Merry Christmas, 2009

Merry Christmas, wherever you are in the world!

This year, we find ourselves in a new country, for Christmas. We didn't really expect this, last Christmas...but events led us overseas, in the course of the past year. For those who haven't been reading recently, we are now in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This is a big city, compared to Singapore (in area and feel) and one that, we feel, has more to offer us, just now. As yet, I am new here, so I am forebearing to comment on many things, until I understand, better, what this country is all about. However, I have seen much, so far, that is promising. I think our time, here, shall prove interesting.

The biggest surprise is that Christmas is actually celebrated in Malaysia, when it is a widely known Muslim country. In every supermarket, there are Christmas trees and crackers, Christmas pudding and mince pies - and every traditional accompaniment of Christmas is available on sale. I think this is a hopeful sign for the nature of the society in which we find ourselves. It is an effort at inclusiveness that the festivals of other religions should be openly celebrated and supported. Indeed, in the newspapers, a Malaysian politician was quoted as encouraging Malaysians to spread the Christmas spirit! It is quite refreshing to see such inclusiveness. I hope it is more than skin deep, for, if it is, then Malaysia will prove to be a society that welcomes others from all over the world. I shall wait to see if this is so, in the months ahead.

The only thing that is missing from Christmas, in Malaysia, is snow. But then, I very much doubt whether Malaysia has snowed for many thousands of years, if at all. So, we shall have to do without snow, this December. However, I should note that, though White Christmases were common in my childhood, they have become rarer in the land of my birth, in recent years, since global warming took hold. Indeed, I don't think any of my children have ever seen snow. In a way, that is sad, because snow provides memories of wonder, in most childhoods of my generation. I hope, one day, then, that my children have a White Christmas and get to build their own snowman. Here's hoping.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

IMDB is the Internet Movie Database for film and tv professionals. If you would like to look at my IMDb listing for which another fifteen credits are to be uploaded, (which will probably take several months before they are accepted) please go to: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3438598/ As I write, the listing is new and brief - however, by the time you read this it might have a dozen or a score of credits...so please do take a look. My son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, also has an IMDb listing. His is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3305973/ My wife, Syahidah Osman Cawley, has a listing as well. Hers is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Selamat Hari Raya 2009

Selamat Hari Raya 2009, firstly, to my wife, and all her relatives. Secondly, selamat hari raya to any and all of my readers around the world who are celebrating it, today.

In Singapore, Hari Raya is celebrated by visiting relatives, eating traditional Malay foods and catching up on a year's gossip.

I have just returned from a house full of guests - all day long - at my mother in law's house. It was good to see how everyone was. I had not seen some of them since they were kids...and now they are adults. That was quite a surprise. It was a sharp reminder that I have passed many years here, in Singapore. Anyway, I had a great day.

I hope you all have a great day, too.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

IMDB is the Internet Movie Database for film and tv professionals.If you would like to look at my IMDb listing for which another fifteen credits are to be uploaded, (which will probably take several months before they are accepted) please go to: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3438598/ As I write, the listing is new and brief - however, by the time you read this it might have a dozen or a score of credits...so please do take a look. My son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, also has an IMDb listing. His is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3305973/ My wife, Syahidah Osman Cawley, has a listing as well. Hers is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

On the non-appearance of the future.

Where did the 21st Century go? By this, I mean, where is the 21st Century futurists and even everyday scientists and technologists, promised the world, in my childhood? None of it ever happened.

I look around, for signs of the technological prophesies I not infrequently read as I was growing up...and it just isn't here. We don't live in a world of flying cars (the ultimate cliche of a future that will probably never happen, since they may always be just too dangerous); we don't live in a world of permanent space colonies, or holidays on the moon; we don't live in a world of vast life spans of virtually immortal humans - in fact, all the most interesting predictions of the future have just never happened. Instead, we have got the mobile phone: just great.

Robert Anton Wilson was a writer (The Illuminatus Trilogy is his most famous, though I confess to not having read it), whom I once read of in an interview. He was convinced, in the early 1970s that he would live for hundreds of years (I believe he estimated 400 years, as "average" in what was to come), given the "pace of technological development", then current. Well, guess what? Robert Anton Wilson died in 2007 at around 75 years old. Optimism is not enough to make the future happen: it needs a lot of concerted work, too, work that just isn't being done.

Robert Anton Wilson was not alone in his belief. A lot of very smart people also had similarly optimistic views about the future. They looked at the pace of change in their own lives and then made what they thought were fair estimates of future progress, based on that. Even Nasa thought, in the seventies, that they would have permanent space colonies, by now. Perhaps they should have read the kind of disclaimer that investment funds generally have: "Past performance is no guide to future returns." Indeed, the past is no guide to the future - for between one and the other, anything can happen - or nothing at all.

Looking at my own life, I note rapid technological change in the first twenty years - and then not a lot of change in the second twenty. It is as if, all over the world, scientists stopped doing science and technologists stopped doing technology, once I came of age. Indeed, there is some truth in that. They have stopped doing science and technology in the same way. There is less basic science now and more short term research aimed at immediate products. There is less risky, open-ended research and more conservative research that isn't really research (it is called development, really). So, in a way, Man seems to be pulling away from the future, where once we were rushing towards it. My views on what is happening in technology are based on personal observation - and on discussions with people working in large technological concerns: a basic summary of their discussions (which I shall detail more at another time) is that not a lot is happening. The "future" may not happen at all, given what I have learnt - or, if it does, it will be a lot later than it would have needed to have been.

There are still futurists at work, making great promises about the future that all of us, who are middle-aged (I hate that term) or younger, shall live to see. One of them is Ray Kurzweil. He is predicting superhuman machine intelligences in twenty years time, believing that a computer will pass the Turing test (be indistinguishable in thought from a human) in 2029. He also believes that by 2050 radical life extension will be possible, making humans effectively immortal. His other ideas including augmenting humans with machine intelligence to make us into "superhuman cybernetic organisms".

I am not sure I like the future Kurzweil portrays. It sounds like a future that would distort what it means to be human, should it ever occur. After all, if your thinking is being done by a machine implant, are you really human anymore? What have you become?

Looking at Ray Kurzweil's predictions reminds me very much of Robert Anton Wilson's predictions of three decades before. They are very similar in time frame, too. Both are looking ahead two or three decades and seeing an utterly changed world that will bring them everything they have ever dreamed of. Yet, the future has a stubborn habit of not happening according to plan. Robert Anton Wilson is dead - so, too, might Kurzweil be (he is 60) before his dreams come true.

Robert Anton Wilson spoke of space migration (it hasn't happened); intelligence increase (it hasn't happened) and life extension (it hasn't happened). In a sense, Wilson's vision is a better one for Humanity - for Wilson's vision did not include the diminishment of Man, implicit in Kurzweil's view that machines will surpass us.

I, personally, hope that Kurzweil is wrong about machines and right about life extension. I fear, however, that it might be the other way around (the worst possible outcome).

Whatever the future may hold, it is unlikely to happen as readily as Kurzweil believes. There is much work to be done to make his dreams come true - and the drive forward, in creative science, is not what it once was.

I think the best thing to do, in the face of futurists who paint amazing visions of the future, and the reality that such predictions have proven wrong in the past, (though they might not in the future!) is simply to look at the world as it is and not to expect more from it, than that. Yes, things will change. Yes, new things will come to pass. But, you know what...I think it is all going to take a lot longer than many people imagine. So, we might live to see Kurzweil's future. However, it is more likely that we will live to see Kurzweil's passing.

We are almost a decade into the 21st Century and it is nothing like what was promised. I wonder whether the "future" will ever come? When it does, will it at all resemble the prophesies of the futurists of today?

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)