Your iNougat will be useless after the Data Apocalypse

Every day makes me feel like more and more of and old curmudgeon. As technology advances by leaps and bounds, my mind grasps for nostalgia rather than advancement. But why is this?

Apple just announced it's iBooks 2 Textbook service. And especially in light of the recent discovery of Foxconn and Mike Daisey's account of working conditions, I am even more sickened by technology. I too was once a die hard Apple Devotee. I still have my First computer a, Woz edition Apple IIgs that I never plan on giving up. And like Daisey, I too didn't fully grasp where all our technology came from, and as he did, imagined long robot equipped assembly lines. But this post wasn't intended to be about Foxconn, or the many other technology factories with abysmal labor conditions, but it will be hard to separate that bad taste from the sour smell of things to come in the Information Age.

Book publishers are panicking, everything is in E-book form from newspapers to novels and now text books. I don't see this as bad, but it is still sad to see a time warn trade die. Book publishers are in the direct line of fire from Amazon.com. Now, the publishers can come and go, but the idea that the printed page might soon become only a novelty is sad. Kodak has filed for bankruptcy protection, with digital imaging replacing traditional photography, the centuries old company is becoming obsolete. It't not the businesses collapsing that worry me, its the lost of the industry in general, and the lost of these methods for producing concrete photographs and printed documents.

There are rumblings of a future Data Apocalypse, and it has many forms and implications. One of the most significant is simply Data Storage. There are no archival methods for digitally storing information. Roughly every 5 to 10 years, all that data has to be updated on to new systems as hard drives, flash media, and computer operating systems changes. Even if you were to etch a tungsten disk with binary information that would be nearly indestructible, if you tried to read it 100 years later, how would your be able to read it? The computer software that coded the file could have been lost. Even with the data intact, the method to read it is not archival.

A friend once told me, "A sharp blade will never be obsolete." With that idea in mind, I also see the Printed page being the same way. Even if a language might become obsolete in time, the lifespan of an archival low acid paper and the language that the words are written in will outlive several generations of computer formats.

Perhaps it is just the unease with how dedicated we are to technology, that even though my computer is very important to me, I still like to have some traditional technology at my disposal that doesn't require logins or batteries. Maybe my mind is too focused on a fictional zombie apocalypse scenarios, and want to know how to survive with 20th century comfort with 19th century technology. My fixation with a zombie apocalypse, or any apocalypse for that matter is subject for a future post.

In 1859 the worst solar storm ever recorded hit the Earth. A coronal mass ejection shot towards Earth at the peak of a 500 year solar maximum. Thankfully technology of those days was still mostly steam and horse power. However, telegraph stations in the Northern US experienced an electro magnetic burst, causing telegraph lines to ignite and telegraph stations to burn down. And what would happen if this happened today? Im sure there are some bad History Channel shows which sensationalize this topic. It would be a technological Apocalypse or Techocalypse. This would be a major earth changing event, and one that would set back the technological age a few decades. Computer systems would fry. Simple lighting might take days or weeks to repair, but the data, the vast stores of data in computers, severs and in the cloud, what would happen to that? Would it wipe away clean all information, or would it just damage the systems permanently?

And if society has to rebuild, what could we fall back on if the last printed book on any given topic is decades old? We would not only be thrown back to pre electricity lifestyle for a period of time. When we begin to rebuild, we might initially only be able to climb up to the time when the last printed information in Science, Engineering and Medicine was printed.

The future might give us some sort new technology, one that will effectively give us a Save point. Right now, given some ability, we probably would not be thrown any further back in time before electricity became widely used. Other circumstances would have to be in effect to throw us back further, but in the future we might find a new Save point, one that might lock technology from not being likely to fall back further than that level of achievement.

Who knows when that future save point might be, or what it is. Till then, keep a few books around, cause when the power goes out, you won't be able to go to Google to solve your problems.

Betelgeuse is shedding nougat

Of the billions and billions of stars in our cosmos, there are right now both new stars being born as well as old stars dying. The stuff that we are made of, and the world around us is composed of atoms created in the crucible of dying stars. We are beings made of star dust, and that very being could not have been if it were not for our stellar ancestors who have long since departed.

Please excuse my Sagan like spiel. Eno's Apollo album is playing, and that might have something to do with my spacey eloquence.

The star Betelgeuse is about to explode, ANY MINUTE NOW! ...or any millennium now. It is known that Betelgeuse is a late stage Super Red Giant star, and that it is predicted to explode in a type two supernova very soon; very soon, that is, in astronomical terms. While a supernova could be seen any minute, it is estimated that it will happen within the next Million years. And if star supernovas are anything like waiting for the cable guy to install your new cable box, if the estimate is between now and a million years, you might want to give up hope that it will happen on the sooner side of the appointment estimate.

But now there is some more juicy and wild speculation! Not only will this event happen at the winter solstice on December 21st, 2012, it will appear to be a second sun in the sky resembling the twin suns of Tatooine from Star Wars: A new hope.

Now that would be pretty awesome. I'm already in the desert, and still full angst from not knowing where I fit into this world, hoping for and adventure that will reveal my destiny. I'll have my moment to stair angstilly (that isn't even a word) at the setting of twin suns while I wear my karate gi. It will be great. Get some storm troopers to bump off my Aunt and Uncle and I am just another step closer to the life I've dreamed of since I was ten.

The reality of the matter is quite different, and yet the significance of Betelgeuse going supernova is still not at all diminished. If the red giant star does supernova, it will only be about as luminous as the Full Moon, roughly 1/100,000th the brightens of our Sun. Not quite a second sun, but noticeable in daylight. The tying in to the Mayan Calendar and the 2010 hullaballoo is just another silly pseudo scientific bit of nonsense; the cherry on top of the crackpot ice cream sunday if you will.

But what if...

The significance of Betelgeuse in astronomy is tremendous, It is ninth brightest star in our sky and it is also part of Orion, one the most recognized and most appreciated constellations in the heavens. Just the tradition of stellar navigation going back thousands of years is profound. The Orion constellation has significance with nearly every culture dating back to ancient times. This red giant, the shoulder of Orion, is of immense cultural, historical, mythological and even of navigational importance to all of man kind. If Orion were to Supernova, and later become invisible to the casual viewer, it would be almost as much of an impact to our culture as if the Big Dipper disappeared, perhaps even greater.

The following is completely Science Fiction.

What if on December 21st, 2012 We Do whiteness the supernova of Betelgeuse? I say whiteness, because, for us to see the supernova of Betelgeuse the moment the Mayan calendar ends, it would have had to have happened 0ver 600 years ago. The star is over 600 light years away, and there's that whole Speed of Light thing to factor in. If the Mayan Calendar is as prophetic as some would like to believe, then a great event at the end of the B'ak'tun, and the great cycle of the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar would be amazing. While some say it will be the end of the world, and others make ridicules cataclysmic predictions I have another more subtle, but equally profound [sci-fi] idea.

Ask any Mayanist about 2012 and they will not spout off about silly apocalyptic ideas. The end of the Mayan Calendar is just like the end of our calendar; we pull out the Far Side a day calendar we just got for Christmas and start over when the previous one ends. That is we could, if only Gary Larson didn't completely retire and then also refuse to let us have our yearly reruns in 365 day increments. I am still a little bitter about that.

The day Betelgeuse appears to supernova and is lost to the naked eye it, will mark the end of an age. While it may not impact our lives today, consider the significance of the stars in the past. If Betelgeuse had gone at a time when the stars were not just pretty things to view at night, but celestial bodies that were depended on, this would have been a titanically profound moment. If the Mayan astronomers were as advanced as some modern day pseudo science followers claim, they might have predicted the supernova of Betelgeuse and then chiseled that end date into their long count calendar to mark the future end date of their age. If if and when Betelgeuse does supernova between now and the end of human society; from that time, you would almost be able to split up the entire history of human culture in terms of the Betelgeuse Era (BE) and After Betelgeuse Era (ABE).

It's purely a Sci-Fi idea, But while I am partying up at some wild 2012 Party I will try and take a moment to stop and look and Orion and its Right (our Left) Shoulder. Maybe a brilliant light will shine day and night and call on a new age. Maybe nothing will happen.

Perhaps more than 600 years later the star will finally be observed to supernova, and with more accurate recording of distance astronomers might be able to calculate that the moment the supernova occurred was exactly on December 21st, 2012.

That would be a shit your pants moment.

A: Your skull is full of nougat

Q: Why do zombies crave brains?

I am not the first to applaud AMC for their Walking Dead series. While the Zombie genre's popularity has endured and evolved for decades, this series that is surprisingly smart and emotional. Especially considering that the setting is a world filled with mindless hordes of brain dead monsters.

For a very long time, I would not have considered myself a fan of Zombie films, but starting with 28 days later and Shawn of the Dead, I have definitely come around to appreciate the Romero Zombie Mythology. I would almost say I am, at times, obsessed with it. But why is part of our culture drawn to these films, and what is it that I find so fascinating? I think it comes down to Five main reasons that the Romero Zombie literature is captivating to myself, and to many others.

First, it is about Survival.

We could all complain endlessly about the rise of reality TV and the decline of good scripted programing. But despite all our grievances towards current trends in television, we almost all have a reality show weakness. I can't get enough of Les Stroud or Bear Grylls. There is almost and obsessive need to keep watching, made much worse if there is a marathon running, where I feel like any tip for staying alive that I miss might be the one that I might need someday. I keep way to much crap in my pockets thinking that some day I will have to Macguyver myself out of a situation. No, seriously, I do need that many paperclips at all times.

The current Zombie stories are about Survival, the horror is not lost, but I am drawn to the survival and critical thinking. After watching, I sometimes think about what I might do in such a fictional situation, and I imagine a game plan or strategy. There is much shared with Post Apocalyptic genre in that it is a harsh world that requires an acute skill for survival and the removal of everything but the basic necessities of day to day life. This simplification also ties with Castaway fiction as well.

Second, It is Not about the dead.

What made the batch of zombie films in the 2000s great, was that they were not about the Zombies. Yes, the Zombies were an integral part of the story, but in many ways they Zombies are a very weak antagonist. The Zombie Apocalypse is a setting, Not a character. In many good Zombie movies, the Zombies could almost be replaced with anything, be it Aliens, Monsters, or The Stuff. It is the Characters, and how they interact in the setting that make some of the recent Zombie fiction so popular. Another big benefit is that the newer films, books and TV shows are much smarter. I have yet to read Max Brooks, World War Z, but I am told that it is brilliant in describing what was once a campy splatter film genre, but now a realistic and detailed thought out world. I still need to read the original Walking Dead Comic.

Third, it can get pretty emotional.

More than any other that I have seen, The Walking Dead shows that the there is an

enormous amount of emotion that is rarely touched in the Zombie genre. From worrying about missing family members, to the horror of having to kill a turned loved one, There is no end to the emotional buttons that can be pressed. It is this emotional element that is reaching out of the once obscure genre and to the masses. Shawn of the Dead was a romantic Comedy in many ways, there just happened to be Zombies acting as the narrative guides.

Forth, there is a message in there somewhere.

When George Romero first took the Zombie Mythology from that of a Voodoo curse on the living, to the mind killing contagion in Night of the Living Dead, we were given a social commentary about America's fear concerning the spread of Communism. Since then, Zombies have been used as metaphor for Consumerism, Environmentalism, Bioengineering and more. From Post Apocalyptic and Castaway fiction, I also find that a big element in Zombie fiction is people subconsciously wanting simplification in their life. There is a draw to these worlds, but not the horrible world itself, but to the idea of a world with simpler demands. We are a culture so over burdened with Debt, bills, obligations and careers. I think many wish there was some sort of escape from the hassles of modern society, and maybe a Zombie Apocalypse would almost be worth it if it made thinks simple again.

Fifth, just tell me where to shoot.

I could ramble on endlessly about how violence is wired into humanity. The world is not black and white. There is no pure evil, and every enemy deep down is just another poor sap trying to make it though the day. But we often crave an adversary, one that we can unleash the full glut of violence that society requires us to keep bottled up and in check. We get the definite good or bad (or alive or dead) distinction in Zombie fiction, but we also have the knowledge that they were once living. This stops it from being a good vs. the ultimate evil idea, as these were once good people too, yet we are able to keep the conviction that this is violence that needs to be done. In the real world there is never a time when that is the case.

Violence is detestable, and there is never justification for it. Unless the Third Reich is marching across Europe, or we are defending the helpless from murderous bandits, there is never a time when violence is acceptable. But human nature is violent, and as society forces us to suppress and ignore the blood thirsty, animal nature within us all. There will still be times when we will crave to attack with the fury of ten thousand enraged gorillas with chainsaws. Thankfully we have some fictional outlets to channel those impulses, and Zombies make some of the best targets.

Just remember to aim for the head.