Category Archives: Transhuman News

Ko Hong-Wei / EyeEmGetty Images

December 31, 2019, will mark the end of one whirlwind decade, and perhaps the beginning of the most important decade in recent memory with such existential threats like climate change, automation, and AI hovering over humanities head.

As we get ready to welcome the new decade, here are some questions we have for the 2020s.

1Will James Dean Be the Biggest Movie Star of the Next Decade?

Earlier this month, producers announced that James Dean will star in a new movie about the Vietnam War, set to hit theaters on Veterans Day 2020. The catch, of course, is that Dean died in a car crash 64 years ago at age 24.

No matter: Thanks to the wonders of CGI, the long-dead heartthrob will live again on the big screen, setting a creepy precedent for reanimating old movie stars because we cant find new ones anymore. Stay tuned for Charlie Chaplins eight-episode Netflix sitcom.

2Are We Headed for a UFO Revolution?

3Will Big Tech Finally Get a Bit Smaller?

Google. Facebook. Amazon. These are some of the most powerful firms in the world and, arguably, the Microsofts of the 2010s, given their outsize market power.

Theres a burgeoning antitrust movement against these so-called Big Tech firmswith four state attorneys general probing into Googles alleged anti-competitive practices and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren promising to break up Big Tech if electedbut this decade has trended in the direction of bigger and bigger behemoths.

Just this July, for instance, the Justice Department approved a $26 billion merger between two telecommunications companies, Sprint and T-Mobile.

4Will We Ever Get a TV show Like Game of Thrones Again?

When Game of Thrones said goodbye last spring after eight years, it wrapped up its historic run as arguably the biggest TV series everand certainly the last show the world will collectively watch together. Replicating the success of a juggernaut like Thrones is impossible for any number of reasons, but mostly because it debuted and became a phenomenon well before the advent of the streaming age.

We now have over 100 on-demand entertainment services to satisfy our fractured tastes; the notion of ever reaching a consensus on a sci-fi or fantasy series again seems insane.

But that wont stop the networks and streamers from trying to capture the zeitgeist: HBO says Thrones spinoffs are coming, and Amazon has a billion-dollar Lord of the Rings prequel series in the pipeline. Could they possibly break through?

5Will Augmented Reality Finally Go Mainstream?

Remember Pokmon Go? Its hard to believe the augmented reality app debuted over three years ago in summer 2016, but when it didit did in a big way. It got the people outside and exercising, meeting new friends, and exploring their neighborhoods.

And the augmented reality (AR) game has generated some handsome revenue from this relatively small business unit: to the tune of $470 million in revenue after only 80 days on the app store.

Except, most augmented reality apps are fun for about five days and the we forget about them and they clutter up our phone and hog up precious memory storage. Will it be any different in 2020 as Apple promises to enter the game?

6Will We Finally Regulate Self-Driving Car Tests?

While 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg was walking her bike across a poorly lit street outside of a Tempe, Arizona crosswalk in March 2018, a self-driving Uber struck and killed her. That sparked a whole new debate about the safety of autonomous vehicles testing and just how much leeway regulators should give to private firms like Uber, Waymo, and Argo AI.

Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board found that the Uber safety driver behind the wheel was guilty of hitting and killing Herzberg, not the company. Just six months after the accident, which marked the first time a pedestrian had ever been killed by an automated vehicle, the U.S. Department of Transportation put out some pretty weak guidelines that firms may choose to ignore.

However, there is still freedom for states to impose their own rules, but in most cases these are simply guidelines, not requirementsand the difference between those two terms could be life or death for others like Herzberg.

So, will we see hard lines on what is and is not allowed when it comes to testing in the 2020s? Its hard to say, but in any case, it looks like were still a longshot away from fully robotic vehicles.

7What Will We Clone Next?

Weve already cloned cows, sheep, cats, dogs, deer, and horses and in 2002, Clonaid, a cloning companyfounded by the followers of Raelianism, who believe that humans are clones of extraterrestrialsmade a huge claim: they had successfully cloned a baby girl named Eve.

However, theres been no evidence to prove the existence of Eve or the subsequent clones the company claims to have created. Theres controversy surrounding the ethics of human cloning, so were curious to see where the scientific community will take this issue over the course of the next 10 years.

8What Will Next-Gen Biometrics Look Like?

Biometrics have become incredibly prevalent thanks, in large part, to phones being able to recognize our faces and fingerprints. There are also retinal scans and Apples Siri can be trained to recognize and respond to the voice of the devices owner and no one else.

Were wondering what kinds of security threats enhanced biometrics could pose and how far this kind of tech will go before its too far and becomes an invasion of privacy (which for some, began at fingerprints).

9Will the World Finally Get Serious About the Climate Crisis?

Are we going to sink or swim? The climate crisis has spawned a generation of people gravely concerned with what the future will look like if we dont take action now to create sustainable living conditions using things like renewable resources.

Its surprising how debated global warming has become considering the fact that its backed by hard scientific evidence. Were hoping the 2020s will be the decade of innovating and creating a better, more sustainable future.

10Will Hollywood Overcome its Marvel Addiction?

Its hard to ignore the outsized importance of Marvel movies in Hollywood in the 2010s. Avengers from 2011 and Endgame in 2019 are perfect bookends for a decade of cinema that lost itself in the tight spandex and wide profit margins of superheroes.

But with growing ire from creative giants and overall audience fatigue with similar franchises like Star Wars, could the superhero franchise finally reach its end? One can only hope.

11Will We Start Trusting Science Again?

The 2010s displayed one major troubling trend in sciencea growing distrust in the conclusions of overwhelming scientific research. One prominent example (and sadly not the only one) is the surprising rise of measles.

According to the CDC, During January-September 2019, 1,249 U.S. measles cases were reported, the highest annual number since 1992. Eighty-nine percent of measles patients were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status, and 10 percent were hospitalized.

Will the 2020s cure humanity of this reckless inability to accept scientific consensus?

12Will the U.S. Finally Focus on Infrastructure?

Its no secret that U.S. infrastructure is crumbling, and when you consider the growing threat of climate change, things start to look downright apocalyptic. Another administration has comeand will likely gowithout addressing this hugely important issue.

The U.S. used to be the envy of the world in terms of infrastructure (in fact, it helped save U.S. democracy), can the country reclaim the crown in the 2020s?

13Will We Finally Witness the End of the Combustion Engine?

14How Many More Species Will Go Extinct?

In 2018, we lost three bird species alone and there are currently several species who will become extinct within the next few yearslike the Northern White Rhinoceros. Will the next 10 years help or hurt the animals on the brink of extinction?

15Google Achieved Quantum Supremacy, So What Comes Next?

After vying against the likes of IBM, Intel, and others, Google claimed to achieve an important quantum computing milestone before anyone else in the world. Their quantum computer performed a task in just over 3 minutes that no standard or supercomputer could complete in 10,000 years, according to a paper published Oct. 23 in Nature.

Companies and countries alike are leaning hard into the quantum craze. The Trump Administration is investing more than a billion dollars in quantum research through its National Quantum Initiative, and China has invested nearly half that amount and filed a slew of patents.

But what does all of this mean for us? Advances in quantum computing are sure to drive innovation in artificial intelligence, power the modeling and forecasting of complex systemslike the weather!and change the way we encrypt, well, everything. Will this be the decade we finally harness its power?

16Will We Set Up Shop on the Moon?

This year, NASA announced its new Artemis mission, in which it will send the next man and first woman to the moon by 2024. Next year, India aims to avenge the death of its Vikram lander by sending Chandrayan-3 to once again visit our natural satellite and attempt a landing. Russia has plans to visit in 2023, and China has vowed to open a permanent base on the Moon by 2030.

And then theres private spaceflightSpaceXs Starship and Blue Origins Blue Moon are both vying for a chance to land on the lunar surface in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Its going to be a big decade for the moon, and were eager to see how our exploration and colonization of the lunar surface unfolds.

Its all missions go.

17Will 5G Live Up to the Hype?

You hear the term 5G everywhere, all the time, right? Industry experts, such as John Donovan, CEO of AT&T Communications in Dallas, Texas, believe that this fifth-generation mobile technology will create a virtually instantaneous real-time network.

That not only means streaming lags on your Disney+ account could dissolve into thin air, but also that self-driving cars could potentially become a reality. But is it all just a marketing ploy?

Only time will tell, but according to a report by McKinsey, optimists tout the great benefits of low latency and high capacity that will eventually enable new value-added use cases, while pessimists focus on the lack of actual new use cases to emerge so far and what they see as a wobbly commercial rationale, not to mention the huge capital expense required.

18Will the 2020s Be a Decade of Cures?

Earlier this year, the FDA announced that the first approval of the first vaccine designed to mitigate the spread of dengue fever in endemic regions. In August, researchers announced two treatmentsan experimental vaccine and a drug called Zmapphave shown promise in combating against the spread of ebola.

Recently developed treatments for HIV have made the virus all but disappear, living virtually undetectable in the body. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is pouring money into curing poliothere were less than 40 cases worldwide in 2016and malaria, the worlds deadliest disease.

Researchers are slowly beginning to untangle the ins and outs of neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimers and Parkinsons. The race to cure the worlds most prolific diseases has been a long, hard-fought battle, but, somehow, it feels like may be inching closer to curing them.

19Will Nuclear Fusion Finally Arrive?

Nuclear fusion energy, a renewable, carbon-free source of energy, powers our sun and other stars. Weve been trying to harness this power here on Earth for decades.

ITER, the largest of the nuclear fusion energy projects, says theyll achieve their first plasma reactionthe first of many stepsin 2025. MIT researchers partnering with a private company claim theyll achieve fusion within 15 years. Its ambitious by any stretch of the imagination.

While we may not see fusion turned into viable energy in the next decade, well likely see incredible progressespecially as the impacts of climate change worsen and pressure to find alternative solutions increases.

20Will the Space Force Get Off the Ground?

President Trumps dream of a sixth branch of the armed services, meant to manage off-planet defense, is in its nascent stage, with planners sketching out what it would look like when its formally established.

The only problem? We have no idea when that will be. Building an entire military branch is a big task, with concerns both budgetary (some estimates peg the price tag at nearly $5 billion) and logistical (can the Pentagons space weapons strategy catch up with the pace of growing threats?).

Well certainly see Steve Carrells Space Force long before we ever sniff the real thing.

Read the rest here:
20 Questions We Have for the 2020s - Popular Mechanics

Beginning two weeks before Thanksgiving, I avoid looking at, much less reading, all food sections. But this year, Thanksgiving, like everything, started early, mere days after Halloween, and with it all those Heres how to make Thanksgiving dinner without meat/outdoors/on the moon pieces that inevitably have me reaching for the Xanax.

Many people have anxiety about their ability to make the meal; hence all those articles and the turkey crisis hotlines. (Memo to the culture at large: If you need a crisis hotline about the main tradition of a holiday, perhaps you should rethink that tradition.)

Get our food critics free weekly dining newsletter

I am not at all anxious about my ability to make Thanksgiving dinner. I can do it 11 ways to Thursday in my sleep. In fact, when I see a piece celebrating an authors ability to work in a cramped kitchen, in a lavish setting or over a campfire, a recipe list rhapsodizing the creativity involved in throwing together a feast in 24 hours or accommodating vegans, vegetarians, small children and all manner of food intolerance at the same meal, I think, Bitch, please.

I am not afraid of Thanksgiving dinner, I just hate it.

Its an uneasy and slightly appalled joke in our family that while I genuinely love to bake and cook for multitudes at Christmas, I am a Thanksgiving Grinch. Every year I dream of spending the day at the movies or beach-eating Chinese takeout.

I could say this stems from the adult realization that the original Thanksgiving meal probably never happened, that the holiday is instead a celebration of colonization that decimated and enslaved the native population, and that whatever religious persecution those early settlers fled they replaced with a strain of Puritanism that would leave hundreds of women dead or tortured as witches.

But that would be incredibly irritating of me, and it wouldnt be true.

I hate Thanksgiving dinner because I am the adult child of an alcoholic and it is the event I most associate with the emotional damage that implies.

I can make Thanksgiving blindfolded because I started doing it when I was 9 or 10. It was easier than watching my mother unravel into tears and increasingly bitter invective beginning sometime mid-Tuesday, when the shopping and the polishing and the laundry and the ironing began, and culminated, inevitably, with her sitting in sodden, furious martyrdom while everyone choked down their coffee and pie before fleeing, leaving us to clean up the literal and emotional mess.

Ill just do it, I said one year, echoing codependents throughout the ages. Itll be fun, I said, unaware of the burden of self-appointed control and inevitable resentment I was shouldering, possibly forever. Let me do it.

Ill just do it. From an early age, columnist Mary McNamara took on the Herculean task of preparing Thanksgiving dinner. It was easier than watching her mother unravel into tears and become increasingly bitter.

(Camily Tsai / For The Times)

The turkey, the stuffing, the creamed parsnips, creamed onions, the candied sweet potatoes, the mashed potatoes, the mashed rutabaga, the tiny canned peas. The pumpkin pies, the apple pies, the raisin-walnut and pecan pies. The shopping lists, the near-algebraic milk and butter calculations (butter is expensive and money was an issue), the factory-floor scheduling of the pots and pans and burners and hot plates, the calculating when the turkey should be thawed and stuffed, and how often it should be basted. The management of counter space, serving dishes and those final insane minutes when everything somehow had to get from the kitchen to the dining room without getting cold or even cool.

Because if it was cold, or the cream sauce was runny or the turkey was dry, then Mom would get mad, and the whole point was to keep that from happening.

During the first Thanksgiving dinner I ever made, I managed to dump the entire pan of peas on the floor minutes before serving them. Mercifully, I was young enough to see nothing wrong in just rinsing them off real quick in very hot water and praying that if there were dog hairs, they wouldnt show up on my mothers plate.

After a hot rinse, not a dog hair in sight.

(Camily Tsai / For The Times)

Over the years, I took great pride in my Thanksgiving dinners. I started making the pies from scratch, introduced pumpkin and zucchini bread. I ditched the rutabaga (which looked good but no one ate) and substituted sauted broccoli, green beans and spinach. I quietly abandoned the beloved boxed mashed potatoes for real ones, experimented with stuffing that included apples or sausage or sage. For a couple of years, and this is absolutely true, I made my own butter.

I was in middle school. It was insane.

It was also and those of you who also grew up with alcoholic mothers will have seen this punch line coming a mile away a classic example of irony in action. By taking over her duties, I gave my mother even more time to drink, with the inevitable results. But I was safe in the kitchen, and how could she yell at me when everyone was so astonished at a child making Thanksgiving dinner?

She couldnt.

Every year I wallowed in the praise and admiration; every year I tried to one-up myself and my Ill do it, just let me do it mentality spread, for good and ill, to each and every part of my life. It gave me confidence and normalized compulsion, in equal measure.

Every Thanksgiving, columnist Mary McNamara tried to one-up herself like abandoning boxed mashed potatoes for real ones.

(Camily Tsai / For The Times)

When I had kids it began to make sense to alternate holiday dinners with family; as I was not about to give up Christmas dinner, which I truly love, I surrendered Thanksgiving.

But I did so grudgingly. Fearfully. What was I if I couldnt miraculously produce 18 dishes in an afternoon all by my lonesome? A miserable failure, thats what.

But once I made the leap, I lost any interest in the groaning boards of turkey roasted/grilled/brined/deep-fried/sprinkled with cannabis, the great cranberry sauce debate, the root vegetables ripped from the earth and subjected to all manner of culinary indignities, the salads that are now required so no one can eat them. I did the math on the effort that went into it: the days of cooking that resulted in, at best, an hour at the table; the Herculean task of cleaning up; the following days of pretending we were going to eat those leftover creamed onions before just throwing them away. I realized I dont even like Thanksgiving dinner, or at least any of the parts that are not involved in pumpkin pie and the after-hours turkey sandwich.

More than that, I began to see how much of my Thanksgiving cooking had been driven by anxiety and fear, a self-concocted need to please, appease and prove ... what? That I could do it? That I could do it anywhere and alone? That I didnt need help, that success is measured by levels of exhaustion and the use of every pot, pan, dish and glass I own? That all this somehow proved something?

By surrendering Thanksgiving dinner, columnist Mary McNamara began to see how much of her holiday efforts in the kitchen were driven by anxiety, fear and a need to please.

(Camily Tsai / For The Times)

My mother, God bless her, eventually got sober; I slid into my own alcoholism and eventually got sober too.

And I recognize now that as a child I believed that one Rockwellian moment could counterbalance all the messy dysfunction that came before and after, and I tasked myself with creating it.

As an adult, I realize this kind of thinking is absurd, dangerous and damaging; the only control I have is over my own self, my expectations and the pressure I put on myself to meet them.

Over the years I have acknowledged and silenced many voices in my head that told me I could fix this by doing that, but way down deep, in the dark inner recesses of my neurosis, theres a gleaming, steaming Thanksgiving dinner. You could do it, that dinner whispers. You should do it. And then everything will be all right.

So I dont really hate Thanksgiving; I hate my own unquenchable desire to shun help, appoint myself fixer-in-charge and then kill myself attempting some version of perfection that doesnt fix the imperfect things in life anyway.

Because honestly, even with the pixie dust of pumpkin spice and the 70 million recipes available online, if were being honest, what everyone really looks forward to is pumpkin pie, which can be bought, and those leftover turkey sandwiches.

See the original post here:
Column: I am not afraid of Thanksgiving dinner, I just hate it - Los Angeles Times