Want to subscribe to the Virtual Consciousness newsletter? Then simply put your email address in the box below and click 'send'. Email:	The Dismal Condition of Democracy - Decline & Fall? Increasingly, a number of trends suggest citizens are becoming less capable of and committed to participating in the democratic process. A more complex, time-pressured society, where media and politicians alike are prone to preoccupying themselves with matters of style rather than substance is slowly ushering in a silent revolution. The complexity of issues coupled with a growing disinterest in politics is slowly eroding democracy's ability to perform functions critical to the maintenance of a stable and open society... Networked Nanotechnology: Tiny hope or big hype? The marvellous nature of new technology is often exaggerated, providing little commercial value and consequently playing a minor part in most peoples’ lives. The immense implications of the advancements made with nano-technology have been the pre-occupation of forecasting and fiction for some time. In reality, though how imminent is a revolution of the small... Boost for TV-style internet ads Advertisements are often a source of consternation and irritation. Tools of communication by corporations, they attempt to inform and persuade potential consumers to purchase particular products. Since its inception, the internet has provided a new virtual medium for adverts. These have, until now, pre-dominantly taken the form of images or simple picture series. Now, following initial technology trials, we could come to expect far more TV-style ads appearing on the net… Robots to Get Boss Upgrades Robots are still something strongly associated with the production process, introduced on mass-assembly lines to boost productivity and reduce marginal costs. This may soon change. The next generation of robots will not only save soldiers' lives, but entertain young people and feed, medicate and comfort the elderly... 'Nanograss' Turns Sticky to Slippery in an Instant With possible applications in everything from microscopic plumbing to slick boat hulls to switches for optical networks, a new chameleonic material developed at Bell Labs sheds water droplets like a newly waxed sports car, but, at the flick of a switch, turns absorbent like a "quicker picker upper" paper towel... Desert challenge too tough for robot racers The prospect of any immediate advance in fully-automated robot transportation may be some distance away, if the results of the Grand Challenge are anything to go by. The most formidable race for robot vehicles yet staged ended limply on Saturday, with not one of the 15 entrants coming close to finishing the 142-mile (230-kilometre) Californian course... Quantum computing gets a step closer Richard Feynman was one of the first physicists who conceived of the 'quantum computer', speculating about its immense computing capabilities and its highly fragile nature. Uncertain as to whether or not it was possible to develop such a sophisticated machine, he anticipated that traditional circuits and transistors would be replaced by atoms and other tiny particles. Now an important milestone in the quest to create a 'quantum computer' has been reached, as scientists have witnessed an atom and a photon - a small packet of light - share the same information... Bionic legs give soldiers a boost Over time we will come to witness the steady erosion of the distinction between man and machine, as bionic limbs, muscle grafts and steel implants grow in use. Already, US researchers have developed strap-on robotic legs to allow people to carry heavy loads over long distances. Especially designed for infantry use, the exoskeleton contains a small, purpose-built combustion engine... Combating Snipers in Iraq Technology has enabled the U.S. to become the world's undisputed military super-power, dominating in the air and on ground with its sophisticated weaponry and well-equipped troops. Despite this superiority of strength, maintaining law and order in post-war Iraq has, however, proved to be a difficult task. A new invention, the "Boomerang", has been developed in an attempt to address perhaps the most pressing problem facing soldiers in Iraq, namely snipers... A New Mobile Domain? The wireless Internet is coming of age as Nokia, Vodafone, Microsoft and six other technology and telecommunications companies join forces to propose the equivalent of a .mobile Internet address category for mobile Web access. In the past the tiny screens of mobiles have made conventional Web pages impossible to see and use. The idea is that the new domain will direct users to sites specifically tailored for use by a mobile device... U.S. Senators Demand Reviews of NASA Hubble Decision On January 16th 2004 NASA decided to stop servicing Hubble, in effect depriving it from essential spare parts that would result in its closure. Now, two months on, the leaders of the Senate subcommittee that controls NASA's purse strings have requested separate, independent reviews of the agency's decision to cancel plans for a space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, giving rise to hopes that the telescope's existence might be preserved... Virtual Consciousness is not responsible for the content of external internet sites. Rising and Falling Powers in the Information Society There is a general consensus among historians and academics that power is cyclical. Empires, dynasties, corporate kingdoms; all are doomed to drop at the knell of time’s final bell. Perhaps the best work to capture this mood was Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which tentatively drew comparisons between America of the late 80s and the Britain of a century earlier, the Empire over which the sun would apparently never set. Kennedy’s assessment, it should be noted, is widely derided as a noble, but ultimately flawed analysis; yet instead of simply gloating on this fact it would perhaps befall his critics better to analyse why and how the US has acquired its new, if ultimately temporary, lease of life... Post-Industrial or Global Economy? In the past two decades there have been two main ‘models’ for understanding the morphology of the new global economy. On the one hand, there are the advocates of the ‘post-industrializing’ economy - Western economies have essentially satiated domestic demand for industrial goods and are therefore experiencing commensurate growth in post-industrial sectors such as health, education, finance, and information services. On the other hand, the ‘globalization’ thesis argues that industry is not declining, it’s just moving abroad... Artificial Intelligence - Elevating Intelligence and Contesting Consciousness Intelligence has come to be the discriminating factor between man and machine, sceptics suggesting that projects attempting to build artificial intelligence (AI) will always fail. Without consciousness, they continue, any real form of independent thought would be unattainable. Instead, irrespective of the advances made in technology, robots and programmes will only ever perform and repeat pre-fabricated actions, working on an industrial assembly line or becoming volk-robots, as imagined by Hans Moravec, mowing lawns and doing other domestic duties... Caves of Steel - Earth's Evolution and Humanoid Robots It is a pervasive albeit unstated belief that economic growth is potentially infinite. Journalists, economists and politicians form the expectation that the aggregate value of goods and services created by economies should increase on an annual basis. The Caves of Steel presents a world which is a distinct departure from this paradigm... Caves of Steel – Technological Progress in Societies Open and Closed Man’s desire to recreate himself in non-human form goes back a long way. In the seventeenth century, the ‘robots’ of their day were the ‘automata’ enabled by mechanics: small clockwork models that performed basic, if perfunctory, actions like waving, dancing, or walking across the tabletop. It is this basic conception that underpins Asimov’s Caves of Steel, published exactly 50 years ago in 1954... Lessons from Neuroscience - Is Virtual Reality Possible? It is a tried and tested truism that the passage of time and the advance of innovation continuously shift the boundaries between the feasible and the far-fetched. Einstein, perhaps one of the most renowned physicists of the twentieth century, was recorded saying "there is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable," and claims about the prospects of Virtual Reality (VR) have also faced similar disbelief... Information management and the cybernetic society: the coming AI revolution We are only in the first phase of the information revolution. Thanks to technologies of information transmission and replication, and in particular the internet, we have achieved a situation of almost panoptic informative overflow. Yet human beings are interpretive animals: we do not perceive the world in its Heraclitean flux but form simplified representations of it using concepts, allowing us to take meaningful action. The challenge is to gather that mass of raw data swirling around in the virtual aether and transform it into data structures that make sense for human initiative and interaction, and this, arguably, is where genuine artificial intelligence could have a role. Knowledge in post-industrial society Just as, during the post-war years, the locus of research in the hard sciences gradually shifted out of the university faculty and into the R&D departments of various companies, in the twenty-first century we are witnessing the locus of social science shifting out of the university and into the vast network of think-tanks that surround governments, parties, companies, NGOs. In part, this is simply a consequence of the 'growth' of society: large and complex social systems such as companies and political parties have learnt the value of having quasi-independent 'research units' that specialise on the issues that concern them; whether it is marketing new products, winning elections, or achieving policy objectives... Neuromancer - Science Fiction or Science Prediction? The representational apparatus of Science Fiction’, declares America’s esteemed critic Fredric Jameson in a recent review of Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, ‘is sending back more reliable information about the contemporary world than an exhausted realism'. While there was never a science-fiction book that perfectly described the future, he has a point. Gibson’s 1984 cult classic Neuromancer made predictions that few sociologists of the time would have dared to voice... William Gibson’s Neuromancer – Technological Change and the Prospect of Progress In recent times fantasy and science fiction genres have risen to great visual prominence. Yet despite their shared popular appeal, the two genres are different in several respects. To Arthur C. Clarke, such distinctions may be unhelpful, since ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Nonetheless, the defining feature of science fiction is that it does take place within the realm of the possible and, on occasion, the plausible. Virtual Reality Now When knowledge gets accumulated, it is accumulated sluggishly: it is a process involving years of research, endless journals, heated (and repeated) conferences, the establishment of laboratories, research centers, and the exhaustion of entire careers. Yet technological innovation is neither gradual nor linear. When change comes, it comes suddenly, unexpectedly. Could virtual reality ever make such a breakthrough? The Possibility of Parallel Worlds The scene is sublime. Standing on the plateau which carries Machu Piccu, the ancient Inca city, you are surrounded by lush vegetation and a stunning vista. The place is eerily quiet as you pick your way among the ruins, deciphering their signs and symbols, eying an eagle floating mid-air a kilometre to the east. ‘To travel is to live’, is a dictum that carries great resonance, although Hans Christian Andersen might not have envisioned such advanced and alternative modes of travel as those offered by cyberspace. On the Verge of the Virtual Suburb The twentieth century carries an essential paradox in the field of urban architecture: through new technologies, it bequeathed firstly the vertical city, as advanced allowed for the towering structures of Manhattan or Chicago; and then proceeded to demolish it, as the widespread ownership of cars and telephones allowed middle classes to settle in the horizontal sprawls of a Los Angeles or Denver. We are on the verge of another epoch breaking shift: this time, from the real suburb to the 'virtual' suburb... Fields of Knowledge After furtively rummaging around in the sociology section it appears all of France's esteemed intellectuals - from Althusser, to Baudrillard, or even the famed Foucault - have been deleted. They are simply not there... can they already be so passé? The problem, of course, is not one of intellectual fashion, only that of classification. The assistant will laugh or throw a puzzled glance, as they inform you in a suitably brisk tone - as if you had never actually read any of these books - 'monsieur, but these authors are not sociologists'. And indeed, in France, they are not. They are something beyond, above, or aside from that realm. They are philosophers...