How I Woke Up

I think it was in junior high school that I came to grips with this very simple secret: there isn't a lot of oneness in the number one. Sure, cursory glance, or an algebraic solution, leads you to a nice, neat answer for x. But inspect the equation with total abandon, and you're left with 0.9999.... I was shocked. Who knew how long one was broken? I suspected it had been that way all along, but no one bothered to let me in on the plot. And after the horror and confusion subsided, I was forced into a more dangerous realization. I had the sinking suspicion that I was being fed a lie. Every day in school, between 1st and 5th bell, I was being conned, hoodwinked and sold a bill of goods. My textbook was soaked in it, approved by school district bureaucrats with simple minds and a penchant for even simpler answers. I would have forgiven the deception were it not for another crushing blow that came the day I learned that Pi was irrational - infinite in it's complexity long after the decimal point. Not 3.14, or 3.14159, but 3.13159265358....3cupcakes...2cats...aredwagon...blah...blah...infinity. The walls shook, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and the universe briefly noticed that I was watching.

The discoveries continued through my undergraduate work in college. At some point, Newton's Universal Gravity Equation started looking strangely similar to Coulomb's Law, despite the fact that gravity and electricity aren't related - not even by marriage. By the way, gravity turns out to be a wuss. Really, it's weak. Remember that flimsy magnet on your refrigerator? Well, the little magnetic wafer is in a tug-o-war with the total gravitational pull of our planet... and it's winning. I couldn't believe it took me so long to notice. But the music completely stopped when I found the ultimate truth about our friend Pi - that he was transcendental. It was in that moment that I saw it. The curtain of reality was hanging open, and things people weren't supposed to see were showing. God was holding the curtain open with a smile, like the kid at the carnival charging a nickle for a peek under the tent at the freak show. And like that, I was awake. Anything was possible.

So here I am years later, still daydreaming about what's possible. But I've since made a promise to myself: my kids would not have to find out the hard way. The day came when I passed the simple problem above to my 10 year old daughter, Jada (the "math wiz"). Her initial reaction was expected: "Dad, it's 1... duh!" I gave her a calculator, had her work through it step by step, and stood back. Boredom eventually gave way to confusion, and confusion was overtaken by awe. She finally looked up at me with the skeptical face of a toddler that saw the puppeteer's arm behind the curtain. And like that, Jada was beginning to wake up, too.

War Machines, Agents and Asimov's Laws

A cursory scan over the table of contents of P. W. Singer's book, Wired for War, reads like a strange cross between the scripts for Will Smith's movies Enemy of the State and I, Robot. The book should be good reading; a potent reminder of technological progress over the last 40 years, and their ethical implications.

My first experience with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) was during US Army Officer's Basic Course. It was 1998, and I was stationed 14 miles from the Mexican border at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona. Ft. Huachuca is the "Home of Intelligence", and was the testing grounds for early UAV models. They were poorly designed back then, often crashing into the mountain side during our morning runs. The whirling sound of remote control airplane, a loud thud, a plume of smoke, and everyone laughed. The running gag was that we were being bombed by Mexican Kamikaze pilots.

Fastforward 4 years. I was an intelligence officer working on a special team supporting mostly operational command and special forces in Afghanistan. Among the operational read-ons: a curious, almost overlooked report of the latest in drone tech - a Predator outfitted with Hellfire missiles - attacked a target in theater with lethal accuracy and without ever being seen. Joke time was over. No one was laughing anymore.

The success of UAV once again called into question the ethical responsibilities of building smarter war machines. Ever since Isaac Asimov gave us his famous Three Laws in the original I, Robot, we seem to be addicted to the idea of imposing morality on machines. And then comes the logical counter-argument that technology is neutral, taking their direction from humans - moral or otherwise. Guns don't kill people; drug dealers, gang bangers and jealous, redneck boyfriends do. And even as legions of computers over the Internet assimilate into botnets,
questions arise that can't be easily answered. We want somebody to protect us by stopping the evil-doers from having technology, but who gets to make those decisions? And who gets to decide who gets to decide?

In my opinion, it comes back to the vision society gives us - the creators. Don't like the applications you see? Dream a better dream. As I sit in my favorite coffeeshop writing this post, I imagine a world where my netbook or mobile phone is home for an intelligent agent that serves me well. While I type, my avatar is bidding on a couple eBay items, searching the Internet for new email addresses of old friends, introducing itself to new friends around me, and checking in on my car around the corner via satellite link to find out if it's been stolen. I imagine a world where our elderly no longer have to leave their homes and their dignity behind for the security of retirement homes. The house of the future no longer facilitates home care; it becomes the care-giver.

It's time to take the next step in challenging the boundaries of science... by challenging the boundaries of our own imagination. Dream better dreams.

Shutter Speed

Some things move relatively slowly. The period for Halley's Comet: 75.3 years. Most people are thrilled to see it once in a lifetime; those that see it twice are considered blessed. Certain oceanic currents will whip flotsam around for 6 to 13 years before washing it ashore on the other side of the world.


Other things may unfold more quickly - the blink of an eye, the twitch of a muscle. A good jazz song trots along at about 120-150 beats per minute.

And then there's life, which is... well... fleeting. For all the rich experiences we may possibly encounter in our lives, the generations of man pass in infinitely rapid procession like the pulse of hummingbird wings. We capture what we can and carry it with us. And the gift of personal consumer technology is that it enables us to do just that. Such was the lesson my daughter taught me yesterday when I picked her up from school. I arrived to her insistence that I witness her latest masterpiece. Unfortunately, I was on the phone with my mother at the time (yes, men can talk to their moms on a regular basis without being "mama's boys"). I congratulated my daughter on her fine work, and took the picture you see here with my T-Mobile G1 phone while continuing the conversation.

It wasn't until the chaos of the day subsided that I found time to go back and give the picture the attention it deserved. And there it was - something I hadn't noticed before: my daughter is actually a pretty talented architect. Structure. Symmetry. Function. Harmony. Aesthetics. Not bad at all for an 8 year old given the materials. Even more surprising was that, when asked later how she came up with the design (I'm thinking Greek temple), she denied that she saw it anywhere else or planned it out in advance. In her words, she just grabbed the blocks "and it came out."

Can personal technology be a distraction to us in experiencing the life that unfolds around us? Possibly. But, being the dualist that I am, I find equal interest in the countering effect of how it can help us capture the vanishing moments we would otherwise miss, flashing before us at shutter speed.

What do you think? I want to hear some examples from you about how your mobile device helps you take advantage of the moment.

Dark Matter, [Social] Gravity

Gravity... it's like a bad childhood in the memory of someone you care for deeply: never seen directly, but, rather, observed via its effect. Gravity is the 800-pound gorilla of the universe, crafted by God to remind us of just how little control we have over the nature of things. But unlike the famous Samsonite gorilla, gravity plays more of a role in maintaining balance and order than simply inflicting chaos and destruction. It does so quietly. Imperceptible. Yet, hypothetically, in the case of nearly a quarter of matter in the universe, provides the only evidence of existence where the electromagnetic spectrum fails us. Such is the nature of "dark matter".

Gravity. It's God's universal reality check. But its existence begs the question: is there such a thing as "social" gravity? Of course there is. It's the effect we feel between ourselves and those around us; the push and pull of the social dynamic. As Aristotle put it: "Man is an animal that lives in a polis (state)." From a less political perspective, Clifford Geertz states that, "man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun". Or, if you're a math geek like myself, you can simply observe Metcalf's Law that the weight/value of a social network relates to the number of its participants by a very simple equation: n(n − 1)/2.

But if the accelerating effect of gravity asserted on us by the social network is real, then so too is the reciprocal effect of our lives on those around us. It's the footprint we leave in the sands of the souls of those we touch in this world. So, ask yourself a question: if you died tomorrow, what would be your footprint? Would your funeral be so full of grieving people that even closest family have trouble finding seats, or barren like a lone sports spectator arriving to the stadium on the wrong day. Would your wake be the memories of brillant people inspired to charge on into the future, or just another party for the alcoholics and drug addicts you partied with in life. Would your children stand over your grave in both quiet indignation and deep relief, removing their masks only to spit on your tombstone? Or would your mourners be like the followers of the philosopher/mathematician/scientist/writer René Descartes, who stole his bones 16 years after his death and venerated them in a grand parade out of honor and desire to keep his ideals alive?

What's your effect on the world? Are you the 800-pound Samsonite gorilla - thrashing about and destroying everything in your path. Or are you like gravity or dark matter - quietly keeping the world of those around you in balance in an otherwise chaotic universe? Trust me. If you don't know the truth, those that know you best do. Be the force that binds, not the one that destroys.