ion-tom

Probably the mass commercializing of Marvel and DC through Hollywood?

What was the focus of your academic life and do you miss doing research or do you still participate? And what pushed you towards a career in writing? Which other hard sci-fi authors do you enjoy reading the most and what do you draw inspiration from?

Your ethos is one of the most modern and invigorating perspectives in any public figure. The world needs more pushers like you, who realize that cutting red tape and thinking in parallel is essential to building a better future.

You are also stress the importance of experimentation and the acceptance of failure. An iterative approach to success and design is part of the rational scientific worldview, which I believe is largely ignored by the diametric/polarized politics in the US.

I've followed your work since X-prize and SpaceShipOne, and have drawn a lot of inspiration from your work. I think that the competition approach to progress will benefit the world tremendously. And now, Massive Online Ecosystems are letting people connect in a way never before possible.

Through reddit, which is a miracle of communication in itself, I have started an group /r/Simulate dedicated to complete parallel world simulation. I attracted experts from many different fields, programmers of all types, and we started several open source github projects. Now I'm trying to diversify with a politically charged project called the Nucleus Collaboration. I take your ethos to heart, striving towards projects of passion is very fulfilling, even though it can't replace everyone's day job (yet).

There is also an entire community dedicated to future based thinking, /r/Futurology, where discussion of trends and disruptive technologies are an everyday digest for people. Being a moderator on there, I've noticed it has become an echo chamber for folks who have dreams of an abundant future. Which is both good and bad. I really think that as a society we need to start perceiving a world where we can come up with technical solutions to social problems. However, I also think that many young futurists fail to realize how logistically challenging it can be to cut through all of the red tape. I think seeing tragedies like Aaron Swartz really drives home how much personal risk is required to make societal progress.

The US also has a whole host of serious problems which I'm not sure can be overcome unless there is some type of massive regime overhaul. We have 1/4 of our citizens in prison, 16% of people don't have food security, and we require continual warfare and mass surveillance to support the high valuation of USD. We have a patent system where patent protection is more lucrative than production, and we have severe monopoly problems due to big subsidies in BigAg, Oil, Energy. ISPs vassalize municipalities and take ownership of cities and enforce artificially high rates. Then we have the Trans-Pacific-Partnership which might make all P2P networks nearly illegal regardless of the content they host.

It's not the fact that we can mitigate the worlds technology through progress, I simply fear that instinctual motives like dominance shape institutions to a greater magnitude than most people imagine. I also believe that disruptive technology continues to lessen the power of nation states, mass-surveillance and authoritarian use of power will increase. This won't come from political partisans, it will come from secretive intelligence agencies which require state funding to stay alive.

Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? (Orwell)

So I have two questions for you:

1. What is the biggest barrier to progress today? Is "Forced Artificial Scarcity" by authoritative power something which you perceive as a threat to radical abundance? ( ie. File Copying <> Theft)
2. Have you ever needed to protect yourself from actors who want to destroy your goals? Is "money" the only defense available? How do you overcome injustice in the world if very powerful people benefit from that injustice and do not want to relinquish control?

P.S. As a former astronomy student I'm really excited for what the Arkyd series is going to offer! I also have some really cool ideas on how to gamify the Asterank app P.R. purchased, thank you for keeping the project open source!

Holy hell, yes! I miss pizza so so much.

Thanks for the response! Do you have time to elaborate a bit more on what type of comet studies you did? I was an astro major in college, got to play with some aerogel and see comet particles under a SEM once, it was pretty awesome! I'm excited to see what Planetary Resources goes after in the long term, although NEA's are probably the first targets.

I also love that your books cover topics of transhumanism/accelerating technology, it's nice to have fiction out there that sits in that type of framework. What contemporary authors do you read if and when you have the time? Have you ever read Greg Egan's "Schild's Ladder?"