I'm crossing my fingers for Bird Flu

As you know, there are many troubles facing us in the not too distant future. I don't mean little troubles, like the fact that my winter boots are tragically out of fashion. I mean big troubles like our human race is doomed. 

If you think about it, our culture has been "on the brink" forever. Back in Biblical or Medieval times there was the ever constant danger of another tribe or culture raping and pillaging their way through your lands. Or disease. Or natural disaster, famine, or just a bad cut that wouldn't heal. A bad cut could easily kill you before penicillin was discovered only 80 years ago. Only 80 years ago! 

Before the relatively recent discovery of various vaccines and treatments (viruses weren't even theorized until 111 years ago in 1898), there was a pretty good chance that you'd not live to be 50. Most people before then snuffed-it before the ripe old age of 5 . Yes, sorry kids, five.

In the last few decades we've gone through several different fads of apathetic panic: nuclear annihilation in the cold war, AIDS, the ozone hole, terrorism, global warming, climate change, SARS, toxic pollution, world food shortage, etc. These sit in pale comparison to the Great World Wars and all the various civil wars and ethnic wars that have been flaring up around the globe, pretty much constantly. But we've always been on the edge of disaster.

But I've got my money on Bird Flu. 

Well, I don't actually have any money on it, but you know what I mean. Let's back up a bit. First, accept that our current rate of population growth and resource use just can't keep growing forever.  Not on this one planet anyway. Thanks, Mr. Spock, but this conversation is assuming that, at least for the time being, one planet is all we have. (By the way, since we've been evolving on this planet for millions of years, don't expect our physiology to work like a charm elsewhere).

So our population can't keep growing. But it will. As long as there is food, there will be more people. You can pass all the Chinese baby laws you want, the fact is our population follows the same dynamic as every other animal: more food, more animals; less food, fewer animals.

So how is our culture finally going to kick the bucket? 

Ebola won't do it. Ebola has been trying to start a fire for a while now, but it's just too deadly. Ebola has such a hard time spreading because it kills 50-90% of its carriers before they have a good chance of walking around at work coughing and pretending they're some kind of hero for not taking a sick day.

But Bird Flu can do it. It did once already. 90 years ago it killed more people than died in World War One: over 50 million people. Not a bad tally! I don't care what game you play, you've not got that many kills in any high score. Check out this map animation showing how H5N1 (a.k.a. Spanish Flu that time) laced the continental US in under one month! See if you can beat that.

One other huge advantage that Avian Influenza has is how it gets around. If you were going to design a virus that could spread well, you'd want a vector (transmitter) that travels the world, inhabits all the same places that people do, rubs shoulders with things like house cats and hunting dogs, and plays a key role in the human food chain. Birds. Nice choice, H5N1!

This might sound sick, but wait. Think about it. Our population isn't going to stay steady now, nor will it decline through our own choices and voluntary control. So as our population increases we will eventually run into something that will cause either slow, managed decline (like a Great Depression that never ends), or a rapid decline like nuclear war, biological weapons malfunction, massive catastrophic climatic collapse, or wars over water, food, land, oil, uranium, or what have you.

So, Bird Flu is the way to go. Yep. No nasty post-nuclear war cancers for the survivors. No wars, no terrorism, no ethnic cleansings or religious craziness (sure, the religious businesses will boom as they sell hope and repentance. They've got the bases covered there). But it won't be a case of one group of people doing horrible things to another group (The Nazi's were cruel and inefficient compared to a virus anyway). Just good, old fashioned survival of the fittest on a biological level, not a political one.  It will just be a good virus doing what it does best. And it's doing it already.

I'm not trying to spread panic. These guys will tell you when to panic. And these guys will make a tidy profit selling stuff online when it comes around. I'm just saying: If we're going to go out anyway, why not go down fighting something together, united as a species? Bird Flu doesn't care what race you are, or what beliefs you hold. It doesn't care what you look like, or if you know the chords to Stairway to Heaven. In fact, Bird Flu (the 1918 strain) had a particular fondness for young healthy adults, so it's not picking on the old or the children unfairly.

When our kind is to be culled, I'm crossing my fingers for Bird Flu.

Have you read these books?

Perhaps someday everyone will have their own website. Geeks who are reading this are saying, "what do you mean, we all have for 12 years now!" I mean 'everyone' as in a significant proportion of the population. Of all ages. It will happen. At the latest it will be when today's 15 year-olds are 70 and anyone born before the Internet is long gone or at least out to pasture.

But it will probably happen much sooner than that. New tools are popping up every day that make it easier and easier for people with no programming or graphic design or even computer aptitude to build a site of their own. Mostly for fun or curiosity (like this blog), some for business purposes, and some because there was a need (WeGoWeGo.com and GreenLid The Landscape Architecture Resource for example). If you're reading this blog then chances are you already know what I mean. Blogger, facebook, Ning, Google Pages, etc.

I've been dinking around with this blog for a year now. Mostly to try stuff out, experiment with widgets, dream of earning money from google adsense... Don't we all? When musing on personal websites I thought it would be really cool if I had a site that kept track of and shared all the books I've read (if I can remember them all). I found the astore at Amazon to actually work well: I can find almost any book and have its picture and some info about it posted, in categories, and online. I'd rather it was more of a chat group, sharing, discussion thing, as it lacks any interaction tools, but it works for now. So here's my reading list (in progress): Have you read these books?

Facebook: what is it good for?

Matt Maroon posted a nice piece on Facebook and why it's crap. I was moved to write a comment which morphed into a full-blown blog post. So I've shamelessly copied it here. Partly to compensate for a lack of posting lately, and party because, well.. I was moved.

A year ago when Facebook launched their SDK I was excited that they were turning it into a platform. And then the junk apps started to fly like so many winged monkeys.
So what if they create a search, stock-market simulators, movie listings, games, photo-sharing aps, etc. until the cows come home? At some point all they've done is create a smaller, crappier version of the www. So why bother? So everyone I've ever kinda sorta met can tell how much time I waste?
It burns me just a little more every time I log in to FB to check all the useless spam that my 100 friends have generated and there's one more jackass selling me some pepsi or real estate tips or concert tickets I don't want because he's ripped my info off of someone's app. Or essentially cold calling me because I'm a "friend" of a "friend".
Great innovations are things that solve problems. Google solved the problem of how to find info. Facebook creates at least as many problems as it will ever solve. There will be a tipping point of spaminess where just enough people will say "fuck this" and Facebook will just disintegrate like wet toilet paper. Let's just hope the next friendster/myspace/beebo/orkut will be... well what? more of the same? A talking phone book? An implanted chip that vibrates every time someone whose name I know changes their socks? Do we really need to all belong to one big social network? Maybe the future will be more about services that actually solve problems. When the novelty honeymoon of everyone being online (not just your other 2 geek friends) wears off, everyone will come back to the basic question: what do I need this for?

Beyond the Information Age

As any avid blog reader knows, the information age is already behind us. Let's say it was basically 1985 to 2001 give or take. Intrinsically we all know it: life is no longer linear. Our transition out of the information age reaches into every corner of our lives. We are now in the recommendation age according to Chris Anderson author of the Long Tail. Distributed intelligence and the probabilistic truth model of Wikipedia and the likes has taken our Post Modern world view and stretched it until it has given birth to a new paradigm. Information is everywhere, ubiquitous, always on. It's a matter now of organizing the infinite cornucopia of information into meaningful systems, networks, and experiences.

Life is no longer linear, in fact linearity seems funny in some ways now.
If you are old enough, you'll remember a time when businesses would name themselves silly things like "AAA Pools" just so they would show up first in the phone book (a paper anthology of businesses that people used to read to find information before Google and keyword search).

Back when music was stored on physical media such as records, tapes, and cd's you used to have to buy a whole album just to get one or two songs you liked. What a rip-off.

There was even a time when people watched television for the news! Imagine having to sit and wait for half an hour (and through commercials) just to get to the 10 second story you were interested in. How pompous of the newscasters to decide what I want to know about. Who did they think they were?!(Incidentally, for those of you who don't use tv anymore, fyi they still broadcast news shows. You should see one someday, what a laugh! There's no substance, no context. It's all fear-mongering and shocking images. I watch the cbc news when I eat breakfast because it's so geriatric and funny it makes my day.)

As a kid I remember listening to the radio for hours hoping that they would eventually play a song that I liked (please don't laugh, it still hurts). Nope, sorry kids, there was nothing to click on that would make it go. I had to wait in line like everyone else. Now, thank God, we can all have our own personal radio station (sorry, this link only works in -gasp- Internet Explorer.

We are going through such a huge evolution of culture right now that in 100 years or less the twentieth century will be lumped in with the Enlightenment as the historical period between the Medieval Ages (before the printing press) and the current epoch (after the internet).
Welcome to the future.