PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 113/2003 - 27 November 2003
"FORGET GLOBAL WARMING, WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF FUEL"
-------------------------------------------------------------------
** Happy Thanksgiving
to all American CCNet members **
Today, we all know that meteorites originate in space. But until
200 years ago
the scientific establishment considered this an outrageous
notion, despite the
mountain of evidence quite literally falling at their feet. Space
was empty and
rocks did not come from the sky - to declare otherwise was
superstition or madness.
--Mark Pilkington, The Guardian, 27
November 2003
The controversy with respect to genetic engineering and plants
will go down as
the biggest hoax of the last part of the 20th century and the
beginning of the
21st century because there are no valid reasons other than
ideology that would
prevent any of this stuff from going forward.
--Robert Goldberg, UCLA, 26 November
2003
People from a cross section of the society have expressed their
concern over
the controversy regarding sighting of Eid moon and called for
evolving a new
system to end it once and for all. Interviews with people
belonging to various
fields of life, show that they are not happy with the ongoing
controversy as
they are still unsure as to what decision they should follow.
Gohar Rehman, a
schoolteacher, criticized the Ulema for creating doubts in the
minds of the people.
--Dawn, 26 November 2003
(1) SOLUTION FOR KUIPER BELT MYSTERY?
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) News, 26
November 2003
(2) SPACE STATION STRUCK BY SPACE DEBRIS?
BBC News Online, 27 November 2003
(3) HOT ROCKS
The Guardian, 27 November 2003
(4) ASTRONOMICAL CONTROVERSY ROCKS MUSLIM FAITHFUL
Dawn, 26 November 2003
(5) ROYAL (DOOM SOON) SOCIETY: FORGET GLOBAL WARMING, WE'RE
RUNNING OUT OF FUEL
Toronto Star, 26 November 2003
(6) REALITY CHECK: ARE WE REALLY RUNNING OUT OF OIL?
NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS, 29
January 2003
(7) EUROPE WANTS FRANCE TO HOST NUCLEAR FUSION REACTOR
BBC News Online, 25 November 2003
(8) FOODS FOR THE FUTURE
Daily Bruin, 26 November 2003
(9) AND FINALLY: VOTING BY NET PROXY?
ABC News, 2 September 2003
(10) UNDER THE BOTTOM LINE
Number Watch, 25 November 2003
============
(1) SOLUTION FOR KUIPER BELT MYSTERY?
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) News, 26 November 2003
http://www.swri.org/9what/releases/Kuiper.htm
Pushing out the Kuiper belt
Boulder, Colorado -- November 26, 2003 -- A new study by
researchers at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the
Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur provides an explanation for one
of the more mysterious aspects of the population of objects
beyond Neptune. In doing so, it provides a unique glimpse into
the proto-planetary disk from which the Solar System's planets
formed. Results will be published in the November 27 issue of
Nature.
The Kuiper belt is a region of the Solar System that extends
outward from Neptune's orbit, containing billions of icy objects
from kilometers to thousands of kilometers across. It was
discovered in 1992 and, since that time nearly 1,000 objects have
been cataloged. Some of these objects are very large - the
largest having a diameter of more than 1,000 kilometers.
As astronomers have studied this structure, a mystery has
unfolded. Like most of the planets in the Solar System, the large
Kuiper belt objects are believed to have been formed from smaller
objects that stuck together when they collided. For this process
to have worked in the distant regions beyond Neptune, the Kuiper
belt would have to contain more than 10 times the amount of
material than is in the Earth. However, telescopic surveys of
this region show that it currently contains roughly one-tenth the
mass of the Earth, or less.
To solve the puzzle, researchers have been searching for several
years for a way to remove more than 99 percent of the Kuiper
belt's material. However, Dr. Harold Levison (SwRI) and Dr.
Alessandro Morbidelli (Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur of Nice,
France) describe in their article, "Forming the Kuiper Belt
by the Outerward Transport of Objects During Neptune's
Migration," that the Kuiper belt may not have lost much mass
at all.
"The mass depletion problem has been sticking in our throat
for some time," says Levison, a staff scientist in the SwRI
Space Studies Department. "It looks like we may finally have
a possible answer."
Levison and Morbidelli argue that the proto-planetary disk from
which the planets, asteroids and comets all formed had a
heretofore unanticipated edge at the current location of Neptune,
which is at 30 astronomical units (AU, the average distance
between the Sun and Earth), and that the region now occupied by
the Kuiper belt was empty. All the Kuiper belt objects we see
beyond Neptune formed much closer to the Sun and were transported
outward during the final stages of planet formation.
Researchers have known for 20 years that the orbits of the giant
planets moved around as they formed. In particular, Uranus and
Neptune formed closer to the Sun and migrated outward. Levison
and Morbidelli show that Neptune could have pushed all the
observed Kuiper belt objects outward as it migrated.
"We really didn't solve the mass depletion problem, we
circumvented it," says Levison. "According to our work,
the void beyond Neptune was probably devoid of objects."
However, in this model, the region interior to 30 AU contained
enough material for the Kuiper belt objects to form. The
mechanisms employed by Neptune to push out the Kuiper belt only
affected a small fraction of the objects. These became the
objects seen by astronomers; the rest were scattered out of the
Solar System by Neptune. This new theory explains many of the
observable features of the outer Solar System, including the
characteristics of the orbits of the Kuiper belt objects and the
location of Neptune.
"One of the puzzling aspects of Neptune's migration is why
it stopped where it did," says Morbidelli. "Our new
model explains this as well. Neptune migrated until it hit the
edge of the proto-planetary disk, at which point it abruptly
stopped."
NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Centre National de
la Recherche Scientifique in Paris funded this research.
For more information, contact Maria Martinez, Communications
Department, (210) 522-3305, Fax (210) 522-3547, PO Drawer 28510,
San Antonio, TX 78228-0510.
=============
(2) SPACE STATION STRUCK BY SPACE DEBRIS?
BBC News Online, 27 November 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3242712.stm
The American-Russian crew of the International Space Station say
their craft may have hit an object in orbit.
American Michael Foale and Russian Alexander Kaleri reported
hearing a metallic crushing sound, apparently from an unoccupied
part of the station.
Russian space officials said there appeared to be no damage to
the outside of the craft or change in air pressure inside, and
that the two men were safe.
Mr Foale and Mr Kaleri arrived on the ISS last month and leave
next April.
Thanksgiving
Michael Foale, the station's commander, and Alexander Kaleri said
they heard the sound as they were completing their breakfast and
cleanup period.
Although no damage has been found, mission controllers are still
trying to determine what happened.
The US Department of Defense monitors the ISS's orbit for space
debris using radar. If it forecasts that a close approach may
occur the ISS can move out of the way.
Michael Foale, who was born near Louth in Lincolnshire, is no
stranger to space station impacts. He was onboard the Mir space
station in 1987 when a Progress supply tanker crashed into it -
one of the most dangerous incidents to have ever taken place in
space.
The latest incident appears to be minor. Foale and Kaleri are
carrying on with their planned duties which include a light work
schedule and a Thanksgiving holiday meal.
Copyright 2003, BBC
===========
(3) HOT ROCKS
The Guardian, 27 November 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/farout/story/0,13028,1093642,00.html
Mark Pilkington
Last week the Earth passed through the dust tail of comet
Tempel-Tuttle, as it does every November, resulting in the Leonid
meteor shower.
Today, we all know that meteorites originate in space. But until
200 years ago the scientific establishment considered this an
outrageous notion, despite the mountain of evidence quite
literally falling at their feet. Space was empty and rocks did
not come from the sky - to declare otherwise was superstition or
madness. Even in 1768, when a scientist found a still-smoking
rock on the ground, it was decreed that it must have been struck
by lightning.
As late as 1771, the statements of scientists from Paris to
Sussex who observed a meteor hurtling across the Channel could
not sway orthodox opinion. But the mood was changing. By 1794,
the German astronomer Ernst Chladni had amassed evidence to show
that meteorites did indeed come from space. Adding weight to his
testimony, British chemist Edward Howard noted in 1802 that these
"aerolites" shared similarly unusual compositions,
including the presence of nickel, which had first been extracted
in 1751.
The final piece in the puzzle came in 1803 when French scientist
Jean-Baptiste Biot saw stones falling from a fireball over
Normandy. Faced by such a wealth of evidence, the prevailing
orthodoxy was finally, if reluctantly, swayed.
Yet ancient cultures were undoubtedly familiar with meteorites.
By about 4000BC, the Egyptians and Sumerians, who both associated
the rocks with the heavens, were extracting their iron for ritual
weapons and objects. Meteorite worship was practised for
centuries all over the world - famously at the temples of Apollo
at Delphi (below) and Diana at Ephesus. Many believe the Hadschar
al Aswad - the black stone in the Ka'ba wall at Mecca, venerated
for centuries before the time of Mohammed -is actually a
meteorite.
Copyright 2003, The Guardian
=============
(4) ASTRONOMICAL CONTROVERSY ROCKS MUSLIM FAITHFUL
Dawn, 26 November 2003
http://www.dawn.com/2003/11/26/local7.htm
By Our Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD, Nov 25: People from a cross section of the society
have expressed their concern over the controversy regarding
sighting of Eid moon and called for evolving a new system to end
it once and for all.
Interviews with people belonging to various fields of life, show
that they are not happy with the ongoing controversy as they are
still unsure as to what decision they should follow.
Abdul Ahad, a shop owner at Bank Road, called for using modern
technology to resolve the issue. He said in this scientific age,
the Muslims should take advantage of the technology and evolve a
system so that there should be no controversy regarding sighting
of moon.
He was of the view that all Muslims should celebrate Eid on one
day as it would help create unity among the Muslim world. He said
for this purpose, the government should convene a meeting of the
Muslim scholars from all over the world to develop a consensus
and find the solution to the problem.
Mohammad Daud, who supervises a library in a university, said a
calendar system should be implemented in the country and the
whole nation should follow it. He said when scientists could tell
the exact time even in seconds of sun and moon eclipses then
sighting of moon was not a big issue. "When we know that at
what time Mars will come near the Earth again after hundreds of
years and when Halley's comet will be visible, then why this
controversy?", he questioned.
Gohar Rehman, a schoolteacher, criticized the Ulema for creating
doubts in the minds of the people. He said when Muslims could not
celebrate Eid on one day in one country then how could they talk
about unity in the Muslim world.
He expressed his surprise that when there was only difference of
few hours in the timings of different countries, then how could
the difference of days occur when it came to celebrate Eid.
Mr Khalid, a retired government employee, called for
reconstituting Ruet-i-Hilal Committee which should also include
scientists and weather experts.
Mr Tanveer, a photographer, on the other hand, called for
abolishing the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee and reconstituting a
special committee with scientists as its members without
inclusion of Ulema.
Izhar Amrohvi, the parliamentary secretary of the Alliance for
the Restoration of Democracy, opposed the idea of abolishing
Ruet-i-Hilal Committee. He, however, said there should be such
committees in each province and the federal government should not
interfere in their decisions.
He was of the view that Islam allowed fasting and Eid
celebrations only after sighting of moon. He said if the federal
government stopped interfering in provincial matters then this
controversy could end.
Copyright 2003, Dawn
=============
(5) ROYAL (DOOM SOON) SOCIETY: FORGET GLOBAL WARMING, WE'RE
RUNNING OUT OF FUEL
Toronto Star, 26 November 2003
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1069801808730&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154
Worldwide oil, gas production expected to peak in 2020
Only solution to impending shortage will be higher prices
PETER CALAMAI
SCIENCE REPORTER
OTTAWA-Forget about hydrogen fuel cells, wind power, nuclear
reactors and even global warming. The real energy crisis is that
worldwide production of oil and natural gas will peak by 2020,
warn some of the country's top experts.
And the only solution will be higher energy prices, from the gas
pumps right through to household electricity.
That stark forecast was delivered here yesterday at a crystal
ball session on energy and the environment organized by the Royal
Society of Canada, the national academy for top achievers in the
arts, sciences and humanities.
University of British Columbia professor Bill Rees, widely known
for devising the ecological footprint method of measuring
environmental impact, predicted that social and political shock
waves will be felt worldwide when oil production peaks.
Analysts forecast that production from both conventional oil and
sources like Alberta's tar sands will start declining around
2017, with natural gas production peaking soon afterwards, Rees
said.
"Canada is not responding. Since 1990, energy use in Canada
has gone up by 20 per cent and last year our fossil fuel use went
up by 4 per cent," he told the meeting. A 4 per cent annual
increase means a doubling in 18 years.
"That's an absolute travesty of logic," Rees said.
Rees and other experts took issue with the more benign energy
outlook presented by Don Johnston, secretary-general of the
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Johnston, a cabinet minister in the Pierre Trudeau era, argued
that a huge expansion of nuclear power would reduce emissions of
greenhouse gases and slow the rate of climate change. Most
questions about nuclear power could be solved by technology once
countries were past the political and economic hurdles, he said.
But many people simply don't trust assurances from the nuclear
industry, Johnston acknowledged - including his own wife.
"Whenever I tell her all the good things about nuclear, she
says: `They lied.'"
Several speakers expressed skepticism about the much ballyhooed
"hydrogen economy" linked to fuel cells as a new power
source for vehicles.
"Is it worth setting in motion this huge research and
development effort just so we can keep our automobiles?"
asked Richard Gilbert from the Centre for Sustainable
Transportation in Toronto.
Gilbert said it was more sensible to redesign communities to make
maximum use of tracked transit, such as streetcars and light
rail, because these could be powered by electricity from any
source.
"We can be reasonably clear that we're going to have a lot
less energy than we have now," he said.
The Royal Society session also heard warnings that the looming
challenge from declining oil and gas production is being obscured
because governments in Canada are preoccupied with the Kyoto
response to climate change.
"Kyoto is a distraction," Gilbert said of the
multinational agreement for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
Copyright 2003, Toronto Star
===========
(6) REALITY CHECK: ARE WE REALLY RUNNING OUT OF OIL?
NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS, 29 January 2003
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg/bg159/
by David Deming
Oil is a nonrenewable resource. Every gallon of petroleum burned
today is unavailable for use by future generations. Over the past
150 years, geologists and other scientists often have predicted
that our oil reserves would run dry within a few years. When oil
prices rise for an extended period, the news media fill with dire
warnings that a crisis is upon us. Environmentalists argue that
governments must develop new energy technologies that do not rely
on fossil fuels.
The facts contradict these harbingers of doom:
World oil production continued to increase through the end of the
20th century.
Prices of gasoline and other petroleum products, adjusted for
inflation, are lower than they have been for most of the last 150
years.
Estimates of the world's total endowment of oil have increased
faster than oil has been taken from the ground.
How is this possible? We have not run out of oil because new
technologies increase the amount of recoverable oil, and market
prices - which signal scarcity - encourage new exploration and
development. Rather than ending, the Oil Age has barely begun.
History of Oil Prognostications
The history of the petroleum industry is punctuated by periodic
claims that the supply will be exhausted, followed by the
discovery of new oil fields and the development of technologies
for recovering additional supplies. For instance:
Before the first U.S. oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania in
1859, petroleum supplies were limited to crude oil that oozed to
the surface. In 1855, an advertisement for Kier's Rock Oil
advised consumers to "hurry, before this wonderful product
is depleted from Nature's laboratory."
In 1874, the state geologist of Pennsylvania, the nation's
leading oil-producing state, estimated that only enough U.S. oil
remained to keep the nation's kerosene lamps burning for four
years.
Seven such oil shortage scares occurred before 1950. As a writer
in the Oil Trade Journal noted in 1918: "At regularly
recurring intervals in the quarter of a century that I have been
following the ins and outs of the oil business[,] there has
always arisen the bugaboo of an approaching oil famine, with
plenty of individuals ready to prove that the commercial supply
of crude oil would become exhausted within a given time - usually
only a few years distant....
How Much Oil Is Left?
Scaremongers are fond of reminding us that the total amount of
oil in the Earth is finite and cannot be replaced during the span
of human life. This is true; yet estimates of the world's total
oil endowment have grown faster than humanity can pump petroleum
out of the ground.
Estimates of the total amount of oil resources in the world grew
throughout the 20th century:
In May 1920, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that the
world's total endowment of oil amounted to 60 billion barrels.
In 1950, geologists estimated the world's total oil endowment at
around 600 billion barrels.
From 1970 through 1990, their estimates increased to between
1,500 and 2,000 billion barrels.
In 1994, the U.S. Geological Survey raised the estimate to 2,400
billion barrels, and their most recent estimate (2000) was of a
3,000-billion-barrel endowment.
By the year 2000, a total of 900 billion barrels of oil had been
produced. Total world oil production in 2000 was 25 billion
barrels. If world oil consumption continues to increase at an
average rate of 1.4 percent a year, and no further resources are
discovered, the world's oil supply will not be exhausted until
the year 2056.
Additional Petroleum Resources.
The estimates above do not include unconventional oil resources.
Conventional oil refers to oil that is pumped out of the ground
with minimal processing; unconventional oil resources consist
largely of tar sands and oil shales that require processing to
extract liquid petroleum. Unconventional oil resources are very
large. In the future, new technologies that allow extraction of
these unconventional resources likely will increase the world's
reserves.
FULL PAPER at http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg/bg159/
=============
(7) EUROPE WANTS FRANCE TO HOST NUCLEAR FUSION REACTOR
BBC News Online, 25 November 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3239806.stm
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
The European Union has chosen France as its preferred location
for a nuclear reactor that scientists hope will revolutionise
world power production.
It will cost billions to build the fusion machine which releases
energy in a similar way to the Sun's furnaces.
Scientists say the new reactor will be the first to give out a
lot more power than it consumes on initial ignition.
International partners in the immense engineering project include
Canada, the US, China, Japan, Russia and Korea.
Well placed
A final decision on the siting of the International Thermonuclear
Experimental Reactor (Iter) should come in December at a meeting
of officials involved in its planning.
The EU candidate, Cadarache, in southeastern France, is likely
face stiff competition from Rokkasho in Japan.
The plant, wherever it is constructed, is expected to generate
thousands of jobs.
Spain had initially put forward its own choice of Vandellos but
then fell in line with its EU partners when research ministers
agreed it could host the administrative headquarters for the
European arm of the Iter project.
Europe believes it stands a good chance of hosting the fusion
plant.
A recent report, chaired by Sir David King, chief scientific
adviser to the UK Government, said "either (European) site
would be likely to win the international site selection".
Star power
The Iter project is the latest stage in the decades-long quest to
develop fusion power.
In conventional nuclear power plants, heavy atoms are split to
release energy. But in a fusion reactor, energy is harnessed by
forcing the nuclei of light atoms together - the same process
that takes place at the core of the Sun and makes it shine.
Advocates say commercial fusion plants of the future could be
cheap to run and environmentally friendly, with much less
radioactive waste produced.
However, developing the necessary technology is proving very
expensive and time-consuming.
To use fusion reactions as an energy source, it is necessary to
heat a gas to temperatures exceeding 100 million Celsius - many
times hotter than the centre of the Sun. At these temperatures,
the gas becomes a plasma.
Under these conditions, the plasma particles, from deuterium and
tritium, fuse to form helium and high speed neutrons.
A commercial power station will use the heat generated by the
energetic neutrons, slowed down by a blanket of denser material
(lithium), to generate electricity.
The fuels used are virtually inexhaustible. Deuterium and tritium
are both isotopes of hydrogen. Deuterium is extracted from water
and tritium is manufactured from a light metal, lithium, which is
found all over the world.
One kilogram would produce the same amount of energy as
10,000,000 kilograms of fossil fuel.
Iter would be the world's largest international cooperative
research and development project after the International Space
Station.
Its goal will be to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for 500
seconds or longer during each individual fusion experiment and in
doing so demonstrate essential technologies for a commercial
reactor.
Copyright 2003, BBC
===========
(8) FOODS FOR THE FUTURE
Daily Bruin, 26 November 2003
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=26533
By Joie Guner
DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR
jguner@media.ucla.edu
By the year 2050, there will be 9 billion humans inhabiting the
world - a population that will require a 100 percent increase in
the production of food to stave of starvation.
A symposium on Friday entitled "Foods for the Future,"
organized by UCLA Extension in collaboration with the David
Geffen School of Medicine, addressed this issue among others
concerning the bioengineering of food
"This symposium is geared to educating the university
community and the public about trying to improve plants for human
health and nutrition," said Robert Goldberg, co-coordinator
and professor in the department of molecular, cell and
developmental biology at UCLA.
Experts on this subject from around the country spoke on issues
ranging from oral vaccines, the enhancement of foods through
vitamins, and the elimination of allergens to regulation of
bioengineering foods and the benefit of such products to
developing countries.
Goldberg gave a presentation that mapped out the origins of
agriculture and its progress into modern day food. He showed how
humans have been genetically altering food to improve its quality
for 10,000 years. The improvement continues today.
With the advent of biotechnological gene modification, scientists
like Eliot Herman of the United States Department of Agriculture
have made far-reaching advances.
"You can use biotechnology to totally remove an intrinsic
food allergen which causes problems for very large numbers of
people," Herman said in a speech at the symposium.
Herman uses suppression technology in order to clone allergen
genes and reinserts these genes into normal soybean plants.
Consequently, the plant gets irritated and thinks a virus is
invading, so it eliminates the proteins that cause allergies.
Channapatna Prakash, the director of the Center for Plant
Technology at Tuskeegee University, delivered a presentation on
the uses of bioengineered foods in developing countries.
"Many developing countries have a lot of malnourishment
because of a lack of certain vitamins and minerals in the crops
that they eat, such as rice," Prakash said. "This
technology has potential for genetic fortification to boost the
level of vitamins and nutrients in the food."
He cited the lack of vitamin A in the diet of many in developing
countries, which leads to blindness in half a million children
each year.
By bioengineering the vitamin A gene from carrots or daffodils
and putting it into rice, scientists take an enormous step toward
solving the problem.
Yet the major concern in developing countries is not solely the
lack of nutrition - it is the lack of actual food itself.
"(Biotechnology) can increase productivity on the farm by
cutting losses that we have already in developing countries due
to diseases and pests and weeds," Prakash said.
"Technology has the potential to make our crops hardier by
trying to provide them with a level of insulation against these
factors," he added.
However, Prakash said countries should implement biosafety
regulations that are "very science-based without too much
bureaucratic red tape" before bioengineered food can be
used.
Goldberg said that by sticking to a "science-based"
solution to the lack of nutrients and food in developing
countries, "miracle plants" can be created.
Such "miracle plants" could potentially be used as oral
vaccines, said Charles Arntzen, a professor at Arizona State
University - a method preferred over needles by organizations
like the World Health Organization.
"The machinery of protein production in plants ... is
slightly tweaked to cause a new protein to accumulate in plant
cells," Arntzen said. "This new protein is designed so
that it acts as an oral vaccine when a dried sample of the plant
is consumed."
These advancements can be hampered by activists who believe that
bioengineered food is poisonous or unhealthy, Goldberg said.
"The controversy with respect to genetic engineering and
plants will go down as the biggest hoax of the last part of the
20th century and the beginning of the 21st century because there
are no valid reasons other than ideology that would prevent any
of this stuff from going forward," Goldberg said.
==========
(9) AND FINALLY: VOTING BY NET PROXY?
ABC News, 2 September 2003
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/FutureTech/techtv_computervote030902.html
By Andy Jordan, Tech Live
Sept. 2- Face it, you're more concerned with who was voted
off the latest reality television show than where California
governor [...] Arnold Schwarzenegger stands on health care.
A futurist at a pioneering new technology school in Italy has
envisioned a piece of software that could help you weed through
all the political issues without picking up a newspaper, visiting
a Web site, or even, someday, stepping into a voting booth.
Jason Tester, 25, has spent the last two years in the foothills
of the Italian Alps in a small town called Ivrea. At the
Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, a very new school built to
develop new products and services, the Stanford-educated American
has been studying where the U.S.'s form of democracy is headed.
"People are used to technology in their voting now. I just
wanted to see what happened when you take that further," he
says. And he admits he's worried about the trend toward
touch-screen voting machines and other technology-enhanced voting
mechanisms.
You might call him the George Orwell of voting technology, since
Tester has been playing devil's advocate on just how drastically
high-tech balloting could alter our our right to civic
representation.
A Virtual Voting Agent
He built a prototype for what he thinks could be the future of
voting: an agent that mines your online and other computer habits
to extract a political ideology, and then makes voting
recommendations - or more omniously, even casts the ballots for
you.
He calls it "Constituty," and it could act as a sort of
McVoting for the masses. No knowledge of politics required.
Indeed, no knowledge of candidates required, either.
Constituty would look at the Web pages you surf, your online bank
account, and even keywords and emoticons in your instant
messages. If it spotted the words "smog day" next to
"environment" and a frowning emoticon, for instance, it
would conclude that you care about the environment.
Guiltless Civic Duty?
Tester says customizing software is paving the way for a real
Constituty.
"There are bits and pieces of customizing and profiling
software out there, just nothing's been applied to voting,"
he says. "It's the last sacred space."
But Tester believes that final sacrosanct arena could be breached
- under the guise of increasing voter turnout.
"I think the service, if it existed, would try to play upon
the guilt people feel for not voting," he says.
Elaborate, Frightening Theories
Tester has started a Web site, AcceleratedDemocracy.net, to
create a forum on the future of technology, voting, and
democracy. The site graphically features Tester's entire
Orwellian theory of future voting, when Constituty can be bought
off store shelves and will work like the old Microsoft
"Clippy" word processor application helper.
In one of four futuristic scenarios laid out on the site,
Constituty recommends candidates for the user and then offers to
place a vote, whether or not the user asks for more information
on how Constituty arrived at its decision.
In another scenario, location-based voting demands a voter spend
time in the woods in order to vote on a ballot measure to save a
certain park.
In the "Exercise Your Vote" scenario, voting power is
given only to those who are informed on candidates or issues, and
rewards them with political payback after votes are cast via cell
phone or PDA, or even at ATM-like voter kiosks.
Finally, as Tester sees it, voters could track candidates'
performance on how well they fulfill, or fail, on campaign
promises.
Each scenario is possible, says Tester, given the way so-called
smart agent technology is progressing.
Technology, the Great Unknown
But Stanford computer science professor David Dill isn't
convinced the technology is ready, or will be anytime soon.
"I hope he's wrong about that being a likely scenario,"
Dill scoffs.
Dill started his own Web site, VerifiedVoting.org, to rally
support for the idea of building a type of paper receipt or other
type of verification from computer-tallied voting. As his Web
site says, the goal is to avoid voting debacles like the 2000
presidential election, and electronic voting isn't the answer,
yet.
Needless to say, Dill isn't too psyched on Tester's prediction
for the future.
"To have a computer program try to guess how you're going to
vote when who knows what kind of logic it's using, and who
programmed that agent, is well beyond anything I would consider
acceptable," Dill says.
So why did Tester do it?
A cautionary tale, perhaps. He considers where we're headed is
"the downfall of democracy - one-click voting when you
barely know who you're voting for."
Copyright 2003 TechTV, Inc. All rights reserved.
=============
(10) UNDER THE BOTTOM LINE
Number Watch, 25 November 2003
Sunday November 23rd - a dark day, with the rain hammering down
in the proverbial
stair rods from dawn to dusk. Nothing unusual for autumn in South
West England,
you might think. Nevertheless, it makes the weather forecast in
The Sunday Times
interesting reading: "Early cloud will clear to leave a
largely bright day with
spells of sunshine. However, some early mist or fog may linger
during the day."
To reinforce the message there is a nice little map with symbols
of the sun coyly
peeping out from behind light clouds. This from the people who
confidently proclaim
they know what the climate is going to do in one hundred years
time.
-- http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/2003%20November.htm
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