Financial Skynet: The Economy Run by Machines

In May of last year one of the greatest drops ever seen by those involved in the US stock exchange took place and the average person had a very different perception of just what went on when it did.  Thinking a massive panic had ensued due to some little known tidbit of knowledge resulting in the stock plunge, after the recovery in the following days we all sighed a breath of relief.  But then it turns out the market is not actually run by people.  According to economists and the New York Times, 75% of all trade volume is done rapidly by computers with no humans involved.  And the next stock market collapse might just be one computer glitch away.


In 2006, the London Stock Exchange had 40% of its market under the influence of so called "Algo" or Algorithmic trading (also known as High Frequency trading).  By 2007 the majority of all trading going on in the stock exchange had become by automatic machines.  And today only a fraction of all trading on the stock exchange is done by something other than an automated machine.  The fact that the foundation of a large part of the economy happens automatically with no oversight due to supercomputers based both in and around the stock exchange as well as the rest of the US has some people concerned about transparency and a great deal more worried about the actions of a single entity wishing the world harm or to swindle others out of millions.

A single hacker, according to some experts, could take advantage of the problems inherent in the system and then destroy the lives of many people financially.  But there's another side to this that seems just as disturbing.  Right now the exclusive purpose of these computers is to interface with one another in order to make those who own the computers money.  With little human intervention in place, these various machines are essentially communicating and becoming one large machine.  And that's what runs no less than 75% of the stock market on any given day.  With computers deciding the fates of billions of dollars, a sufficiently powerful computer could in theory even honestly just find a way to beat the system and take up the greater part of the economy with only a few dollars at the beginning.  Of course that's an extreme scenario and seems fairly unlikely with the checks and balances in place.  Right?

Given enough time, a machine could generate millions of dollars by a combination of luck, a little bit of insight, and a lot of processing power.  And if that same computer were owned by someone who then manipulated the market, they could theoretically then have a bounty of resources to make their next move.

Of course at the moment this is mostly just the stuff of science fiction.  But it's unnerving to think that in a world where the world's governments are now taking active steps to fight against economic instability, computers are actually the ones in charge of the economy.  And rather than a simple problem of transparency, the investors themselves don't actually know what's going on in the market for the most part.  And now it's all becoming part of a vast and incredible machine who knows all that happens to its financial market.

Steel No Match for New Super Tough Glass

Imagine standing on a platform raised on a building over a hundred stories tall and looking down to see traffic running beneath you.  Standing on glass might make you nervous, but thanks to the efforts of scientists working at Cal Tech, we could all be looking at a whole new world where glass is one of the strongest materials known to man.  And if this incredibly tough material can be made transparent, there's no end to what it could do for our world.

Incredibly strong windows able to take more of a beating than steel would mean floors and support structures could be strong enough to ensure the most overwhelming attacks while still letting people see through them.  The material would most likely be used in vehicles designed to protect high profile public officials and certain aircraft at least, and possibly even find its way into maximum security defense installations as well.  The only problem is, unlike more traditional glass and plastics used to make windows, this material uses very expensive bonding materials like palladium to hold the materials together.

By bonding palladium, silver, and other materials in with the process, these windows can be made to withstand things like bullets, bombs, sledgehammers, and even vehicular collisions.  And that's not all.  Scientists are now more confident than ever that this is only the beginning when it comes to incredibly strong glass.  The rest could come with a far less expensive material to develop it.  As it stands today, both silver and palladium are already increasing in price with increased industrial demand.  And as that demand increases and the world stock supplies dwindle, some experts are suggesting these precious metals will run into a brick wall when it becomes too expensive to make their use feasible due to scarcity.

But in the mean time, these materials could still be able to be used to develop windows on everything from spacecraft to glass panes for office buildings.  Only don't expect it to come cheap if you want this ultra bullet proof glass standing between you and your greatest fears.  And whether that's a terrorist bomber or a free fall from a hundred stories or even an oncoming mac truck, that will be up to what seems most useful to engineers and developers.

But how common will these windows become?  At the moment it's hard to tell.  With how expensive the materials involved will be, there's a real possibility that it won't be seen everywhere.  We won't simply evolve past a world of broken glass.  But the powerful protection afforded by this scientific material might be yet another material used in the space program when exploring the surface of the red planet.

And in a time where fear runs rampant in the world, there's nothing more secure than being able to look out your window and knowing nothing can make its way in.

A Digital Brain by 2029....!!!

Scientists have pointed out that as the limitations of the integrated circuit limit the ability of an artificially intelligent machine, the projected progress outlined by Moores Law will ultimately finally reach the edge of its limitations.  But as new developments in quantum computers come forth each passing year, the AI of tomorrow may use quantum computers already in development to function.  And as such, what can we make of Moore's Law which suggests a human digital brain could reach our desktops by the year 2029?

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of artificial intelligence is that Moore's Law has not, as so many have predicted, slowed down.  Rather, in 2008 the progress of transistors in computers has -in fact- sped up.  In 1990 the release of the 486 computer carried with it approximately one million transistors and was capable of playing tic tac toe extremely well, but only capable of playing chess at a beginner level.  It has been estimated that the human brain's cerebral cortex carries within it twenty billion neurons, and the entire brain houses somewhere around fifty billion.  If this analysis is to be believed, then the human brain is essentially equivalent in processing power to twenty-five Quad-Core Itanium Tukwila computer processors (developed in 2008).  Earlier this year a new type of transistor was developed that operated similarly to a human brain's.  If we were to take the processing power of the most advanced processors and put them together with these new neuron-like transistors would we ultimately create a facsimile of the human brain?  Unfortunately, not yet.  Such a device would only have an equivalent processing power to a human brain and would not necessarily be able to process information in a comparable way.

But then we take into account the potential learning capabilities of social machines such as Kismet, which has a certain degree of interactive intelligence and even expressive features, and the powers of perception and reaction such as the TOPIO robot, which can play ping-pong, and somehow find a way for these machines to become creative using mathematical algorithms and suddenly the possibility of true Artificial Intelligence no longer becomes an issue left to the imagination of science fiction.  Instead, such a system would be able to interact with its environment in a way that would be difficult to distinguish from human interaction.  Additionally, such a system would almost certainly be able to then begin designing a new system of thinking that made programming as well as some forms of human problem solving a thing of the past.  It would then also at this point begin designing a more efficient means of improving itself.  At this point such a machine is at the threshold of reaching a singularity.  The future AI systems such a machine would design would be capable of designing better systems, and so on.

Current projections suggest we may have a realistic human brain in computer format by the year 2029, and this brain could be manufactured to help humanity at this level by not only conveying information, but developing and processing it.  And by that point will it be ethical to reprogram them or turn them off?

It's easy when dealing with this issue to let fear be the primary guiding judge of whether or not to explore this new horizon of technology.  But if humans have developed the capability of creating life, are we not by this point capable of transcending such basic emotions as fear of the unknown?  And what could we learn about ourselves if we created an entirely artificial yet wholly conscious entity?

Cars Drive Without Drivers

Cars capable of driving themselves without any intervention on the part of any of the passengers have been developed and recently underwent an eight thousand mile test drive from Italy all the way to China.  And though the vehicles still have many bugs to work out, it seems we may be soon seeing more vehicles that don't require a driver to operate.  Is this the future of transportation?

The driverless car is something we once could see only in films.  But now as the technology is being showcased and experiments are being conducted with success across such enormous road trips, the robotic cars are proving to be more effective than once thought possible.  The incredible vehicles and the technology serving as a driving force behind them (both literally and figuratively) are progressing far faster than once expected.  In 2008 Honda announced that vehicles utilizing driverless technology would become technologically feasible in the year 2018.  And yet with the successful experimental run of four vans this year it seems they may be coming out a bit sooner than we expected.

The vans used a guidance system known as the Generic Obstacle and Lane Detector, or GOLD as the passengers sat in the vehicles completely hands off except in a few circumstances where they needed to stop the car to pick up additional passengers, input new coordinates as unexpected road blocks appeared, and during intense road conditions the systems were not yet designed to handle.  But aside from these handful of situations derived from a lack of infrastructure for the automated systems, the drivers made an 8,000 mile journey with no one putting their hands on a steering wheel and no one got even close to wrecking.

So will driving soon become a thing of the past?  As the technology speeds along far faster than once anticipated, it seems this could be a very real possibility.  But will we be safer if everyone on the road is using automated systems such as this?  Yes, say the system's developers.  The GOLD system, even while set to drive conservatively and carefully would all but eliminate traffic jams, automobile accidents, and traffic problems.  Even without breaking a single speed limit law city traffic would run at peak efficiency and effectively remove a number of potential drawbacks to driving.  The systems may in fact one day become so advanced that cars would not even include steering wheels anymore.

But while these systems would no doubt work more efficiently, some are concerned that these systems would also take the power out of the hands of the vehicle operator.  By making driving a computerized and automated system likely connected to a network, these vehicles could be disabled more easily.  And there is also the possibility of a computerized glitch resulting in a malfunctioning guidance system.  And while these are only a few of the things that still have yet to be worked out, hopes are high that one day driving could be a thing of the past in consumer vehicles.

Algae as Fuel

With the navy's move shifting toward newer and greener fuel bases, it's clear that the new fleet's primary concerns list fuel among their top priorities.  And now a ship running off of algae promises to be one of the most effective and interesting looking steps toward a military that not only protects the people of its nation but can utilize resources from almost any source, even growing its own fuel onboard or harvesting it from the sea.  The move is part of a cooperative to make the fleets entirely independent of fuel by the year 2020.

Listed among the possibilities for fuel sources in the year 2020 are nuclear reactors to power ships, solar panels to be used as backup and supplementary generators, and a new development - algae laced fuels.  The fuel currently being used relies on 50% algae and 50% diesel fuel.  The emissions have been hailed as being far less toxic and unlike ethanol, the fuel does not require a massive burning off of food crops in order to sustain it.  The claim that the emissions are less toxic than ethanol may be misleading as the term "toxic" does not necessarily mean lower carbon emissions, but the move is certainly a step toward a more sustainable and economically intelligent military.

The ship was first tested the 22nd of October during a training exercise involving several ships in a wargame-like scenario.  And the exercise has been hailed largely as a huge success.  Is this the military of the future?  Can we expect a green military concerned with its environment as much as it is with victory?

The development is not, however, motivated entirely by ecological interest alone.  In fact, the military in producing this algae driven fuel is in fact making a very intelligent tactical decision as well.  As fuel supplies are a concern in the United States, a lack of fuel or requiring fuel resources to be stockpiled and stored away may grind a military force to a halt.  If the fuel supply were disrupted in any large way, it could rush military forces in a predictable and tactically unsound way toward supply lines in an attempt to retake them.  But if the military were to run exclusively off of power sources that were easily replaced and even grown on the ships themselves this could drop the costs and the supply chain almost entirely from the equation.

But it's not quite the holy grail of military technologies just yet as development still must be made for growing and processing the fuel.  At the moment with the systems in place the algae based fuel systems can cost up to $23,320 per 55-gallon container.  And if this sounds outrageous, keep in mind it is only $24 per gallon over the current cost of diesel.  While the diesel itself is relatively cheap, its transportation requires such a large cost that in just a few years this and other technologies may actually save the military money in the long run in addition to being tactically superior.

Solution to Global Warming

The proposal is to build a very large orbiting shield which will intercept sunlight before it reaches the Earth and reflect it back into space.  The shield will consist of a very thin metal foil covering a sparse matrix of ribs.  In order to minimize the cost, the materials needed for this shield will come from the Moon.  The shield will be built robotically both to save cost and because humans are not suited to working in space.  How large a shield will be necessary?  Our initial estimate is 6 percent of the cross-sectional area of the Earth.  Since the cross-sectional area of Earth is about 50 million square miles, the shield will need to be about 3 million square miles (roughly the size or area of Australia).  Since the shield will orbit the Earth, it will only intercept sunlight when it is on the sunny side of the Earth.  Thus the effect of the shield will be to reduce incident radiation from the Sun by about 3%.   How long will it take to build this shield?  Suppose that we could build one square mile in the first year of assembly.  By doubling the effort each year thereafter (through the expansion of our Lunar manufacturing facilities), we could complete the shield in about 22 years.  Including three years of startup, the entire project could be completed in 25 years.  One additional year would double the size of the shield to 6 million square miles and give a reduction of 6% in the incident sunlight (if this were deemed necessary).

      The cost of this project would be surprisingly low.   Since the very very vast majority of material would come from the Moon, that part will be FREE.  All we need to pay for is the startup facilities.  The startup facilities would consist of a large electromagnetic projectile launcher (EMPL) built on Earth and configured to throw its payloads to the Moon - as in Jules Vern's Moon gun (cost about $5 billion).  We would require just one robotic mission to the Moon to put in place the initial manufacturing capability (cost about $1 billion).  Other costs include sending additional materials to the Moon via the EMPL. These would include robots, computers, and other parts which could not be built easily on the Moon from materials found there (cost about $2 billion).  We will also require one mission to the orbital site of the shield which would put the initial assembly equipment in place (cost about $1 billion). Finally, there would be the cost of supervising the construction of the shield over 22 years (cost about $1 billion).  Thus the total cost of the Sun shield which would solve the global warming problem would be about $10 billion.   

      Of course there are several major hurdles to overcome before this shield could be built. The first question would be what latitudes would the shield cover.  Assume that we choose to build a shield which is 3000 miles wide and 1000 miles high.  We could orient this either North to South or East to West.  If it were oriented with its long side going around the Earth, it would cover about 50 degrees from East to West and about 17 degrees from North to South.  This could be from 8.5 degrees South to 8.5 degrees North on either side of the equator.  If the shield orbits Earth twice per day, then its shadow would take about 1.5 hours to pass overhead on each orbit.  If the shield were turned 90 degrees, it would cover 17 degrees from East to West and 50 degrees from North to South.  In this case it would cover from 25 degrees South latitude to 25 degrees North latitude and would pass overhead in only a half hour.  The second problem would be to put the proposal before the United Nations in an attempt to secure global approval for the shield.  We feel sure there will be plenty of people who will oppose this plan - either because they don't believe it can be accomplished or because they have some objection - such as worrying about the shield falling or because it will get in the way of astronomical telescopes.  There are even a few people who do not believe that global warming is actually happening.  However, the seriousness of global warming grows greater with each passing year and we need to do something before it is too late.

Problem solved 

      A possible problem with this shield proposal was that it would block satellite signals from satellites which orbit above it.   However, it appears that simply by punching a bunch of holes in the foil, we can eliminate this problem.  Thus the foil would look like a swiss cheese or a checkerboard.  This would allow the satellite signals to pass through with little attenuation.  Obviously this will require a somewhat larger shield area to make up for the holes - but this is not a problem either.

What is the evidence of global warming?

Carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) concentration increasing

• The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has been increasing steadily for 50 years.
• First look at the CO2 concentration over 400,000 years from the Vostok ice cores
• 
• Compare this to Mauna Loa CO2 measurements over the last 50 years
•   

Methane (another greenhouse gas) buildup

• Methane trapped in frozen tundra may be a ticking time bomb. (* new 3/22/06*)  Aparently as much as 400 billion tons of methane may be trapped in the frozen tundra in the arctics.  This is about 3000 times the current methane content of the atmosphere.  Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.  The warming and thawing of the tundra may start a chain reaction which could release billions of tons of methane into the atmosphere which would greatly exacerbate the global warming problem.

Surface temperature increasing

• Global average temperatures are slowly increasing
• Temperatures have risen about 0.7 deg Celsius over the last century.
•      
• Many of the hottest years on record are recent ones. The ten hottest years were:
•  2005, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2001,  1997, 1995, 1990,  1999
• Graphically you can see the trend starkly.
•     
• Temperature hit 100 in London (August 10, 2003) for the first time in recorded history.

Ocean temperatures increasing

• Recent headline:  Caribbean coral suffers record die-off.    (* 3/31/06 *)
• Costal ocean temperatures are so high that sea corals are being killed globally.
• Up to 90% of corals are dead or dying in many areas.
• It is now too late to derail or delay the disaster.
• The increase in the temperature of the oceans is providing fuel for stronger and more frequent hurricances and typhoons - like last year when we saw a record number of hurricanes in the Caribbean.   Japan also set a record for the number of typhoons to hit Japan.
• Sea levels are slowly increasing, threatening cities such as Venice, Italy
• Sea level as measured at San Francisco, California, USA.
•      

Glaciers melting

• In Montana's Glacier National Park only 27 of the 150 glaciers which existed in 1910 remain today and they will be gone in only 20 years.
• Glaciers are in retreat all over the world.
• Here is a spectacular site by Gary Braasch called " World View of Global Warming"
• He shows numerous "before" and "after" pictures of glaciers - such as the following:
•            
•  Upsala Glacier         Rhone Glacier
• Over 90% of the ice shelf north of Ellesmere Island (Canada) is gone.

Animals are dying 

• Animal ranges are changing due to changes in the local climates.
• Walruses are starving in the Bering Sea because they are adrift on ice flows in water too deep to feed.
• In Canada, polar bears are starving because Hudson's Bay is ice-free too long each year so they cannot catch enough seals to survive. Pregnant females are losing so much weight that they fail to produce enough milk for their cubs, which then suffer increased mortality. Once females fail to attain a minimum weight they won’t give birth at all, and scientists can already document a 15 percent drop in birth rates.
• Also in Canada, river temperatures are so high now that salmon are being killed on their way to their spawning grounds - thus killing off the salmon FOREVER. 
• Frogs are dying all over the world - not just a few frogs here and there but WHOLE SPECIES are dying off FAST.
• Vanishing Frogs
• Recent Amphibian Declines in Lower Central America
• Amphibious Assault

Plants effected

• Plants are germinating earlier and earlier and moving farther and farther North.
• Nearly 4 million acres of mature white spruce forest on the Kenai Peninsula (in Alaska) have been killed by a growing population of spruce bark beetles (Dendroctonus rufipennis) since about 1987.
• Louisiana (USA) is losing land at a rate of about 25 square miles per year.
• This effect has now been shown to be primarily due to subsidence of
• the land.  A new NOAA report  says that the northern part of the Gulf
• of Mexico is sinking at a rate of 60 inches per century or about 0.6 inches
• per year (whereas sealevel is only rising by 8 inches per century).  
• Worldwide there are increases in droughts and forest fires.

 The Sun is getting hotter too

• Nasa satellite data shows that Solar radiation reaching the Earth is 0.036 percent warmer than it was in 1986.
• Confirmed by a Swiss/German research team whose data shows that the sun is brighter now than 100 - 150 years ago.

 Arctic changes are the greatest

• Alaska data
• Average temperature has risen 3 degrees C (= 5.4 degrees F) in the last 30 years.
• The sea level around Alaska has risen a foot in the last century.
• The permafrost is melting - which is causing buildings to sink into the mud.
• 98% of glaciers & sea ice are melting.
• Alaska glaciers
•    Denali 1919        2004
•    Holgate 1909      2004
•    Muir 1941           2004
• Over 90% of the ice shelf north of Ellesmere Island (Canada) is gone.
• Scary pictures of the northern polar regions in 1979 & 2000 
• Polar ice has been decreasing by 1% per year since 1979.

      
                                    1979                                                                          2000

---

New picture of Polar Ice Extent in September 2007

                                     Minimum 9/16/2007                        Ice extent 9/21/2006

              You can see that the "Northwest Passage" north of Canada was open for the first time in thousands of years.  Rate of Ice Melting Shocks Warming Experts   In September of 2007, the minimum polar ice extent was 4.13 million square kilometers (1.59 million square miles) on September 16, compared to 5.32 million square kilometers (2.05 million square miles) at the minimum in 2005.  This is a drop of 23% in just two years.  At this rate the Artic will be ice-free by 2020 - not 2050 as previously supposed. 

        Master Plan

• Build a large Earth to Moon electromagnetic projectile launcher.
• Build an Energia HLLV to carry our initial manufacturing facility to the Moon.
• Send the Energia to the Moon with our equipment.
• Set up the first Lunar base and our manufacturing facilities.
• Built a large solar array on the Moon the provide power to run everything.
• Build small EMPLs on the Moon to throw manufactured parts into Earth orbit.
• Assemble Sun shield in orbit using robots.

                              

What is the mass of the shield?

• Assume the mass is 1 ounce per square yard.
• There are 1760 * 1760 = 3097600 square yards per square mile.
• The mass is then 3097600 ounces per square mile = 193600 pounds.
• The mass in Tons is 193600/2000 = 96.8 Tons per square mile. (Round to 100 T)
• Shield mass is 3,000,000 times 100 T = 300 Million Tons.
• The cost to lift it FROM EARTH at $2000 per pound would be $1200 Trillion.
• The cost to lift it from the MOON is NOTHING = NIL = FREE FREE FREE.

Is 300 Million Tons a lot?

• The mass of the shield is equivalent to about 1/16 of a cubic mile of sea water.
• One cubic mile of sea water weighs about 4.718 Billion Tons.
• Equivalently, a cube of sea water 2107 feet on a side weighs about 300 Million Tons.
• There are about 1.37 billion cubic kilometers of water in all the oceans of the world.
• The weight of all that water is about 1.40 billion billion metric tons. (1.4 x 10^21 Kg)
• The total mass of our planet is about 5.976 x 10^24 Kg.
• All Earth's water constitutes 0.0234 % of the mass of our planet.

Baby Conceived on 1989, Born Now

The latest astounding miracle of medical science has come out thanks to the efforts of a medical team in Eastern Virginia.  A human embryo first conceived in 1989 was frozen for twenty years by two parents, and then transplanted to a surrogate mother who then gave birth to it in May of this year.  To date it is the longest time a human embryo has been conceived and frozen before being born successfully.

The incredible announcement was made in a written analysis in the journal Fertility and Sterility.  As the scientists involved declared that thus far the procedure  had been successful.  And of course this isn't the first time a child has been born that had been conceived years prior, but it is certainly an unusual thing to consider for the future.

Will we eventually live in a world where people who have been frozen for several generations are finally brought into a new world?  According to fertility experts, we could even use current technology to preserve embryos for an indefinite period of time.  Some day a person conceived a century before may be brought out of isolation and born to the descendants of his biological parents.

But while the process is incredibly interesting from a purely scientific perspective, will there be challenges to introducing people from generations prior into a new environment?  While it may not have a direct impact on natural selection (or the model currently in use in our society) immediately, it could hold potential for some exciting and perhaps terrifying future innovations and projects.

Consider the Svalbard Seed Vault first created in 2008.  The project was designed so that in the event of a worldwide catastrophe, a great deal of the world's seeds would be accessible eventually and once again reseed the planet.  But what about the fauna of the planet?  Many plants depend on animals and humans in order for them to reach their potential and thrive.  Could the technology used to preserve embryos be used for access by future generations so the human race could survive as well?  Of course in theory the project would also require humans to bring back this vast underground ark.  At least currently it would.

In February of 2009, Nick Otway from New South Wales Department of Primary Industries proposed that an artificial uterus could be created to save Grey Nurse Sharks from extinction.  And with the attention the procedure received at the time, many asked the obvious question, could it ever work with humans?

So the ultimate futuristic proposal, and this is where it enters the world of mad science, could be made that a seed vault carrying hundreds or possibly thousands of embryos frozen deep within the tundras of Greenland or the Arctic could be preserved with little power and then eventually thawed and introduced into an artificial nursing system that would raise human children with a robotic system using technology not far from our current state in the future.  While the scenario is at the moment nothing more than science fiction fodder, could we one day find ourselves in a world where the human race is saved from extinction by a similar system to the seed vault in Svalbard?  Imagine the last of the human race kept alive in a ship in a bottle to be revived hundreds or possibly thousands of years after it was first conceived.  And while it may sound preposterous to those of us living in the year 2010, will those of 2050 consider it a possibility?