"Avogadro Corp" by William Hertling

From the cover's tag line "The Singularity is closer than it appears" I expected this book would be a bit pat - aimed perfectly at my interests, as per this blog's focus. It certainly was very pat. Entirely straight forwards and linear in it's plot structure, with overly plain language and cardboard characters prone to converse in totally unrealistic exposition.

This book is basically a long form best guess at how a very early technological Singularity might be kicked off, via the accidental creation of AI. "Avogadro" would probably have read "Google" if not for the trademark issue - that is literally the company described, in every detail. As such the story is unimaginative. Yet it is still unbelievable in the amount of contrivances it throws in, to start the plot rolling.

The behaviour of characters is often uncanny, too - although this may be down to writing for brevity, without the author having the deft wordsmith skills of the likes of Charles Stross (let alone Banks).

To be fair, it was easy reading, for me, with short chapters and good pacing - I actually finished it (first one this year!). I'm considering going forwards onto his sequels, except the first chapter excerpt name drops both "Gibson" and "Stross" (as future phone handset models). Ick; clearly the author's influences are near perfectly aligned with my own, here, but his hat  tips are ugly AF.

Utility of the Green Energy Bubble

Continued climate skepticism, international treaty failures and government spending malaise are still the state of play as far as renewable energy generation is concerned, right? The planet is already doomed to a 2-4deg.C rise, while home-owners bicker over new wind turbine locations... But forget all that!:

"China steams ahead on clean energy"

From the perspective of this BBC article, a clean energy boom is already well under way. Even the UK, with our apparently doddering government, was 3rd in the world for renewable investment (in 2009), not far behind the US in gross expenditure. Way out in the lead, in terms of investment, and soon installed capacity, is China. Yes, the nation getting the most international evils for it's ballooning coal addiction, will soon pass it's 2020 target of 30GW of renewables (when counting just its wind power), and it is the world leader in photovoltaic cell production.

While US investment fell 40% during the sub-prime mortgage crash, overall global investment has been buoyant. South Korea's capacity grew 250% in the last 5 years!

Greenpeace may be moaning about data center power use, but Google are already heavily reducing their carbon footprint, spurring the rest of the industry, and society as a whole to follow suit. Their roves are carpeted with solar PV and the Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI circa 2007) they co-founded has pretty ambitious targets.

Admittedly, the internet uses (very) roughly 5% of global power (and rising). I consider this should be

Settling the Seas for Freedom

I've been contemplating the future potential for colonising the oceans; possible (high-tech) uses for abandoned oil rigs and massive cargo ships/bulk carriers. Some of the prospects they could offer have excited me for years: an transhuman level AI taking over a container ship and turning it into an advanced manufactury, or self contained, floating AI nation-state. Throw a few pampered humans on board too and you would have Banks' Culture on our high seas. As a main context for a sci-fi novel, it might make a great prequel to the Culture novels, much more interesting than a concluding story, as discussed in my previous blog post.

Having contemplated technical solutions for autonomous living at sea as an purely hypothetical exercise (renewable power generation, pumping heat from the sea, growing plants and meat hydroponically, etc) I recently discovered the term "Seasteading", which represents a growing movement (and a revealing history).

One of the most famous Seasteads is "The Principality of Sealand", a former World War II 'Maunsell' Sea Fort in the North Sea, 6 miles off the coast of Suffolk (England). Despite consisting merely of two corroded pillars sticking out of the sea with a shack on top, it has currency, coins, stamps, national anthem and athletes, a constitutional monarchy that has issued tens of thousands of passports (now mostly revoked after fakes linked to high-profile crimes), broadcast pirate radio in the late 60s, 'defended' its territorial waters against the royal navy, witnessed a forcible takeover by a German and a Dutch citizen, who were later deposed and held as prisoners of war after a helicopter assault by the original owner (Bates), then freed after a diplomatic visit and now self declared "government in exile". Some of the highlights of a truly hilarious Wikipedia article.

The point is having one's own 'land', free of big government, is exceedingly rare and desirable indeed! Dodging legalities for instance: The Pirate Bay attempted to