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Minority report the beginning...

Ali Razeghi, a Tehran scientist has registered "The Aryayek Time Traveling Machine" with the state-run Centre for Strategic Inventions.

The device can predict the future in a print out after taking readings from the touch of a user, he told the Fars state newsagency.

Razaeghi, 27, said the device worked by a set of complex algorithims to "predict five to eight years of the future life of any individual, with 98 percent accuracy".

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14.29.78.74.71

Unexplained ground cracks, tear earth in Arizona

Unexplained ground cracks, tear earth in Arizona:

March 25, 2013 –LUEPP, ARIZONA – It’s not something you see every day on the Navajo Nation, but a crack in the earth has been forming for a long time now and no one seems to have a clear answer. It just sits east of Flagstaff on Luepp Rd and about one mile west of Leupp gas station. It’s gotten so big, that they had to fence it in. According to the U.S. geological survey, they say earthquakes come and go in the northern parts of Arizona, which also covers the reservation, it’s not big enough to rattle down buildings but with the recent collapse of highway 89 near Page, some local residences wonder what mother nature has in mind for the vast reservation. On March 18, we reached out to the Navajo Nation land and geology department, they did not have a particular person to give us an answer, so no one was readily available to explain what that huge gash was in the earth. –Navajo Post

Geologic event collapses highway: U.S. 89 is the main road connecting Page to Flagstaff and the Valley. More than 120 feet of the highway has sunk nearly 4 feet just south of Page in the Navajo Nation, according to Dustin Krugel of ADOT.  – February 2013

contribution Emanni

‘Nightmare’ bacteria spreading in U.S. hospitals, nursing homes: CDC

‘Nightmare’ bacteria spreading in U.S. hospitals, nursing homes: CDC:

March 6, 2013 – HEALTH – A “nightmare” bacteria that is resistant to powerful antibiotics and kills half of those it infects has surfaced in nearly 200 U.S. hospitals and nursing homes, federal health officials reported Tuesday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 4 percent of U.S. hospitals and 18 percent of nursing homes had treated at least one patient with the bacteria, called Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), within the first six months of 2012. “CRE are nightmare bacteria. Our strongest antibiotics don’t work and patients are left with potentially untreatable infections,” CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a news release. “Doctors, hospital leaders and public health [officials] must work together now to implement the CDC’s ‘detect and protect’ strategy and stop these infections from spreading. The good news,” Frieden added at an afternoon teleconference, “is we now have an opportunity to prevent its further spread.” But, he continued, “We only have a limited window of opportunity to stop this infection from spreading to the community and spreading to more organisms.” CRE are in a family of more than 70 bacteria called enterobacteriaceae, including Klebsiella pneumoniae and E. coli, that normally live in the digestive system. In recent years, some of these bacteria have become resistant to last-resort antibiotics known as carbapenems. Although CRE bacteria are not yet found nationwide, they have increased fourfold within the United States in the past decade, with most cases reported in the Northeast. Health officials said they’re concerned about the rapid spread of the bacteria, which can endanger the lives of patients and healthy people. For example, in the last 10 years, the CDC tracked one CRE from one health-care facility to similar facilities in 42 states. One type of CRE, a resistant form of Klebsiella pneumoniae, has increased sevenfold in the past decade, according to the CDC’s March 5 Vital Signs report. “To see bacteria that are resistant is worrisome, because this group of bacteria is very common,” said Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. Most CRE infections to date have been in patients who had prolonged stays in hospitals, long-term facilities and nursing homes, the report said. The bacteria kill up to half the patients whose bloodstream gets infected and are easily spread from patient to patient on the hands of health-care workers, the CDC said. Moreover, CRE bacteria can transfer their antibiotic resistance to other bacteria of the same type. This problem is the result of the overuse of antibiotics, Siegel said. “The more you use an antibiotic, the more resistance is going to emerge,” he said. “This is an indictment of the overuse of this class of antibiotic.” What’s needed are new antibiotics, Siegel said, adding that pharmaceutical companies lack the financial motivation to develop them right now. “Eventually, there will be enough resistance so drug companies will have a financial incentive. In the meantime, lives can be lost,” he said. -MSN

contribution by Nickko

Organize your bag: Find things easily and reduce back pain

Organize your bag: Find things easily and reduce back pain:
Have you looked inside your bag lately? I’ve been checking out What’s in your bag?, a regular feature on the website Verge.com, where people open up their bags to show everything they carry around with them. The bags of both men and women are profiled and it’s interesting to see the similarities of the things they normally keep with them (almost all bags contain a pen and a marker). Equally as interesting was that some people carry as many as 60 items on a regular basis, some of which are heavy (like cameras and laptops).
It’s likely that many people select bags not just for function (being able to carry essential items), but also for style (ability to complement most things you wear). But, if you look in the latest fashion magazines and catalogs, you’ll notice that bags seem to be getting bigger and bigger, probably so the people using them can carry more stuff. That may sound like a good thing, but overloading your bag can make it difficult for you to find what you’re looking for when you need it and, more importantly, can be a source of physical pain.
According to the American Chiropractic Association, weighty bags can have a significant impact on your body:

Carrying a bag with detectable weight–more than 10 percent of your body weight–can cause improper balance. When hiked over one shoulder, it interferes with the natural movement of the upper and lower body. The person carrying the bag will hike one shoulder to subconsciously guard against the weight, holding the other shoulder immobile. This results in the unnatural counterbalance movement of one shoulder and little control over the movements of the arms and legs. Even worse, the spine curves toward the shoulder.

If you tend to put a lot of things in your daily bag just in case you might need them, you may want to do things differently. While you might like the idea of being prepared for anything, in reality, you’re simply doing physical harm to yourself and cluttering up your time searching for stuff. As you decide which items you need to carry on a daily basis, consider these three simple things you can do to organize and reduce the weight of your bag:

Use a smaller bag

Using a smaller bag will encourage you to carry around your essential items only. If you have to use a larger one, consider getting one with wider straps, alternate carrying it on both shoulders, or get a bag on wheels. And, when you use a backpack, wear it (use both straps) instead of slinging it over one shoulder. If it helps to see cold, hard numbers, put your bag on a scale to see how much it weighs.

Clean and organize your bag often

It’s a good idea to organize your bag on a regular basis. Take out the non-essential items (like expired coupons, receipts, loose change) and keep only things you need to have with you every day (like keys, wallet, glasses). You’ll also want to vacuum the inside and clean the outside (especially if you place your bag on floors or public restroom counters). Pick a day of the week that you’ll regularly organize your bag to ensure it’s not overloaded with things you don’t need.

Consilidate and keep like items together

Both Erin and I are fond of bags with compartments because you can’t overstuff them and all of your things have a home. But, you don’t need a special bag to achieve the same results. You can create a bit more order in your current bag by downsizing (how many pens do you really need?) and consolidating similar items into pouches or zip top bags. This will keep things easy to find and help you to be more selective about the items you carry around with you.
Need help getting organized? Buy the DRM-free audiobook version of Erin Rooney Doland's Unclutter Your Life in One Week today for only $8.99.

WorldWide Telescope focuses on a familiar planet: Earth

WorldWide Telescope focuses on a familiar planet: Earth:

Earthquake data from WorldWide Telescope's new add-in.

Image via Microsoft Research

WorldWide Telescope, a free program that turns the cosmos into a visual dictionary, has added a plugin that allows virtual astronomers to train their amplified eye on Earth and to look back in time.
The original Telescope, from Microsoft Research and powered by Silverlight, can be employed in a browser and downloaded to a user's device. Scroll about the night's sky and select one of millions of celestial objects, then click on it and you will access astronomical information such as a galaxy's wave length, as well as interpretive data, like papers on the object from peer-reviewed journals.
Technology Review quoted Harvard astronomy professor Alyssa Goodman, a longtime user of the software, and founder of the WorldWide Telescope Ambassadors program, as describing the Telescope this way: "Objects in the sky become the hyperlinks themselves."
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Google's PageRank could get a boost from quantum computing

Google's PageRank could get a boost from quantum computing:
Practical quantum computers don't exist yet, but if they did, could they solve the problem of searching the Web? A particularly challenging problem in finding content is ranking the results: determining which page out of the plethora is most relevant to the search terms, and which sources are most likely to be reliable. One familiar algorithm for this is Google's PageRank, which is (obviously) computationally expensive; it is impossible with current technology to extend it to the whole Web.
In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, Silvano Garnerone, Paolo Zanardi, and Daniel A. Lidar proposed a quantum algorithm encoding the same information as PageRank. Quantum computing is based on the principle of entanglement: the possible binary states (quantum bits, or qubits) are simultaneously encoded. The authors caution that even their algorithm—or any quantum algorithm—will probably offer no speedup over current classical algorithms if the entire Web is simulated. However, in the case of specific network connection topologies, the quantum algorithm offers a potentially significant improvement over current search strategies.
The particular connection topologies the authors considered in this paper were the sparse and small-world networks; the latter is the basis for the "Six Degrees of Separation" (or Kevin Bacon) game. Using their quantum algorithm, the researchers found a significant (polynomial) speed up when the number of connections each node possesses was small, compared to the classical PageRank algorithm.
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Premature Obituaries and the Mandela Effect

Premature Obituaries and the Mandela Effect:
Premature obituaries are not — so far — a significant factor in “Mandela Effect” reports.
Among all the stories I hear in real life, via email, and in comments at this website, few (if any) represent documented premature obituaries.  Even the prepared obituary for Nelson Mandela was leaked long after the era when people clearly remember his funeral.
You can see a list of the major false reports at Wikipedia’s list of premature obituaries.
It’s routine for news reporters to prepare obituaries for important public figures.  Then, when the person is gone, the tribute to that person is ready to rush to press (in the case of newspapers and magazines) and to broadcasts.  Reporters have the highlights of the person’s life already written.  Only the death information is necessary for the new report.
In at least one case, some of those prepared obituaries were leaked… but not as actual obituaries.  The event was known as the “CNN incident.”  Here’s how Wikipedia describes the hack:

Multiple premature obituaries came to light on 16 April 2003, when it was discovered that pre-written draft memorials to several world figures were available on the development area of the CNN website without requiring a password (and may have been accessible for some time before). The pages included tributes to Fidel Castro, Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela, Bob Hope, Gerald Ford, Pope John Paul II, and Ronald Reagan.

When considering the Nelson Mandela reports, it’s important to put them into context:

1. This CNN website issue wasn’t reported as actual obituaries.  Mostly, when the story went public, it focused on ridiculous things like Dick Cheney being described as the “Queen Consort,” and Fidel Castrol being a “movie star.”
2. The CNN website leak was reported in 2003.  Most people who remember Nelson Mandela’s death, remember details from the 1980s.  They’re not confusing that era with 2003.

So far, I don’t have any good explanations for the detailed, rich, credible memories people report in connection with the death of Nelson Mandela, Billy Graham, and others.  Nevertheless, when your memory of a celebrity’s death doesn’t match the timeline you’re in, it’s important to double-check the premature obituaries list, just in case.
Wikipedia lists the following explanations for premature obits:

•     Accidental publication: accidental release of a pre-written obituary, usually on a news web site, as a result of technical or human error. The most egregious example was when, in 2003, CNN accidentally released draft obituaries for seven major world figures.

•      Brush with death: when the subject unexpectedly survives a serious illness or accident which made them appear to be dead or certain to die.

•     Fraud victim: many people from Uttar Pradesh, India have been registered dead by officials who are bribed by relatives who want to steal the victim’s land. The ensuing legal disputes often continue for many years, with victims growing elderly and sometimes dying in reality before they are resolved.

•     Hoax: when a death is falsely reported, as a prank.

•     Impostor: when an ordinary person who for years has passed himself off to family and friends as a retired minor celebrity dies, it can prompt an erroneous obituary for the real (but still-living) celebrity.

•     Misidentified body: when a corpse is misidentified as someone else, often someone who was involved in the same incident or who happened to go missing at the same time.

•     Missing in action: soldiers who go missing in war are sometimes incorrectly declared dead if no body is found. In particular, a number of Japanese soldiers thought to have died in World War II in fact survived – typically hiding in remote jungle for years or even decades, believing that the war had not ended.

•     Misunderstandings: such as when a Sky News employee thought that an internal rehearsal for the future death of the Queen Mother was real.

•     Name confusion: where someone with an identical or similar name has died. Usually the subject of the obituary is famous; the deceased person is not.

•      Pseudocide: when the subject fakes his own death in order to evade legal, financial, or marital difficulties and start a new life.

Premature obituaries and other news reporting errors can lead to misunderstandings.  However, most of the reports I receive can’t be explained by a news error or simple misunderstanding.  The Mandela Effect goes far beyond that.

Sci-fi no longer, NREL engineers smart homes

Sci-fi no longer, NREL engineers smart homes: Thanks to TV shows such as The Jetsons and Star Trek, many Americans grew up dreaming that homes of the future would be equipped with fantastic high-tech features. From automatic food dispensers to sliding doors, to Rosie the Robot doing the household chores, the imagined homes of the future seemed to be driven by an unlimited supply of energy.

Bizarro by Dan Piraro - 26 April 2012

Bizarro by Dan Piraro - 26 April 2012:

The Tao of Travel

The Tao of Travel:

‘A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.’ ~Laozi

Post written by Leo Babauta.

I’m not the world’s most seasoned traveler, but I have made a number of trips lately and have learned a few things that work well.

This year I’ve traveled to Guam for a month, to Portland, New York City, Las Vegas, London, Paris, Southern California. They’ve all been beautiful trips, and I’ve never taken more than a small backpack.

Travel lightly, with no set agenda, and you’ll have an amazing, stress-free trip.

Traveling doesn’t have to be stressful. It can be simple, if you keep it so.

Essential

1. Pack little. I take a small backpack, and don’t pack it too heavy either. I’ve found through experience that I just need a pair of jeans, 2-3 T-shirts, 2-3 quick-dry boxer briefs, 2-3 pairs of quick-dry socks, maybe a light sweater. I wash things in the shower if they get dirty and hang them to dry overnight. I bring my laptop so I can work for 30-45 minutes every morning. A paperback novel, maybe a small notebook. Minimal toiletries: deodorant, toothbrush, razor, Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap (for washing clothes in the sink, and shaving), dental floss. I never wait to check my back or get the bag after the flight, and I can pack in 5 minutes.


2. Have no agenda. I often ask for recommendations from locals, and get a list of incredible things. I’ll also put everything on a Google Map, so I can see where everything is. Then I toss all that out and let the day lead me where it will. Having no set agenda means you aren’t pressured to get anything done each day, which means you can enjoy yourself fully.


3. Walk a lot. The best way to explore any place is to walk. Walk all over, with no set directions. Get lost.


4. Eat lightly. Eat anything you want, but don’t eat a lot. I like to mix fruits and veggies in with the heavier stuff, so I don’t feel so heavy.


5. Find space to relax. Most people try to do too much, and rush around all day. Stroll casually, find good coffee shops or tea shops to relax in, or a good sidewalk cafe with good wine. Find parks and enjoy them. If it rains, walk in the rain. Read a lot.


6. Be present. Don’t be on your smartphone or laptop all the time. Don’t always think about what you’ll be doing later, or work stuff. Be fully present, and you’ll have a great time.


7. Smile at people. Talk to the locals. Ask for recommendations. Find out about their lives.

A Few More

• Do bodyweight exercises. I do a mix of pushups, squats, lunges, burpees in my hotel room or apartment.


• Don’t just stay for a day or two. If you really want to see a city, stay for a week or more. I could have gone to Europe and hit up 10 cities in three weeks, but instead I split that time among just two cities (London & Paris) and really saw those cities.


• Get a short-term apartment if you can. If you can stay for a week, get an apartment if you can afford it. It’s cheaper than a hotel and much more comfortable.


• Read a good novel.


• Bring a metal water bottle. I learned this from my friend Scott: pack an empty water bottle, so you can get through TSA security checkpoints, and then fill up the bottle at the airport water fountain after the checkpoint. I carry the water bottle around everywhere I go so I’m never thirsty.


• Keep a journal. Don’t stress over the journal. It doesn’t have to be daily. Just write out your thoughts, impressions when you have some spare time.


• Travel locally. For years I never traveled, to save costs. I was content where I was, and that’s still true. Be a tourist in your hometown — see the sights, walk the area, explore and try to find new things you’ve never seen before. You don’t need to spend a lot to travel locally.

‘One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.’ ~Henry Miller

Must-See Video Reveals What’s at Risk With Canada’s Northern Gateway Tar Sands Pipeline

Must-See Video Reveals What’s at Risk With Canada’s Northern Gateway Tar Sands Pipeline:

Protests Increase Against Canada’s Alternative to Keystone XL

Photo: Ian McAllister

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is currently visiting China to forge alliances and open up the Asian market for Canada’s environmentally-disastrous tar sands crude.

Harper may be making friends in China. But he’s certainly not making any friends in the environmental and conservation communities in the U.S. or Canada.

As Americans fight an increasingly intense political battle over the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, Canadian groups are stepping up their opposition to a proposed domestic pipeline that they say would destroy pristine wilderness and jeopardize the way of life of First Nations living in the path of the project.

This past weekend saw a new round of protests in British Columbia against the Northern Gateway project, a proposed 731-mile pipeline that would transport crude from a terminal near Alberta’s tar sands to the Douglas Channel — located in a sensitive rainforest — for export to China and other countries.

More than 1,000 people gathered in Prince Rupert, British Columbia to voice their deep concerns about the project. The demonstration was organized by First Nations and featured a variety of local politicians who said that the protests were “bringing people together” to protect British Columbia’s environment.

The groups were demonstrating against both the pipeline and the proposed shipping route that would allow hundreds of massive oil tankers to travel a treacherous path through pristine wilderness.

The Natural Resources Defense Council released a report last fall detailing the route:

At Kitimat, a tank farm at the edge of the water would facilitate the transfer of oil to holding tanks and then into large oil supertankers. These supertankers would then traverse 185 kilometres of inner coastal waters, including the Douglas Channel, before reaching open ocean in the unpredictably dangerous Hecate Strait, Queen Charlotte Sound, and Dixon Entrance. There is a reason that large oil supertankers have not used these waters in the past: the route poses many navigational challenges for large vessels, even under ideal conditions.

…To export tar sands oil, supertankers called “Very Large Crude Carriers” (VLCCs), with a capacity of 2.2 million barrels of oil (320,000 tonnes), would be required on a much more frequent basis. There is already strong opposition to large oil tanker traffic in coastal waters among local citizens, First Nation communities, and organizations concerned about the potential impacts of an oil spill in the ecologically sensitive marine habitats of the coast.

The people of the Gitga’at First Nation who live in the area have expressed deep concerns about the shipping route. In 2006, a ferry transporting 101 people ran off course and sank while sailing these inner coastal waters, killing two people. The vessel was only a fraction of the size of the supertankers that would be carrying crude:

[Bob Hill, a treaty coordinator and negotiator for the Gitga’at] noted it was Gitga’at residents of Hartley Bay who rescued passengers off the B.C. ferry Queen of the North when it sank in 2006.

“And it’s an example of what a small community is faced with in regards to tanker traffic — and the Queen of the North is minute compared to the size of the tankers they’re talking about.”

Hill said the view of the Gitga’at is, “No matter how careful we are in improving technology, and the safety concerns we have, there’s always that chance that human error will enter the equation and do the damage to the environment.”

With the fate of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline uncertain in the U.S., the Canadian government is looking to increase exports of carbon-spewing tar sands crude in other ways — and the Northern Gateway pipeline is key to that strategy. But the project has been in the works for almost six years and continues to face long delays because of extended environmental reviews and a strong opposition movement.

If the tar sands opposition movement continues to expand like it did in the U.S. last year, then Northern Gateway may suffer the same fate as Keystone XL.

So what would the Northern Gateway project mean for British Columbia’s rainforest? Watch the amazing documentary below, called “Spoil,” to get a sense for the consequences. In the film, the International League of Conservation Photographers spreads out across the BC rainforest documenting the unique wildlife and the special relationship the Gitga’at First Nation has with the land.

The film is 45 minutes long, so be sure to make time to watch the whole thing:

SPOIL from EP Films on Vimeo.

Tribler Makes BitTorrent Impossible to Shut Down

Tribler Makes BitTorrent Impossible to Shut Down:

The Tribler BitTorrent client is no newcomer to the BitTorrent scene. It has been in development for more than 5 years and has delivered many innovative features, which have mostly been ignored by the masses.

Today, however, Tribler is more relevant than ever before.

Developed by a team of researchers at Delft University of Technology, the main goal is to come up with a robust implementation of BitTorrent that doesn’t rely on central servers. Instead, Tribler is designed to keep BitTorrent alive, even when all torrent search engines, indexes and trackers are pulled offline.

“Our key scientific quest is facilitating unbounded information sharing,” Tribler leader Dr. Pouwelse tells TorrentFreak.

“We simply don’t like unreliable servers. With Tribler we have achieved zero-seconds downtime over the past six years, all because we don’t rely on shaky foundations such as DNS, web servers or search portals.”

So how does it work?

Like many other BitTorrent clients, Tribler has a search box at the top of the application. However, the search results that appear when users type in a keyword don’t come from a central index. Instead, they come directly from other peers.

Tribler’s decentralized search results

Downloading a torrent is also totally decentralized. When a user clicks on one of the search results, the meta-data is pulled in from another peer and the download starts immediately. Tribler is based on the standard BitTorrent protocol and uses regular BitTorrent trackers to communicate with other peers. But, it can also continue downloading when a central tracker goes down.

The same is true for spam control. Where most torrent sites have a team of moderators to delete viruses, malware and fake files, Tribler uses crowd-sourcing to keep the network clean. Content is verified by user generated “channels”, which can be “liked” by others. When more people like a channel, the associated torrents get a boost in the search results.

The latest addition to Tribler is a Wikipedia-style editing system dubbed “Open2Edit,” where users have the option to edit names and descriptions of torrents in public channels. All without a central server, totally decentralized.

open2Edit

According to Dr. Pouwelse, Tribler is fully capable of resisting any pressure from outside, and it will still work when all torrent sites and trackers are gone. It simply can’t be shutdown, blocked or censored, whatever laws politicians may come up with.

“The only way to take it down is to take The Internet down.” Pouwelse told us.

One thing that could theoretically cause issues, is the capability for starting users to find new peers. To be on the safe side the Tribler team is still looking for people who want to act as so called bootstraptribler peers. These users will act as superpeers, who distribute lists of active downloaders.

“Together with software bugs and a code cleanup, that is now our last known weakness,” says Pouwelse.

While the Tribler client only has a few thousand users at the moment, for avid file-sharers it must be a relief to know that it’s out there. No matter what crazy laws may pass in the future, people will always be able to share.

Those who want to give it a spin are welcome download Tribler here. It’s completely Open Source and with a version for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Source: Tribler Makes BitTorrent Impossible to Shut Down

What 7 Billion People Means?

What 7 Billion People Means?:

Just in the past few weeks the Earth’s population surpassed 7 Billion people. While that may seem like a lot, it is hard to comprehend the true meaning of it. Here is an interesting infographic on just that!

Click image for a larger version

Why Europe's Crisis is Everyone's Problem - ETF Guide

Why Europe's Crisis is Everyone's Problem - ETF Guide

Europe’s financial crisis has escalated from a regional problem into a global one.

Banking and financial institutions in the region are at grave risk because of their exposure to toxic sovereign debt.

In turn, investors around the world are at risk because of their exposure to Europe’s financial system.

How big are Europe’s problems? What will be the global effects? And what’s the proper investment strategy for dealing with it? ....

Markets Indicate Greek Default is Imminent

Markets Indicate Greek Default is Imminent: The second bailout package for Greece is increasingly being challanged while the fiscal situation in Greece is become more dire. Without the current bailout money, Greece will default on its debt soon -- probably this fall. This will only be a respite from the inevitable however since the mathematics of the situation indicates a default no matter what.

Time Machines

Time Machines: [Revised entry by John Earman and Christian Wüthrich on October 7, 2010.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, figure1.html, notes.html]
Recent years have seen a growing consensus in the philosophical community that the grandfather paradox and similar logical puzzles do not preclude the possibility of time travel scenarios that utilize spacetimes containing closed timelike curves. At the same time, physicists, who for half a century acknowledged that the general theory of relativity is compatible with such spacetimes, have...

How to Make a Composting Toilet

How to Make a Composting Toilet:

As my husband and I began mapping out the interior of our rustic shed-turned-cabin in Montana, he knew we wouldn’t have plumbing, and I knew I didn’t want to deal with chemicals or smells. With two small children and weather that can range from -20 to 85-degrees Fahrenheit, we also didn’t want to deal with schlepping outside for potty breaks. Building our own humanure toilet turned out to be our perfect solution.

With only 12'x20' of living space, our low-profile toilet is tucked in a quiet corner behind the door

We get quite a few jokes from friends and family about our “lovey loo,” but I would take our lovely-loo over a honey bucket any day! It’s a bucket inside a wood box, and we cover – um – the deposits with sawdust. it has a real toilet seat on it for looks and comfort, but it is what it is, and it works very well.

Recycled red outhouse behind The Shabin always stinks!

I’m a city girl with a flushing toilet, and if our composting toilet had ever started to stink or had drawn bugs, I would have buried the whole mess and put up an outhouse last year! In fact, we did install an outhouse on our last trip and I hate it! Within one day of putting the outhouse to regular use, it stunk to high heaven and was full of flies even though we continuously tossed lime into it. So pardon me if I prefer my little lovey-loo over in the cabin’s quiet corner. Privacy is highly overrated anyway, or so I tell myself … before swearing that we must purchase a curtain next time we’re in town!

After emptying and rinsing the bucket, start with a layer of wood shavings or other dry debris.

I’m not sure why wood shavings and leaf debris work so well to cover the smell, but I would emphasize that new shavings don’t work well. We take our composting debris from the wood pile, and perhaps the older debris has more microbes? We keep the shavings in a basket next to the lovely loo, and we do put toilet paper in with the leavings. Every “deposit” is covered with about an inch of dry compost. I would not recommend using kitchen scraps.

The lysol is not for smell, but it is an option for disinfecting the bucket after it's been emptied and rinsed. After bouts of sickness, extra disinfecting is required.

To make your own, build a wooden box around a bucket. Create a removable lid with or without a toilet seat attached. Know where you’ll be burying or composing your deposits. We bury ours deep out in the fields where the tractors will till it under the following season, while some build a separate compost pile, covering it with straw and claiming that humanure is usable after one year. As long as fresh waste is kept away from human consumables and out of reach of small pets and children, it is an eco-friendly and smell-free means of living comfortably off-grid.

Bethany Learn lives in Oregon with her husband and two small children. She has a degree in Exercise & Sport Science from OSU, and she is the founder and main instructor behind Fit2B.US which features wholesome home workout videos for the whole family. Fit2B Studio and her blog “Fit2Bmama” are rapidly gaining popularity, and she enjoys a wide following on Twitter and Facebook, and she has been a guest on Get Fit Now Radio & The Organic View. Bethany also heads up the MOMS group at her church and operates a resource site for aspiring writers called Ready to Publish. Bethany’s hobbies include editing, reading, dragon boats with the Castaways, crocheting rag rugs out of recycled shirts, and fixing up “The Shabin,” which is a rustic little shabby shed that she and her husband are converting into an off-grid, sustainable cabin on family land in Montana.

The Future of the Internet

The Future of the Internet: "

“In only a few short years, electronic computing systems have been invented and improved at a tremendous rate. But computers did not ‘just grow.’ They have evolved… They were born and they are being improved as a consequence of man’s ingenuity, his imagination… and his mathematics.” — 1958 IBM brochure

The Internet is a medium that is evolving at breakneck speed. It’s a wild organism of sweeping cultural change — one that leaves the carcasses of dead media forms in its sizeable wake. It’s transformative: it has transformed the vast globe into a ‘global village’ and it has drawn human communication away from print-based media and into a post-Gutenberg digital era. Right now, its perils are equal to its potential. The debate over ‘net neutrality’ is at a fever pitch. There is a tug-of-war going on between an ‘open web’ and a more governed form of the web (like the Apple-approved apps on the iPad/iPhone) that has more security but less freedom.

An illustration of a computer from a 1958 IBM promotional brochure titled ‘World of Numbers’

So what’s the next step in its evolution, and what’s the big picture? What does the Internet mean as an extension of human communication, of the human mind? And forget tomorrow — where will the web be in fifty years, or a hundred? Will the Internet help make the world look like something out of Blade Runner or Minority Report? Let’s just pray it doesn’t have anything to do with The Matrix sequels, because those movies really sucked.

This article will offer in-depth analysis of a range of subjects — from realistic expectations stemming from current trends to some more imaginative speculations on the distant future.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #2 is Successful Freelancing for Web Designers, 260 pages for just $9,90.]

Security

“Death of the Open Web”?

Those words have an ominous ring for those of us who have a deep appreciation of the Internet as well as high hopes for its future. The phrase comes from the title of a recent New York Times article that struck a nerve with some readers. The article paints a disquieting picture of the web as a “haphazardly planned” digital city where “malware and spam have turned living conditions in many quarters unsafe and unsanitary.”

There is a growing sentiment that the open web is a fundamentally dangerous place. Recent waves of hacked WordPress sites revealed exploited PHP vulnerabilities and affected dozens of well-known designers and bloggers like Chris Pearson. The tools used by those with malicious intent evolve just as quickly as the rest of the web. It’s deeply saddening to hear that, according to Jonathan Zittrain, some web users have stooped so low as to set up ‘Captcha sweatshops’ where (very) low-paid people are employed to solve Captcha security technology for malicious purposes all day. This is the part where I weep for the inherent sadness of mankind.

“If we don’t do something about this,” says Jonathan Zittrain of the insecure web, “I see the end of much of the generative aspect of the technologies that we now take for granted.” Zittrain is a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University and the author of The Future of the Internet: and How to Stop It; watch his riveting Google Talk on these subjects.

The Wild West: mainstream media’s favorite metaphor for today’s Internet

The result of the Internet’s vulnerability is a generation of Internet-centric products — like the iPad, the Tivo and the XBOX — that are not easily modified by anyone except their vendors and their approved partners. These products do not allow unapproved third-party code (such as the kind that could be used to install a virus) to run on them, and are therefore more reliable than some areas of the web. Increased security often means restricted or censored content — and even worse — limited freedoms that could impede the style of innovation that propels the evolution of the Internet, and therefore, our digital future.

The web of 2010 is a place where a 17 year-old high school student can have an idea for a website, program it in three days, and quickly turn it into a social networking craze used by millions (that student’s name is Andrey Ternovskiy and he invented Chatroulette). That’s innovation in a nutshell. It’s a charming story and a compelling use of the web’s creative freedoms. If the security risks of the Internet kill the ‘open web’ and turn your average web experience into one that is governed by Apple or another proprietary company, the Andrey Ternovskiys of the world may never get their chance to innovate.

Security Solutions

We champion innovation on the Internet and it’s going to require innovation to steer it in the right direction. Jonathan Zittrain says that he hopes we can come together on agreements for regulating the open web so that we don’t “feel that we have to lock down our technologies in order to save our future.”

According to Vint Cerf, vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, “I think we’re going to end up looking for international agreements – maybe even treaties of some kind – in which certain classes of behavior are uniformly considered inappropriate.”

Perhaps the future of the Internet involves social structures of web users who collaborate on solutions to online security issues. Perhaps companies like Google and Apple will team up with international governmental bodies to form an international online security council. Or maybe the innovative spirit of the web could mean that an independent, democratic group of digital security experts, designers, and programmers will form a grassroots-level organization that rises to prominence while fighting hackers, innovating on security technology, writing manifestos for online behavior, and setting an example through positive and supportive life online.

Many people are fighting to ensure your ability to have your voice heard online — so use that voice to participate in the debate, stay informed, and demand a positive future. Concerned netizens and Smashing readers: unite!

Freedom

Net Neutrality

Some believe that the fate of the Internet has been up for grabs ever since the federal government stopped enforcing ‘network neutrality’ rules in the mid-2000’s. In a nutshell, net neutrality means equality among the information that travels to your computer: everyone has the right to build a website that is just as public, affordable, and easily accessible as any other. However, some companies like phone and internet service providers are proposing ‘pay tiers’ (web service where you need to pay premium fees in order to allow visitors to access your site quickly). These tiers of web service could kill net neutrality by allowing those who can afford premium service (particularly large media companies who don’t like sharing their audience with your blog) greater access to consumers than the average web user.

The debate over net neutrality reached a boiling point when Google and Verizon announced a ‘joint policy proposal for an open Internet’ on August 9th, 2010. Despite the proposal’s call for a “new, enforceable prohibition against discriminatory practices” amongst online content, many criticized it, citing leniency and loopholes.

Net neutrality needs to be made law. If the Internet were to have a slow lane and a fast lane, your average web user could lose many of his or her freedoms and opportunities online, thereby shattering the core values that make the Internet so profoundly valuable to society. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for this thorny issue. To learn more, read the full proposal or watch the Bill Moyers episode ‘The Net @ Risk.’

The World into the Web

Browser-based Everything

Google is developing a variety of applications and programs that exist entirely within the browser. Their PAC-MAN game was a preview of what’s to come because it allowed in-browser play of a simple, lightweight video game that required no downloads and relied on pure HTML, CSS, and Javascript. At the company’s 2010 I/O conference, Google laid out its plans to develop “rich multimedia applications that operate within the browser” (according to this New York Times report on the conference). The company plans to sell in-browser web applications like photo editing software (imagine using a Photoshop equivalent entirely within the browser) that it will sell in a web applications store called the Chrome Web Store.

If our programs and applications are about to be folded into the browser, what will exist within the browser in ten years? Currency? Education? Consciousness? Personally, I’m hopeful that my browser will be able to produce piping hot cheeseburgers sometime soon.

The Internet as a Collective Consciousness

The Internet is a medium, and philosopher Marshall McLuhan believed that all media are extensions of the human senses. The engine of our collective creative efforts is the force that’s causing the web to evolve more rapidly than any biological organism ever has.

Transcendence is one of the great themes of human culture. Image of seated Buddha statue: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Internet is an extension of the collective human mind and it’s evolving into a medium of transcendence. By constructing a place where the collective human consciousness is both centralized in one location (on your computer) and globally accessible (for those with the means to reach or use a computer, that is), our human spirit is transcending the human body. Way back in 1964, McLuhan himself wondered, “might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness?”

With the advent of trends including social media, ‘lifecasting,’ and ‘mindcasting,’ the Internet is being used as a real-time portal for the human consciousness. Perhaps those trends will be inverted by some web users of the future: instead of bringing offline life to the web (as so-called ‘lifecasters’ do when they stream live video of their attendance at an offline event), some web users will live their entire public lives online. Imagine a pop star who conducts her entire career online: every interview, live performance, music video or album release conducted solely through a browser window or mobile screen. Or a media theorist who exploited the platform of the web while discussing the theoretical ramifications of those actions. It’d be a great gimmick.

The Web into the World

The ‘Web of Things’

The ‘web of things’ or ‘Internet of things’ is a concept that will be a reality (at least in a rudimentary form) in the near future. The idea is that devices, appliances, and even your pets can all be tracked online. With Google Maps for iPhone, you can currently track your location on a digital map in relation to the streets and landmarks in your area. So it’s not hard to imagine a world where you can zoom in on your location and see detailed, 3D renderings of your surroundings: the cars on your block, the coffee machine in your kitchen, even Rover running around in your backyard! And it’s a good thing that you’re digitally tracking the location of poor Rover; he’s liable to hop the fence and make a run for it now that you’ve created a satellite computer out of everything you own (including his dog collar) by attaching a tracking device to it.

AT&T is betting big on the web of things. According to this Reuters article, the phone service provider is investing in tracking devices that could be installed in cars, on dog collars, and on the pallets used to move large shipments of products. The dog collar, for example, “could send text messages or emails to the owner of a pet when it strays outside a certain area, or the device could allow continuous tracking of the pet.”

Combine the concept of the ‘web of things’ with Second Life-style 3D imaging and you can imagine a web-based duplicate world — a virtual world that corresponds to the real one. But what are the implications of a world where every physical item has a corresponding digital existence online? Can we track the physical effects of climate change in the web of things? Will there be a digital avatar for every pelican carcass in the vicinity of the oil spill that’s devastating the Gulf of Mexico? It’s a tragic shame to develop a virtual world if we let the natural one go to waste in the meantime.

Interactive Landscapes

It has been said that today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s reality. Unfortunately, most good science fiction stories are cautionary tales set in dystopian nightmares.

QR codes on the façade of Japan’s N Building. Photo: Gizmodo

Simon Mainwaring reports on the N building in Japan, where “the whole building facade has been transformed into a real time dialogue between smart phones and what’s going on inside the store.” The exterior of the building is layered with QR codes (an alternate form of bar code) that can deliver real-time information to your phone. In Stephen Spielberg’s film Minority Report (adapted from a short story by mad genius Philip K. Dick), Gap ads came alive to hawk khakis to Tom Cruise. Looks like we’re about one step away from this scenario.

Mr. Mainwaring imagines a future with “billboards that watch you shop and make targeted suggestions based on your age, location and past buying habits,” and “stores will effectively be turned inside out as dialogue and personalized interaction with customers begins outside the store.”

The technology is cool, but it sounds like a pretty annoying future if you ask me. Who wants to be accosted by a holographic salesperson? The web grants us a great opportunity to use our collective voices to speak out on topics that matter to us. Because there are no regulations yet for much of this technology, it may be up to concerned citizens to make themselves heard if Internet-based technology is used in intrusive or abrasive ways.

The ‘Innerweb’

Cyborgs are among us already — humans whose physical abilities have been extended or altered by mechanical elements built into the body (people who live with pacemakers are one example). What will happen when the Internet becomes available on a device that is biologically installed in a human? What will the first internal user interfaces look like?

Here’s one speculation.

In the near future, we may be capable of installing the Internet directly into the user’s field of vision via a tiny computer chip implanted into the eye. Sound far-fetched? I doubt that it would sound far-fetched for Barbara Campbell, whose sight has been partially restored by a digital retinal implant (CNN reports on Barbara’s artificial retina).

Ms. Campbell was blind for many years until she had a small microchip surgically implanted in her eye. A rudimentary image of Ms.Campbell’s surroundings is transmitted to the device, which stimulates cells in her retina, in turn transmitting a signal to her brain. It’s a miracle that the development of a bionic eye has begun to help the blind see.

How else might doctors and scientists take advantage of the internal microchip? Perhaps the user’s vision will be augmented with an Internet-based interface with capabilities including geolocation or object identification. Imagine if technology like Google Goggles (a web-based application that identifies images from landmarks to book covers) was applied inside that interface. The act of seeing could not only be restored but augmented; a user might be capable of viewing a landscape while simultaneously identifying web-based information about it or even searching it for physical objects not visible to the naked eye. Apply the concept of augmented sight with the idea of the ‘web of things’ — an environment where physical objects have a corresponding presence on the web — and you can imagine a world where missing people are located, theft is dramatically reduced, the blind can see, and ‘seeing’ itself means something more than it used to.

If the web is an extension of our senses, it follows suit that the web may be capable of modifying those senses or even accelerating their evolution.

The Crown Jewels

“The next Bill Gates will be the deliverer of a highly technological solution to some of our climate change challenges.” — Lord Digby Jones of Birmingham

In preparation for this article, I considered a variety of wild ideas and fun speculations about the future. Could the Internet be used to solve the problem of climate change, generate tangible matter, or contact extraterrestrial life? Maybe those ideas sound like the stuff of imaginative fiction, but in a world where quantum teleportation has been achieved and researchers have created a living, synthetic cell, it almost seems as if the concept of science fiction is being eradicated while real technology brings our wildest fantasies to life. Here is the result of my most daring (absurd?) speculation.

Time Travel

The functionality of the Internet relies on a linear series of events. Image: Eadweard Muybridge

I called on physics teacher Mark Stratil to answer my last burning question: could the Internet ever be capable of facilitating the development of time travel? Here’s Mark’s answer:

“The Internet is still based on computers, which make linear calculations. Right now, all computers are based on binary code, which is a series of yes and no questions. You can make something that’s incredibly complex with a series of yes and no questions, but it takes a certain amount of time. The Internet still has to go through those calculations and it still physically has to make one calculation that will lead to the next calculation that will lead to the next. So no matter how fast we can get our computers – they’re making billions of calculations, trillions of calculations per second – there’s still going to be some lag time. They’re still limited by time in that way. They still need some time to make that conversation or that calculation.

In that way, they’re kind of chained to time. Their whole existence is based on a linear sequence of things that happen. In order to create something else, something that goes outside of time, you would have to make it a non-linear system — something that that’s not based on a series of yes and no questions, because those have to be answered in a precise order. It would have to be some kind of system that was answering all the questions at once.”

So Mark’s short answer to my fundamental question was basically that the Internet, in its current state, would not be capable of facilitating time travel. However, if the Internet was liberated from the linear structure of binary code and migrated onto an operating system that ‘answered all questions at once,’ then maybe it could have the potential to manipulate time or transcend the boundaries of time.

Sounds unlikely at this point, but one of the Internet’s greatest capabilities is the opportunity to share and develop ideas like these!

Conclusion

Responsible Evolution

Through technology, we hold the reins to our own evolution.

For the first time in history, it might be said that there are moral implications in the act of evolution. The Internet is an extension of our senses and our minds, and its progress is propelled by our own creative and intellectual efforts. The future of the Internet will be shaped by millions of choices and decisions by people from all walks of life. Designers and programmers like us have the advantage of technical skill and specialized knowledge. Given the increasing presence of the Internet in our lives, our choices can have deep reverberations in human society.

We’ll face small choices like what color to use for a button and larger choices like which platforms to endorse and which clients to support with our work. But the real questions form broad patterns behind every media trend and every mini technological revolution. Can we use technology to develop solutions to environmental problems — or will we abandon the natural world in favor of a digital one and the ‘web of things’? Have we fully considered what it means to merge biology and technology? And finally, do we really need a digital tracking device on our coffee machines?

What a thrilling time to be alive! Let’s proceed with great enthusiasm and a commitment to designing a future that is meaningful, peaceful, and staggeringly exciting.

Partial Bibliography

• New York Times Magazine: “The Death of the Open Web”
• Simon Mainwaring: “The Future of Shopping: What Happens When Walls Start Talking”
• The Gutenberg Parenthesis: Parallels Between Pre-Printing Communication and the Digital Era
• New York Times: “Google Pitches a Web-Centric Future”
• Google Talks: The Future of the Internet
• Moyers on America: ‘The Net @ Risk’ (Video)
• Pew Internet Research Poll: Future of the Internet IV
• Google I/O: The Web is Killing Radio, Newspapers, Magazines, and TV (TechChrunch reports)

Related Posts

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• The Evolution of the Logo
• The Dying Art Of Design
• Lessons From Swiss Style Graphic Design
• Art Manifestos and Their Applications in Contemporary Design

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© Dan Redding for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: analysis, future, internet

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