The Chronikler

The internet of everything and nothing?

By Ray O’Reilly

Jerry Michalski, the founder of the ‘Relationship economy expedition’ (REX), shares his insights on the future of the internet.

Monday 25 May 2010

From 1987 to 1998, Jerry Michalski was a technology analyst, focusing not on quarterly earnings but rather on which technologies would be useful and which would be distractions, what trends and forces create new potential, and where all these forces might take us over a 20-year timeframe. For the last five years of that period, he was the managing editor of Esther Dyson's monthly tech newsletter Release 1.0, as well as co-host of her annual conference, ‘PC Forum’. He was fortunate to be on duty when the internet crept up on us all.

Since 1998, he has been an independent consultant, doing business as Sociate, a name he coined because he is skilled at associating ideas and people, and also because he believes that the social changes that we are going through as a result of all the new connectivity (e.g. internet, mobiles, inexpensive cameras, video sharing, tweeting) will be more profound than the structural and economic changes we have already seen.

What do you understand by the term ‘future internet’? Isn’t it a misnomer ― aren’t we already seeing it?

The internet as we know it is maybe 15 years old. It's very young. From my perspective, we are pretty early in a longer process that may take 30 or 50 years to complete. This is one of those moments of punctuated equilibrium, the kinds of moments it's really nice to be alive during.

Because there's so much change going on, the internet is always evolving. Right now, it's quite plastic. The cost of experimenting with it is very, very low, and there are practically no barriers to entry.

The internet crept up on us. It was designed out of a defence project by engineers who didn't have a stake in the game. They hardly cared whether their companies could turn the internet into a profitable new channel or platform. My belief is that no commercial venture could have invented the internet. If you play this idea out, it is possible that attempts to ‘improve’ the internet may well end up ruining it. After all, television was going to revolutionise education. It hasn't.

Technologies tend to run far ahead of our ability to understand them or their effects. The telephone, for example, was a century ahead of our understanding of its effects. I can whisper into a telephone, and I will seem to be closer to the person I'm speaking with that I could be in person. The telephone is incredibly intimate.

Now multiply this a thousand-fold. People are divulging their favourite music, their location and far more information than is healthy for them. We have very little idea where this all might go. Unfortunately, there are many forces who would like to privatise the internet, to rope off certain parts for them, or to create ways of charging extraordinary rents for their services (read Jonathan Zittrain on this). Once a technology has gotten business's attention, bad things can easily happen.

There's another problem: a ‘better’ internet may not be what engineers and scientists envision it to be. It may not be giga-fast, semantically smart, sensor driven or otherwise more fully featured. It may be that the best internet is the simplest internet that reaches the most people, and allows the greatest range of creative responses and experiments.

What got you involved in technology and the ‘futurist’ business (if we can call it that)? What advice would you give to anyone setting off in a career in IT or related sciences?

Years ago, I would introduce myself as the accidental technology analyst. Without a degree in computer science or journalism, I ended up writing about technology for a largely business audience.

In 1981, I bought an Apple as a hobby. Later, I discovered a passion for history and the future, which complement one another very well, the latter turning into the former in a very messy way. I've always followed my instincts about what to learn and what to write about, which has served me wonderfully and terribly.

I say wonderfully, because today I feel that all the strange little grottoes of knowledge I stumbled into, like neurolinguistic programming or pattern languages, inform my world view in fabulous ways. I say terribly because I've sacrificed a more ‘normal’ career path to my curiosity.

My advice would be to avoid the well-worn path and dive deep into a few interesting areas. Develop a broader thesis about what is going on than Moore's Law and Metcalfe's Law. Learn about sociology and history, then fold that into technology. Don't overdose on engineering or management practices. Both are valuable, but in isolation, they're part of the problem. Learn about spirituality and eco-feminism, for example. Some of the solution is in those worlds.

The future internet is being touted as something of a panacea for all that dogs Western society, from ageing populations to ailing economies and financial sectors. Can you help our readers sort the happening from the hype? What’s really possible and how can people benefit from it?

The internet pierces or tears down many walls that existed before, like the walls that separated the CEO from everyone else (now you can email him/her), your employees from the outside world (they're all on LinkedIn and Facebook! or they're Tweeting!), your ideas from everyone else (they're wafting in the info-breeze, openly).

Many of those walls were the premises of business models based on scarcity. Many things that were once scarce are now abundant. We're going to see a very messy few decades ahead as everyone adjusts to these changes. Businesses need to figure out how to make profits while nurturing the Commons, instead of roping off their part of it and damaging it.

So the internet is both a big opening/opportunity and a great danger (to incumbents, mostly). We're likely to see far more chaos than we've seen so far. But in the long run, we're correcting many errors that came about when market society was born, back in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, and we may end up rebalancing those errors over time.

When you start to see today's progress from this perspective, all sorts of new ideas pop into your head. Some are business ideas, some are simply things that ought to exist, which some small group of motivated individuals could do for free over several months, if they were inspired to do so.

It's a wonderful (and even scary) time to be alive.

The ancient Greeks believed that the universe was filled with a mysterious element called ether ― the substance that filled all space. We know better now but perhaps the sort of pervasive, ubiquitous computing touted as part of the future internet will revive the power of the ether. Care to comment?

I fear the sensor-filled future that many tout. If car-makers can't make the software in their high-end cars run properly, how are we supposed to live in a world filled with connected devices too small to see, all chattering with one another and talking about us? I fear we're opening Pandora's Box even further in such a world.

I love that the net allows people who have never had a voice to find one online, and to connect with other people. That is one of the Net's great virtues. But one of the casualties of this progress will be our privacy, and with it, our autonomy. Get a government that's a shade or two more devious than recent ones we've had, and we'll be spinning towards one of several dystopian science fiction futures.

Software is today what hardware was in IT’s halcyon days, say 30 years ago. But the critical systems running everything from vacuum-sealing machines to train networks are getting too complex for mere beings to maintain, let alone upgrade. Is there a place for self-healing machines, networks and applications?

I believe a few disciplines will figure out how to field self-healing devices and applications, but it will be the exception, not the norm. On the whole, broken devices and systems will be typical. Complexity overwhelms, then we could see collapse.

How far are we prepared to let an ‘internet of machines’ run themselves?

I think we're blithely confident that whatever bad things that show up can be controlled, and that we believe the emerging internet of things will be generally benign. That is misplaced optimism. Hackers can easily be able to take over most of those sensors and devices, and who knows what they will do.

Smart cars? I don't think so. That's merely an invitation for the driver to nap, and if the car can't handle 100% of the task of driving, we're asking for trouble. And on from there into other domains.

The big issues of today are climate change, poverty, sustainable economies and energy… To what extent do you see the internet of tomorrow shaping up to help solve or tackle these sorts of global issues?

I'm constantly inspired by smart initiatives fuelled or lubricated by the internet, from the Extraordinaries to Open Source Ecology, Khan Academy and Kickstarter, to name just a few. The cost of launching an initiative has fallen through the floor, to almost nothing. That is terrific. The danger is that we try to tackle all these problems with a centralised, "we have the right answer" mentality, rather than look for local wisdom and help amplify that.

And all the data centres needed for this internet thing to happen cause a great deal of pollution and energy waste themselves. Just look at the externalities of semiconductor manufacturing.

We see more and more little robots that act like rats or ants or other natural phenomena. How do you see the work on bio-inspired computing, such as neural networks, panning out in the future?

Interestingly, neural networks is the technology that pulled me from general-purpose (non-tech) consulting into the tech world, back in 1987.

I'm ambivalent about these technologies. On one hand, as I mentioned, I fear the unconstrained use of micro-sensors and bots that will litter our landscape and invade our privacy. I'm not sure how many useful things they can actually do for us to offset those forces.

On the other hand, I believe we are weaving a global brain, and that this is a very positive accomplishment in human evolution. Every time someone forwards an interesting e-mail to someone else, or friends them on Facebook (believe it or not), or tweets into the ether, or blogs ― they are creating small, weak dendritic connections with other people.

We don't know ahead of time what might happen over those connections, but later they might determine whom you trust in a national emergency, or what products you trust and purchase. These relationships are crucial, even (maybe even especially!) when they are weak.

I've been weaving a small brain of my own, using a commercial product called PersonalBrain. You can view mine online. Here's a link to a good starting point, which expresses my personal beliefs.

As more business and activity moves to the net, security, data protection and privacy issues are reaching a critical stage. What is your prediction on how this will evolve, and on the subject of eTrust?

Several parallel forces and outcomes come to mind: security is an arms race, though it is more biological than military (and thus more complex). We are likely to be very surprised by cyber-attacks in the next five to ten years. I wouldn't be surprised to see a country’s power grid taken down for a week or more in this way, which would be devastating to the economy and social structure in its current high-consumption state.

Privacy seems to be in the process of shifting. Millennials [the net generation] not only make much more information available publicly, it could be that they won't trust anyone who doesn't have such information (say, embarrassing photos from an out-of-hand party) available online. If you left no electronic footprints, maybe you didn't even exist? So I think privacy will shift markedly from what 45-year-olds would hope today, towards the Facebook generation. But I think it'll pull back from the extreme of everyone knowing everything.

Companies are furiously harvesting all the data they can now reach easily, and they're trying to analyse it in order to influence us. That sort of behaviour works, but is not trustworthy. My hope is that trust and authenticity trump all those efforts at data mining, and that companies which spend very little money trying to manipulate us but fulfil our needs really well will do better than those whose costs are higher because they're busy figuring out how to make us buy things we don't really need.

That may be a bit Utopian of me.

Find out more about Jerry Michalski's REXpedition.

Published with the author's permission.  © Ray O'Reilly. All rights reserved.

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Climate change in Camelot

By Robert Adler

In South Dakota, everyone knows that the climate is just right - and that global warming is just the hot air of science.

Monday 15 March 2010

“It’s true! It’s true! The crown has made it clear.

The climate must be perfect all the year.

A law was made a distant moon ago here:

July and August cannot be too hot.

And there’s a legal limit to the snow here

In Camelot.”

- Camelot, by Alan Jay Lerner & Frederic Loewe

 The legislature of the State of South Dakota distinguished itself by passing an anti-climate change resolution – House Concurrent Resolution No. 1009 – in February.

 No, the legislature did not follow King Arthur’s lead by attempting to stabilise the state’s climate by decree. Instead, it called for “the balanced teaching of global warming” in South Dakota’s public schools, borrowing the language and tactics of the ongoing campaign to force the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in America’s schools.

On a 36 to 20 vote, South Dakota’s House of Representatives urged the state’s schools to teach that global warming is a theory rather than a proven fact. Teachers are to impress on students that the significance and “interrelativity” of the “variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological [sic], thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics” that determine global weather patterns are “largely speculative”, and that the scientific investigation of global warming has been “complicated and prejudiced” by “political and philosophical viewpoints.”

The resolution concludes with a seemingly innocent statement urging that “all instruction on the theory of global warming be appropriate to the age and academic development of the student and to the prevailing classroom circumstances”.

The phrase I’ve italicised is a coded way of warning teachers not to present climate change in a way that might anger students or parents who believe that climate change is a hoax hatched by the UN to frighten ordinary citizens, justify draconian laws and enrich greedy scientists. It’s similar to language advocated by the right-wing group Students for Academic Freedom in its ‘Academic Bill of Rights’, which has been used to attack and even sue college professors whose teaching goes against the beliefs of conservative students.

 It’s all too easy to trivialise the South Dakota House Resolution and poke holes in the facts and reasoning advanced to support it. The resolution’s use of “astrological” instead of “astronomical”, the flawed list of anti-climate-change evidence it presents – that the earth has been cooling for the last eight years, that there is no evidence of warming in the troposphere, that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but “the gas of life” – and the argument that the existence of naturally driven climate change in the past rules out human-caused climate change today, makes for a document that’s hard to take seriously.

 Even South Dakota’s senate seems to agree. They stripped out the most embarrassing verbiage before passing their own version of the resolution on 24 February.

 I suppose that, from a European perspective, the whole issue may seem quaint and laughable – just another example of America’s amusing lack of sophistication.

 Unfortunately, the resolution has to be taken seriously. It stands as the latest – but by no means the last – skirmish in a long and continuing battle for the minds, as well as the hearts, of America’s children. As reported by New Scientist, the Texas school board – whose annual purchase of some 48 million textbooks allows it to determine what most of the nation’s children study – voted last March to require textbooks to question the existence of global warming, and, in an astonishing kowtow to “young-earth creationists”, deleted the 14-billion-year age of the universe from the science curriculum.

 It’s not just climate change, evolution, or the age of the earth which are in the crosshairs in this battle, but science as a whole. The religious-conservative movement that helps elect creationist school board members across the country, state legislators like Resolution 1009’s author, Don Kopp, the 110 members of the United States Congress who win perfect ratings from ultraconservative groups, or Senator James Inhofe who now wants to file criminal charges against US and British climate scientists, has a far more ambitious agenda – nothing less than to replace the pluralistic secular humanism that most people think has defined the United States since its inception with religious fundamentalism.

 The movement dates at least to the 1980s, when the Rev. Pat Robertson founded the Christian Coalition with the stated goal of advancing a Christian agenda nationwide through grassroots activism. This still-growing movement has made it clear that it is determined to redefine America in the light of the “truth” that the nation was founded not on the basis of the rationalism of the Enlightenment, but on fundamentalist Christian beliefs. They see the Bible as true and the Constitutional wall separating church and state as a dangerous myth. Be it evolution, global climate change, or embryonic stem cell research, when science gets in the way, it will be attacked.

 As reported in the New York Times, attacking climate change along with evolution may be a way to get around court rulings that so far have found that singling out evolution for so-called balanced presentation in textbooks and classes is clearly religiously motivated and violates the separation of church and state. By also targeting global warming, the age of the universe, or the origin of life, anti-evolutionists can claim that they are merely advocating academic freedom and fair play.

 And I suppose it doesn’t hurt that the same politicians who depend on the votes of true believers also depend on campaign contributions by corporations that are strongly motivated to keep pumping crude oil, mining coal, and pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

 At least in the United States, this is not a challenge to which scientists and those who recognise that science can only thrive in an environment that values facts and reason over Bible-based belief and God-given truth can remain indifferent or uninvolved. A war has been declared, and scientists and their supporters can no more wish it away than South Dakota’s legislators can resolve away global climate change.

Published with the author's permission. ©Robert Adler. All rights reserved.

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The fine art of repression

By Khaled Diab

Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosny's bid to be the chief of the UN's cultural wing has aroused suspicion among liberals and conservatives alike.

15 September 2009

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Labour saving devices

By Khaled Diab

Could pregnancy outside the womb save women the pain of labour and herald in a new level of gender equality?

13 August 2009

There is something mysterious, mystifying, magical and also menacing about pregnancy. The swelling belly, rising like a bun in the oven. The wall of tissue separating mother and father from child. The foetus’s tentative attempts to communicate pleasure, dissatisfaction, and hold conversations through the primitive Morse code of kicks and jabs.

For the expectant mother in particular, pregnancy carries a huge emotional cache. The foetus growing inside her is both a part of her and apart from her which enables the mother to bond in a way that a father can only dream of. The umbilical cord connecting them relays not only nourishment but also moods and emotions.

I witness this in my wife whose bond with our baby grows stronger every day: her regular communion with him, the unconscious way she holds her tummy, the subtle nuances conveyed by the way he shifts inside, and the meaning of the different pokes. Of course, I also have a connection with him – albeit a less direct one. I talk to him and see the surface evidence of his development, his faint taps through Katleen’s skin, the rare grainy glimpse of him during our visits to the gynaecologist.

In addition, he and the cat seem, after an initial period of distrust on the part of the cat, to have built something of a relationship: he pokes more when Kuku comes to lie on Katleen’s belly and even seems to hum when the cat purrs.

What sense does the baby have of the outside world from inside his cocoon? I know he can hear and feel and I wonder what he makes of his mama, papa and cat. I imagine what it must be like inside the womb – I know we have all been there but how many of us can remember? Is it as cosy and comfortable as we adults like to assume? Or would the little one, curled up in the proverbial foetal position, prefer more legroom and a womb with a view?

When it’s time to leave, will he miss the security of his confinement and the 24-hour womb service? Or will he let out a scream of delight as he dives head first towards the everyday light at the end of the tunnel and the official start of his life?

Understandably, Katleen does not yet want to think about the actual delivery (D-Day) – and I can’t blame her. It fills me with awe, bewilderment and panic – and my role is only a supporting one! Despite the undoubted pleasure and significance of bringing a life into this world, the process does involve an awful lot of pain.

Is it desirable for medical science to find a way to spare women the suffering of labour – create a new kind of labour-saving device? Perhaps some boffins will go beyond the initial spark in a petri dish at the core of IVF treatment and develop a complete incubation system – an artificial womb – that would host the unborn child for the entire nine months of the pregnancy, and the parents would pay regular visits to the incubator to watch their child develop.

Such a for-now SciFi possibility would enable men and women to play equal roles as prospective parents, and enable women once and for all to take full control of their bodies, and may even be healthier for the foetus as the womb would be perfectly calibrated for it.

The pill and other effective contraceptive devices helped not only to trigger the sexual revolution – transforming sex into a largely risk-free leisure activity – but they also evened the sexual playing field between men and women, helping cement ideas of equality.

Perhaps removing the last major biological distinction between men and women would herald in a new dawn of equality, but if it becomes universal enough, it would raise the profound and fundamental question of why we need men and women – and the battle of the sexes could take on a decidedly nihilistic bent. Alternatively, just as sex has evolved from procreation to recreation, perhaps nostalgia and love of diversity would lead to us holding on to our biological differences for the sheer fun of it.

On the down side, such technology may banish the pain and discrimination associated with pregnancy, but it would also rob women off its joys. Moreover, it may be bad for the child. Millions of years of evolution have made the bond formed between mother and foetus crucial to the psychological health and well-being of the baby; tampering with that could cause massive alienation and erase the loving link between them.

Moreover, is the price of the possible convenience worth paying, considering the physical and psychological deformities it could potentially cause as we feel around blindly in this largely uncharted field? In addition, even if the science one day proves sound, the associated ethical conundrums should give us pause for thought as it could affect society in ways that end up harming men, women and babies. At the end of the day, removing pain from the equation may not actually bring about a gain.

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The truth about Arab science

By Khaled Diab

Can we look forward to a boom in Arab science or will poverty, bureaucracy and religion be insurmountable obstacles?

26 July 2009

Hannah Clark has certainly earned, both literally and figuratively, the title of the "girl with two hearts" bestowed upon her by the media. When she was just two years old, she had the dubious distinction of becoming the first person in Britain to possess a 'piggyback' heart.

For more than a decade, Hannah lived on a potent cocktail of medication designed to stop her body rejecting her second heart. But suppressing her immune system in this way made her susceptible to infections and, by the age of 12, she had developed cancer. During chemotherapy, her body began to reject the donor organ which led doctors to take the dramatic decision to remove it. Through all this, although she lost her second heart, Hannah didn't lose heart. Now, aged 16, she has fully recovered, her doctors said in a recent article in The Lancet.

This is a truly heart-warming testament to the power of modern medicine to turn tragedy into triumph. And I could not help feeling a little rush of pride that the doctor who made all this possible was an Egyptian: Magdi Yacoub, who is actually also a neighbour of sorts, as his Cairo home overlooks my family's.

Dishearteningly, and almost inevitably, Yacoub, the son of a surgeon, did not find his success in Egypt but in Britain, where he built up a career as one of the world's most pioneering heart surgeons and researchers. Dubbed the "King of Hearts" by the Royal Society, this naturalised Brit did not usurp the throne but he did receive a knighthood.

And numerous other examples abound of Arab minds – such as the Nobel prize-winner Ahmed Zewail – deserting the Arab science desert and thriving elsewhere. Why is it that a region that was once the world's scientific powerhouse has now become its outhouse? In an article last year, I explored some of the reasons which included: "The dominant patronage culture in academia, the shortage of research funding, the almost complete absence of private research, the difficulty of registering and protecting intellectual property, as well as the rote-based education system."

Some experts observe that Islam's scientific heritage equips Muslims to look positively upon modern science. In fact, many Muslims believe that modern science confirms the Qur'an. "In those countries where fundamentalism has taken hold among the youth in the universities, it is striking to observe that the fundamentalist students are in a majority in the scientific institutions," says Farida Faouzia Charfi, a science professor at the University of Tunis. "[Islamists] want to govern society with ideas of the past and the technical means of modernity."

But this selective interest in science is a double-edged sword because it encourages people to disregard inconvenient scientific truths if they conflict with or contradict their faith. Attitudes aside, another important factor that is often missing from the equation is the simple question of resources. I think it's no coincidence that the start of Europe and the west's golden age and the Arab and Muslim world's gradual decline occurred at about the time when Muslims ceded their grip on global trade to Europeans who also "discovered" a resource-rich "new world" in the process.

But things are looking up, according to Nadia al-Awady, a freelance science journalist based in Cairo. Writing in Nature, she links the surge in science coverage in the Arab media with a related boom in Arab research and development activities. Since 2006, there has even been an Arab Science Journalists Association (ASJA).

"Although the science staff of media organisations in the United States and Europe face cutbacks, a survey of ASJA members in January 2009 indicated that full-time jobs for Arab science journalists have remained relatively stable over the past five years," reports al-Awady.

However, quantity does not always mean quality, as al-Awady herself freely admits. "As I sit at my desk in Cairo, it is easier for me to know what is happening in American universities halfway across the globe than to know what is happening within the walls of Egypt's National Research Centre just across the street… Another problem for science journalism stems from a more general issue. Many media platforms are government-owned and, as a result, many journalists provide uncritical coverage of government announcements."

In addition, for someone whose role is to be a chronicler of science, al-Awady holds some pretty unscientific views. Writing for Islam Online, she goes against the scientific consensus and describes homosexuality not as a natural sexual orientation but as an individual lifestyle choice or a psychological condition that can be "cured".

More tellingly and even less scientifically, she cautions her readers, in case her scientific arguments have failed to persuade them: "Islam is a way of life. It is a system of beliefs based on divine revelation… As a Muslim, one cannot choose to follow parts of Islam and disregard others."

This illustrates well how scientific truth is sacred until it contradicts the holier truth of the Qur'an. During Islam's scientific boom years, such an attitude could just about survive alongside scientific inquiry – although many of Islam's greatest scientists were sceptics, theists or agnostics.

However, in the modern world, science fact increasingly contradicts religious myth and, for the Arab world to advance, it needs not only to invest more in research, it also has to hold universal truths above religious ones.

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 24 July 2009. Read the related discussion.

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Natural born warriors

By Khaled Diab

Does scientific evidence that war is hardwired into human society mean that we are doomed to live in perpetual conflict?

November 2008

If war is a product of human culture, then there endures the possibility – no matter how remote it may seem at present – that we will, one day, learn to eradicate that scourge on our societies through cultural change and evolution.

 But what if it turns out that our species has a natural propensity to wage war and that warfare has had a profound influence on how humanity has evolved? According to an emerging theory, “not only is war as ancient as human kind… but it has played an integral role in our evolution”, New Scientist reported last week.

 Experts from numerous disciplines – anthropologists, archaeologists, primatologists, psychologists and political scientists – now seem to agree that warfare has affected our evolution and is, hence, hard-wired into our societies and behaviour. And it does not take a massive leap of logic to understand where they are coming from.

 One can quite easily imagine that competition over food and other scarce resources led our ancestors to take up arms against rival groups. This rivalry triggered an evolutionary cycle in which different groups would develop more elaborate ways of attacking their rivals and defending themselves against attack.

 This has taken us from the informal, small-scale group violence of our forebears – which was similar to that of related species, such as chimps – using simple stone weapons or spears, to the highly organised mobilisation of armies counting in the millions, armed with high-tech weaponry.

 Well, it’s not all bad news. Despite its huge cost to society, war can have some benefits, but whether these can ever outweigh the costs, especially of modern warfare, is doubtful. Just as military research sometimes creates useful spin-offs for society, evidence suggests that our evolution into effective warriors has helped equip us with out highly evolved ability to co-operate within society and work together towards common goals.

 If warfare, as this theory suggests, is a deeply ingrained aspect of human culture, does that mean we are doomed to live in perpetual conflict?

 The notion that war is a natural human tendency makes belief in its inevitability tempting, which can give warmongers an additional justification when beating the drums of conflict and it can take some of the wind out of opposition to war.

 But this would be an extremely flawed way of looking at this theory. Even if we are natural born warriors, we are also born pacifists and peacemakers. The species that cursed us with Adolf Hitler also blessed us with Mahatma Gandhi. In fact, the vast majority of humans and societies spend more time in peace than at war.

 In addition, a deeper understanding of what drives us to violence can help us develop the mechanisms to cope with it and dispel its causes. For instance, the type of warfare we are “naturally” predisposed to is more akin to gang wars which bear little resemblance to contemporary warfare.

 As Samuel Bowles, an economist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, emphasised, the decision to go to war is not simply some primal reflex, but is based on “some interplay between warfare and the alternative benefits of peace”.

 Given the massive costs in terms of both human lives and resources of modern warfare, we can only expect – and hope – that the “alternative benefits of peace” will increasingly get the upper hand. There are a number of promising examples of societies that have learnt that lesson, albeit the hard way.

 Germany and Japan, once the personification of jingoism, are spectacular examples of how societies geared to war can prosper and thrive when they turn their backs on conflict and transform their “swords into ploughshares”. And, for all its faults, the EU project has helped peace to reign on a continent once plagued by incessant warfare, including two world wars.

 Deeply ingrained as the war instinct is, we can evolve out of it, like we once evolved into it. Perceptions of group identity – the fearful 'us' versus 'them' dichotomy – play a major role, and are manipulated, in the march to war. If we can somehow elevate appreciation of our common humanity – and the common good – above the narrow self-interests of individual societies, then we have a hope of reining in the massive destructiveness of modern conflict.

 We have taken tentative steps along these lines, such as through the acknowledgement of our common humanity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Now we need the necessary cultural shift and robust international legal order to make these principles a reality.

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 22 November 2008. Read the related discussion.

This is an archive piece that was migrated to this website from Diabolic Digest

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The love laboratory

By Khaled Diab

Can science make us more attractive and appealing? Let’s put it to the test.

December 2008

In the game of love, like in comedy, timing, they say, is everything. And a new study seems to confirm just that. Blokes who have their advances repelled can take solace – or delude themselves – from the possibility that women are most responsive to corny chat-up lines at the most fertile period in their menstrual cycle and least so during their period.

 Given the hormonal imbalances, headaches and pain many women feel during menstruation, this is hardly an earth-shattering discovery. In fact, it raises the question: what exactly is the use of this particular study?

 It’s not much use to single men, unless some nifty gadget which discreetly gauges the menstrual cycle I’m unaware of has come on the market. And I very much doubt that “If you’ve got the right time of month, I’ve got the place” will catch on as a chat-up line. Stumped for any other explanation, my wife speculated that the only use of the study would be to help jealous boyfriends and husbands plan their agenda.

 Of course, scientific inquiry is a valiant pursuit in its own right, yet I can’t help thinking that humanity has more pressing and important questions that need answering. So, in a modest attempt to make sure that all this relationship research does not go to waste, here is a brief empirical guide to courting.

 As we are constantly told, first impressions count. Depressingly, according to one study, most people don’t even give each other the benefit of an exchange of words and form enduring impressions in a matter of milliseconds. Looked at romantically, though, it could be evidence of “love at first sight”.

 If, like me, you are someone who needs time before people appreciate your finer points, what can you do to make the right first impression? Don’t despair, science is there with some suggestions.

 If you want someone to find you attractive on the first encounter or date, a good scientifically sound strategy is to look them straight in the eyes and smile. Preferably, make sure your eyes are smiling, too.

 Oh, and don’t forget to turn up the smile slowly to enable the onlooker to bask in your warmth – a “long-onset smile”, as it is known in the literature – while tilting your head slightly. While you’re doing this, cross your fingers that you don’t come across as a weirdo with neck ache.

 The supremely confident – or arrogant – should be warned that, even if their interlocutor reciprocates, this may not necessarily be a “come on”. One group of researchers has found that some women chat happily and flirt, even if they have absolutely no interest in the man – which is bound to make the bashful and proud even more tongue-tied.

 So, how can you tell if someone finds you attractive?

 Research suggests that people tend to choose partners who look like their opposite sex parents. To my mind, this is not only troublingly Oedipal, I don’t think I’ve ever been attracted to anyone who looks like a family member.

 More worryingly still, many seem to be drawn to partners who look like them – so much for “opposites attract”. In fact, there is even evidence that a surprising number of people are highly attracted to opposite sex images of themselves.

 So, the self-centred among us can kill two birds with a single stone: increase their chances of finding a partner by seeking out someone who bears a resemblance to them and indulge their narcissistic impulses.

 Of course, some people are fortunate enough to be widely regarded as attractive because they have the right facial and physical proportions. But old macho ideals are on the way out. In fact, most women, one study suggests, find a more “feminine” face alluring in men. This is good news for metrosexuals and might explain why many women are so drawn to the boyish good-looks of Johnny Depp. And for those who aren’t endowed with a baby face, it might be time to invest in that “guyliner” and “manscara”.

 But you don’t have to be one of the beautiful people with a perfect figure to find romance or get laid. In fact, the best way to a man’s heart for women who do not fit the emaciated size zero is not through his stomach, but it is to make sure he doesn’t get enough food! Hunger, it seems, makes some men want to feast on their date.

 Besides, there are people out there, including good-looking ones, who prefer brains over beauty. The scientific evidence suggests that choosing intelligence is more common among women than men. Then again, other research points to the fact that there are plenty of women who go for looks.

 A contradiction? Yes and no. Given the sheer diversity, complexity and individuality of human interactions, certain patterns are bound to hold true in certain circumstances, but the exceptions will at times outnumber the “rule”. So, the best strategy is to throw away the science books and embark on your own unique experiments in the laboratory of love.

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 19 December 2008. Read the related discussion.

This is an archive piece that was migrated to this website from Diabolic Digest

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Promises of immortality

By Khaled Diab

Religion has been promising us eternal life after death for millennia, can science deliver us immortality right here on earth – and do we want it to?

4 July 2009

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A brief history of brainy women

By Khaled Diab

Where does Gail Trimble fit in the brainy women’s hall of fame?

February 2009

Some men define themselves by which part of the female anatomy they prefer: breasts, legs, arse, etc. Personally, I’m more a brains and face kind of guy. I’ve always been attracted to intelligent women with beautiful facial features, and my wife ticks those boxes for me.

Gail Trimble, the grand boffin of University Challenge who seemed to have a Google implant in her brain, has ventured into relatively uncharted territory for brainy women: she has become a media sensation. Not only have her lightening reflexes and her supercomputer brainpower won her a legion of admiring fans, she has even become something of a sex icon, complete with an offer to pose for a lads’ magazine – which goes to prove that there are lads out there who appreciate brains and not just ‘booty’.

However, not everyone was impressed, with some bloggers and tabloids railing against her for being “smug” and “superior”. Shockingly, the Daily Mash reported that, despite the protective shelter of the body of Christ (Corpus Christi), Trimble was to be burnt as a witch, apparently because she recites “the periodic table backwards in Aramaic while dancing naked in a circle with a murder of gigantic, two-headed crows”.

Of course, that’s far-fetched satire today, but this fate was a real occupational hazard for some of the brainiest women of yesteryear. Take Hypatia of Alexandria, who has the dual distinction of being the first and last great female philosopher of the classical era.

The Hellenic polymath must have been well pleased with herself when she became the first woman to head Alexandria’s Platonist school and, in that great Greek philosophical tradition, donning her scholar’s robes, she toured the town engaging in public debate and interpreting the works of other philosophers.

However, trouble was a-brewing for Hypatia. Although she was well-admired across the Hellenic world, she had amassed powerful enemies in the nascent Church, especially in the shape of Alexandria’s bishop Cyril. Eventually, her “pagan” ideas and gender were to cost her her life as an angry Christian mob waylaid her chariot and brutally murdered her. It is ironic that the first notable female scholar of the Greek tradition also became the last.

Hypatia is one of numerous brainy women through the ages whom I have become familiar with as part of a fascinating project – at least for me – I am co-operating on which explores the contribution women have made to science over the centuries.

Based on the women I have researched, a certain pattern is discernible in their quest for success and recognition: they often had to become honorary men, they were forced into marginal areas of learning (which ironically often put them at the cutting edge of new knowledge), and they quite literally felt compelled to be second to nun in their morality, foreswearing carnal pleasures and embracing chastity.

Hypatia, for instance, reportedly rejected a suitor by showing him her menstrual rags (tampons to us), claiming that this showed there was “nothing beautiful” about carnal desires.

Of course, it wasn’t all black and white. For instance, the German philosopher, physician and composer Hildegard von Bingen, who was saintly in her ways although she never quite became a saint, was an abbess and, hence, a virgin, yet she was possibly the first European to have described the female orgasm (albeit in medieval terms).

In order to advance her career, Hildegard quite literally needed divine intervention: the visions she claimed to experience helped her to get around the medieval Church’s restrictions on women preaching and practising philosophy and the sciences. Of course, I use the term ‘science’ here loosely.

Although she was at the cutting-edge of learning for her time, the bulk of her work could only be described as superstition. For instance, a remedy she proposes for a hangover in one of her medical works involves dunking a bitch in water and drinking the resulting murky liquid. If any readers feel brave enough to try this, please report back on your findings.

Starting in the 19^th century, things started to get decidedly better for women, although they still had to swim against a tide of prejudice. Believe it or not but the world’s first computer geek was not a bespectacled, socially inept male teenager, but an English aristocrat of the female persuasion.

Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron who never met her erratic father, was a mathematical whiz-kid and the mother of all computer nerds. She is credited with having written the world’s first ‘computer programme’ for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine (the ‘first computer’). Babbage called her his “enchantress of numbers”.

In the 20^th century, women played pivotal roles in many of the newest areas of physics and chemistry. The most legendary is probably the Marie Curie, the only woman to win two Nobel prizes.

Despite advances in the status of women, however, some did not get the recognition they deserved. Rosalind Franklin is a prime example: her images of DNA were essential to the cracking of its now famous double-helix structure, but she did not receive a Nobel prize for it. Even James Watson, despite his dodgy views on race, agreed that she should have also got one. Unfortunately, Nobels are not awarded posthumously.

Even today, the glass ceiling is still around to a certain degree, but it is far smaller and more permeable and, at least in principle, it does not exist anymore.

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 28 February 2009. Read the related discussion.

This is an archive piece that was migrated to this website from Diabolic Digest

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Survival of the nicest

By Khaled Diab

The emerging notion that genes can be ‘selfless’ as well as ‘selfish’ suggests that working for the greater good is natural.

March 2009

Charles Darwin’s famous theory of natural selection and Richard Dawkin’s focus on the so-called ‘selfish gene’ are among the most widely misunderstood ideas of modern times.

At one end of the spectrum, creationist find the idea that we evolved from apes – or, worse still, that we can trace our lineage right back to single cell prokaryotes which emerged out of an inauspicious chemical soup of amino acids – insulting and believe that evolution is an elaborate excuse for a-morality. At the other end of the spectrum, the uglier manifestations of social Darwinism have completely misinterpreted the metaphor ‘survival of the fittest’ to justify their self-serving racist, imperialist and classist ideas.

But neither Darwin nor geneticists like Dawkins advocate the idea that cutthroat, ruthless competition is the only game in town, and co-operation between individuals, communities and even species permeates their work. Darwin even wrote in the Descent of Man that evolution would eventually lead a species to “acquire a moral sense or conscience”.

Still, while ‘selfish gene’ theories can explain a lot of behaviour, including co-operation and reciprocal altruism, they do not satisfactorily explain everything. Looking out for number one, no matter how enlightenedly individuals do it, cannot explain away all variations in human and animal conduct.

An extreme example of this is the enigma of why certain people are willing to lay down their lives for non-kin – soldiers, firefighters, accidental heroes and heroines. By saving the lives of people not related to them, they are actually putting the survival of their own genes in jeopardy.

Dawkins suggests that this can be explained by ‘misfiring’ – i.e. the application of an instinctive, genetic rule of thumb in situations it did not originally evolve to cover.

But could there be a ‘selfless gene’ out there? Could we be more than simple conduits or vessels which self-serving genes take for a ride? A growing number of scientists are beginning to advocate the existence of such selfless genes, i.e. genetic code that works to advance the survival of the group, species or even ecosystem above that of the individual.

Examples include genes that restrict how many offspring a predator has so as to avoid wiping out its prey, or genes that restrict the size of individuals within a species to limit its demand for food and other resources.

Dawkins himself sees some merit in species selection but not in group selection, because of the existence of ‘cheaters’ and ‘freeloaders’. But a few candidate examples of group selection have been identified and, as they actively look for them, scientists are finding more. Evidence is emerging that groups with the least number of cheaters thrive, while those with the largest number often perish, hence placing an evolutionary check on freeloaders.

One slimy example is microbial biofilms, which are colonies of bacteria living on a ‘commonwealth’ of slime that they secrete. Cheaters who live off the slime but do not contribute to it endanger the entire group, while colonies in which all bacteria pull their weight prosper.

By implication, this leads to the intriguing possibility that natural selection may operate, in one way or another, at the level of entire ecosystems. Some experiments have shown that ecosystem selection can and does occur, although other explanations cannot be ruled out.

If these ideas stand the test of time, they could revolutionise the way we view the natural world and our place in it. For instance, this might mean that ecosystems may react to climate change and other environmental pressures in unexpected ways that may not be explainable by the sum of their individual parts. In addition, it rings another alarm bell for humanity that if we don’t stop behaving like a ‘cancer’, nature may eventually find a way to evolve us out of the picture.

With imperfect and incomplete knowledge, it can be hard to tell how much science reflects reality and how much it reflects ingrained biases and prejudices. How much did the idea of the selfish gene fuel our individualistic, consumerist culture, and how much did the culture affect our interpretation of the scientific evidence? In contrast, how much is growing disenchantment with the notion that the dogged pursuit of self-interest will magically serve the greater good by harnessing greed skewing our view of the scientific evidence today?

To my mind, what is becoming increasingly clear is that co-operation is as ‘natural’ as competition, and that altruism is as natural as selfishness, and we need to find the right balance between the two. More importantly, our biology is only one factor in a complex equation and, ultimately, we are masters and mistresses of our own destiny.

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 11 March 2009. Read the related discussion.

This is an archive piece that was migrated to this website from Diabolic Digest

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