Thoughts

Greetings fellow bipeds:

It has been my tradition to write a short email to friends and family on New Year’s Eve just as a way to connect the past to the future and to connect with my sputniks, my fellow travelers.

There was a time in America when one could be placed under surveillance, or worse yet, be arrested for writing just such words as sputnik or fellow traveler. Yes, during the Cold War to use a word thought to be a “communist” word was a dangerous thing indeed. So, is it OK, just now, to say that I love the Russian language? I really love that the word “Mir” means both Peace and Earth. I must admit here that my greatest joys come from the simplest of things. Like a smile, or just the right word used in just the right way.

I enjoy etymology. Take the word “bistro” for example. This is the Russian word for “quickly”. It is said that during a previous century, when Russians were aplenty in France, the waiters would often hear a Russian or two chanting “Bistro, bistro” -- you take it from there.

Words were invented to be used as a means of communication, to express thoughts and feelings. But here is a sticky point: words can only fulfill their purpose if used properly with proper intent. Words are too often misused to create fear, confusion, or to misinform. It is clear words are more often than ever used for all the wrong reasons. With cell phones, the Internet and all the modern communications tools, we are certainly communicating faster, but are we communicating any better?

It is important to feel free enough say at least one highly controversial thing to friends per year. Freedom is useless without opportunity and so I use this illusionary boundary between one year and the next as just such an opportunity. This year, looking back I will say that the events of 9/11 changed nothing of historical importance. Humans are constantly doing such things out of greed, or fear or stupidity. To give the event historical importance is to give those who perpetrated it exactly what they were hoping to achieve. If one were to look for the most important historical event in history it would be the rise of the Internet. The Internet has changed things so radically, if it were a living being it could be called a revolutionary and someone would shoot it or crucify it out of fear and stupidity. And what is more, the Internet will continue to change things in ways that only few of us can even imagine. Machine to machine communications will flourish making it easier and easier for more and more “things” to do all the work, gather all the information and make more and more of the decisions. A dangerous thing, that.

And just maybe we are, as I feel, at an epoch at this very moment. Maybe choices made in 2010 will set the course of humanity for the next millennium. In 2010 we will find out.

Even now machines are tracking our every move. Presently most credit cards, passports, driver’s licenses, even clothing and shoes contain RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips. When a human walks into a bank, store, airport, hotel or government building they must pass through an RFID reader.

Some comments on the past, the present, and the upcoming year and decade...

These RFID readers are connected by the Internet to any number of public and private databases, government agencies or worse yet, sales people. If you really want the silent alarm bells to go off then simply be in the wrong place without the right chip. There is not time here to go into detail as to what this means to humanity as a whole, so you will need to make use of your own imagination, or borrow someone else’s.

Water: humans are made mostly of the stuff and it is the most amazing stuff. Humans quickly die without water and can get very sick from water that is only slightly contaminated. I say every year that that the most important technology is one that can simply and effectively make dirty water clean at a minimum cost.

Recently there was word of the possible discovery of large amounts of water on the moon. My friend Arthur Clarke wrote of water on Europa – a moon of Jupiter (this was later found to be true by a robotic mission to that moon) - and of a strange obelisk on the moon of earth. Everything is connected.

When Arthur passed on I was less sad for his friends and family than I was for humanity as a whole. Arthur’s words carried respect, and Arthur’s vision for humanity was more selfless and clear than any other I have encountered. Arthur and I worked on alternative energy projects together - projects I would have rejected as poppycock, projects that focused on using water to produce clean, safe, and as Arthur liked to called it, Infinite Energy - but my feeling was that if Arthur was interested

in something, that something deserved respect. Arthur convinced me of the urgency for humanity to take the first real steps to leave the cradle. Arthur knew that the recent geological period had been one of anomalous stability. But such periods are bound to come to an abrupt halt and humanity is most certainly not ready. I and others have been working to send a team of minibots to the moon to look for structures which could be used as easy habitats for the first human lunar inhabitants. I feel certain this will happen in 2010.

And if something is going to happen, it could be most useful to have a bit of forewarning based on scientific evidence. There exists a technology that listens to the electromagnetic voice of the planet earth. A low-cost sensor grid distributed around the earth by way of the Internet could offer some advance warning of impending earth changes. This would be a great mission for someone to take on in 2010.

Please open your minds and open your hearts in 2010. This year, I feel will be a most important year for the human race. Now is the time for the thinkers and the visionaries to work hand in hand with the dreamers and the doers. Now is the time for humans everywhere to do the right thing.