Moving in the Future

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At the beginning of 19th century, people were not moving around so much in their daily life.  Most people lived in the same town though their entire life.  It was not because they liked it so.  They just had no choice because moving to a different town was not so easy.  First, people moved on foot at about 5 km/h.  Then, we got animals to help us move a little faster.  As early as 1550, train was invented to take a large group of people over long distance.  However, it was the invention of automobile that took personal mobility to a different level.  It would be considered one of the most important inventions of human history.  It brought so much potential and possibility to our everyday life.  As crazy as it sounds, the very firstcar was built in 1769 and had a top speed of only 2.5 mph.  After about 250 years, some cars can even move 100 times faster. 

Modern cars are faster, safer, prettier and have many more function than what people could ever imagine back in 18^th century.  But the improvement of technology has never stopped as Google introduced their driverless automobile.  The driver is a super computer inside the car, using GPS and environmental sensors to not only drive the car, but also make decisions on how to drive the car.  Google claims that their driverless automobile put human error the thing of the past.   

In 2011, Nevada first legalized the driverless automobiles.  Then Florida followed.  Last week, California, the state, which has 10% of US population, made a big decision on allowing driverless cars on the road.  It tells us that another landmark change in the personal mobility is on the way.  Future that described in sci-fi stories, where people can travel to places with a touch of bottom is just steps away.

On the other hand, behind the glory of technology, there is the concern of people’s acceptance to this new way to living.  Traffic regulation is not the only thing that needs to catch on to the speed.  People don’t like changes, so that many try to find all kinds of downsides when a new technology is introduced.  “Driving enthusiasts see them as the harbinger of a boring, 55 mph future. And politicians see them as high-tech boogeyman to scareseniors into voting booths.”  Recently, Consumer Watchdog rose the concern of the use of data that driverless car collected in the course of driving. As the group's Privacy Project director John Simpson wrote in a letter to Governor Brown,

"A law regulating autonomous vehicles must provide that driverless cars gather only the data necessary to operate the vehicle and retain that data only as long as necessary for the vehicle's operation.... It should provide that the data must not be used for any additional purpose such as marketing or advertising without the consumer's explicit opt-in consent.”

This is not he first time that a new technology faces challenges from the society.  But at the end, we all know that technology would win and society will change for a better future. 

Richard Dawkins - Fight for Your Belief

            Every day, when people turn on the news or open up some news magazine, there are always some smart looking guys talking about issues that most people care about in their daily life.  They are often people holds high educational degrees or know a lot of stuff in their fields.  Their words are convincing because they know and believe in what they are talking about.  Their words are influential because common viewers tend to have trust in experts.  They are what we called public intellectual, people who have expertise in one or more fields, but do not limit themselves in their own academic circles.  They spend time to reach out to mainstream readers and raise their opinions out load in public.  They try hard to connect with people, who understand so little of the world, and share their knowledge with others.  Some of them may do it for the fame, but many public intellectuals writes in hope that their action can change many people’s minds or even change the world.  However, the public who holds different views often criticizes those public intellectuals.  Richard Dawkins is one of those typical public intellectuals.  His strong supports on biological evolution, atheism and many other issues do not make him the most popular guy of the year, but his dedication in educating public put his name in the list of top 100 Public Intellectuals.

             Richard Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya on the 26^th of March in 1941.  His father was an agricultural civil servant but with a strong interest in natural science.  Dawkins’s parents were often answer his question with scientific explanations, but they are Christians.  Dawkins was raised to believe in god and bible.  However, as a teenager boy, Dawkins found that the theory of evolution is a better explanation for this complicated and wonderful world than the bible give to him.  Dawkins said, “the main residual reasonwhy I was religious was from being so impressed with the complexity of life andfeeling that it had to have a designer, and I think it was when I realized thatDarwinism was a far superior explanation that pulled the rug out from under theargument of design.  And that leftme with nothing.”

Then, fallowing his passion, Dawkins studied zoology at Balliol College and Oxford.  He received his Master and Doctor degree as working for Nobel Prize-winning ethnologist Nikolaas Tinbergen.  After 2 years in University of California, Berkeley, he returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 and later on became Simonyi Professor for thePublic Understanding of Science at Oxford.  The expectation of this position was to make important contributions to the public understanding of scientific field.  From there on, to communicate with public and share his intellectual knowledge became his job.  He founded the Foundation for Reason and Science to promote studying sciences.  Dawkins has also given tons of public lectures, writing many books for the mainstream readers and participated in many television series to spread his knowledge and ideas crossed public communities.  One of the most outstanding works of his is The Selfish Gene.  The book was published in 1976.  In which, Dawkins explained and popularized the gene-centered view of evolution, which means that evolution occurs through the competition of different genes for survival.  He also introduced a term, meme, which is “an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.”  As he stated in his book, “examples of memes are tuned, ideas, catch-phrase, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or building arches.  Just as genes propagate themselves in the gen pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain.” 

The Selfish Gene is only one of his many works on the topic of evolution.  In all of his work, Dawkins stood strong on evolution as a fact instead of a theory in the common understanding.  In his publicseminar with Lawrence Krauss in 2008, he explained that there two definition oftheory in Oxford dictionary.  One is the common understanding of theory – an idea used to account for a situation or justify a course of action.  The other one is the one scientists use in their professions – a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.  Dawkins said that the theory of evolution is in the sense of the second definition, which it is not an unsupported idea but a well used explanation qualified as the basic of modern biology.   

 However, the most special about his work was not his clever ideas or fancy new terms, it is his public friendly writing style.  He used most easy untreatable words to explain complicated scientific ideas.  His books were not written for biologists like many other scientists.  His books were designed for common public.  This shows that he put educating public as his priority goal.  The reward was that his The God Delusion has sold more than two million copies in English and had been translated into 31 different languages. 

Besides writing books on scientific matters, Dawkins has also been deeply involved in political and social movements.  He is best known for his strong atheism belief.  As Stephen Weinberg said, “science doesn’t make it impossible to believe in God.  It just makes it possible to not believe in God.”  Dawkins is the one who took this possibility.  He has abandoned religion since he found Darwinism, and he has held his position strong for the past 50 plus years.  He explained in his popular non-fiction book, The God Delusion, that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist, and the belief in God is like a delusion.  He also quoted Robert Pirsing’s statement, “when one person suffers from a delusion its is called insanity.  When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.”  Dawkins raised four strong massages in this book,

1. Atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled.
2. Natural selection and similar scientific theories are superior to a "God hypothesis"—the illusion of intelligent design—in explaining the living world and the cosmos.
3. Children should not be labeled by their parents' religion. Terms like "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should make people cringe.
4. Atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.

Moreover, Dawkins did not stop his atheism support at simply writing a book, he also spoke out in other public media, such as Television series The Purpose of Purpose.  Dawkins often identify himself not only as an atheist, but also a militant atheist, who would fight for atheism against religion influence in politics, education and many other areas for society.  For example, Dawkins out spoke against schools teach children creationism in basic education, and does not even mention evolution until the very last of biology class in secondary education.  He is also a big supporter of Brights Movement, which is a social movement that aims to promote public understand of the naturalistic view.  On the other hand, Dawkins does not want to separate atheists from rest of the world.  Unlike many religious people who think atheism make people have bad behaviors; Dawkins believed that there are almost not correlation between your belief and your behavior in general.  Said him, “An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”   Moreover, for Dawkins, atheism is not simply denying the existence of God or supernatural events.  It is a belief that can help people to open their minds and enjoy this wonderful world through the beauty of science.  He used term, non-theism, to describe the true atheism that he believed in, which is like agonist but instead of believe in equal chances of God’s existing or not existing, non-theism is in favor of the non-existence of God without denying it completely. 

Furthermore, Dawkins’s work did not only stay in Britain.  As being such strong atheist believer, when Dawkins saw such low support on evolution in US, there is no doubt that he would bring his ideas crossed Atlantic Ocean.  He said in his TED seminar,

“In professional circles everywhere, [evolution] it’s of course universally accepted. In non-professional circle outside America, it’s largely ignored. But in non-professional in America, It raises so much hostility, that it’s fair to say that American biologists are in the stage of war. “  

Dawkins went on about how deeply influenced the political structure is by religion in America.  For example, he mentioned George H W Bush’s statement of “I don't think atheists should be considered citizens or patriots since, we are one nation under God.” In the seminar, Dawkins called for atheists to speak out for their beliefs and also a separation of religion and political structure.  However, as a British, it may be hard for him to imagine the role of religion in this country.  Dr. Stephen Mack said in his blog,

“American democracy has always depended onpublic figures—and public intellectuals—whose work has been animated by strongfaith. Billy Graham’s efforts to promote racial harmony during the 1950s, andReinhold Neibuhr’s work for economic justice throughout his career come quicklyto mind. A deep religious sensibility has the power to make us feel a realkinship with others. And kinship tempers self-interest. This kind of“democratized” religion enlarges our sense of justice, moving it beyond aconcern for individuals alone toward a personal investment in the well being ofour countrymen.”

It may be true that America need religion, but for Dawkins, he believes those atheists are fully capable of whatever religious people are capable of doing.  He worries the positions and rights of the large population of atheists not only in America, but also in the world.  As Dr. Stephen Mack said, “a more important challenge wouldcenter on how religion is being used, not whether it is used,” perhaps religion can be used in a way that can help religious people as well as non-religious people.

              On the other had, as all public figures, Richard Dawkins’s strong position against religion puts him in the center of conservative’s criticism.  For example, T. J. Nelson wrote in his book review of The God Delusion, 

“Why would someone be so much of a grinch asto write a book as mean-spirited as this? Part of the answer may be that theauthor feels threatened by creationism and religious fundamentalists. Fear,along with a sense of victimhood (which is a unifying factor in many specialinterest groups), is one of the few emotions that can produce such smallness ofspirit.”  Moreover, as a “militantatheism,” 

Dawkins tends to use strong words against religion and many die-hard religious people.  It also many people in an uncomfortable position, as many people tend to be “polite” and “respectful” to other’s religious view.  Jim Holt stated in New York Times, Sunday Book Review,

“It’s all in good fun when Dawkins mocks abuffoon like Pat Robertsonand fundamentalist pastors like the one who created “Hell Houses” to frightensin-prone children at Halloween. But it is less edifying when he questions thesincerity of serious thinkers who disagree with him, like the late Stephen JayGould, or insinuates that recipients of the million-dollar-plusTempleton Prize, awarded for work reconciling science and spirituality, areintellectually dishonest (and presumably venal to boot). In a particularly lowblow, he accuses Richard Swinburne, a philosopher of religion and science atOxford, of attempting to “justify the Holocaust,” when Swinburne was strugglingto square such monumental evils with the existence of a loving God."   

However, in order to understand Dawkins’s words, people have to understand that he does not hate religion or religious people.  Dawkins is just desperately want the society of atheists, who tend to be separated and “polite,” to united and fight for the rights and attention that they deserved like many other minority groups.  He hopes for an atheism movement similar to the homosexual movements.  Just like Dawkins said in the end of his TED seminar, “let’s all stop being damn respectful.”

Patent War

It seems like a great week for Apple. First, on September 12, 2012, Apple for the first time released their new iPhone 5’s design in San Francisco.  This could be one of the big news for many people.  PopSci estimates that it will takeabout 21 days for Apple to sell 10 million iPhone 5.  Moreover, after Apply won its battle against Samsung and Google on their new tablet’s bounce-back list feature, many Google products face challenges.  For example, GoogleMotorola is forced to recall android tablets in Germany.  However, on the other side of the world, Japan could not care less about Apple’s patent violating claim, andrejected its lawsuit gives one point for Samsung and Google’s android.  The battle between Apple and Samsung has been going on for a long time.  Apple first suited Samsung on the Smartphone design.  Then, Samsung counter suit Apple for 3G-network feature.  There are now over 30 lawsuits in 10 different countries.  Two biggest competitors in the Smartphone and tablet industry both want to dominate the market and a share of each other’s profits.  

As the technology improve rapidly, most technology appellations build on other technology.  There are going to be more and more patents filed for technology that may be apply to so many applications in our daily life.  From an engineer point of view, to have all technology available to use is the most efficiency way of developing technology.  Most productive researches and developments are built on other existing intellectual knowledge and applications.  From a business point of view, intellectual property is equally valuable as physical property.  Patents are designed to protect one’s intellectual properties through legal system.  If others want to use the property, they have to pay to the owner.  It worked great for many years.  However, as electronic applications get more complex and use more technologies over so many different fields, it becomes hard to develop an original product without using similar technologies, or we should say that it is harder and harder to even develop something that can be called original.  Therefore, the patent war begins.  After the long battle of lawsuit between Apple and Samsung, patent is more looking like a tool for big technology companies to eliminate competitors.  Apple and Samsung, who used to be business partners, now fight over patents not only for millions of dollars, but also for the Smartphone market share around the world.