The n-Category Café

Physics plays a role in the below, and must not be strangled by antiquated journals.

Executive Summary of the Decade 2010-2020

The decade from 2010 to 2020 is not over yet, as I write this. But we can already see that certain events and science fiction are already important.

This decade included the dramatic commercialization and penetration of World Wide Web culture; the explosion of genotechnology; the first hundred million entertainment, retail, and household robots; the commercial development (and first market crash) of Nanotechnology. Technically, the Voyager 1’s passage beyond the Transition Zone and across the Heliopause marked a start to the First Interstellar Age.

The last vestiges of the Cold War paradigm faded. The bipolar world (Capitalism versus Communism) was replaced by a multipolar world, with the economic balance between the North and South American Free Trade Zone, Greater Common Europe, and the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Still unsettled was the question of whether there was still an underlying Clash of Civilizations (Judeo-Christian, Islam, Hindu, Shinto-Confucian, Animist), a have-versus-have-not division between Northern and Southern Hemispheres, or whether the realignment along Pre-Modern, Modern, and Post-Modern pseudonations was crucial.

World War III had long past (Korea, Vietnam, and various proxy wars) and World War IV (Bush I’s Iraq War, Bush II’s Afghan-Iraq-Chad-Somalia War) merged with the so-called War Against Terrorism as part of the transitional chaos before the New World Paradigm stabilized.

Among Christians, the Easter of 24 April 2010 was the latest in the season since 1943.

The Ancient Mayan Long Count Calendar ended on 21 December 2012, causing messianic unrest in parts of South America. The world did not come to an end. That year, 2012, included the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. She pointedly did NOT step down to allow Charles to become king, even though tabloids hinted that she would on the condition that he almost immediately step down and allow the coronation of Henry IX.

There were the amusingly symmetrical dates abbreviated as:
* 10/10/10
* 11/11/11 [with its later, tragic resonance]
* 12/12/12

The impact of Technology was perhaps the dominant theme of the decade. First, there were the 25 major technologies not quite commercially effective, but clearly on the verge of market success:

1. A.I.: True Artificial Intelligence
2. Political backlash attempts to “preclude singularity” Practical use of sustained Fusion for energy and neutrons
3. Super-cheap desalinization of seawater ends Fresh Water Crisis Artifical growth of new limbs and organs, in situ and for transplantation
4. Robotic-limb Backlash as predicted by Bernard Wolfe in “Limbo” Room temperature superconductors
5. Super-cheap electrical power distribution; mag-levitation trains Major use of rockets for commercial and private transportation (Earth and beyond)
6. Effective chemical or biological treatment for most mental illnesses
7. Political dissent on whether or not Therapy should be mandatory Almost complete control of marginal changes in heredity
8. Conservative backlash against genetic modification of humans Suspended animation (years or centuries)
9. Maximum length of this technology unknown until 22nd century Practical materials with nearly theoretical limit strength (nanotubes, etc.
10. Plans to build “orbital skyhooks” or “space elevators” Conversion of mammals to fluid-breathers
11. Covert military maneuvering on the Continental Shelves Direct input into human memory
12. “We can remember it for you wholesale” Direct augmentation of human mental capacity by brain-computer connection
13. Brain-race between post-modern superpowers Major rejuvenation and/or significant extension of vigor and lifespan (100-150 years)
14. Maximum length of this technology unknown until 22nd century Chemical and biological control of human character and intelligence
15. Automated highways
16. Higher traffic density, fewer accidents, reconfiguration of suburbs Extensive use of moving sidewalks and Segways
17. Continuum from Pedestrians to vehicular traffic Substantial lunar and planned planetary installations
18. Start of multiplanetary economy Electric power available for under 0.3 mill per kilowatt hour
19. semi-industrialization of pre-modern world Verification of some extrasensory phenomena
20. Planetary engineering
21. tested on minor moons, asteroids Modification of the Solar System
22. Competing proposals Practical laboratory conception and nurturing of animal and human foetuses
23. “Brave New World” Production of recreational drugs equivalent to Huxley’s Soma
24. Neo-opium is the Religion of the Masses Technological equivalent of telepathy (brain-computer-brain web)
25. Post-human group-think entities Some direct control of individual thought processes; Meme Wars

[truncated] [much more on web page]

Hey, Mark Hopkins! (Not to be confused with topologist Mike Hopkins.) Long time, no see. I seem to recall that the Unwritten Book used to be larger than the copy on your site, but perhaps not.

Joan Baez explained, on Tavis Smiley last night, what I thought was a mere tautology as a song title on her critically praised new album: “God is God.”

It’s a phrase from Recovery, i.e. in a 12-step program, and thus has to be interpreted as something like: “It’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about God, and God is God, to which higher power I must admit that I need help.”

Now, if only I could get the correct association for the TV ad for the action figure: “Only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe.”

Joan Baez did mention that her father was a Physicist, but she did not mention John Baez. Same family, different type of performance.

Surely, one can use pgp to have better automatic, cheap and rational overlay peer-reviewed publichation system over and with an input from the arXiv. I believe the physics/math community could get with sufficiently many improvements to make it an order of magnitues cheaper than various author-pay etc. systems of “open” access. In any case, if the editorial boards who do their work are us = scientists, then it is stupid (whatever is the paying algorithm) to pay to do online publishing via individual-commercial publishers.

Making complicated crosss-breeds between open and commercial of the kind like the consortium discussed above is not a solution to the problem, but the indicator of the problem!

As long as we do not need print editions, and as long as editorial boards are from
our community, we do not need anybody from any other community except a big arXiv-like site (and corresponding gurus plus the add-on inventions like the ones I propose above) to do all the publishing we can imagine!

The only reason why people send papers to the individual publishers is to get them peer-review approaved! So, let us add the mechanism for this reviewed-stamp to the arXiv via overlay peer review systems and we are in principle done!

Of course, we loose various things like uniformity of layout of commercial journals, uniformity of bibliography, and checkers of english style etc. They can be here or there added for some money, but it is not the real value. In one journal, I send a reference to J. J. Jeje and the journal corrects me that in their journal it should be quoted as Jeje, J. J. or Jeje J J without dots, in another journal they correct me backwards to J. J. Jeje. So what is the point of paying for that crap of getting uniform along J. Algebra style or instead PNAS style ? In everyday research every paper I download is from a different journal so no uniformity in my practical reading. Before in 1950-s if one sit in chair and opened Zeitschrift one could enjoy that every article had the same layout of bibliography thanks to the publisher, but now the only thing I care is availability and kind of qualities which are approved by referree and editor. Not kind of quality which is improved by people correcting J. J. Jeje to Jeje J. J.