sponsored post… I’m just excited to try them down at my local Ausländerbehörde where the future and the past will chaotically collide.
- 🔬 And finally, charming thing of the week is a periodic table of elements, made up of haiku!. My favourite: Flerovium.
Mirage? Mistake? Truth?
Would further neutrons lend you
a doubled magic?
THE IDEALIST FLASHBACK!
- In Issue 1 I shared a video about the music in the original Blade Runner. Today I saw the new one. It is a masterpiece, a thing of unsettling beauty.
- In Issue 3 I waxed lyrical** about Carlo Rovell’s book on quantum gravity. Well, since then, the dudes who actually recorded the first gravitational waves, have won the Nobel Prize for Physics. Bravo!
* Pop Fact Footnotes!
- This phrase comes from the latin for salt being the root for the word salary
- Today I learned that to understand the phrase wax lyrical one must first transmogrify it to become poetic. To wax is old English for “growing” (presumably from the boredom of watching candles change) whilst the root of the term lyrical/lyrics is from the ancient instrument, the lyre. Who knew!
P.S. Hello to a few new subscribers. Now this newsletter is out of beta mode, I took the liberty to add a few new people to the list. I hope you like it, if not, there’s an unsubscribe button right down this way.👇