An Open Christmas Letter
Updated 24 December 1999
Happy Holidays!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all. I hope you have a terrific and fulfilling season.
Sorry to have to resort to a general message. I have to try to satisfy all my interests and obligations as quickly as I can, because I've overextended myself and just can't accomplish everything fully. This problem permeates all facets of my life (and probably yours too), and I suspect that my inability to attend to family and friends at traditional levels is frustrating to many, perhaps especially at this time of year. I regret that - I don't intend or wish to disappoint or offend anyone. But in my case, the pursuit of happiness seems best served by a hefty helping of self indulgence with grown up toys and conceptual flights, coupled with independent decision making so that the eccentric or at least unusual projects can proceed unimpeded. So long as this method yields good results, and I'm not significantly hurting anyone (as far as I know), it's difficult to justify changing a life style that seems to work well for me. Perhaps this will prove to be a naive perception and a profound mistake at some 'Christmas future'. But maybe not. What really works long term for people like me may not be genuinely clear - I'm not aware of any credible studies on this subject (which is not to say I've actively researched the matter). Until experience or other compelling evidence indicates otherwise, I'm inclined to remain a self indulgent nerd style hedonist and amateur explorer. If I'm causing a problem with anyone, let's chat. I'll try to be reasonable, though I can't promise anything beforehand. But I do appreciate that, ultimately, we're all in this together (which I take to include all living things), and I like to think that I have a constructive conscience. Email or voice please.
Most everyone seems to be aware of the big doings in my life this year, so there's little need to add to the unexpectedly high level of visibility which has already occurred. I post the latest progress as often as I can at www.AirplaneHome.com, so get the big aluminum tube news there. I won't have it ready to move into until at least next spring or summer, so be patient - it's a big project, and it's time-shared with business obligations (www.HypatiaInc.com). The journey is perhaps the most fulfilling element in these endeavors. And it really is fun. You're always welcome to visit of course. Just try to give me a little advance notice so I can gather all my embarrassing Poke´mon and Toy Story action figures from the living room floor and store them safely out of sight.
Health and relative freedom are still intact. But I am 50 now, and declining endurance, eyesight, and other generally minor degradations are occasionally a bit frustrating. I'd really like to get my Telemeres reset, but I just haven't found any clinics that can do that yet. I'm pretty lucky though - when I reflect upon all the close calls, the stupid risks I've taken, the ignorance of youth, and, generally speaking, the wonder that such a vulnerable package could get through over 18K days of wanderings in an unforgiving mechanized world, it seems remarkable that all my appendages, senses, and faculties are still essentially intact. (OK, the idea that my faculties are or ever have been intact is arguable at best.) But it seems a bit unlikely that I'll age entirely gracefully, because I don't harbor the notion that aging is inevitable. It strikes me it as a profoundly unfortunate disease born of evolutionary mechanics - a required competitive tool for every species to wrestle it out with one another and the environment in an ever changing natural world. As wonderfully constructive as aging may be for a competing species, it's profoundly destructive for its individuals. In my opinion, in a technical culture, so long as life is interesting, the aging process stinks big time and should be eliminated - it's just a disease and it needs to be conquered. Personally I think we'll be knee deep in HAL-9000 computers before we figure out how to reset our Telemeres, so I suspect that solving this fundamental biological problem will mostly be a matter of how the next dominant life form elects to deal with us. I hope they have a maternal streak or prove to be very fond of their pets...
As you can see I'm still convinced that we're on the threshold of creating true artificial sentience, and that it will change the world profoundly, and very rapidly, and be wholly uncontrollable. A few years ago I thought this would happen within two years. While I obviously missed that projection, I remain convinced that it's right around the corner. So take your choice: Either brace yourself or not, as you apply your own planetary story line probabilities. But if you care to indulge me, consider what living artificial beings might be like (ignore the Hollywood versions). It seems probable to me that they will acquire, store, correlate and associate information at very high speeds, clocking at a few GHz and using all manner of efficiency boosting software and hardware to make every clock cycle perform as much constructive work as possible. And they'll do this 24 hours a day, without sex drive or hunger distractions (mostly). Existing individuals will never lose their knowledge base due to aging or most other degradations, and new individuals will be able to upload existing knowledge bases in a relative flash. They'll be excellent explorers because they'll understand the critical importance of constantly testing new ways of understanding and doing things. And they may well be driven by competitive pressures from their peers, as has always been the evolutionary rule in the biological world. To repeat myself, I'm inclined to believe that most people still yield to our instinctive predisposition to view ourselves, as individuals and as a species, as substantially more unique, significant, and indomitable than we actually are. Self serving concepts such as deities in our image, Earth as the center of the universe, the remarkably inconsistent practice of unnecessary carnivorism while maintaining beloved pets, and many other human behaviors testify to our egocentric predispositions. Such behaviors improved our survivability in the natural world, but they corrupt our analytical thinking terribly. And this tends to blind us to important future possibilities which we need to view in a sober and objective manner as a matter survival in a technical age.
It still seems very strange to me that, thus far, we've been unable to detect any intelligent signals in a roughly 13 billion year old Cosmos of perhaps 100 billion galaxies with perhaps an average of 100 billion stars in each. I wonder if this silence suggests that, typically, a certain type of dramatic occurrence profoundly changes worlds relatively shortly after they become capable of radio transmissions, and that whatever this change is it renders them unrecognizable to us when we use traditional searching methods. That is, we may be looking for the wrong kinds of evidence of extraterrestrial technology. Or perhaps such worlds usually suffer a cataclysmic fate, perhaps due to runaway competition among supremely powerful artificial life forms.
But enough of this - I'm repeating myself. If you're interested in my thoughts on this check out the AirplaneHome.com web site. Scroll most of the way down the FAQ page and click on the relevant link sometime in the next couple of months. I'll try to get my material on this subject posted there in about that time.
I'm still playing tennis. Julie and I failed last week to defend our mixed doubles title from last year's Christmas tournament at our facility though, losing in the first round in a tough and close match. And I lost in my singles draw too, also in the first round, in a relative blowout. What a bummer! But as always tennis remains very gratifying and is an important source of exercise. I play doubles with the guys twice a week generally, mixed doubles in the context of Julie's rotation schedule, and add singles and both men's and mixed doubles during league seasons and some local tournaments.
No, no love life of course. The media seemed to enjoy exploring the notion that I'm an eligible bachelor during the frenzy days, and I generally played along. It seemed a little odd to me though, occasionally taking me by surprise. I'm hardly in my prime, and I am a lanky nerd with modest attributes and modest assets after all - I'm no heartbreaker. But I guess we all love hearing anything about intimacy and sex, and if it isn't inherent in the subject it's often added artificially. And why not - while nothing more than flights of fancy, it's fun, it's embedded in our humor and our culture, and it's generally harmless. But in my real world, the tradeoffs and history of intimate relationships seem to have tilted the scales such that they're now a spectator sport. Which is OK.
Once again the merriest of holidays and all the best, Bruce