#empathy has gone virtually extinct

[soyosauce]

On Using Culture As Language In Last Tango In Cyberspace

“THIS REVOLUTION IS FOR DISPLAY PURPOSES ONLY.”

Last Tango in Cyberspace makes culture a character to be explored in equal measure as the main character. Lion, an empathy-tracker, or em-tracker for short—uses his unique talent to consume curated content provided by clients and extrapolate a future; not at an individual level, mind you, rather as a glimpse at the cultural significance regarding the content in the future. It’s an amalgamation of genetic drifts which hardwires an em-trackers’ pattern recognition. Hacking their intuition to do a sort of cultural prognostication.

“A small robot standing on a busy city street corner, looking around. I SEE HUMANS BUT NO HUMANITY.”

Em-trackers methods vary with the person and there are very few known trackers, at least in so far as ones operating in the same capacity of Lion, doing this very niche work for a living. A very good living at that.

Lion, in particular, is rigged to make these deductions from words and logos, though it’s gestured that each tracker would be completely different. He processes the content he’s given, reacts, and tells the client if he sees a future or not. It’s usually a binary answer; a “yes” or a “no.”

“His journalism days are behind him. No longer does he get paid for the plot. Now, he’s paid for saying yes or no—the sum total of his contractual obligations. His work in the world reduced to one-word responses. When, he wonders, did his life get so small?”

Superficially, this book is about Lion being contracted by a major corporate entity to take a look at a crime scene and apply his talents… but this is a very unorthodox application of his gifts and one which ends up taking him down a rabbit hole. Ostensibly it’s a murder mystery wrapped up in noir trappings, something people might expect from cyberpunk. This is where the clear iterations from the sub-culture come into play, however. Within the tropes of a pleasurable whodunit, there’s much more to be consumed.

“You can’t scrub everything,” says Lorenzo. “Information gets what it wants, and it wants to be free.”

A specific trope that follows noir elements in cyberpunk, the investigator in over their head, is a unique vernacular used. There is typically a colloquial dialect that is foreign to the reader and makes them feel a fish out of water. The reader interprets what these cultural elements are in the future with the remix of certain words or the use of completely fictional words, from time to time. Interestingly, the dialect used in this novel is pop culture itself. Not in the very limited sense of Ready Player One, where games, gamers, and gaming is the language—but in landmark moments in cinema and literature that is reasonably absorbed into the general intellect of society. The most common being the novel Dune. Lion carries it with him all the time and is the cornerstone for the explanation of Lion’s gifts and poly-tribalism, a central component to the way Lion looks at culture in the story. People are intersectional beings with complex identities. Tracing the identity back to its origin is possible with technology these days. Appealing to particular facets of the identity can be a predictor for if something is to be successful and thrive or be consumed by another identity that dominates it.

'“Shifting culture requires a confluence of inciting incidents. Something directional that leads to a tribal fracturing and reknitting. Often shows up in language first. In music. Fashion. It can feel a little like hope.” He points at the images. “This doesn’t feel like hope.”

I think this approach both hinders and helps Last Tango in Cyberspace. For one, it’s an interesting use of the trope which proved satisfying to read for me, personally. I had never read Dune but it is explained as needed. I never felt lost. However, I could see some people who had read the book and disagree with the cultural impacts asserted in the text having a problem with most of the book, as it draws from it heavily at a personal level for Lion, as well as a fundamental shorthand for what is happening in the plot; ingrained in the theme and a permanent fixture.

“Words are just bits of information, but language is the full code. It’s wired into every stage of meaning-making, from basic emotions all the way up to abstract thought. Once you can speak a language, you can feel in that language. It’s automatic. It creates empathy.”

The frenetic pacing that accompanies cyberpunk literature is replaced with a sort of artificial acceleration with the structure of the book. Lots of very short chapters, in other words. This allows for expounding on the cultural aspects that are conveyed during the text. You notice what Lion notices. These details becoming foundational to the extrapolations he draws on later. What this means though, is the pacing is somewhat sacrificed in order to get the reader to do the same types of pattern recognition Lion does during the book. It’s clever, but a slow burn.

”Hybridization, he figures, is destined to become one of the ways this generation out-rebels the last generation. How we went from long-haired hippie freaks to pierced punk rockers to transsexual teenagers taking hormones.”

For me, the slower pace made it feel reminiscent of Takeshi Kovach in Altered Carbon. Envoys in that novel “soak up” culture in order to fit in and navigate foreign cultures. Lion’s talent feels like it takes that idea and explores it more thoroughly, engaging with it more, and this method allows you to soak up the information as well. If it were frenetic some of the details would be lost, I feel.

“Lion glances back at the pigeons. Sees a flicker he didn’t notice before. Remembers that the de-extinction program was a failed effort, realizes he’s looking at a light-vert. An AR projection of an almost. The bad dreams of a society disguised as a good time.”

A concept continually being reiterated in the novel is “living the questions.” Something that also subverts first wave cyberpunk, the characters of which are generally on the spectrum somewhere, unlikeable and/or anti-social, and live on the fringes of society in a sub-culture of some kind.

Lion, however, is an embodiment of empathy. He is in stark contrast to those protagonists, relating to most everyone and so can assume their point of view. To the extent, in fact, he resolves to not use his talents on other people.

“We ache for this feeling, but it’s everywhere. Booze, drugs, sex, sport, art, prayer, music, meditation, virtual reality. Kids, hyperventilating, spinning in circles, feel oneness. Why William James called it the basic lesson of expanded consciousness—just tweak a few knobs and levers in the brain and bam. So the drop, the comedown, it’s not that we miss oneness once it’s gone; it’s that we suddenly can’t feel what we actually know is there. Phantom limb syndrome for the soul.”

Last Tango in Cyberspace feels like a love letter to cyberpunk while updating it. In Neuromancer, for example, Gibson’s Rastafarians were a source of major critique. They are also featured in this novel but the author instead traces the cultural aspects and importance of Rastafarian influences on western mainstream culture. It felt as though it was making a point to correct the caricature found in the original source material. Whether or not it succeeds I leave up to someone who’s more educated on that and can speak to it—but the intent is clear.

“the failure of language.” “It’s a creative destruction. Out of that failure comes culture. Out of culture comes desire. Out of desire come products.”

This led me to the only thing I didn’t like about the novel and a personal pet peeve of mine: authors phonetically using foreign language in dialogue. It’s usually done as a form of cultural appreciation and authenticity, I’m sure… but it results in the author needing to clarify what is being said regardless and it just feels uncomfortable. It’s pretty much always from a Western perspective on a minority culture and usually is the default assumption of what the culture sounds like. Lion is able to converse with them for plausible reasons, often not the case when this is encountered, but it’s always left me feeling squeamish. Just tell me they have an accent, placing them in whatever area if that is relevant.

“…what is genuine emotion and what is business strategy. The modern condition.”

As Lion navigates the mystery and ping-pongs about the globe consuming the clues surrounding the mysterious death the reader, too, is engaging in this meta-language. Both in terms of how it subverts or remixes cyberpunk tropes, as well as the cultural context and information Lion imparts as his process. All of which is given weight. Hooking the plot into these details down the line as it comes together.

Most interestingly of all perhaps, the author goes out of their way to state that all of the technology exists in the world today, or is in a lab somewhere being worked on, at the very least.

“The car sees emotions. Signals have been pre-programmed, down to the basement level, below Ekman’s micro-expressions, getting to the core biophysical: heart rate variability, blood oxygen levels. And all from pointing a laser at a tiny vein in the human forehead. The car sees emotions, yet feels nothing. So morality too has to be pre-scripted into the code. Aim for garbage cans and not pedestrians; aim for solitary pedestrians rather than large groups. Empathy programmer, he’s heard it called, someone’s job now.”

This makes the future we are presented with prescient in the same way Neuromancer did with the advent of the Internet and the rise of technology in the ’90s. But where technophobia is firmly rooted in first wave cyberpunk. Last Tango in Cyberspace is making a virtue of humanities peculiarities, some of which we barely grasp. While the Internet is not something we may understand, so too are we learning the same of our own minds. Empathy, after all, is not something we gained from modernity.

“Rilke knew what was up. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, one distant day, live right into the answer. What’s truer than that?”

And empathy seems to be the thing we desperately need right now, rather than the consensual hallucination that allows us to connect to others while, at the same time, enabling us to dehumanize each other.

“Last tango in cyberspace…the end of something radically new. Copy that.”

“Pitch black again. Like someone extinguished an angel.”

[lostissarahsophiacaruana]

Do Androids Dream of Robot Sheep

Synopsis:  “In post-apocalyptic 1992 (2021 in later editions),[2] following a devastating global war called "World War Terminus", the Earth's radioactively polluted atmosphere leads the United Nations to encourage mass emigrations to off-world colonies to preserve humanity's genetic integrity. Moving away from Earth comes with the incentive of free personal androids: highly advanced robot servants that are practically identical to humans. The characters and text refer to these androids (or "andys") variously as "robots", "machines", and "programmed", but it is later made clear that they are constructed of organic materials so similar to a human's that only a tedious "bone marrow analysis" can independently prove the difference. To save time in identifying incognito androids, various polygraph-style personality tests have been devised.The Rosen Association manufactures the androids on the colony of Mars, but certain androids violently rebel and escape to the underpopulated Earth where they hope to remain undetected. Despite their realistic appearance and advanced intellect, androids are not treated as equals to humans. They are prohibited from doing many things, including emigrating from the colonies to Earth. Therefore, American and Soviet police departments remain vigilant, keeping bounty-hunting officers on duty to track and "retire" fugitive androids. Similar to the androids, humans with mental disabilities, psychological disorders, or genetic defects, called "specials", are also treated as sub-human; they are forced to remain on Earth and are prohibited from traveling to the colonies.On Earth, owning real live animals has become a fashionable status symbol, both because mass extinctions have made authentic animals rare and because of the accompanying cultural push for greater empathy. High-status animals such as horses cost far more than low-status animals. However, poor people can only afford realistic-looking robot imitations of live animals. Rick Deckard, for example, owns an electric black-faced sheep. These artificial animals appear and feel identical to real animals, but are described as "electric", having "circuits" and hidden access "control panels", and requiring "repairs". Compared to the android robots, Deckard regards these electric animals as "a kind of vastly inferior robot".The trend of increased empathy has coincidentally motivated a new technology-based religion called Mercerism, which uses "empathy boxes" to link users simultaneously to a virtual reality of collective suffering, centered on a martyr-like character, Wilbur Mercer, who eternally climbs up a hill while being hit with crashing stones. Acquiring high-status animal pets and linking in to empathy boxes appear to be the only two ways that humans can attain existential fulfillment.Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter for the San Francisco Police Department, is assigned to "retire" (kill) six androids of the new and highly intelligent Nexus-6 model which have recently escaped from Mars and traveled to Earth. These androids are capable of extremely realistic behaviors, which make them difficult to detect, but Deckard hopes to earn enough bounty money to buy a live animal to replace his lone electric sheep. Deckard visits the Rosen Association's headquarters in Seattle to confirm the accuracy of the latest empathy test, which he suspects may not be capable of distinguishing the latest Nexus-6 models from genuine human beings. The test appears to give a false positive on CEO Eldon Rosen's niece, Rachael, meaning the police have potentially been executing human beings. Rosen attempts to blackmail Deckard to get him to drop the case, but Deckard retests Rachael and determines that Rachael is, indeed, an android, which both Rosens ultimately admit.Deckard soon meets a Soviet police contact who turns out to be one of the Nexus-6 renegades in disguise. Deckard kills the android, then flies off to kill his next target: an android living in disguise as an opera singer. Meeting her backstage, Deckard administers the empathy test, but she calls the police. Failing to recognize Deckard as a bounty hunter, they arrest and detain him at a police station he has never heard of, filled with officers whom he is surprised never to have met. An official named Garland accuses Deckard himself of being an android with implanted memories. After a series of mysterious revelations at the station, Deckard ponders the ethical and philosophical questionshis line of work raises regarding android intelligence, empathy, and what it means to be human. Garland, pointing a laser gun at Deckard, then reveals that the entire station is a sham, claiming that both he and Phil Resch, the station's resident bounty hunter, are androids. Resch shoots Garland in the head, escaping with Deckard back to the opera singer, whom Resch brutally kills in cold blood when she alludes that he may be an android. Desperate to know the truth, Resch asks Deckard to use the empathy test on him, which confirms that he is actually human, and then Deckard tests himself, discovering that he has a sense of empathy for certain androids.Deckard buys his wife Iran an authentic Nubian goat with the bounty money. His supervisor then insists that he visit an abandoned apartment building, where the three remaining android fugitives are assumed to be hiding. Experiencing a vision of the prophet-like Mercer confusingly telling him to proceed, despite the immorality of the mission, Deckard calls on Rachael Rosen again, since her knowledge of android psychology may aid his investigation. Rachael declines to help, but reluctantly agrees to meet Deckard at a hotel in exchange for him abandoning the case. At the hotel, she reveals that one of the fugitive androids is the same exact model as herself, meaning that he will have to shoot down an android that looks just like her. Rachael coaxes Deckard into sex, after which they confess their love for one another. However, she reveals she has slept with many bounty hunters, having been programmed to do so in order to dissuade them from their missions. He threatens to kill her, but holds back at the last moment. He leaves for the abandoned apartment building.Meanwhile, the three remaining Nexus-6 android fugitives plan how they can outwit Deckard. The building's only other inhabitant, John R. Isidore, a radioactively damaged and intellectually below-average human, attempts to befriend them, but is shocked when they callously torture and mutilate a rare spider he's found. They all watch a television program which presents definitive evidence that the entire theology of Mercerism is a hoax. Deckard enters the building, experiencing strange, supernatural premonitions of Mercer notifying him of an ambush. Since they attack him first, Deckard is legally justified as he shoots down all three androids without testing them beforehand. Isidore is devastated, and Deckard is soon rewarded for a record number of Nexus-6 kills in a single day. When Deckard returns home, he finds Iran grieving because Rachael Rosen arrived while he was gone and killed their goat.Deckard goes to an uninhabited, obliterated region of Oregon to reflect. He climbs a hill and is hit by falling rocks, and realizes this is an experience eerily similar to Mercer's martyrdom. He stumbles abruptly upon what he thinks is a real toad (an animal thought to be extinct) but, when he returns home with it, his wife discovers it is just a robot.”

[parchment-and-petrichor]

This is as good a time to write this review as any, given how much furor Harlequin Teen has received over The Black Witch lately... I read Nexis with full intentions of reading the sequel, Redux in time for its release, but I can't in good conscience read Redux, let alone finish Nexis. Which I feel really terrible about because I received Redux not just in exchange for an honest review from the publisher, but I got it as a granted Wish on NetGalley... If anything, I hope this post raises awareness as to the types of things publishers should be aware of when considering sensitivity reads.

This series has an interesting enough premise. It's set in a post-apocalyptic world (called Evanescence, by the way. I hope that sets the tone...) where humans have let the Earth fall to ruin. The poor are left to rot in the toxic air of the outside world while the elite literally live in their own bubble of ignorance. It's essentially a cheap imitation of The Diabolic. The elite pat themselves on the back for doing a favour to the poor by creating virtual reality video games that allows people to essentially live a second life. (So basically, virtual reality Sims.) Fine. Cool. The author says to just roll with it and let it happen.

So I do.

In amongst this dystopian world is Ellani, who happens to go by 500 different pet names, half of them cringe-worthy. She's a stuck up, bratty teen obsessed with boys and disrespectful to her father, who tries so hard to teach her how the Earth once was and all the terrible things human beings have done to it in their selfishness. I can see where Davroe is going with this. It's heavy-handed, and you expect Ellani to get it at some point and realise she has to do something about it. But nope.

In one ear and out the other.

While her father's busy trying to teach her empathy for the world that once was, she's too preoccupied with begging for plastic surgery for her birthday because she's the only one who hasn't been altered in some way. She also happens to solely accept validation in the form of how many boys notice and fall in love with her. So vapid is she, she's apparently "in love with" the prince, who never gives her the time of day, never said a word to her, and doesn't even know who she is. Not only that, he owns what Davroe is calling Dolls, who are basically slaves he uses to experiment cosmetic surgery upon... If this were, say, The Hunger Games, this would be making all sorts of really intense social commentary on just how corrupt and beauty-obsessed society has become. But no, this, just like everything else, is treated as the norm.

Not only is cosmetic surgery completely normalised in this world, so is assimilation of culture. It's explained early on that black people were completely weeded out of the gene pool. They're literally extinct. At this point, I have to put down my ereader and whisper eugenics to myself, which is never a word I want to associate with books I'm reading unless it's something making important statements against it. This book is not, and in fact, is so blasé, I almost miss when they use the actual word eugenics to explain the way people look so homogenous. And it's not in a "eugenics happened and now the world is fucked up" way. But in a "oh, and also, eugenics... anyway..." way. Casual as you please. As if the reader's just supposed to accept it and move on. Because that's exactly what the characters do...

So, Ellani enters the game, which takes all its world-building from how the world used to be before mankind destroyed it. And for 4.5 seconds, she's taken with how beautiful it is and what a shame that the sky and wildlife and trees and rain are gone. And I think, thank god, maybe she'll be motivated to do something about it in the real world.

But then a boy comes along. And it's instalove, so everything else she was inspired by has instantly been wiped clean from her brain (not literally, but wouldn't that be interesting?) because clearly boys are more important than stopping planetary extinction...

Just when you think I'm done describing the offensive things being so casually name-dropped in this novel, I have one more horrifying tidbit. The big, instigating plot device that gets Ellani into the game in the first place is this big crash which (spoiler alert), kills her father. Fine, you could see it coming from miles away. Alright. But then she loses her legs. And given how poorly Davroe has handled literally everything else in this novel so far, you can maybe see where this is going. Two or so chapters later, she enters the game and discovers she can have her legs back. Well, I was looking forward to seeing a disabled character kick ass in a dystopian world (again, please see The Hunger Games!), but sure, this isn't a horrifying, ableist alternative at all...

I can now glean a couple messages Davroe is leaving with this:

Attention from cute boys is all the validation girls need.

Being beautiful is all girls should aspire to be.

God forbid, if you wind up disabled, you're better off dead.

You know what was a good idea? The Holocaust.

Cool. With that, I have absolutely no interest, or intention of reading the rest of this series. I sincerely hope Entangled Publishing reads this review and strives to do better next time.

The sequel comes out today, guys. PLEASE DON’T READ IT.

[j-kaiwa]

Discussion Article April 1st

7 Predictions About the Future That Should Scare the Hell Out of You

The future looks bright, except when it doesn’t. Here are 10 exceptionally regrettable developments we can expect in the coming decades. 

Listed in no particular order.

1. Virtually anyone will be able to create their own pandemic

Earlier this year, Oxford’s Global Priorities Project compiled a list of catastrophes that could kill off 10 percent or more of the human population. High on the list was a deliberately engineered pandemic, and the authors warned that it could happen in as few as five years.

Many of the technologies for this prospect are starting to appear, including theCRISPR/cas9 gene-editing system and 3D-bioprinters. What’s more, the blueprints for this kind of destruction are being made available. A decade ago, futurist Ray Kurzweil and technologist Bill Joy scolded the US Department of Health for publishing the full genome of the 1918 influenza virus, calling it “extremely foolish.” More recently, a number of scientists spoke out when Nature decided to publish a so-called “gain of function” study explaining how the bird flu could be mutated into something even deadlier.

The fear is that a rogue state, terrorist group, or a malign individual might create their own virus and unleash it. Natural selection is good at creating nasty and highly prolific viruses, but imagine what intentional design could concoct.

2. People who transfer their minds to computers are actually killing themselves

One of the more radical visions of the future is a world in which biological humans have traded-in their corporeal bodies in favor of a purely digital existence. This would require a person to literally upload their mind to a supercomputer, but this hypothetical process might actually result in the permanent destruction of the original person. It would be a form of unintentional suicide.

This is what’s known as the “continuity of consciousness” problem. Sure, we may eventually be able to cut, copy, and paste the essence of a person’s personality and memories to a digital substrate, but transferring the seat of consciousness itself may be an untenable proposition. Neuroscientists know that memories are parked in the brain as physical constructs; there’s something physically there to copy. But consciousness still eludes our understanding, and we’re not certain how it arises in the brain, let alone how we can transfer it from point A to point B. It’s also quite possible that subjective awareness cannot be replicated in the digital realm, and that it’s dependent on the presence and orientation of specific physical structures.

Many futurists predict that one day we'll upload our minds into computers, where we'll…

Mind uploading will likely require destructive atomic-scale scanning of the brain. It would be similar to the way teleportation is done in Star Trek. Indeed, one of the dirty little secrets of this sci-fi show is that the person being teleported is actually killed each time it happens, replaced by an exact duplicate who’s none the wiser. Mind transfers could be similar, where the original brain is destroyed, replaced by a digital being who’s convinced they’re still the original—but it would be a delusion.

3. Authoritarianism will make a comeback

As threats to national security increase, and as these threats expand in severity, governments will find it necessary to enact draconian measures. Over time, many of the freedoms and civil liberties we currently take for granted, such as the freedom of assembly, the right to privacy (more on this next—it’s worse than you think), or the right to travel both within and beyond the borders of our home country, could be drastically diminished.

At the same time, a fearful population will be more tempted and willing to elect a hardline government that promises to throw the hammer down on perceived threats—even overtly undemocratic regimes.

The threats to national security will have to be severe to instigate these changes, but history has precedents. Following the September 11 attacks and the subsequent mailings of anthrax spores, the US government enacted the Homeland Security Act. This legislation was criticized for being too severe and reactionary, but it’s a perfect example of what happens when a nation feels under threat. Now imagine what would happen if another 9/11-type event happened, but one involving hundreds of thousands of deaths, or even millions.

Such an act of terrorism could be unleashed through miniaturized nuclear weapons, or the deliberate release of bioweapons. And the fact that small groups, and even single individuals, will have the power to attain and use these weapons will only make governments and citizens more willing to accept the loss of freedoms.

4. Privacy will become a thing of the past

We are rapidly approaching the era of ubiquitous surveillance, a time when virtually every aspect of our lives will be monitored. Privacy as we know it will cease to exist, supplanted by Big Brother’s eyes and ears.

Governments, ever fearful of internal and external threats, will increasingly turn to low-cost, high-tech surveillance technologies. Corporations, eager to track the tendencies and behaviors of its users, will find it impossible to resist. Citizens of the surveillance society will have no choice but to accept that every last detail of their lives will be recorded.

Already today, surveillance cameras litter our environment, while our computers, smartphones, and tablet devices follow our daily affairs, whether it be our purchasing proclivities or the types of porn we watch.

Looking ahead, government agencies and police could deploy more sophisticated tracking devices, including the much-anticipated smart dust—tiny sensors that would monitor practically anything, from light and temperature to chemicals and vibrations. These particles could be sprinkled around Earth, functioning as the eyes and ears of the planet. In conjunction with powerful data mining algorithms, virtually everything we do would be monitored. To ensure accountability, we could watch the watchers—but will they allow it?

5. Robots will find it easy to manipulate us

Long before artificial intelligences become truly conscious or self-aware, they’ll be programmed by humans and corporations to seem that way. We’ll be tricked into thinking they have minds of their own, leaving us vulnerable to all manner of manipulation and persuasion. Such is the near future envisaged by futurist and sci-fi novelist David Brin. He refers to these insidious machine minds as HIERS, or Human-Interaction Empathetic Robots.

“Human empathy is both one of our paramount gifts and among our biggest weaknesses,” Brin told Gizmodo. “For at least a million years, we’ve developed skills at lie-detection...[but] no liars ever had the training that these new HIERS will get, learning via feedback from hundreds, then thousands, then millions of human exchanges around the world, adjusting their simulated voices and facial expressions and specific wordings, till the only folks able to resist will be sociopaths—and they have plenty of chinks in their armor, as well.”

We puny humans can be depressingly fragile and flawed, a realization that's all the more…

Brin figures that some experts will be able to tell when they’re being manipulated by one of these bots, but “that will matter about as much as it does today, as millions of voters cast their ballots based on emotional cues, defying their own clear self-interest or reason.” Eventually, robots may guide and protect their gullible human partners, advising them when “to ignore the guilt-tripping scowl, the pitiable smile, the endearingly winsome gaze, the sob story or eager sales pitch—and, inevitably, the claims of sapient pain at being persecuted or oppressed for being a robot.”

6. The effects of climate change will be irreversible

Late last year, world leaders forged an agreement to limit human-caused global warming to two degrees Celsius. It’s a laudable goal, but we may have already passed a critical tipping point. The effects of climate change are going to be felt for hundreds, and possibly thousands, of years to come. And as we enter into the planet’s Sixth Mass Extinction, we run the risk of damaging critical ecosystems and radically diminishing the diversity of life on Earth.

Climate models show that even if carbon dioxide levels came to a sudden halt, the levels of this greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere will continue to warm our planet for hundreds of years. Our oceans will slowly release the CO2 it has been steadily absorbing, and our atmosphere may not return to pre-industrial levels for many centuries. As a recent assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated, “A large fraction of climate change is largely irreversible on human time scales.”

In The Bulletin, science writer Dawn Stover lists the ramifications:

The melting of snow and ice will expose darker patches of water and land that absorb more of the sun’s radiation, accelerating global warming and the retreat of ice sheets and glaciers. Scientists agree that the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet has already gone into an unstoppable decline. Currents that transport heat within the oceans will be disrupted. Ocean acidification will continue to rise, with unknown effects on marine life. Thawing permafrost and sea beds will release methane, a greenhouse gas. Droughts predicted to be the worst in 1,000 years will trigger vegetation changes and wildfires, releasing carbon. Species unable to adapt quickly to a changing climate will go extinct. Coastal communities will be submerged, creating a humanitarian crisis.

Our only recourse, it would seem, is to start geoengineering the planet, but that will also introduce complications.

7. The antibiotic era will end

An increasing number of diseases are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Eventually, we could make the unhappy transition to a “post-antibiotic era,” a time when even the most routine infections could threaten our lives.

The era of antimicrobial resistant bacteria will change medicine as we know it. Transplant surgery will become difficult, if not impossible. Simple operations, such as a burst appendix, will be perilous once again. Pneumonia would ravage the elderly, as would many other diseases of old age, including cancer.

How bad could it get? A recent report by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in Britain predicted that the new era of antimicrobial resistance will kill upwards of 10 million people each year by 2050. No wonder they’re calling it the “antibiotic apocalypse.”

A team of scientists has discovered a gene that renders bacteria resistant to colistin, a so-called …

Thankfully, we’re not completely out of options. Scientists are currently on the hunt for undiscovered antibacterial compounds. They’re also working to develop bacteria-fighting viruses and vaccines. Failing that, we could alway design artificial microorganisms that can hunt down and destroy problematic bacteria.

[mrmichaelchadler]

Sundance 2019: The Empathy of Virtual Reality

There's the age-old adage that one cannot understand the experience of another unless you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. But it's not often that we are willing or able to physically remove ourselves from personal comforts to truly empathize with others. At the New Frontier Exhibits at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, there was considerable enthusiasm for technologies that allow people to replicate engagement with the physical world. As Chris Milk puts it in his TED talk, virtual reality (VR) is “the ultimate empathy machine.”

Experiences are what delineate us as humans, so it comes as no surprise that a powerful VR experience can be more effective than simply visualizing something. Sundance’s New Frontier allows interactive storytellers to present new narrative forms using technology. In engaging with these dynamic projects, I wanted to explore whether it was possible for thoughtful, evocative, and surprising VR to truly impact and encourage empathy among us all. 

At the New Frontier, attendees were treated to a multi-room, trance-like experience that functioned as a chose-your-own-adventure type feel. Spanning two locations, the larger New Frontier Central held most of the exhibition, while a smaller space nearby in the basement of The Ray theater featured a 40-set VR cinema and the remaining projects. It was clear from the structural design of the exhibition that Sundance was very intentional in creating a social intersection element that allowed different types of people from all over to talk about the various works in the same room. 

The dominating installations at New Frontier Central showcased the use of projections, artificial intelligence, pseudo-holograms, and augmented reality as it alternated between projects such as "Esperpento," "Dirtscraper," and "The Dial." Customized works showcased the leaps that mixed-reality experiences have made and the ways that these technologies aim to use the principle of synesthesia to mix up human senses creating a borderline trippy experience. Adding to the mind-blowing experiences was the trend of putting physical bodes inside the frame of their experiences. No longer is VR simply removing you from the real world. "Runnin’" [pictured at top], a cosmic hip-hop dance party with artist Reggie Watts at The Ray, was one of the most thrilling, mind-bending experiences I have ever had. 

"Gloomy Eyes"

The Colin Farrell-narrated “Gloomy Eyes,” is a beautifully, transportive experience that truly connected with the New Frontier goal of storytelling. The first episode, which premiered at The Ray, tells the story of transcendent love between a human girl and a zombie boy in a world where zombies are considered fugitives. The ways this story is able to simultaneously capture the hope of young love with the darkest side of humanity invokes a true sense of magic.

While each of the aforementioned experiences were well worth the hype, my goal was to uncover immersive projects that pushed the boundaries of our understanding of the human experience. It was with pleasure that I was able to experience the easy-to-use 3D volumetric capture experience "REACH."  Dubbed the “godmother of VR” by Engadget, Nonny de la Peña is once again at the forefront of the VR world, in trying to make this technology more accessible. 

“Most people are calling it a VR photo booth, but that’s not exactly what it is,” de la Peña explained. “It’s actually a creation platform. It’s like iMovie for volumetric VR—super simple. And then you get to publish on like YouTube. It’s volumetric YouTube and volumetric iMovie put together. And so, what we’re doing is trying to make it super simple for folks to participate in the creation process.” 

"Reach"

Representing a new advancement in VR technology, "REACH" allows anyone to be captured and dropped into any 3D environment of their choice, giving way for attendees to step inside of the story. The added dimensions to these immersive experiences, de la Peña believes, makes VR an increasingly important medium for telling stories. 

“The reason I got started in VR was I wanted to put people on scene in stories that were otherwise kind of invisible, people whose stories were invisible,” she said. “We feel like by putting you on scene we’re able to make some of these stories become better quality, more significant.”

Because VR content can produce such powerfully emotional experiences there is a growing belief among creators in the community, including de la Peña, that with the elimination of distribution barriers (as with "REACH") anyone will be able to harness the power of VR to not simply consume stories but to create and experience them. In 2018, there was a $12.1 billion global AR/VR revenue, a 38.4% increase. de la Peña believes that this growth signals the desire from consumers to engage the interactivity of VR experiences, much like with gaming. 

Still, she was clear that not everyone believes in the power of VR experiences to shape and reshape the human condition. While some believe it is simply a fad whose uniqueness will wear with time, others believe the path to a more empathic society is already within reach in our current reality. Paul Bloom of The Atlantic argues that the best “empathy machines” are books and that language gives us a sort of reproduction of what another consciousness is like, most notably in comparison to those whose experiences and beliefs are radically different from our own. But what happens when that language is extinct or when there are too few accessible texts exploring the ways that history is repeating itself? 

"Last Whispers: An Immersive Oratorio"

In "Last Whispers: An Immersive Oratorio" (a project also involving Nonny de la Peña), the cross-media artist Lena Herzog isn’t creating a new reality but instead is hoping to revive those that have been lost. "Whispers" explores languages that are endangered or extinct underscoring the ways in which we are losing our linguistic diversity and ultimately the way we understand ourselves. 

“Every two weeks a language dies,” a passionate Herzog exclaimed. “The reason they are falling silent is because young generations do not speak it. The reason they are falling silent is because of genocides, climate change and people getting uprooted and having to put roots in other cultures and switch to other languages when they have to join other communities. The reason they are falling silent is because of colonization. I mean why would the Americas speak Spanish? There is a very clear answer to that—it’s because of this conquest by the Spaniards. Why is that we’re speaking English here? So, the Roman Empire alone, some speculate but it’s really hard to tell because it was a while ago and there wasn’t really research, was probably responsible for some thousand languages—the Roman Empire alone, of erasing them. Why is that languages have fallen silent? Because of globalization—cultural globalization.” 

"Last Whispers" is an incredible universe that encapsulates all of these endangered and extinct languages as they swirl around you. It’s an octa-phonic design created in such a way that the frequencies hit your ears with a physical presence. This technology is incredible in that it makes the listener feel as if the languages being spoken throughout the oratorio are sharing your physical space. In this way as the sounds of the voices begin to fade, you feel that presence leave you, you feel that extinction happening. This magnificent aural experience was an intentional creation by Herzog.  

“A very profound philosophical dilemma that I understood about that was that it had to do with the very nature of extinction,” she said. “The very nature of extinction is silence and we understand something when we articulate it and how we articulate it. So, it’s the very crux of the problem. So then came a really interesting challenge—how do you articulate an extinction, the form of which is silence? A very sort of direct obvious answer is to sound what has gone silent. But how do you do that? How do you really make it present? So, I started to research about how do we perceive something as present neurologically and that’s when I knew I had to have a sound team that would create an 8.1 for public presentation or a binaural for personal experience in the headphone mixes because our brain perceives that sound as present and alive.” 

The visuals of "Last Whispers" are just as captivating. Herzog had originally done the visuals in her original 46-minute, 2D piece but felt it necessary to allow viewers to be inside the world that she had created. Viewers become enclosed in a sphere that encircles you as the approximate place of origin for each language is geolocated on the globe. The context provided with the visuals adds to the haunting reverberations of invocation of languages lost and incantation of those that are endangered or extinct underscoring the ways in which we are losing our linguistic diversity and ultimately the way we understand ourselves.

"Traveling while Black"

In what proved to be one of the most popular VR experiences at the New Frontier, Academy Award-winner Roger Ross Williams and Ayesha Nadarajah co-directed a 20-minute, 360-degree virtual reality recreation of the restaurant, Ben’s Chili Bowl in "Traveling While Black." Paying homage to Ben and Virginia Ali’s restaurant, "Traveling While Black" immerses viewers in intimate conversation in one of the most popular safe places for African American travelers in the survival guide known as The Green Book.  

The experience opens with an electrifying Reverend Sandra Butler-Truesdale sitting at the counter of Ben’s Chili Bowl. She narrates how growing up in segregated Washington she was not allowed to try on clothing in departments store for fear that she wasn’t clean and would make an item contaminated for white patrons.

“I think Sandra is a dynamic, amazing character,” Williams said in conversation with the New York Times' Brent Staples. “So, as a documentarian as soon as I met her, I thought that she has to be sort of our narrator through the piece.” 

In various moments throughout the piece, viewers are forced to reckon with the solitude of night and an almost empty restaurant. There are times where there is an orange haze and commotion outside the doors from unrest while the walls are covered in projects of the brutality that can be associated with traveling as a Black person in America. The restricted nature of the experience is unnerving, and Williams’ didn’t hesitate to enthrall viewers in the sadistic reality of state sanctioned violence. There are moments that are hard to watch as they are fraught with emotional turmoil, but that is the crux of this experience. 

While some of the most exciting VR experiences still require users to be tethered to a powerful computer, creative teams are working to create accessibility whether it’s through partnerships with schools and museums or giving direct access to the user as with de la Peña’s "REACH" platform. Currently, who we feel empathy for is strongly influenced by irrelevant factors such as race, attraction, and similarity, and our empathy often takes us in the wrong direction. The experiences on hand at the New Frontier at Sundance was an impressive slate of technology, art, and psychology blended together to help address the difficulties we have understanding one another. At worst. VR experiences are changing the way we experience entertainment. At best, VR simulations offer the experience of becoming—a virtual embodiment of ourselves and others, exploring the mechanisms, possibilities and implications of such experiences. As VR technology continues to grow in both popularity and content, the line between the user and the story dissolves, leading us toward a more compassionate society. 

from All Content http://bit.ly/2UFjjiT