Perhaps you read it, but for those out there who have not quite realized that the promise of technology, more free time, has not materialized, please read this essay.
Well, it has, in absolute terms, but not in relative terms. The problem is that human psychology makes us view things using relative metrics instead of absolute ones. If you earn a 20% raise this year, but all your friends earn 100% raises, do you feel richer or poorer compared to last year?
If you want to have a 1950s comfortable standard of living regarding possessions, health care, entertainment, food, etc. you can do so by working far fewer hours than a 1950s human had to. But if you want a 2000s standard of living... ah, then you still have to work, or otherwise procure income. But at least work tends to be less menial and physically taxing than it did in the 1950s, on the average at least.
It's a question of whether you measure standard of living by absolute standards or relative ones. No matter what the technology level, it will be always true (in capitalist societies, anyway) that someone who works hard will, on the average, earn more than someone who works little at the same level of technology. So of course the idle will never win... in relative terms. But if you view things in absolute terms, the idle American today can live far more comfortably than the average hard-working American in the 1950s. (The same is even true of the third world; a citizen of country X today has a more comfortable existence than a citizen of X in the 1950s, in almost all cases - calorie intake has more or less doubled, for instance, and life expectancy extended by a decade or more. Again, in relative terms the poor countries of 2000 will be behind the rich countries of 2000, but they can certainly be comparable with the rich countries of 1950 in many absolute, objective metrics.).
Nevertheless, I do agree with you on one point - there is more to life than the rat race. But you are free at any time to downshift and live a comfortable and leisuirely life, and viewed in absolute terms one has far more capability to do so now than in the past. It's only the relative viewpoint which seems to suggest that one cannot "afford" to be idle.
The Unabomber's manifesto violates a very important law: The chances that a written work was authored by a crackpot increase with the percentage of completely capitalized words in the work.
I don't know if anyone else had come up with a similar law before I thought of it a number of years ago (thanks mostly to the brilliant work of none other than Ivan Stang), so I'll put a flag in it right now and call it Wee's Law of Tinfoil Hats.
Well, using ALL CAPS to track crackpots is an old, old idea, it's even part of the
canonical crackpot index!
If this theory of gravitiational propagation is true then gravity would have to exhibit doppler effects. The force of gravity would be stronger and act at a shorter distance towards the velocity vector of an object and conversely it would be weaker and act at a greater distance in the opposite direction in violation of the inverse square rule for gravitational effects. This has not been noted in any observations. All present observations of moving astronomical objects moving at anywhere near to relativistic speeds, or even those moving much slower taken as a statistical whole, show no such effect.
Actually, such an effect is predicted by general relativity. It's called gravitomagnetism. If NASA ever launches Gravity Probe B, it should be able to measure it.
Incidentally, the Doppler effect for gravity is more complicated than just compression, because the gravitational field is a tensor, not a scalar. Not only does it "compress", it also "twists", which makes it act differently on fast particles than it does for slow ones. A very similar effect holds for the electric force - when an electron moves very fast (i.e. generates a current), the electric force begins to twist in such a way that it affects moving charges (especially charges moving parallel to the original charge) in a different way from static charges. This is of course just the familiar phenomenon of magnetism, and what I just described is a simple consequence of Ampere's law.
And yes, magnetism travels at the speed of light too. Have you heard of "electromagnetic radiation"? What do you think light is, anyway?
Even in the case that Lindows gets everything it wants out of the suit and Microsoft loses its trademark on Windows... all that will happen is that the next generation of MS Windows software won't be called Windows. They'd call it something else like "Chicago" (this was Win95's codename). But that won't damage the brand, in fact it might even strengthen it. And all the remaining Windows-clone names will end up looking a little silly.
Remember when the Cyrix 686 first came out? Intel lost the fight (and rightfully so) to trademark the ??86 sequence of numbers. But guess what, all that happened was that Intel renamed their 586 the Pentium and made sure as heck that that was trademarked properly... and in the end, despite any number of stupid jokes at Intel's expense, their brand was stronger than ever.
If we could combine all the constants in all the formulars together, could we come up with a unit of messure that negated the need for the constants?
Yes. These units of measure are known as the Planck units, and are used quite often in theoretical physics. These are the only units in which the gravitational constant G, the speed of light c, Planck's constant hbar, and Boltzmann's constant k, are all set to one.
However, while these units are great for doing particle physics, they are horrible for our everyday world (For instance, imagine a speedometer which measured everything in fractions of c - wouldn't that be depressing!). In Planck units, the meter is replaced by the Planck length, which is an incredibly tiny 1.6 x 10^{-35} meters. (This is the smallest length scale which can be directly measured - to resolve any smaller length would require so much energy that the resolving particle would collapse under its own gravitational forces. It's widely believed that some new theory of quantum gravity must operator below this scale).
am I to believe that the meter/kilometer just happens to be the right size to express the speed of light (c)? And what if we measured things in light seconds or in light years?
It's all a matter of units.
Energy is measured in units of
force x distance. Force is measured in units of mass x acceleration (Newton's second law!), acceleration is velocity per unit time, and velocity (or speed) is distance per unit time. Putting this all together, we see that energy E has units of
mass x distance^2 / time^2
while m has units of mass, and c has units
of distance/time. So the equation E=mc^2 makes sense no matter what you pick the units to be.
In SI units, mass is measured in kilograms, distance is in meters, time is in seconds, so speed of light is in meters/second. Energy is measured in kilograms-square-meters-per-square-second, more commonly known as Joules.
If we were to use light seconds and seconds, then the speed of light would be 1, but then energy would be measured in kilograms-square-light-seconds-per-square-second, which is a truly humungous amount of energy (about 10^17 Joules, which is about the same energy released by about 10 megatons of TNT, give or take an order of magnitude). So yes, the "E" in "E=mc^2" would now be tiny because c was 1, but because E is now measured in megatons of TNT the energy is still the same impressive amount.:-)
... ever since I got it in February. The things I
tend to use the most are:
address book
calendar (also doubles as an "urgent"
version of the "to do" list)... in my job I get
a lot of little meetings set up at odd times
shopping list
recording spending (I amuse myself sometimes by going back and computing my mileage
from past months)
Vindigo! (especially for restaurants
and movie show times)
The dictaphone feature comes in handy,
for instance when trying to remember where
your car is parked and your hands are quite full, but the dictaphone button is easy to operate. Also makes a decent clandestine spy device though I've only used this to get a few laughs once or twice.
Photos of wife and kid:)
Less often, but still coming in quite handy:
Pocket Streets - especially helpful
when being a tourist
imdb database on TomeRaider (this tends to
impress my friends more than any other
application)
the various Microsoft Reader dictionaries
(English to French, Italian, German, Spanish)
- not very big, but enough to translate common
phrases (turned out real handy when wandering
around Europe).
World map / CIA factbook (for all the times
conversation turns to trivia... see also imdb
database above)
Calculator and conversion app (between US
units and rest-of-the-world units... I deal
with a lot of non-US people:).
Birthday present wishlists - I love the fact that I can get a flash of inspiration for
what might be a suitable gift and make a "mental
note" that is guaranteed to stick around.
Similarly for video rental wishlists (I've been
known to wander Blockbuster for half an hour not
remembering what I wanted to see), etc.
Astronomy app has come in handy once when
hiking in the dark without a compass.
The backlight is really handy in this regard too.
Games of course, when one has no choice but to
endure a long wait
Portable backup for work files, etc. - a couple occasions I've been stranded at a friends place and unable to access my work files via internet, but I can IR them from the IPAQ.
And there are times when my laptop is just too much of a pain to carry around.
Sure, I could duplicate a lot of these features
with a pen-and-paper system, but knowing me
I'd always forget to bring my paper organizer
just when I really need it. The IPAQ
on the other hand, is now indispensable to me
(I made a strenuous effort in the first month to
really move all my other organizational systems
onto it, and forced myself to use it exclusively... it got a bit tough, especially with all the data entry, but it was definitely worth it. It helps to do the data entry on a bigger computer and then sync it over).
That said, a lot of people wouldn't get much out of a PDA, particularly if they always work at just one location, since it would then be more logical to place all your calendars, phone books, reference materials, etc. there. Plus you have to be sort of geeky to insist on using it to run your life.:)
This is actually pretty similar to the plurality
system (it essentially replaces each voter
by 10 mini-voters, and then applies plurality
to the mini-voters).
For instance, Bush, Gore, and Nader
are competing in an election. 45% of the voters
love Bush but hate Gore and Nader; they give
all 10 points to Bush. The other 55% of the
voters like Gore and Nader equally, but
hate Bush; they split their points equally between Gore and Nader, giving each candidate 5 points. Then Bush will win by a landslide, despite being liked the least of
all the candidates, because the majority
of the voters have split their votes.
It's possible to avoid some of the problems in voting by using a random process. Each voter puts their vote into a big barrel. Then someone reaches blindfolded into the barrel and picks out the winner! This system is free of most paradoxes, but is of course much more subject to random chance than other methods - a candidate with only 1% of the vote now has a 1% chance of winning, as apposed to a virtually 0% chance
under most other methods.
This isn't the first time some idealistic libertartians tried to move somewhere to set up an utopia. Although the Atlanteans seemed to think it would be somehow cost-effective to start their new country under the ocean...
The whole concept probably won't get this far, but I'd start being impressed if this free state movement will survive its first schism (the usual killer of idealistic movements).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it has, in absolute terms, but not in relative terms. The problem is that human psychology makes us view things using relative metrics instead of absolute ones. If you earn a 20% raise this year, but all your friends earn 100% raises, do you feel richer or poorer compared to last year?
If you want to have a 1950s comfortable standard of living regarding possessions, health care, entertainment, food, etc. you can do so by working far fewer hours than a 1950s human had to. But if you want a 2000s standard of living... ah, then you still have to work, or otherwise procure income. But at least work tends to be less menial and physically taxing than it did in the 1950s, on the average at least.
It's a question of whether you measure standard of living by absolute standards or relative ones. No matter what the technology level, it will be always true (in capitalist societies, anyway) that someone who works hard will, on the average, earn more than someone who works little at the same level of technology. So of course the idle will never win ... in relative terms. But if you view things in absolute terms, the idle American today can live far more comfortably than the average hard-working American in the 1950s. (The same is even true of the third world; a citizen of country X today has a more comfortable existence than a citizen of X in the 1950s, in almost all cases - calorie intake has more or less doubled, for instance, and life expectancy extended by a decade or more. Again, in relative terms the poor countries of 2000 will be behind the rich countries of 2000, but they can certainly be comparable with the rich countries of 1950 in many absolute, objective metrics.).
Nevertheless, I do agree with you on one point - there is more to life than the rat race. But you are free at any time to downshift and live a comfortable and leisuirely life, and viewed in absolute terms one has far more capability to do so now than in the past. It's only the relative viewpoint which seems to suggest that one cannot "afford" to be idle.
Terry
Well, using ALL CAPS to track crackpots is an old, old idea, it's even part of the canonical crackpot index!
Terry
Actually, such an effect is predicted by general relativity. It's called gravitomagnetism. If NASA ever launches Gravity Probe B, it should be able to measure it.
Incidentally, the Doppler effect for gravity is more complicated than just compression, because the gravitational field is a tensor, not a scalar. Not only does it "compress", it also "twists", which makes it act differently on fast particles than it does for slow ones. A very similar effect holds for the electric force - when an electron moves very fast (i.e. generates a current), the electric force begins to twist in such a way that it affects moving charges (especially charges moving parallel to the original charge) in a different way from static charges. This is of course just the familiar phenomenon of magnetism, and what I just described is a simple consequence of Ampere's law.
And yes, magnetism travels at the speed of light too. Have you heard of "electromagnetic radiation"? What do you think light is, anyway?
Terry
Remember when the Cyrix 686 first came out? Intel lost the fight (and rightfully so) to trademark the ??86 sequence of numbers. But guess what, all that happened was that Intel renamed their 586 the Pentium and made sure as heck that that was trademarked properly... and in the end, despite any number of stupid jokes at Intel's expense, their brand was stronger than ever.
Terry
Yes. These units of measure are known as the Planck units, and are used quite often in theoretical physics. These are the only units in which the gravitational constant G, the speed of light c, Planck's constant hbar, and Boltzmann's constant k, are all set to one.
However, while these units are great for doing particle physics, they are horrible for our everyday world (For instance, imagine a speedometer which measured everything in fractions of c - wouldn't that be depressing!). In Planck units, the meter is replaced by the Planck length, which is an incredibly tiny 1.6 x 10^{-35} meters. (This is the smallest length scale which can be directly measured - to resolve any smaller length would require so much energy that the resolving particle would collapse under its own gravitational forces. It's widely believed that some new theory of quantum gravity must operator below this scale).
Terry
It's all a matter of units.
Energy is measured in units of force x distance. Force is measured in units of mass x acceleration (Newton's second law!), acceleration is velocity per unit time, and velocity (or speed) is distance per unit time. Putting this all together, we see that energy E has units of
mass x distance^2 / time^2
while m has units of mass, and c has units of distance/time. So the equation E=mc^2 makes sense no matter what you pick the units to be.
In SI units, mass is measured in kilograms, distance is in meters, time is in seconds, so speed of light is in meters/second. Energy is measured in kilograms-square-meters-per-square-second, more commonly known as Joules.
If we were to use light seconds and seconds, then the speed of light would be 1, but then energy would be measured in kilograms-square-light-seconds-per-square-second, which is a truly humungous amount of energy (about 10^17 Joules, which is about the same energy released by about 10 megatons of TNT, give or take an order of magnitude). So yes, the "E" in "E=mc^2" would now be tiny because c was 1, but because E is now measured in megatons of TNT the energy is still the same impressive amount. :-)
- address book
- calendar (also doubles as an "urgent"
version of the "to do" list)... in my job I get
a lot of little meetings set up at odd times
- shopping list
- recording spending (I amuse myself sometimes by going back and computing my mileage
from past months)
- Vindigo! (especially for restaurants
and movie show times)
- The dictaphone feature comes in handy,
for instance when trying to remember where
your car is parked and your hands are quite full, but the dictaphone button is easy to operate. Also makes a decent clandestine spy device though I've only used this to get a few laughs once or twice.
- Photos of wife and kid
:)
Less often, but still coming in quite handy:Sure, I could duplicate a lot of these features with a pen-and-paper system, but knowing me I'd always forget to bring my paper organizer just when I really need it. The IPAQ on the other hand, is now indispensable to me (I made a strenuous effort in the first month to really move all my other organizational systems onto it, and forced myself to use it exclusively... it got a bit tough, especially with all the data entry, but it was definitely worth it. It helps to do the data entry on a bigger computer and then sync it over).
That said, a lot of people wouldn't get much out of a PDA, particularly if they always work at just one location, since it would then be more logical to place all your calendars, phone books, reference materials, etc. there. Plus you have to be sort of geeky to insist on using it to run your life. :)
Terry
Terry
This isn't the first time some idealistic libertartians tried to move somewhere to set up an utopia. Although the Atlanteans seemed to think it would be somehow cost-effective to start their new country under the ocean... The whole concept probably won't get this far, but I'd start being impressed if this free state movement will survive its first schism (the usual killer of idealistic movements).