Apologies for the lack of Brain Parades lately. I allowed myself to fall behind before I went away to Spain and Rosie has been buried under work with school. I’m currently working on compiling a dozen Brain Parades but it’s going to be at least another week before any of them are finnished.
I do have […]

Do you perceive a growing sense of mistrust from the public with respect to science?
This is the second parter of a Brain Parade that we ran last month. I’ve already given an answer focusing on the “culture wars” in the United States and Canada and growing acceptance of Global Warming back then.
Looking back at my […]

Today we tackle a subject that has been vexing me more and more later. I’m going to blather on in a moment but first the question….

Do you think the rise of self selecting media channels is going to facilitate more people subscribing to a lot of loony conspiracy theories and consensual realities, or will the net effect be to dispel many such notions?

Today we tackle a subject about which countless hundreds of thousands of words have been written over the past sixty years.

Do you perceive a growing sense of mistrust from the public with respect to science?

We return to our Mankind’s Destiny in Space debate origins by collecting responses to this question:

Do you think its important that human beings venture out into space? What does space as a frontier mean to you?

Today we tackle a tricky question: Do you think advances in technology may spell the end for asymmetric warfare? And if so is this necessarily a bad thing?
Asymmetric warfare as defined by Wikipedia:
Asymmetric warfare is a term that describes a military situation in which two belligerents of unequal strength interact and take advantage of their respective strengths and weaknesses. This interaction often involves strategies and tactics outside the bounds of conventional warfare.

We asked Mike Treder and Patrick Lin, two nanoethicists the following question:
Do you think the global economy and already existing regulatory structures will be able to adapt to the impact of nanotechnology without large-scale negative disruptions?
This is part of our nanotechnology series, more of which can be found by clicking through to the post itself.

I was going to post a frivolous Brain Parade up tonight but as I’m all grumpy and introspective from my battles with nicotine withdraw I can’t be asked to write anything funny. So today I’m going to give you a bit of controversy by asking whether scientists should criticize religion or if this is counterproductive?

We ask the question: Much of what has been written about nanotech revolves around fairly advanced/far future scenarios. What however do you thing are going to be some of the impacts and applications over the next few years?

Memetherapy asks the question: MT: In the sixties we had a vision of computers, best summed up by Hal 9000, that wasn’t realized. The reality turned out to be much different. Are we currently engaged in a similar misimagination with respect to the future of nanotech?

Another excellent post by David Louis Edelman on Greasemonkey and self selecting reality. Greasemonkey being the app that lets you self censor and run macros on the web pages you’re reading. Essentialy modifying the web page according to criteria you select before you read it. Here’s an excerpt of what he had to say:

We kick off this week with a series of brain parades on nanotechnology, it’s risks and possible rewards.

Putting aside grey goo style scenarios for a moment, do you think there are other existential risks/safety concerns that we should be worrying about with respect to nanotechnology?

We kick the week off with an interview with Paul Hartzog about Panarchy theory which he is a primary developer of. He contributes to Smart Mobs and also blogs at Panarchy. We get his take on a few issues with respect to share and sharing alike.

Just in case you thought I’ve turned into a completely silly blogger I’ve got a brainy and serious Brain Parade for you:

We seem to be awash in technological/scientific issues that raise serious ethical questions nowadays. Of these which concern/interest you the most?

Do you think it likely that the first discovery of extraterrestrial life will be made by a rover?

MT: I’m not properly qualified to answer this question but I will anyways: Yes. There at least I kept my uninformed opinion short.

That Mars vs. Moon debate isn’t new. I’m partial to the Moon myself, partly out of sheer practicality and partial out of temperment. There’s something very appealing to me about a human presence on the moon.

Every once in a while we run a Brain Parade on a question that we don’t really have an answer for ourselves. In a way these are my faves because these are often the Brain Parades I learn the most from and it also means that I don’t have to write any commentary of my own because I simply can’t answer the question.

Today we interview The Guardian’s Technology editor Charles Arthur on the Free Our Data campaign, aimed at persuading the British government to stop charging for non personal data collected at the taxpayers expense. To read the original article that started the campaign go here. (link)

As usual you’ll have to wade through my two cents first: The first step that I see happening are networked grassroot movements gaining an increasing say in the internal politics of political parties. This isn’t going to happen quickly.

Maybe this comes from four years of filling out hazardous waste pick-up labels when I was a grad student, but I’m inclined to think we might be better off working out energy technologies that don’t produce hazardous waste.

Oh, wow. This is an easy one. Easy and ubiquitous access to space, in all its forms. Great spinning Lagrangian colonies filled with bright white curving hallways. Moonbases with gritty miners and frontiersmen. Mars colonists, building the foundation a whole new world.

I kick the week off with a short exchange with technology writer Paul Gilster author of Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration on the subject of spaceflight.

We’re seeing renewed attacks on evolution, certain branches of scientitic research and conspiracy theories involving climatologists and Global Warming. At the same time supernatural thinking (new age, crystals, ID, deified interpretations of the Gaia hypothesis) are thriving. Should we be concerned by the level of magical thinking in our society? And if so what, if anything can be done about it?

The 21st century has been hyped up to be the biotech century. Do you agree with this assessment? And if so what killer app do you think we might see (or would like to see) next?

The world’s commercial airline fleet vanishes overnight. What do you replace it with?

MT: And once again I’ve been beaten to the punch by the commentators (Tim Pratt is the guilty party this time). Without further adieu:

o me the answer is to the first part of the question is a hell ya. To a limited extent we’re already there. The CIA extraodinary rendition scandal was broken by a network of bloggers with digicams. Tracking the movements of a CIA black op qualifies as government level survaileance in my books.

I’ve got a lot of good commentary on this Brain Parade from people who are much more knowledgeable and articulate on the subject than I am so instead of giving you my two pence let’s just get straight to the commentators:

Lest you think we’ve forgotten that we blog about speculative fiction as well as speculative politics I bring you an interview with science fiction author Adam Roberts. I asked him a few questions about his latest novel Gradisil and his writing in general.

We’re keeping it political today with a mini interview with Jamais Cascio who is the co-founder of Worldchanging (link), one of my favourite blogs. I got some commentary from Jamais for some of upcoming Brain Parades but I also took the oppurtunity to ask him some non-Brain Parade questions as well the answers to which I relate to you here:

I’m not going to answer this Brain Parade myself. I’ve already in fact written on this topic here (link) and I’ve got plenty of good commentary that covers most of the bases I’d want to elaborate on further anyway.

One thing I like about this blog is that I get to ask just about all kinds of brainy types questions that have been nagging me. Today I have a short interview with Daniela Cerqui. She’s an anthropologist currently conducting research at the University of Reading’s Cybernetics dept

Today we talk about our aspirations of what we’ll be doing on the internet in five years time. Here’s today’s question:

What do you see yourself doing on the internet in five years that you aren’t doing now?

Today I pester science blogger Jennifer S Griffin on biological and molecular kinds of things.

MT How do you feel about the way science is portrayed in science fiction?

JG There is a very wide range of science fiction, and some of it is brilliant and fascinating.

For my take I first have to state that I see the trend of increasingly autonomous weapons as nigh unstoppable. So I’m not going to whinge about should we or shouldn’t we as that is tantamount to pissing in the wind. However what does concern me is oversight.

Just in case anyone suspected that we took this blog too seriously I’m running a whimsical Brain Parade featuring bloggers. Today’s question is:

We give you a coupon redeemable for any spacecraft depicted in a science fiction story (insurance not included). Which ship do you trade it in for and what do you do with it?

Robert Peckyno has been a lecturer for the “Introduction to Space Studies” course at the University of North Dakota as well as the webmaster for Volcano World for the past four years. He is currently leaving UND to begin PhD work at Oregon State focusing on Martian volcanism and geomorphology.

I’m a bit of a naysayer on this topic. I do agree that the internet lets us all connect to each other in wonderful new ways. However to me that’s beside the point, technology (or more specificaly the way our society uses technology) has alienating effects as well that are worth paying attention to.

I’m responding to this article (link) in Seed titled Discovery for the Sake of Discovery (cheers to Double A for the spottage)

The author makes comparison’s between science and religion which I think are totally naff and I’m going to tell you why.

I’m continuing the robots and ethics thread that I started with that Kevin Warwick interview last week (link). This week I bring you the perspective of Daniel Wilson author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising, a funny and informative book on the future of robotics that reads like a quirky non-fiction take on science fiction.

Gavin A. Schmidt is a climatologist and climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). He works on the variability of the ocean circulation and climate and how changes related to varying forcings relate to variations due to intrinsic (unforced) climate variability, using general circulation models. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for us on the subject of climate change.