Brand's Blog

Peak Experiences, Meditation, and Urban Riding

Went biking into DC today, it was such a beautiful day. 35 miles round trip, but more importantly, 420 vertical feet.  That was the toughest part, biking up the incline on the way back.

Biking got me thinking about that book, the omnivores dilemma, and how the author talks about the 'hunters zone', where the hunter stops thinking, and essentially becomes one with nature, observing every part of nature with almost supernatural senses. In other words, one stops thinking, and becomes one with what one is doing at the moment. Thats kinda a perfect description of meditation. where concentration on a mantra is supposed to clear your mind of extraneous thoughts.  Its also a description of being in 'the zone' in athletics, or of having a 'peak experience' in new age philosophy.  So I think all of these items describe the same sort of experience, which most humans find beneficial, and sometimes profound and emotional.

Which brings me back to my bikeride. I find that urban bikeriding, where one is weaving in and out of people, bikes, buildings, traffic, obstacles, you name it, gives me that peak experience. I cannot afford to think of anything but what I am doing, and I concentrate so hard on not crashing that extraneous thoughts, the outside world, my bike, they all disappear, and in my mind all that exists is me controlling my path thru obstacles, staying hyperalert by guessing which of those obstacles, such as small humans, will do unpredictable things.

So perhaps I should promote urban bikeriding as a mystical experience. But really, I think the meditationists put fancy labels on an experience that is not that uncommon, if one looks for it.  That experience of total concentration, of having ones ego fall away, of loosing all extraneous thought, of being one with the task, be it of saying 'OLMMMMM',  of landing a plane in bad weather, of driving a car in high speed heavy traffic, of skiing down a slope two colors beyond your capability, or, well, this is a longshot, giving blood, doing something that terrifies you.

Which perhaps explains extreme sports. For them, the peak experience can only happen when there is something real at risk, such as their lives, or their limbs.  That risk is a wonderful concentrator of ones mind.

For myself, Ill stick to urban bikeriding and giving blood for my peak experiences. No skydiving off of cliffs  backwards for me.

A Learning Experience?

In my I95 journey, i was listening to a podcast about religion, and it got me thinking about everything. What it got me thinking about is one way to look at the history of human species is a series of learning experiences, where humankind learns to adjust to living in larger groups. We first lived in families, and then in tribes, but living in tribes had its challenges, such as communicating between members, and intertribe conflict. We learned to adjust to these new realities, and then lived in villages, which had other challenges such as defense and sanitation, and then in cities, with more and different challenges, and so on. At each stage, disasters, particularly local ecological disasters, become part of the learning experience.  We evolved from cities to citystates to nations, to what we have now, which is essentially a global international society, incredibly tightly interwoven.

Every stage, family, tribe, village, city, nation, every stage has had its challenges, its rewards, and disasters that become part of the learning experience.   We are currently in the stage of gobal society, where we are facing an energy, ecological, and human conflict disaster.  One way to look at the current state is a learning experience, for humankind to learn how to live globally.

Perhaps we make it, perhaps we dont. If we make it, we advance to the next stage, of a society that fills the solar system, and then perhaps the stars.

Series of stages, where disaster and conflict are part of learning for each stage, and are required to advance to the next stage.  We learn, we advance.

Perhaps thats the religion, to believe that humankind, even with all of the horror, is here for a purpose, is here to advance, is here to be part of the universe.

What I Believe

What I know and what I believe

We describe our personal knowledge by saying either “I know that…”, or by saying “I believe that…”. I reserve the first statement for those cases where the evidence is so overwhelming as to approach certainty. Examples would be “I know that the Earth orbits around the Sun”, or “I know that I will die.”

The second statement is normally used when the evidence for the statement is not compelling. Examples would be “I believe that room temperature superconductors will be discovered.”, or “I believe that I will live to an old age.”

In many cases, time converts “believe” declarations into “know” declarations. We will eventually know the truth or the falsehood of the assertions above as we collect more evidence. Technically speaking, the two declarations are falsifiable, in that they can in principle be proved or disproved by the collection of information.

The word “believe” is also used for statements that are not falsifiable. These assertions can never, even in principle, be proved or disproved. The most famous example of such a statement would be “I believe in God.” A scientific rationalist would never make declarations of this kind. She would point out that making any nonfalsifiable statement is equivalent to saying that 478 invisible, nonobservable angels can dance on the head of a pin.

I consider myself a scientific rationalist. Nevertheless, my Credo does include nonfalsifiable beliefs. Unlike a hardcore rationalist, I think that such statements serve a purpose. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which of my declarations are falsifiable, and which are not.

Prologue

“We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life’s continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited for it, but here we are.”
—Stephen Jay Gould

My Credo
•    I believe that the universe is more than the sum of its parts.

•    I believe that there is a purpose and a meaning to the universe, and that we do not yet know this purpose and meaning.

•    I believe that our species is special: there is a purpose and a meaning for our own existence.

•    I believe that it will take millennia, or longer, to discover the reason for our existence and of the meaning of the universe.

•    I believe that we will learn of this meaning through discovery and exploration of the universe: by using our collective intelligence to the utmost.

•    I believe that intelligence is rare or even unique in the universe. It is our precious gift that we cannot squander.

•    I believe that it is our destiny to explore the farthest reaches of our galaxy, and that purpose and meaning are to be found out there, and not here. The fact that travel between the stars may take hundreds or thousands of years is of little consequence when we think not of individuals, but of the species.

•    I believe that the most immediate task for our species is survival. If we do not survive, we cannot begin our journey to the stars.

•    I believe that the 21st century will be the most critical 100 years in human history. We must do what we can to create a moral world society that will ensure survival of our species.

•    I believe that we can help create this moral society by promulgating the principles of a global ethic. These principles must include statements of individual rights and freedoms, but also of the responsibilities of each and every one of us to assist in the survival of our species.

•    I believe that we must stress the importance of making long-term decisions. The environment that we destroy today will not be there for future generations. Our responsibility is not just to our fellow humans, but to our progeny in future millennia.

•    I believe that placing survival of a particular human generation ahead of the survival of the rest of the life on this planet will doom future generations. We have seen over and over how our long-term survival depends critically on the careful maintenance of the global ecosystem. Arrogance and ignorance will kill us just as surely as a nuclear holocaust.

•    I believe that all of us are immortal. We live on in the collective consciousness of the human race. I believe that this is good enough. We do not need a hereafter with angels and clouds to give us comfort of our continuance.

•    Finally, I believe that my own personal life has a meaning and a purpose. That meaning and purpose to help make sure that our species not only survives, but prevails.

Lunar Base Proposal

Written in 1987, still true today:

Introduction
Many of us have a great dream of people living in space permanently and independently.  There need not be logical reasons for this vision: it may very well be an expression of a biological imperative to fill every possible ecological niche.  Of course our living in more niches like space would increase humanity's survivability, and I happen to feel that this is a good thing.  I give no apologies for being a flaming humanophile.

What is the best way to achieve this dream?  What can we do such that we may see people living in space independent of earth in our lifetimes?  It is apparent that if the United States does nothing, space will still become inhabited by Russians.  That is fine.  But I hope we are the ones to do it.

This note is a proposal for a project that may be the key to accomplishing the goal.  Possible projects will be compared against each other.  But first it is important to discuss the features of successful projects.

Successful Projects

Elements of a successful project are stated here without proof:
•    The project should have clear, limited goals.
•    Each major step of the project should be doable within a graduate student lifetime.
•    They should use pre-existing materials and techniques.
•    There should be a relatively low entry cost.
•    The project should offer the possibility of early return on investment.
•    It should have a unique technological niche: competition can kill innovative projects in their infancy.
•    The project should form a firm base for future expansion.
•    Single failure points should be avoided at all costs.
The shuttle project failed on many of these points.  The National Commission on Space also fails many points: their goals are too broad and nebulous.
Proposed Space Projects

Below are five proposed projects for insuring mankind's survival in space.  All have been bouncing around for years.  Which of the five, if any, whould be the best path to take?

Boosters to Low Earth Orbit (LEO)
Every technological nation on the face of the planet has plans to build new boosters.  The competition is fierce, and the pressure to lower costs is intense.  Nothing that a small group can do with the design of new boosters can have much of an effect on space.

LEO Space Station
Space stations will clearly be needed eventually, to develop a good infrastructure for permanent human occupation in space.  At least two nations are working on LEO space stations right now, more will follow.  But a small group cannot compete against nations with billions to spend.

A second problem with space stations is that there is no incentive to develop an independent presence, since they will be visited so frequently.  This independence is absolutely crucial to the vision.  With independence there is no economic limitation to future expansion of human presence in space.

Perhaps the best way to think of boosters and space stations is to make the analogy with the development of aviation:  new airlines do not have to start by spending literally billions on airports, navigational aids, charts, etc.  That infrastructure has been set up for them by the government.  The same is of course true for roads: every trucker need not spend billions on highways.  One reason for the existence of governments is to create these infrastructures that make commerce possible.
Boosters, space stations, and orbital transfer vehicles will be the governmental infrastructure of space.  We want to merely make use of the system.

L5 Space Station

Or equivalently, a space station in geosynchronous orbit (GSO).  They are equivalent because the energy cost to go from GSO to L5 is approximately zero.  The original proposal for a manned solar power satellite was outrageous.  It grossly violated the rules of low entry cost, of single failure point, of early return, of limited timespan.

A more modest space station in GSO is interesting, and will certainly happen without our intervention.  There are at least two problems:  the first is the lack of shielding against solar radiation.  The inhabitants would now be outside the radiation belt protection.

The second is a complete lack of raw materials: everything for life support and expansion of facilities will have to come from earth at great cost.  It will not therefore further the vision of an independent presence.  I do not see a GSO space station as the magic key to human colonization.  I do see it as another part of a government supplied infrastructure, along with transfer vehicles to go between LEO and GSO.

Trip to Mars

This is the option sponsored by Carl Sagan and the Planetary Society.  It would be very expensive and time consuming.  There is no apparent short term return from the project.  More importantly, there would be no incentive to develop a firm base for future expansion: the infrastructure required for colonization would not necessarily be put into place.  It appears to be like the Apollo project, which did nothing for the infrastructure.

It seems that a Mars project is best left for governments with trillions of dollars burning a hole in their respective pockets.  It's emotional impact may benefit other space projects following on it's coattails, or conversely the project could soak up all available funding (as the shuttle did).

Lunar Base

If done correctly a lunar base would be an unprecedented opportunity.  There is unlimited raw material, unlimited shielding, unlimited expansion for structures, and relatively low energy cost from GSO.  It is certainly a technological niche currently unoccupied.

If done by governments, a lunar base would be phenomenally expensive, again because all needed supplies would be shipped from the earth.  But imagine an ideal lunar base than can produce anything needed using raw materials on the moon.  For such a base, the one and only cost would be the price of a single one way ticket to the moon.  The potential is there for a low entry cost and immediate economic returns.

It would in one fell swoop be the realization of the dream of an independent presence.  This ideal lunar base could produce additional lunar bases, ensuring that no single failure point exists.

Lunar Base Pros and Cons

Advantages

No other terrestrial planet has a moon like the Moon.  It would be a shame not to make use of this fortuitous circumstance.  Advantages include cheap shielding, cheap raw materials, cheap construction.  It is a perfect base for all types of astronomy: radio, optical, xray, gamma ray.  It it also a good location for remote sensing of the earth.  And it is the only one of the proposed projects that ensures an independent presence.

It could be argued that a lunar base now is too drastic: that effort should instead be concentrated on space stations in earth orbit. Imagine in the late 15th century proposing that a large, floating platform be placed in the middle of the Atlantic, as a staging area for the future expansion of the New World.  Such a platform would of course have been useful, but at staggering cost.  It was then, and is now, much cheaper to just go all the way.

Disadvantages

There can be no microgravity manufacturing on the moon.  Actually, the presence of gravity is a major plus for lunar base.  Humans are used to dealing with gravity, in construction, in living quarters.  It is certainly not clear what the long term effects are of living in microgravity.  This will be one less problem for the lunar base.  Microgravity factories can still be placed in lunar orbit, and supplied from the lunar base. 

The lunar base would be in darkness two weeks every month.  This means that solar power cannot be the sole energy source of the base.  Possible short term solutions include batteries, nuclear power plants, or some sort of chemical or thermal power plant.  The long term solution would be power transmission lines or microwave links from lunar bases in the sunlight.  Three bases, all separated by 120 degrees and connected by power lines, would be an ideal configuration.

This lack of a power source is a serious problem, but I do not believe it is fatal to the project.   Perhaps mirrors in lunar orbit could beam sunlight to the bases?

What are the possible psychological problems from living in such a base for long stretches?  The presence of gravity and cheap construction will make the psychological problems much less than other proposed projects.  However the high energy cost from the lunar surface to the earth surface greatly limits options for medical evacuations, trips home, etc.

We have some modern experience with this: members of the south pole station cannot leave the base for any reason for six months.  Perhaps much can be learned by the experience of this base.
Historically, humans have prospered in much worse circumstances.  The whole point of this exercise is to have people eventually treat the moon as their home.

The occupants of the base will understand that life on the moon is extremely hazardous.  But there are millions of people willing to take those risks, to possibly give their lives for the opportunity. 

Economic Returns of a Lunar Base

For the base to be viable, it needs a near term economic return.  The initial lunar bases clearly cannot be our ideal completely independent bases, and needed supplies from earth cost money.  Possible opportunities include:

Products with Markets on Earth
It is not clear what can be produced on the moon that that would be worth shipping to earth.  The moon does not have microgravity, and a much longer supply line than say LEO.

Products with Markets in Space

This is a great opportunity for the lunar base.  Given the energy closeness of the lunar surface and GSO, it may be possible to greatly underbid shipping from the earth.  The lunar base would excel at bulky or heavy objects that are expensive to get from earth: shielding, construction materials and fuel are items that come to mind.

Service Industries

It is impossible today to service GSO satellites.  It the future it may be possible but not economically viable.  A lunar base may be able to service those satellites cheaply.  Perhaps the lunar base could have an exclusive service contract for anything from GSO on out.  Anything requiring human presence at GSO or lunar orbit or the moon would be fair game for bids from the lunar base.

Science

As stated before, the lunar surface is perfect for astronomy.  The lunar base could become a subcontractor for NSF or NASA to run observatories on the moon.

In the early days of aviation, airlines were supported by the government through the indirect subsidy of carrying the US mail.  This subsidy allowed to airlines to exist and grow until they could exist on their own.  GSO servicing and NSF observatories may be the space form of the indirect government subsidy.

Funding

Direct government funding should be avoided if possible.  The levels of funding can change drastically from year to year.  This is a long-term project that needs long-term funding.  In addition, too many strings are usually attached to the money.  And the potential for economic profit is that much reduced.

There may not however be a choice.  The experience of startup companies is not encouraging.  Only two startups in the last fifteen years that required more than 50 million dollars initial funding have made it.  The startup costs of this project are obviously much higher than that.

One possible way out of this dilemma is having some form of short-term return.  As will be discussed below, the lunar base will be self-sufficent in terms of life support, but also in terms of manufacturing.  Are there any environments on earth that could benefit from such a base?  Antartica is one possible place.  Research for the lunar base could pay for itself by selling bases to such places.
Another possible solution would be to interest large corporations.  For example, Boeing is currently thinking of spending $10 billion of their own money to develop a heavy lift vehicle.  That sort of cash can pay for our proposed lunar base many times over.

How to Proceed
The good news about the lunar base is that the needed technology can all be developed on the earth.  The bad news is that much of the technology does not yet exist.  The needed modules include:

Closed Ecologies
Both the Russians and the United State (Biosphere in Tuscon,AZ) realize the importance of close ecologies for cost effective life support.  The problem is much easier on the lunar surface than in orbit, since the lunar base does not have to be completely closed: there is raw material at hand.  The lunar base project could publicise the importance of closed ecologies, to encourage the funding of research.

Lunar Studies
It is an incredible stroke of luck that we have in hand several hundred pounds of lunar soil.  This material should be studied with processing in mind: what raw materials (oxygen, iron, aluminum) can be extracted easily from the soil?  How uniform is the lunar soil?

We do know that the lunar soil contains 40% oxygen, 20% silicon, 14% aluminum, 4% iron, and a large amount of hydrogen in the lunar dust.  These are all exceptionally handy elements to have available, if they can be isolated in a cost effective way.  The relative lack of carbon and nitrogen is irritating but not necessarily fatal to the project.

The government should be encouraged to send more robot probes to the lunar surface, to get a detailed view of the available resources.  For example if Apollo had landed on the earth, the soil samples returned would have been grossly inadequate for judging the mineral wealth of the planet.  Legal issues of using the moon for economic gain should also be clarified.

Robotics

Autonomous robots are needed for the lunar base, but they are also needed desparately for all aspects of space exploration.  The lunar base project need not spend precious funding on this, as governments and companies with billions to spend will do the work for us.

MicroManufacturing

This will be the pacing technology.  It is not enough to have a closed ecology for life support.  One must also be able to manufacture any object needed, from walls for structures to power tools to lightbulbs to computer chips.  The cornerstone of this effort would be micrometallurgy.  Precision objects made of metal will probably constitute the bulk of the required technological items. High value, low bulk items such as computer chips would still be imported to the lunar base for some time.
We we propose is nothing less than the creation of a new technological civilization.  Every town on the planet today has thousands of ties to the technological base of the planet.  On the moon each of those ties is very expensive, and must be broken. 

What are all of the elements of technological civilization?  What raw materials are needed, what objects need to be created and in what order?  Perhaps the leaders of the lunar base project will be technological ecologists, those able to see systems as a whole and how they interact.

As mentioned before, the project becomes much easier if there are markets for these micromanufacturing factories on the earth.  I recently visited the Aleutian islands, where every item costs about twice what it would cost in the states.  If a microfactory there manufactured for example metal tools from materials at hand at about twice the cost of doing it with a large factory, it would be economically viable.  More extreme locations may have even better economic ratios.

Transportation

As mentioned above, the project will merely buy time on commercial boosters and orbital tugs to get to GSO.  A tug to go from GSO to lunar orbit is trivial, since the energy difference between the two is essentially zero.  The lunar lander is not trivial, but makes use of no exotic technology.

   Theoretically, if a single ideal lunar base can be constructed and placed, only one lunar lander need be constructed on earth.  New landers would be constructed on the moon itself.

Conclusion

A lunar base is the magic ticket to independent human presence in space.  There is no limit to the growth of a base with no economic ties to the earth.

Parts of the proposed project are extremely difficult and may be impossible in the short term (micromanufacturing of everything needed, for example).  However because they are difficult does not necessarily mean they need be expensive.  The lunar base project would be one of finesse, not brute force.

There is no reason not to start now.  The infrastructure of boosters and space stations will be in place by the time the base is ready.  To delay may mean postponing the realization of the vision to after our lifetimes, which I am selfish enough to not want.

                            Brand Fortner
                            January 28, 1987

Lessons from the Challenger

Written in 1987. Frighteningly true today, after the Columbia accident...

Introduction

It is now one year from the Challenger explosion.  Before January 28, 1986 many of us (including much of the NASA staff) were living in a dream world.  The dream was one where the Space Shuttle would solve all problems and finally open the space frontier to everybody and everything.
This dream world and reality met head-to-head last year.  Reality won.

This note is about what has hopefully been learned about space and people and technology because of the accident.  It is a truism that failures are often more important than successes.  This failure was certainly important.  Are the lessons learned are worth the price?

The Vision

The space shuttle program was created by people with a great vision, one that I share.  That vision is one where humans live and work in space permanently, making it the next frontier.  The program creators had a firm belief in the shuttle as the first step towards that goal.

The project was sold to congress, the defense department, and the american people as the magic ticket to outer space.  Payloads and people would be delivered to low orbit so frequently, cheaply, and routinely that space would become boring.  They were lying, and they knew it.

These people were blinded by the vision.  They felt that the success or failure of the vision was dependent entirely on the success or failure of the shuttle project.   So they compromised, dissembled, ignored facts, in fact did anything required so that the project was not canceled.

The result was an impossible budget, impossible schedule, and impossible expectations.  The project sponsors should have walked away from it.  But they lacked the courage to face the reality that would imperil their vision.  Many if not most of the problems with the shuttle project stem from the decision to even have a shuttle program in the first place, given the constraints.

Lesson One:
One must always have the courage to say no.

Lesson Two:
The game is rigged:  reality always wins.
       -or-
Wishing does not make it so.

Lessons from Evolution

Many parallels exist between evolution and successful project management.  This is hardly surprising or profound: systems with similar rules and similar constraints exhibit similar behavior.  In both evolution and technological projects, the output (organism or product) must be well adapted to it's environment to be successful.   And the similarities of competition and ecological niches in both systems are too obvious to enumerate.

One possible lesson from this analogy has to do with how an organism or a technological object is created.  Evolution is never revolutionary, so to speak.  The design of a new organism alway uses modules from previous organisms, modules that have been throughly tested and debugged over billions of years of use.  The perfect example of this is the genetic code itself, which has remained unchanged throughout the entire history of life on this planet.

Nature has created amazing creatures using this scheme.  Many of these creatures are in fact revolutionary in their impact on the planet (birds, for example).  But in every case there is a continuous path between new organisms and previous ones.  For example, animals with tractor treads do not exist because there is no transitional path.  Revolutionary organisms in nature are always profoundly evolutionary.

The analogy for technical objects is clear: successful revolutionary inventions evolve from previous inventions.  The integration of modules may be new, but the modules themselves have existed before.  Outstanding examples may be the steam engine, the DC3, the Model T, the digital computer, the personal computer.  According to a recent article in Science, the only breakthrough invention in modern times that did not evolve continuously from previous inventions is the transistor.

The space shuttle is revolutionary in both senses, and dangerously so.  Just about every feature of the shuttle was new and untested.  This design was forced onto the project managers by the impossible constraints of the project.  The use of "success engineering", and going directly from design into production just made matters worse.

Lesson Three:
Successful revolutionary projects are always evolutionary in nature.

A successful species in nature absolutely must have a good gene pool, with lots of variation.  It has been shown countless times that species with narrow gene pools are but marking time until extinction.  It is evident why this is so.  Species with limited variability have single failure points: a single environmental change, or a single disease, can wipe them out completely.  It is like reproduction: it does not affect the survival of an individual, but life would not exist without it.
To sell the shuttle program, the sponsors narrowed the NASA gene pool on purpose.  By placing all future launches on the shuttle, they created the dreaded single failure point, endangering the entire species (here, the space project).  And the single failure point failed.

Lesson Four:
Maintain a good gene pool: no single catastrophic failure should ever imperil a project.

Management Failures
The shuttle failure was also a management failure: it has been a shock to realize that people in business suits sitting around a table can kill just as surely as a bullet.  Again, these failures for the most part stem from the initial decision to have the project in the first place:  the impossible constraints stressed the management system to the breaking point.

Historically, successful projects have had clearly defined, limited goals, with a reasonable time (less than 4 years) to completion.  Good projects also have good management, where responsibility and credit are delegated to the same teams for the duration.  As I understand it, shuttle management failed on all counts.

The goal of the shuttle project was never clear, and constantly changing: was it to put people in space, or to be a heavy lift vehicle?   More crucial was the fact that the goal became unbounded: the shuttle would do everything for everybody.  The project became too big, and too long, for a happy conclusion.
As impossible schedules and budgets became more impossible, many shakeups occured.  This can be disorienting: staff never knows who is responsibile for what, and no one feels accountable for anything.  The usual outcome of this state of affairs is the seige mentality.

The seige mentality is where the staff feels swamped with putting out fires.  Because of this, there is a complete loss of vision, a loss of communication, and a loss of responsibility.  Putting out fires is just that.  Unless changes are made the house will never get rebuilt.

A recent article in Infoworld discussed successful microcomputer companies:   The ones that made it were the ones that stayed stable for about 4 years, then reorganized.  The stable periods were for accomplishing clear, limited goals in a stable environment, and the shakeups to keep the seige mentality at bay.

It is interesting to note another parallel with evolution: recently it has become clear that species stay pretty much the same for long periods, interspersed by short periods of very rapid change.

Lesson Five:
Successful projects have clear, limited goals doable within a few years.

Conclusion
The shuttle project as implemented should never have happened.  It should have been scaled down to just a vehicle to get people to space.  Heavy lift tasks should have been left on heavy lift boosters.  This would have increased the gene pool, given the project a clear and more limited goal, and would have been doable.

Without the impossible demands, the management could have stabilized, developed cohesive teams, delegated authority, set up a strong communications infrastructure, and accomplished it's goal in 4 years.  These limited goals would have allowed more conservative engineering, with full experimental and prototype stages before production.

Such a shuttle would have built a stable base for the future expansion of space.  We would be much closer to the ultimate vision than we are today.

But this scaled down shuttle might never have gotten funding.  That would have been ok.  Humanity could have waited a few more years.

There is one last lesson , thinking specifically of the Challenger astronauts:

Lesson Six:
Some things are worth dying for.

                            Brand Fortner
                            January 28, 1987

Can we Know there is a Creator?

The topic for the debate is “Can we know that there is a Creator”. There are two key words in that topic: ‘Know’, and ‘Creator’, which we are just about to discuss. In my talk I will use the fact of the creation of the universe to help explain why it would not be possible to “know” something supernatural. I will then talk about what we mean by the word “Creator”, and why normal usage implies something supernatural, which we cannot “Know”.

Introduction-The Creation of the Universe

In the beginning, time and space appeared: from where we do not know. They appeared with a Bang, literally. The biggest bang imaginable. This explosion occurred simultaneously everywhere, not only in all space, but creating Space. Nanoseconds after the creation, the universe was an unimaginably dense and hot soup of matter and light that may not have been bigger than a person…

Events proceeded quickly at first, then more slowly. Particles combined into atoms. Atoms collected into clouds, which gathered into galaxies, which gave birth to stars, and thence to us. This is our modern creation story.  I find it much more awe inspiring than the one told in Genesis.

And I know that it is true.

How can I possibly make that statement? That I know that it is true? I can make that statement because of the way I define the word ‘know.’

What Can We ‘Know’ About the Universe?

Well, there is ‘knowing’, and there is ‘believing’. I believe that I will live a long life. But I do not know it. To ‘know’ something means that the objective evidence for that something is so overwhelming that there are no reasonable alternatives. In this context, the term ‘objective’ describes information that can be gathered that is independent of any particular observer.

So people used to ‘believe’ that the earth was a sphere. We now ‘know’ it, because of the preponderance of evidence for that fact. Certainly any sane, knowledgeable person on the planet will accept the earth’s sphericity.

Note that there is no absolute certainty in that statement of ‘knowing.’ We ‘know’ that the sun will rise tomorrow, although we cannot make that statement with absolute mathematical precision.  By the rigors of absolute certainty, we cannot ‘know’ anything. The universe could have been created a second ago. The earth could turn into blue cheese next week.

But to make such wild statements puts an end to intelligent discourse: we must have some ground rules. And our ground rules are preponderance of objective evidence.

Falsifiability

Note the very important flip side of our definition of knowledge: it must be falsifiable! Since knowledge can be verified by objective evidence, then it must also be falsifiable by the same objective evidence!

This distinction is usually used to separate objective knowledge from religious beliefs. Religious beliefs are not falsifiable by objective evidence. For example, the term ‘creation science’ makes little sense: the beliefs of creationists are not falsifiable, and hence are outside the realm of science. 
By our definition, a religious belief is not something that you can ‘know’ objectively. It must be a matter of faith. If it is something that you can ‘know’ objectively, then it is not religion: it is science.

Knowing, and Knowing

Of course, things are not quite that simple. For example, we ‘know’ that the earth is a sphere, right?
Wrong! The earth is not a sphere!

It is closer to a oblate spheriod, but even then, it is not quite right. Many scientists get into extremely heated arguments about the exact shape of the earth.

Does this mean that the ancients were right after all, that the earth is flat? Of course not! The fact that we are debating the fine details of the sphericity does not negate the original knowledge: The earth is approximately spherical.

This scientific statement has been verified so many times, in so many ways, that to not call it a fact is to leave the term ‘fact’ without meaning. We know, absolutely know, that the earth is approximately spherical. One should never confuse debate over the details with debate on the essentials, something that the national media is not particularly good at making clear.

What Can We Not ‘Know’ About the Universe?

Let us return to the creation of the universe.

Just as in the sphericity of the earth, the fact of the Big Bang has been verified so many times, in so many ways, that no rational scientist currently debates this essential point. However, that does not mean that we have the same levels of ‘know’ for the details.

For example, what happened before one hundredth of a second after the Big Bang? The conditions then were so far outside of our experience that nobody can say for sure.  It is a matter of deep theoretical debate. A matter of belief, so to speak, that may one day turn into knowledge.

I submit, however, that there are two questions about the creation of the universe that will never turn into knowledge. That are beyond ‘knowing’, in the sense that I have defined.

The first is this: what was going on before T=0, before the initiation of the creation? I believe that we can never ‘know’ that. Any evidence was swallowed up in the initial explosion.

The second question concerns the ultimate meaning of the universe. Nobody can even conceive what evidence one would attempt to collect to answer this question.

I believe that these two questions will never be ‘known’: they will always be a matter of religious faith.

Natural Versus Supernatural

We have talked at length about ‘knowing’. We now need to talk about the ‘Creator’. We must be clear what we mean by the word. If by ‘Creator’, we mean a synonym for the universe, or for ‘Nature’, then of course there is a Creator, or we would not be alive to have this debate. If that is what is meant, then we can all go home in complete agreement.

But wait. What most people mean by the term ‘Creator’ is something a bit different: a supernatural being that controls our destiny in some way.

So we have a definition of ‘Creator’. But what about ‘supernatural’? Supernatural is by definition something outside human knowledge: something that we cannot explain with what we know about the universe.

So let us say that the Creator is supernatural. Then she is outside our knowledge. Literally. We cannot ‘know’ her, in the sense of gathering objective evidence. If we could collect an overwhelming preponderance of evidence of her existence, then she would be ‘natural’. End of debate.

But hold on. Suppose the Creator is outside human knowledge today, but perhaps not in the future!  Perhaps, someday, we will understand what forces and fields she uses to shape the universe.  At that point, the Creator is no longer ‘supernatural’. She is ‘natural’, and most people would not call a being that we could understand completely a ‘Creator’.

For example, suppose the ‘Creator’ is actually a race of highly advanced extraterrestrials. They would initially be ‘supernatural’, in that they would use powers beyond our understanding. But should such a race be placed in the category of ‘Creator’? I  think not.

So we have a bit of a Catch22: either the Creator is supernatural, in which case she is beyond ‘knowing’, or she is natural, in which case we would not call her a Creator.  We cannot ‘know’ that there is a ‘creator’. QED.

I have absolutely no problem with this. One should have faith to believe in an ultimate meaning of the universe. Why should a ‘Creator’ be comprehensable by humans?

A Search for Morality

I would like to end my statement on a personal note: the source of my own moral beliefs.
The Columbia Flyer this week had two quotes that bothered me: one from Dostoyevsky, “If God is dead, then all things are permissible.”, the second from Mr. Yaguez, “If we are products of chance, then there are no rules…if we apply evolutionary philosophy, then anything goes.”

There are two fallacies in those statements. The first comes from what has come to be known as the “Anthropic Principle”, which briefly says that we cannot discuss how special and unique our planet is or we are, because if things had turned out differently, we would not be here to admire ourselves.
Suppose only one universe in a quintillion quintillion can support humans. We, of course, must exist in that universe. It would tell us nothing about any possible role for a “Creator” in the universe. Many creation science statements are incorrect because of this logical principle.

What does this principle have to do with the quotes? Just this: I submit that if human society had no morals, we would not be here having this debate: we would be beating each other to a pulp with sticks, or extinct. A highly advanced society is impossible without morality, and says nothing about the possible existence of a ‘Creator’.

The second fallacy is this. Cindy will verify that I am a deeply religious person. I believe that there is an Ultimate Meaning to the Universe, that there are supernatural causes, that there is a ‘Creator’. I believe that humankind is here for a reason, and that we cannot reach our ultimate destiny without a moral society. You do not need to believe in the God of the Christian bible to be moral. People that think otherwise have caused untold misery throughout history.

I have faith in my vision. You have faith in your vision. We both believe in an ultimate meaning. We both believe in morality. We should both agree that one must have Faith, that one cannot prove the superiority of Christianity over other religions and belief systems. I feel that in many respects we are closer to each other than many people would like to think.

Vegan Manifesto

So I’m sitting here munching on my grilled tofu sandwich, browsing “Vegan World Fusion Cuisine”, the book where I figured out how to make said snack, and it stuck me that the guys who wrote it thought that they could help save the planet, but they can’t, ‘cause they are wusses, it’s gonna take me instead. I'm gonna be the one to save the planet.

You see, we all know, well, at least most of us know, well, at least some of us who have thought about it know, that we just can’t go on like this forever.  Something's gotta give, and if we don’t do something good real soon, it’s not gonna be pretty. No more oil, no more water, no more topsoil, no more food, well, it won’t be a good day for civilization.

But hey, every society has a ‘come to Jesus’ moment where they figure out that when you go head-to-head with Mother Nature, well, she don’t ever lose. Sometimes, like in  Iceland, or ancient Japan, or Tahiti: they got the message, and figured out how to live within limits. Other times, like Greenland, or, well, Easter Island, they just died. Sigh.

Our society’s ‘come to Jesus’ moment is any day now, except now, it ain’t one island, its the whole planet. Can’t take no steamship off the ecological wasteland and head off for pristine lands. If we want to preserve our water, our topsoil, our food, our energy, our biodiversity, and save our planet, what’s the best thing to do? You guessed it, we all become vegans! Don’t believe me?  Well too bad, I only got a thousand words. Look it up!

Oh, sorry, got sidetracked. Lemme get back to my tofu burger. I love this stuff. I inhale my pad thai, I snarf down hummus wraps, and geesh, carrot cake is to die for.  I love this stuff so much, well I’m one big guy. Six foot four inches, two hundred and sixty pounds dripping wet. Well, maybe a little more, but you ain’t gonna ever find out how much more.  I’m living, breathing, eating proof that vegans don’t gotta have that Twiggy body style. We can look like John Goodman, and be proud of it!

So here’s why its me that has to save the world, not the “Vegan World Fusion Cuisine” guys. Just gaze at their pictures. They all have that skinny, vegan, emaciated look.  And to top it off, they all have those new agey silly grins.  Now really.  How many Americans can identify with that? Ever seen what a typical American looks like these days?  You just are not gonna convince the Walmart crowd to stop eating daisy the cow by espousing flowerly mystical new age mother nature stuff. Ain’t gonna happen.

Like I work in a place with thousands of other folks. Some of them are real bright. But I think I'm the only vegan in the whole place. Heck, to the people I work with, they think a vegetarian is someone who doesn’t eat deer because they cried as a kid over Bambi.  The thought of a human being not eating hamburgers, fried chicken, cheese pizza, well, you might as well try to live without water. I mean, heck, where would you get your protein?  Its downright communist. Or democrat. Same thing.

So “Vegan World Fusion Cuisine” just ain’t gonna fly with this crowd. Too bad, cause that cookbook has some great stuff in it. Stuff that really tastes great.  And taste, thats the secret. People aren’t gonna put down that triple cheeseburger with bacon because they wanna save the world. They are gonna put down that steak pizza because they found something that tastes better. So great recipes, that’s a start.  But no self respecting good ol’e boy gonna have a cookbook in his place called “Vegan World Fusion Cuisine”.  No sir.

So here’s what I'm gonna do. I’m gonna write a cookbook for my kind’a people.  It’s gonna be called something like “Bubba's Veggies”, or “Fried Plants for Macho Guys”, or just “The Real Guy Cookbook”.  I don’t know much about cooking, so I’ll just steal all of the recipes from the World Fusion folks.  But those recipe names. They gotta go. No more “Sacred Sesame Shitake Dressing”.  Instead, its gonna be “Bubbas Kickass Sauce”. Same stuff. Different name.

And to spice it up, I would take out all of those wuss photos of nature, and put in real stuff. Big macho guys hacking sugar cane with a mongo machete. One of those big honking combines, smashing into those monster corn rows.  A top fuel tractor, mowing down those soybeans at Mach 1. Big honking grain silos reaching for the sky. Hu-Rah!

I guarantee my cookbook will be a hot seller. Like hotcakes. Bubba’s hotcakes.  But that’s only part of it. Other people gotta do their part. Cookbooks for twenty-somethings, for gamers, for geeks, freeks, soccer moms, Yuppies, Buppies, Hispanics, Cherokees, Koreans, Norwegian Bachelor Farmers, Unitarians, hey, even Baptists.

Lets get busy! First one to save the planet gets a big carrot cake with lemon tofu icing! Yum!

Thoughts on the 2004 Democratic Convention

My speech at the 2004 democratic national convention, if I was asked to speak.

I spent the last few days listening to speeches at the democratic convention. Some were pedestrian, but many were rousing, inspirational, really touching on true, serious issues facing us.

But what struck me listening to the speeches was that no one talked about the truly important issues. Instead, the talks were on the economy, on Iraq, on the environment, on health insurance, on education. Vital issues, all.  But not the truly important ones.

What can be more important than the US economy, our war on terrorism, the health of US citizens?  Just this. The most important issue of today is not one of personal fulfillment, or the stature of the United States in the world. The most important issue of the day is the survival of the human species.

I just got your attention. I will lose your attention if I cannot quickly convince you that there is any truth to the statement.

To start, let me begin by noting that the human species has faced many critical transitions in the past, such as the birth of agriculture, the fall of the roman empire, the start of the industrial age, and so on.  In these critical transitions, the future becomes highly uncertain, until a new path is chosen. The analogy to the concept of 'phase transitions' in physics, or 'punctuated evolution' in biology is not accidental.  Virtually every complex system follows similar histories: long periods of stasis, punctuated by short periods of rapid change, chaos, and uncertainty.

Most people will accept the statement that we are currently in one of these short periods of chaos.  What may not be fully appreciated is that this transitional period is potentially the most serious of any so far faced by our species.  It is the most serious because of the unprecedented collision of several issues, each of which potentially threatens global civilization.  These issues are:

1) The human species is running out of energy. Our civilization is based on cheap and plentiful energy.  That basis will disappear in one or two generations. We face and unknown and unprecedented transition to a new relationship with energy.

2) The human species is performing a global environmental experiment that has the potential to catastrophically change the world's climate in less than a generation, primarily through the injection of CO2 into the atmosphere.

3) Our highly technological civilization is fragile to asymmetric warfare to an extent that even today is not fully appreciated.   For most of human history, countries in conflict could have only local effects. Then during the cold war,  countries could potentially create global effects. Today, small groups or even individuals can create global effects.

4) The world population explosion is stressing the earth to an unprecedented degree. Today, the planet is close to the ultimate agricultural carrying capacity.  The environmental and biological change to the globe is without precedent, not just in human history, but in the entire history of our Earth.

5) The world society is becoming both fractionated and globalized to an unprecedented degree.  By fractionated, I mean that the world no longer consists of countries interacting. Today, religious and political fractions, and especially multinational corporations, are often more important than countries. By globalized, I mean that groups and individuals are no longer primarily defined by their geographic location, but by affiliations that often transcend place.   When age old social networks are stressed or broken, the outcome of the social realignment is highly uncertain.

For people who read more than newspapers and watch more than the major US news outlets, none of these issues are new. In fact, some of these issues, such as the population one, have been bandied about for 200 years. So what is different about today? The sky has not yet fallen, who's to say the sky will never fall?

The first answer to that question is one of a mismatch of timescale. People think about today, next month, next year.  The issues above are all on the timescale of generations, which is difficult to think about.  We will not run out of energy this year or next. But it will happen, and soon, when we think not of days but of  generations.

The second answer to the question is to understand how predictions are made. Predictions are made based on some certain things (physical laws, conservation laws), and other uncertain things (human behavior, complex system response, etc). The uncertain things mean that prediction of timeframe is almost always very difficult. The certain things mean that even if we do not know when, we can often be very certain that things will eventually happen.  We will run out of energy. CO2 will dramatically change the climate. Our civilization will be disrupted. Population will increase. Society will change...

So for the first time in human history, we have multiple global challenges that are hitting us at approximately the same time. What do we do about it?  The first thing we do is recognize the situation we are in. The historian Barbara Tuchman has a wonderful book called "The March of Folly", where she talks about how the refusal to think clearly about the true situation causes catastrophe after catastrophe.

It is comforting to ignore problems, to think that things will always work out. But sometimes, things don't work out, at least not without help.  If the engine on my airplane starts making strange sounds, do I hope it will get better by itself, or do I immediately look for a field to set down in?  Which path is better for my survival?  We must, absolutely must, have a clear vision of the current situation, even in the face of uncertainty. The engine may or may not quit. But I had better be prepared for it to.

The second thing to do, of course, is to do something.  This requires that we stop acting as individuals, as groups, as countries, but as a species, that is interested in self-preservation.  We require leaders that will inform, and will lead, and will help us work together to solve these problems that threaten our existence.

What happens if we do nothing?  Well, given the uncertainties of timescale, it is very possible that I personally will have a decent life. It is somewhat less likely that my children will have a decent life in a decent civilization. It is much less likely that my grandchildren and their children will not suffer catastrophic change.

I for one am less interested in the health and wellbeing of my generation and my country than I am in the ultimate survival of the species. I believe that we have a sacred duty as a species to not only survive, but to prevail, to explore the universe, to discover the secrets of the universe.   We need leaders with that vision.  Leaders that will lead.

The Problem with Technical Data

Science used to be either experimental/observational or theoretical, but nowadays a third way, computational science, is coming into its own.  That much we all know.

What is less appreciated is that the ways of computational science are still in their infancy, with only decades of practice instead of hundreds or thousands of years of history. This youth is best seen in the struggles most scientists have with what should be routine tasks of dealing with data.  These tasks include the discovery of data sources, accessing this data, fusing multiple data products into a coherent whole, and archiving data in a way that makes it useful to others .

For well-funded users of supercomputers, these data frustrations are a small part of the project effort. However, for the vast majority of scientists and engineers using computers, 90% of their time can be spent dealing with data issues.  I believe that the best bang for the buck in terms of advancing the cause of computational science for all technical workers is by improving these areas: data discovery, access, fusion, and archiving.  In short, if we can make discovering and using technical data as easy and intuitive in the future as browsing the web is today, we will have made a huge leap for all.
Data Meaning
In the four areas that we consider here the main issue is that of knowing what the data 'means'. The team 'meaning' is highly overloaded however.  For example, consider the different ‘meanings’ that a simple stream of bits can have.

•    Bits that represent 8 bit bytes of information
•    Bytes that represent 32 bit floating-point numbers
•    Floating Point numbers that represent temperature
•    Temperature values that represent parameters of atmospheric measurements
•    Temperature values measured in Iowa on Nov 22
•    Temperature values in a 2D sparse array
•    2D array of values as a component of an HDF5 file
•    An XML metadata file listing parameters relevant to temperature measurements
•    An XML Schema for the Temperature XML metadata files
•    A relational database system containing temperature measurements

And so on.  The level of meaning that is needed for a particular bitstream depends on the situation. For example, a network protocol may only care that the bits are separated into bytes, if that.  However, a scientific user may care only about the higher level meanings, such as when and where the data was taken, under what conditions, and so on. The ‘lower level’ meanings are, or should be, invisible.

In an ideal world, every bitstream would have every level of meaning possible associated with it, and all of those layers of meaning would be readily accessible to any tool, application, or user. But of course we do not live in that ideal world, but the real world of missing metadata, incompatible formats, and tools and applications that cannot talk to one another.

So what is the best way to improve the situation, to remove the routine data barriers to science and engineering?  Before venturing an opinion, I want to return to the four areas mentioned above of Data Discovery, Access, Fusion, and Archiving.

Data Discovery
Today, most technical data is available on the web, on either public or private networks. But just because the data is ‘available’ does not mean that it is searchable, or discoverable. 

Sometimes the barriers to finding data are there on purpose, to prevent unauthorized access. But more often, the barriers are technical. Some of these impediments include nonstandard interfaces to the data sources, no methods for querying the data source for contents, and so on.

Another barrier to discovering data is the overabundance of data sources.  An example of this is a typical Google search, blah blah blah – need to expand on this somewhat.

But by far the most common barrier to data discovery is a lack of metadata associated with the data, a lack of ‘meaning’.  The data provider may know the information encoded in the file name of ‘USWS.27-020302.23345.txt’, but most users would not. In particular, someone searching for Iowa temperature measurements would never find those files.

The ideal solution would be for all data sources to make query available through a well-documented, standardized interface, with a rich field of standardized metadata associated with every piece of data.   Again, this is too much to ask, primarily because of the formidable technical and political barriers to cross-disciplinary standardization of interfaces and metadata.  So what can be reasonably done?

Data Access
Once we know where data is, how can we access it? Once again, we hit barriers caused by lack of standardization. There are hundreds of ways to access data, from FTP servers to Oracle databases, each with their own, often custom interfaces. But the most serious barrier to data access is again that of meaning.

Just because I have been able to download a stream of bits from a data source does not mean that I will be able to extract any meaningful information from those bits.  I may not know the format of the data, or it may not have a format.  Even if the data is in ASCII, I may have no way of knowing what particular bitstreams mean, what its units are, the dimensions of arrays, and so on.

The ideal solution would be for all technical data to be made available in standardized formats, along with rich metadata in a standardized format and with a standardized vocabulary.  Dream on. So again, what can reasonably be done?

Data Fusion
Suppose a technical worker has discovered and accesses data from a variety of sources. She knows what every bit represents. But she is not home free yet.  Not only must the data talk to her, it must talk to each other.

For example, suppose that one bitstream records locations using latitude and longitude, another using X,Y,Z offsets from a datum. Or more seriously, one bitstream records wind speed, but another records X,Y, Z components of wind velocity.  How do we compare and fuse data that may have different units, coordinate systems, and measurement types?

The ideal solution would be for all technical data to share a unified, comprehensive ontology that describes relationships between all conceivable parameters.  Right. So again, what can reasonably be done?

Data Archiving
A scientist has spent much time, effort, sweat and tears discovering, accessing, fusing, modeling, assimilating, visualizing and managing data. Much insight was gained through this process.  Now what?   Often, that insight goes into a human brain and stops there. Perhaps some of that insight flows into research papers and technical articles. But most does not. Wouldn’t it be better if that insight could be made available for discovery, access, and fusion by other workers?

I believe it is not enough to store data values in databases.  It is not even enough to record sufficient ‘meaning’ with those data values. What is also needed is to make available what I would call ‘derived meaning’; some way of recording in a way that’s easily accessible all of the fruits of a computationalists labors.

Some of these fruits would be derived data products or model outputs.  Some may be views into the data, such as particular visualizations. But the best fruits may be the insights derived from the labors. How do we quantify those insights?

The Solution for Technical Data
There are lots of problems listed above. What is the solution?

As in any complex system, there is no single ‘solution’, but instead a series of actions that can whittle away at a problem.  I believe that the most cost effective actions that can greatly reduce data frustrations and greatly enhance all computational work include:

•    Promoting a small set of powerful datafile formats.  The dream of a single technical data format for all is long gone.  But perhaps the community can settle on the best few dozen formats and support them, through periodic maintenance, great documentation, powerful interfaces, easy to use tools, and rich data models.

•    Continuing the XML revolution. XML by itself does not solve the problems of meaning, in the same way that ASCII did not solve the problems of meaning. However, it is a great start. It provides a lingua franca for at least talking about metadata, a standard way of defining vocabularies for particular disciplines.

•    Providing a clearinghouse. Interdisciplinary workers are at a particular disadvantage when it comes to data.  Having a single meta-repository of information about data formats, metadata formats, access methods, data vocabularies, ontologies and the like would be invaluable.

•    Providing powerful, easy to use meta-tools. These meta-tools would consist of standardized interfaces for data discovery, access, fusion and archiving of technical data across a wide variety of databases, formats, access methods, and ontologies. The meta-tools would make it much easier to develop and support tools for technical workers.

•    Providing analysis and visualization tools that know meaning.  Most publicly available visualization and analysis tools require users to convert data into the tool environment, and then convert data out of the tool environment. In that process, almost all ‘meaning’ is lost. What is needed are tools that understand meaning, that keep data, metadata, ontologies, analysis, and visualizations together throughout the entire process.

•    Providing software for ‘virtual observatories’. The space community has a concept of providing unified discovery, access, and fusion portals for a wide variety of data in particular disciplines, such as for example a virtual solar observatory. This idea is a good one:  A single unified portal for all technical data is not in the cards, but a series of smaller ‘VxO’s where ‘x’ is just about anything, is one way to advance the cause.

•    Promoting the development of discipline specific and interdisciplinary data vocabularies and ontologies.   There is considerable grassroots effort going on in this area, but very little coordination.

I feel that these actions and others at improving the life of technical data would have enormous consequences, not just for technical workers, but also for society as a whole.

What Price Information?

We have been ‘entering the information age’ for a several decades now. One would think that the ramifications of this new age have long since been evaluated. But some of the legal and societial implications of this transformation have only recently been seriously addressed.

The most important of these issues is the price of information. How much should we pay, and how should we pay it, to read a novel, to listen to music, to look up an address, to use a word processor, or to view a satellite image? In addition how accessible should that information be, regardless of price?

These are not new questions. For hundreds of years, every conceivable answer to the questions have been tried. The answers have typically implemented using copyright laws that vary from making all information free to giving the creators of information total control. Current copyright laws are somewhere between these two extremes. They do a fairly good job of balancing the interests of the creators of information with that of the consumers of that information.

The new information technology has disrupted that balance. For the first time, anyone can make perfect copies of any information, trivially and without cost. This capability has spawned what I would term an overreaction from the information creator community. An example of this overreaction is the ‘Collections of Information Antipiracy Act’, which if passed will seriously damage not only the free flow of information, but also, to some people’s surprise, American industry as a whole.

To make this point, some definitions are in order. The easiest way to define information (or synonomously, data) is something that can be expressed digitally, as ones and zeros. For example, text, books, music, pictures, scientific measurements, computer programs, movies, and so on can all be expressed digitally. All are information.

As a counter-example, an automobile cannot be expressed as just ones and zeros. It is a physical thing, not disembodied information. Note, however, that the specifications of that automobile can be expressed digitally.

Here we will be mostly concerned with a subset of information that is referred to as intellectual property. Intellectual property is information that had been created by someone, and is owned by someone. Publishers or authors typically own the rights to books, music, movies, and so on. Note that the creator and the owner of the intellectual property are not necessarily the same entities: authors can sell the rights to their works to publishers, for example.

Intellectual property is protected by an armada of copyright, patent, and trademark law. Intellectual property can be bought and sold. Pure information has no such protection. It is for the most part free to all. Therefore, defining what is intellectual property, and what is just information, is the crux of the issue, and the core of the debate over the ‘Collections of Information Antipiracy Act’.

By definition, intellectual property has to be created. In 1991, the Supreme Court reiterated that a mere fact is not intellectual property. You can copyright an article, but you cannot copyright your measurements.

Keeping facts out of copyright is a very good thing. Scientific research can operate effectively only in an environment where technical data is shared openly and freely.  Imagine the situation if this was not the case: you could be sued for using the temperature readings in Duluth, because someone else had slapped a copyright notice on their measurements.

The proposed Act does not copyright facts, but it does the next best thing: it proposes to allow the copyright of collections of facts. Perhaps a single temperature measurement would not be copyrightable. However, a book of temperature measurements, with the new law, would be copyrightable.

The proposed Act is being sold as contributing to American industry. More and more effort is being spent in creating these collections, or databases, of information. Think for example of the databases that combine phonebooks from across the country into a unified directory. The creators of these databases say they need incentive to continue producing these collections, and that incentive is copyright protection.

Needless to say, the academic community is not happy with this proposal. The act would give protection to a vast amount of data that is currently in the public domain. The distinction between facts and collections of facts in the Act is so ill defined that it may very well give defacto protection to mere facts. It opens up universities to vastly increased liability for use of data.

Many people view this debate as one where industry is on one side and academia is on the other. That supporting the free exchange of information would hurt industry, and cost jobs. Our view is that this is not correct. In many ways, the Act hurts industry more than it helps it. For every company selling collections of fact, there are several others that make money off of those very same facts.

For example, my own company, Fortner Software LLC, sells tools that make it easy for people to view and analyze technical data such as satellite images from remote sensing satellites. The market for our software exists because NASA makes its remote sensing data available to all. If that data was proprietary, the number of people that would access that data would be vastly smaller, and the market for our software would dry up. As another example, the people trying to make money off of unified phone directories themselves depend on the free availability of phone information from across the country.

In general, the availability of a large amount of freely available data not only energizes research and development, but also makes possible the creation of whole industries for processing, managing, and analyzing that data. Pulling much of this data out of the public domain would damage or destroy many of these emerging industries.

Our country and our government has a history of increasing our country’s competitiveness by making new resources available to all, and thereby creating new markets. Examples would include the interstate highway system, the federal airport and airspace system, and more recently, the internet itself.  Would the internet had changed our world if users had to pay for every packet sent? Obviously not.

The balance needs to be restored. The rights of the authors of information needs to be maintained, to continue to encourage the creation of that information. On the other hand, the free availability of a large body of information is just as important, to maintain not only our excellence in scientific research, but also to foster new markets that depend on that information.

This is not a small issue. Today, over four hundred billion dollars of the country’s gross national product (GMP) is copyrighted information. This number, in both absolute and relative terms, is growing much larger every year. A bad decision on this issue today will have vast consequences in the days to come. After all, information is our future.