Archive for June, 2012

Mondragon Coops Now in Sci-Fi

by Editors @ Thursday, June 28th, 2012. Filed under Economic Democracy, High Design, Mondragon

Kim Stanley Robinson Sees Humans Colonizing the Solar System in his New Book, 2312

By Geek's Guide to the Galaxy

Wired Magazine

With his new sci-fi novel 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson delves 300 years into the future.Photo: SFXFuture Publishing

In 1948, George Orwell looked ahead to 1984 and imagined a grim totalitarian world. In 1968, Arthur C. Clarke looked ahead to 2001 and imagined transcendent alien contact. Now, Kim Stanley Robinson is looking ahead to the year 2312.

“I decided I wanted to go out a long way — at least for me,” says Robinson in this week’s episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

Projecting 300 years into the future is no easy task. But it’s made a bit easier by the fact that Robinson, who is best known for his novel Red Mars and its sequels about terraforming Mars, has spent a lifetime thinking about the future. 2312 combines many of the concepts the writer has developed throughout his career, such as the idea of a city that constantly circles the planet Mercury, remaining in the temperate zone between night and day (an idea that originally appeared in his first novel, The Memory of Whiteness).

Most stories about space exploration imagine starships zipping between alien worlds, but 2312 is set firmly in our solar system. Yet the novel shows that a single solar system can provoke plenty of wonder and provide ample territory for intrigue. In this future, rising sea levels have turned New York into a city of canals, asteroids are hollowed out to create giant nature preserves, and malicious schemes are calculated with the aid of quantum computers. Citizens live hundreds of years, are augmented with cybernetic technology, and casually swap genders.

It’s hard to say how much of this might come true. For example, Robinson points out that even the world’s top researchers can’t say how much ocean levels might rise. But nothing in the book violates known science.

Read our complete interview with Kim Stanley Robinson below, in which he describes how the Mondragon Accord might replace capitalism, recalls running into Jimmy Carter in Nepal, and expresses skepticism about the technological singularity. Or listen to the interview in Episode 62 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast (link above), which also features a discussion between hosts John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley and guest geek Tobias Buckell about ecological themes in fantasy and science fiction.

Wired: Your new novel is called 2312. What’s it about?

Robinson: Well, we’re in the year 2012, and I decided I wanted to go out a long way — at least for me. The two things I postulated that I think make it workable as a realistic kind of fantasia are space elevators on Earth and self-replicating machinery, and these are two supposedly possible engineering feats that are discussed in the literature, so they’re not physically impossible. They might be hard engineering feats, but it seems like they could be done, and there are even companies working on at least the space elevator. Self-replicating factories are somewhat of a stretch at this point, but not obviously impossible.

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High Design and Reducing the Working Day Toward Zero:

by Editors @ Friday, June 22nd, 2012. Tags:
Filed under High Design, Technology

Ant Behavior Inspires More Efficient Warehouse Robots

By Ben Coxworth
Gizmag

March 23, 2012 -When it comes to groups that work together to get a job done, ants have pretty much got the process perfected.

That’s why computer scientist Marco Dorigo studied the creatures’ behavior, and created his Ant Colony Optimization model – an algorithmic technique that can be applied to human endeavors, when efficiency is the order of the day. Scientists from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics have now applied these algorithms to a swarm of 50 autonomous shuttle robots working in a parts warehouse, in an effort to create a new and better type of materials-handling system.

The warehouse is actually a 1,000 square-meter (10,764 sq-ft) research facility, equipped to simulate a distribution center. It incorporates 600 small-parts bins located on storage shelves, and eight picking stations. The wheeled Multishuttle Moves robots are responsible for getting requested parts from the shelves, and delivering them to one of those stations as fast as possible.

Besides having microprocessors running software based on the ant algorithms, the robots are also equipped with distance sensors, accelerometers, and laser scanners. All of the robots are informed when an order comes in, and proceed to check in with each other via a wireless local area network, to find out which one is closest to the bin containing that part. The task is then assigned to that robot (assuming it’s available), which uses a combination of its onboard navigation software and sensory input to determine the quickest route to and from the bin, and to avoid running into other robots.

Traditionally, many distribution warehouses utilize roller tracks in the floors for the transportation of goods. According to Fraunhofer, one of the advantages of its system is the fact that it’s more scalable – the floor can be left unaltered, with whatever number of robots being deployed as needed. The robots should also be quicker, as they can determine the fastest route for each situation, instead of being limited to following the rollers every time.

Source: Fraunhofer



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Five Reflections about 21st Century Socialism

by Editors @ Monday, June 18th, 2012. Filed under Cuba, Marxism, Socialism, Venezuela

 

By Marta Harnecker

The journal Science and Society devoted a special number in April 2012 [Volume 76, No. 2] to explore central topics in the current discussion about socialism. Marta Harnecker and five other Marxist authors from different countries were invited to participate in this reflection by the editors Al Campbell and David Laibman, who prepared a set of five questions. This paper written in July 2011 presents her contribution with some foot notes that does not appear in the journal. The following topics are explored: 1. Why speak of socialism today?; 2. Central features of socialist organization of production; 3. Incentives and the level of consciousness in the construction of socialism; 4. Socialism and the transition to socialism; and 5. The centrality of participatory planning in socialism.

1. WHY SPEAK OF SOCIALISM TODAY?

1. Why talk about socialism at all if that word has carried and continues to carry such a heavy burden of negative connotations, after the collapse of socialism in the USSR and other Eastern European countries?

2. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union, Latin American and world leftist intellectuals were shocked. We knew better what we did not want in socialism than what we wanted. We rejected the lack of democracy, totalitarianism, state capitalism, bureaucratic central planning, collectivism that sought to standardize without respect for differences, productivism that emphasized the expansion of productive forces without taking into account the need to preserve nature, dogmatism, the attempt to impose atheism and persecution of believers, the need for a single party to lead the transition process.

3. But at the same time Soviet socialism was collapsing, democratic and participatory processes in local governments began to emerge in Latin America there, and these foreshadowed the "kind of alternative to capitalism that people wanted to build." These processes not only foreshadowed the new society; they also demonstrated in practice that people could govern in a transparent, non-corrupt, democratic and participatory manner. Political conditions in several Latin American countries were thus prepared, making it possible for the left to come to power through democratic elections.

4. Those lights that radiated throughout our continent were enhanced by the resounding failure of neoliberalism and, most recently, by the global crisis of capitalism. An alternative to capitalism thus started to become more necessary than ever. What should it be called?

5. It was President Chávez who had the courage to call socialism this alternative society to capitalism He called it "21st-century socialism," reclaiming the values associated with the word socialism: "love, solidarity, equality between men and women and equity among all," but adding the adjective "21st century" to differentiate the new socialism from the errors and deviations present in the model of socialism that was implemented during the 20th century in the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries.

6. However, it must be remembered that 35 years earlier, in the early 1970s in Chile, the victory of President Salvador Allende, supported by the leftist Popular Unity coalition, began the world's first peaceful transition to socialism. Although the Popular Unity government was defeated by a military coup three years later, it left important lessons. If our generation learned anything from that defeat, it was that peaceful progress towards that goal required us to rethink the socialist project applied until then in the world; that it was therefore necessary to develop a project that was more adequate to Chilean reality and more appropriate for a peaceful path. Allende's folkloric expression, "socialism with red wine and empanadas," seemed to capture this, pointing towards building a democratic socialist society rooted in national popular traditions.  And so I believe that the Chilean experience should be considered the first practical experience that tried to get away from the Soviet model of socialism and move toward what we now call 21st-century socialism.

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‘Third Wave’ Technology Driving 2012 Election

by Editors @ Sunday, June 10th, 2012. Filed under 2012 election, Organizing, Politics & Elections, Technology, Youth

Obama’s Data Advantage

By Lois Romano
SolidarityEconomy.net via Politico

June 9, 2012, CHICAGO — On the sixth floor of a sleek office building here, more than 150 techies are quietly peeling back the layers of your life.

They know what you read and where you shop, what kind of work you do and who you count as friends. They also know who your mother voted for in the last election.

The depth and breadth of the Obama campaign’s 2012 digital operation — from data mining to online organizing — reaches so far beyond anything politics has ever seen, experts maintain, that it could impact the outcome of a close presidential election. It makes the president’s much-heralded 2008 social media juggernaut — which raised half billion dollars and revolutionized politics — look like cavemen with stone tablets.

Mitt Romney indeed is ramping up his digital effort after a debilitating primary and, for sure, the notion that Democrats have a monopoly on cutting edge technology no longer holds water.

But it’s also not at all clear that Romney can come close to achieving the same level of technological sophistication and reach as his opponent. (The campaign was mercilessly ridiculed last month when it rolled out a new App misspelling America.)

“It’s all about the data this year and Obama has that. When a race is as close as this one promises to be, any small advantage could absolutely make the difference,” says Andrew Rasiej, a technology strategist and publisher of TechPresident. “More and more accurate data means more insight, more money, more message distribution, and more votes.”

Adds Nicco Mele, a Harvard professor and social media guru: “The fabric of our public and political space is shifting. If the Obama campaign can combine its data efforts with the way people now live their lives online, a new kind of political engagement — and political persuasion — is possible.”

Launched two weeks ago, Obama’s newest innovation is the much anticipated “Dashboard” , a sophisticated and highly interactive platform that gives supporters a blueprint for organizing, and communicating with each other and the campaign.

In addition, by harnessing the growing power of Facebook and other online sources, the campaign is building what some see as an unprecedented data base to develop highly specific profiles of potential voters. This allows the campaign to tailor messages directly to them — depending on factors such as socio-economic level, age and interests.

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