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 […]

Science has come under fire from some people on religious grounds. Some scientists (eg. Richard Dawkins) have returned fire by criticising religion. Is this productive? Or should scientists avoid talking about the merits of religion?
This is the second parter of a Brain Parade we ran over a month ago. You can read the first installment […]

Outside of your field, what advances/research excite you the most?
This is a touch one for me to answer. I’m not a scientist so I don’t have “a field” but I’m not going to let a lack of qualifications stop me. To me the most exciting thing going on right now is what is being referred […]

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 continue reviewing books that are unavailable in stores.

A Brain Parade of reviews of Science Fiction books with a small twist, none of the books review here actually exsists. These books may not have the advantage of exsisting but at least we’ve done you the favour of giving you a sneak peak as to what you’re missing.

Some transhumanists have advocated the “uplifting” of primates. Do you see any merit in this idea?

The inspiration for this Brain Parade comes from my readings of thinking in the transhumanist movement. I agree with the transhumanists in a lot of things. They’re right to say that our response to ethical challenges posed by future technologies should be informed by something more than yuk factor.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

As promised here’s the second part of our Underrated Technology Brain Parade. Just in case you missed it the original is here (link). Here’s the question I posed to our commentators:

Out of our currently exsisting technologies, is there one that you feel has the most underrated potential?

Today’s question seems overly simplistic in hindsight but that didn’t stop me from posing it to a lot of smart people.
“Do you think technology is contributing to an increasing sense of alienation in modern society?”
I put this question to science fiction writers Elizabeth Bear, Robert J. Sawyer, Matthew Cheney and Tom Purdom. I also asked Bob Seidensticker a former program manager at Microsoft and sf reviewer and blogger in arms Shaun C Green.

The question this week is on technologies with underated potential. I’ve asked a number of SF authors, scientists and bloggers to pick a technology that exsists today that has the most underrated potential. I’ve got a variety of very interesting answers but first I’m going to begin with my cautiously optimistic but very boring pic: solar power.

I’ve been thinking of the thought experiment Jeff Duntemann, science fiction and technology writer, proposed in the our Brain Parade.

Pretend you can look down on the 20th century from a height. Which year looks more like 1950: 2000 or 1900?

Evil scientists were always a rich goldmine of villains for comic book writers. But even as a child fed on a steady diet of Superman, Batman and Fantastic Four comics I never thought that real world scientists were the scourge of mankind that they were made out to be. And eventually the evil scientist as villain fell out of fashion, psychopath, drug dealers and evil mutants took their place.

This week’s question revolves around near future spaceflight, should it be manned or unmanned?