Cold Constructs Blog

The idea has been around for many decades, but now that we have the tech to do it, we really should. This article from adAstra clearly explains the benefits and general how-to of putting such things into orbit.

However, this is a centralized source of energy–receivers could be damaged somehow and put off-line, leaving hundreds of thousands or even millions of people without energy at a time. But the situation we’re in at the moment demands this undertaking as a means to get us off foreign (as well as polluting) sources of energy. Once we get an SSP up, we’ll have the infrastructure in place to build more at a cheaper cost and reap incredible rewards. But we’ll still need to increase the efficiency of homemade energy such as solar, wind, heat differentials, and others. Such decentralized systems are mandatory for resilient systems, something our energy supply should be since it is the core of every industrious society.

The idea of a transparent society is a bit disturbing at first. One reason is that in order to make our government responsible and accountable for their actions is to make the citizens accountable first. People don’t like being accountable for their actions, but the behavior of a government is a reflection of the behavior of its citizens, so the only way to fix a broken government like our own is to first fix ourselves. “Be the change.” Here are a couple news items that tell of some neat progress towards a transparent society:

The New Scientist tells us how buildings can conserve energy by automating internal atmospheric controls according to how many people are in the building and where. The buildings are rigged with infrared sensors that pick up (approximate) data on how many humans are in one particular area, and if there are none, it’ll shut off the lights and AC. It can also be used to point people to the quickest exists in the case of an emergency.

Some people seem to be freaking out about it because they think it identifies the people being monitored, but it doesn’t. A true socially transparent way to utilize the system would be allow occupants to see if there’s anyone in the building late at night, which would allow the occupants to become aware of break-ins and stay out of harms way, and report it to the police in time to catch the fuckers.

Next we have the forerunner in opening up our society, culture, and government–Google–going at it again–this time they want to make publicly-available government records searchable via any net search engine, not just their own. Google, those magnificent bastards…. This is perfect because everyone knows that bureaucracy tends to hide sometimes-vital documents from the people who need it most. Privacy advocates bitch about Google all the time, but this is the kind of resistance we’ll see as we emerge as a transparent society. It’s hard to handle at first, but once you understand the benefits (and you’re not a creep, pervert, criminal, etc) then you’ll embrace the movement and hail it as our greatest sociological achievement ever. “As technology jets ahead, understanding ourselves and how we use that tech lingers behind.” The transparent society is a huge leap in catching up.

The transition is going slowly, but I think it’s safe to say that’s the direction we’re heading. The tipping point is when we get vast sensory networks (cameras, atmospheric stations, microphones, etc.) broadcasting their data publicly and continuously. These networks can only handle such a load if they’re wireless and based on mesh networking tech, hence my advocacy of such systems on this blog.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, Cringely recalls his own tragedy and proposes a very Killusional solution to the problem of troubled people killing innocents: mod our net crawlers to pick up distress signals, such as those emitted by the Columbine shooters. In his own words:

There are Internet start-ups scouring the web by the hundreds right now looking for every imaginable form of content or commercial intention, but I’m guessing there isn’t a single spider program specifically dragging back signs of hate. Why not? Search the web for hate and vitriol and despair, do some clever parsing and analysis to figure out the where and when, then throw a mapping mashup interface on it all with the simple goal of giving school principals and baseball coaches and worried moms and dads a place to look for trouble brewing in their schools, towns or neighborhoods.

It wouldn’t violate privacy, free speech, or any laws because everything searchable on the web is public anyway. IT COULD EVEN BE SUPPORTED BY ADVERTISING. It would be like the program that is supposed to warn you when your hard drive is about to die, only applied to our culture.

It would probably save lives.

Indeed it could, but in the comments of his post, people express their concern that such a technology could easily be abused. But this all comes back to the fundamental nature of neutral tools such as this–whether they’re used for better or worse, they will open up doors that we never knew existed and will therefore push us to develop new ways of interacting with our world in a manner that is generally beneficial. We just gotta try.