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Download a copy for Kindle at http://amzn.to/1aYa92y.
Lecture by Leo Susskind...
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| False-colour scanning-electron-microscope image of the edge of the JQI optical lattice showing the ring-shaped waveguides. A waveguide at the centre of the image is missing and the light is seen detouring around it. (Courtesy: Emily Edwards/JQI) |
A version of the quantum Hall effect (QHE) involving light rather than electrons has been created by physicists in the US. The team believes the demonstration could boost understanding of the QHE and perhaps lead to the development of better photonic circuits that use light to process information.
The QHE is a well-known phenomenon that occurs when a voltage is applied along a thin conducting sheet and a magnetic field is applied perpendicular to the sheet's surface. Throughout most of the sheet, the magnetic field makes conduction electrons travel in circular orbits that are quantized. At the edge of the sheet, however, the electrons cannot travel in circles because they would have to leave the sheet and re-enter it. Instead, these electrons hop along the edge in repeated semicircles. Crucially, they will travel along the edge regardless of its shape, following any dents or bulges.
These "topologically protected" paths and other aspects of the QHE have proven to be a rich seam of physics research that has led to two Nobel prizes. However, certain key predictions of QHE theory, such as the presence of bound electron states called anyons, remain unproven. This is because QHE experiments require pure samples, cryogenic temperatures and an ultra-high magnetic field – making measurements difficult to do.
Physics World: Quantum Hall effect created using light
My new eBook Where the Monsters Are was just released last month and I’m giving away 7 copies. If you’d like one, please visit my site at www.razorlinepress.com and leave a message on any of the posts there with your email address. These posts only go public if I make them (so I won’t) and I’ll gift a Kindle copy to you if you’re one of the lucky 7. Check out the press release or click on the link to see what it’s about: http://amzn.to/1aYa92y.
Another thought, society presses to make us individuals, independent in thought and action. We balance that push with a natural inclination toward the collective. We have had our history burned and were retaught history as a warped paraphrase of unrelated events. Then we are taught trust, faith and to hope with no bases in reality. In the end our collective realm was trashed and our individual person mugged to the max.
We spend the rest of our lives with snippets of truth. As strong individuals we often display what we know, exalting that part as the whole, the fire of rhetoric, the rhythmic bantering, the jive of justice. Of course our discourse is timely but as momentary as fads, fantasy and trends, WHY? Because new info interrupts our mini siege on the world, causes us to reconsider our display until further notice. One of the big problems of Black folk is having to reconstruct our past so that we know how to act today. The other problem is projecting into the future with what we know or think we know now.
If you step back far enough, we are who we are, in our time, the result of all before us. In that sense we don't need to do anything except survive. But there is, at least in me, a pain in the bones, wanting to know what other Blacks are thinking, feeling, how they are dealing, what pieces of the puzzle they realize and do they know that it is just a piece. What happens when the pieces come together from different persons, schools of thought and the misalignments, extraneous thoughts and events are exposed, shaken off? What happens when we the strong individuals connect in a natural collective realm? What happens when we realize our powers are not defined or depended on the system that domesticated us? What happens when we step back and look at us as a collective, regardless of the physical and mental distance constructed between us? Can we come out of our domestication, probably not completely. We might dare to risk a thought life behind the scenes while holding a compliant public face. Soon that too becomes a way of life. Hypocrites are the saints of survival. Don't we live that way? I do!
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| Not a brick wall. Electron microscope image of a cross section of the newly characterized tunable microwave dielectric clearly shows the thick layers of strontium titanate "bricks" separated by thin "mortar lines" of strontium oxide that help promote the largely defect-free growth of the bricks. Credit: TEM image courtesy David Mueller. Color added for clarity by Nathan Orloff. |
Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have joined with an international team to engineer and measure a potentially important new class of nanostructured materials for microwave and advanced communication devices. Based on NIST's measurements, the new materials—a family of multilayered crystalline sandwiches—might enable a whole new class of compact, high-performance, high-efficiency components for devices such as cellular phones.*
"These materials are an excellent example of what the Materials Genome Initiative refers to as 'materials-by-design'," says NIST physicist James Booth, one of the lead researchers. "Materials science is getting better and better at engineering complex structures at an atomic scale to create materials with previously unheard-of properties."
The new multilayer crystals are so-called "tunable dielectrics," the heart of electronic devices that, for example, enable cell phones to tune to a precise frequency, picking a unique signal out of the welter of possible ones.
Tunable dielectrics that work well in the microwave range and beyond—modern communications applications typically use frequencies around a few gigahertz—have been hard to make, according to NIST materials scientist Nathan Orloff. "People have created tunable microwave dielectrics for decades, but they've always used up way too much power." These new materials work well up to 100 GHz, opening the door for the next generation of devices for advanced communications.
What this means to you: as you'll read in the article, it could mean an end to dropped cell phone calls (or, at least minimizing it significantly)...
*C-H Lee, N.D. Orloff, T. Birol, Y. Zhu, V. Goian, E. Rocas, R. Haislmaier, E. Vlahos, J.A. Mundy, L.F. Kourkoutis, Y. Nie, M.D. Biegalski, J. Zhang, M. Bernhagen, N.A. Benedek, Y. Kim, J.D. Brock, R.Uecker, X.X. Xi, V. Gopalan, D. Nuzhnyy, S. Kamba, D.A. Muller, I. Takeuchi, J.C. Booth, C.J. Fennie and D.G. Schlom. Exploiting dimensionality and defect mitigation to create tunable microwave dielectrics. Nature, 502, 532–536, Oct. 24, 2013. doi:10.1038/nature12582.
National Institute of Standards and Technology:
Perfect Faults: A Self-Correcting Crystal May Unleash the Next Generation of Advanced Communications
Nathaniel David Lewis asks about Black representation in the cartoon industry. When I was in college I explored the same thing concerning Industrial Design, Interior Design and Architecture. Sure there are notables and maybe even a principle (owner of a firm). Even MIT university ask how many black architects can you name. Names escape me as I think of the brother who designed a spacey looking airport building around the 50's and the Madison brothers here in the Cleveland Ohio area. I have lost touch with the different fields and gone into art. But ask who are the black artist from whom I draw inspiration, I'm at a loss again.
If one of us (black persons) is trained in any of the design professions and have the good fortune of being known in the industry as a cultural innovator or a so called household name, that is a thing of wonder. To have a body of work that capsulizes the cultural flavor and fuels the market with products that black people could embrace as out from us, that is again a wonder. The problem seems to be coming up through the ranks of companies owned and directed by other cultural bents and not getting the opportunity or idea that a different expression will survive the market place.
When I was in high school, I did renderings of homes, mostly I copied, but some of my own design. I tried to imagine what it would be like to design silverware, quilts, t shirts, furniture and home interiors. Do you think there was any support to push in that direction? Not for me, I did assume others might have those aspirations and needed support. I look at the fields today, there are many black designers, none of note I can name. You see working in the field as a player doesn't mean you are managing the game, doesn't get your name associated with the product, the movement. What does it take, I don't know. Today I am more about the flavor. What is the Black Aesthetic, the Black Style, the Black Look. I do see it kind of in fashion, mainstream black art, but it hasn't reached Interior Design products on the store shelves or a Black owned and operated culturally bent towards us store. I think we are spread, dispersed too thinly across America to have impact on ourselves.
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| Source: Science in Seconds |
"God must be an Aggie," my classmate said as the weather was beautiful: average temperature felt about 70 degrees Fahrenheit...in November. We won in a 59-12 blowout. I left after the halftime show: 31-6 then.
So, out of curiosity, I went to the archives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Weather Forecast Service for Raleigh/Durham. I'd last attended #GHOE in 1999 right after my father's passing; the archives only went to 2000 (all admitted "eyeball" approximations of November average temperatures). I recall it being cold enough for a coat and ski cap in that November:
2000: 50 degrees
2001: 52 degrees
2002: 50 degrees
2003: 58 degrees
2004: 70 degrees
2005: 50 degrees
2006: 52 degrees
2007: 50 degrees
2008: 50 degrees
2009: 60 degrees
2010: 52 degrees
2011: ~50 degrees or less
2012: 50 degrees
2013: ~68 degrees
Greensboro and Durham, NC are both 36 and 40 degrees respectively for the moment. Climate change is murky because people either want a clear demonstration that it IS happening - Louisiana may be gone in 10 years. Once we've reached that stage, only star ships or biblical rapture could save the human species.
Ironically, the NOAA posts a disclaimer: "Climate data on this page is PRELIMINARY (unofficial). CERTIFIED (official) climate data is available from the National Climate Data Center (NDCC)."
Except, when you click on the link you get this message:
404 Not Found
The requested URL /rah/cliplot/www.ncdc.noaa.gov was not found on this server.
The actual URL I did find, and it has some useful information, but sadly seems as well-designed as the health care exchange site. I'm not saying the information is NOT there: it's just going to take some patience on your and my part since neither of us are environmental engineers.
I'm posting not just due to a week from Hurricane Sandy's anniversary: the "quick fix" solution promoted (and I've reported on this blog) has been geoengineering, i.e. seeding the clouds with sulfate aerosols deliberately to cool the temperature of the planet. I had a strong reaction to this: One of my process engineering projects had been eliminating chlorofluorocarbons from [then] our Polysilicon Etch processes. The problem with the whole aerosol spray thing is there could possibly be less rain, and since the planet and our bodies are made of ~70% melted comet snow balls, that presents problems only Bedouins so far have successfully adapted to. Of course, the Bedouins kind of "know" where the water is for their survival. Quick fixes seem to be the norm in the post-Google world of downloading information versus studying to master it; we've lost an appreciation for the process of discovery and problem solving: both take time, and soon that luxury will not be afforded us.
In Caveat Emptor, I pointed out a large percentage of the elements/rare earths for so-called green technology are found in the country of our banker, China.
We appear to be painting ourselves into a very narrowing corner, our options are few and sadly due to the elevation of the politics of deliberate science ignorance at the highest level: self-constricting...
PSA: It's election day, and every one counts. Go out and vote for the representatives that can answer these questions: ScienceDebate.org. Money becomes free speech only when free people stay home.
Technology Review: One Potential Problem With Geoengineering: Less Rain
Your Nightmares. All Grown Up
Where the Monsters Are
Gerald Dean Rice
Gerald Parsons is on his way up. He's a talented executive in line for a major promotion and married to a beautiful woman. But a chance encounter that may not be coincidence with a stranger who claims to know him begins to unravel his happy life. After a co-worker is killed and another has his career sabotaged, the stranger shows up at his home, ready to party with his own special news, leaving Gerald to ponder if he is next.
Just because Halloween is over doesn’t mean the scares have to stop. If you didn’t get your fill of horror in October, download the tale that answers what happens to the monsters under our beds and in our closets when we’re not little children anymore.
Gerald Dean Rice is the author of numerous short stories, novellas, and his first novel, The Ghost Toucher. He’s currently working on his first vampire novel and doing workshops on publishing in Michigan.
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Where the Monsters Are is available for download right now on Kindle, Nook, and everywhere eBooks are sold.
You can follow him on Twitter @GeraldRice or join the Gerald Rice fan page. To book him for speaking engagements, please visit http://razorlinepress.com/i-speak/.
Small Fish, Big City - Chapter 1
Matthew discovers the laundromat in his new home of Big City to be just a little bit stranger than he initially thought: http://wp.me/p1UgIB-HR
Small Fish, Big City - Chapter 2
After recovering from the unusual nature of the laundromat, Matthew discovers the phenomenon he has discovered has a name. They are called kami! - http://wp.me/p1UgIB-Ib
Small Fish, Big City - Chapter 3
Big City has one more lesson before the day is over for Matthew. Gangs rule the night...: http://wp.me/p1UgIB-Il
Looking to do something more interesting than the standard ad for my new novel, I put together an animated web banner for the latest novel in the Tales from the Long Road series, 'Book of Dragon's Teeth.'
© 2012 H. Wolfgang Porter. All Rights Reserved. Published by Dreaded Enterprises Unlimited, Inc.
To see the animation, click on the image below
This is a story I wrote a long time ago that I updated and uploaded to the Kindle platform being that I heard that this is the way to wealth, fame and riches. It's being offered for free on the Kindle. I definitely like the new cover. Has some slightly disturbing content. Its free for the next day or so. Enjoy.
I keep forgetting that I have a blog page on here!
I just joined the board of the Carl Brandon Society, so I'm excited about working with the organization that gave me so much in 2012.
Recently I was told that my short story "Throb" will be included in the new groundbreaking speculative fiction anthology "Longhidden". It comes out in 2014.
Also, my short story "Throwback" is in the new Genesis 2 Anthology. (Support!)
One of the things I really want to do with the BSFS family is to encourage the writers here to attend conferences and apply for writing workshops that I am just now discovering. Part of the reason why I love the Carl Brandon Society is their commitment to bringing forth new writers of color in Spec Fic.
One of the biggest complaints I hear from black writers is that traveling to conferences or applying to writing fellowships/workshops is expensive. Yeah, some are, but I'm going to call bullshit on using that as the crutch to not investing in the work. We all know college is expensive, and yet if people want a degree, you have to pay for it. And before people start throwing up "I have kids, a fulltime job, responsibilities..blah blahblah," STOP. If you are not willing to invest in your craft, move on. It's that simple.
Let me tell you, by saving up (a year in advance) and attending conferences like Wiscon & Readercon last summer, I have made wonderful contacts and inroads with my writing career. I've met writers, editors, publishers and genre fans who have connected me to writing opportunities. I mean literally I have spoken to editors for magazines who have said "Send your stuff over." Simply because I was in the room with them talking in person. And check this: The Carl Brandon Society has a Con or Bust program to help cover the costs of PoC attending conferences. Check out the website:http://con-or-bust.org/ via carlbrandon.org
So, I will do my best to be an advocate for BSFS members. I come from a tradition of each one teach one, and payback is reaching back. And access to information is a tremendous help. I had never heard of WisCon or Readercon or a butt load of cons until I went to Clarion, and Ted Chiang, one of my teachers told me to go. So I am telling you. Go. There are many Cons near any city where people live. I will be going to WisCon again next May, and I'm thinking of going to DetCon, a convention in Detroit next July. So I'm saving money now. Next November I am going to the World Fantasy Convention which will be in D.C., so if there are folks in and around the D.C. area, let's chop it up. Do it.
Holla atcha gurrlllll.....
L-Boogie
It’s been a while since I found one of these guys who promise to take your manuscript and publish it in eBook form.
X Publishing is requesting proposals for books to be published on iPad, Kindle, and Nook. eBook technology is changing the publishing world. iPad, Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, and Sony Reader created profitable mass markets for eBooks. We at X Publishing are here to help you take advantage of that.
We invite you to submit a query letter or manuscript for consideration.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I retain the rights to my book?
Yes. You retain all print rights, which means that when your eBook gets discovered by a big publishing company, you’ll receive 100% of those royalties.How much will you edit my manuscript?
Not too much. If your manuscript needs major edits, it probably will be rejected. We will edit for clarity and concision. You will have the opportunity to approve or reject all edits.Do I have to pay anything?
No. If your manuscript is selected, you will pay nothing to have your book published.How much do you sell your eBooks for?
We prefer to sell eBooks at low prices with the goal of stimulating more sales volume, profits, and royalties. We default to charging $2.99 per eBook, but are open to your preferences on pricing, especially if you have already built a target audience with which you are familiar.How much will I earn in royalties?
The fortunate few chosen to write for traditional publishers receive around $2 in royalties for each $20 hardcover book sold, according to the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency, an agent that represents writers. Your royalties will be 230% higher than that. You’ll receive $1 for each $2.99 eBook sold.I’m not sure if my manuscript is good enough. Should I submit?
If you’re on the fence, we suggest submitting. X Publishing can often say yes to manuscripts that traditional publishers will reject because our costs are lower.
I took out the name because I don’t want to give these guys any more press than this. Let’s break this down piece by piece. Notice at the very beginning how they are only publishing your manuscript as an eBook? That should be a warning flag right there. ePublishing is something that is super easy that anyone can do. I even wrote a book about it that retails for $2.99. Now that’s not just a plug (well, it is a plug, but I’ll come back to it in a moment).
You might be saying at this point, ‘hey, so what it’s only electronic where they publish, they’re not charging me anything’. This is very true if you mean there’s no upfront cost. But what they are charging you on the back end. Their price-point is $2.99. Now on Amazon (just about everyone follows closely what Amazon pays) the publisher will earn $2.05 per unit sold. They are pocketing 51% of that and paying you a buck. Now you may be thinking, hey, that’s actually a pretty good deal, if my book were published by a traditional publisher, I’d be making way less than that (which is true and is pointed out by these guys). But what a real publisher is giving you outweighs anything these guys have said they’d do for you.
Notice nothing is said about the creation of a cover, extensive editing services, advertising of your book, book tours, etc. All these things are what the big boys do to promote your book so it can sell. So what you are giving up in royalty percentage, you are more than gaining in units sold (ideally). But these guys are getting you on the cheap. They make no mention of promoting you, which means you are left to promote yourself. They make no mention of creating a cover for you, which means you either are going to create your own cover, pay them to create your cover, or pay someone else to create your cover. Now, there are some places you can have a cover made without spending a lot of dough (again, you can read about that in my $2.99 book) or you can wait until you’ve signed the bottom line with these guys to see which option you are left with.
Next! You do retain the rights to your work. Of course you do. You just are signing away your right to publish it yourself for a term of service. Something between 3 to 5 years. And by them saying they’ll be your publisher until an actual publisher comes along to buy the rights, that big publisher is buying the rights from them, not you. You’ve already handed over the rights to publish (you can never surrender ownership of your story–it’s a semantics trick).
The reason they don’t want to edit your manuscript is because they are looking for people to hand over their work so they can publish right now. They herd you in the right direction to get cover created and they can have your book on e-shelves in a few days time with little to no financial investment on their part.
Again, self-publishing an eBook is very simple and super-easy. I take you through the whole process in my book, and instead of paying them $1.05 per book, you can buy mine for a one-time charge of $2.99. But you can always buy anyone’s book on self-publishing in the digital age and come out way cheaper than anything these guys can do for you.
Kori Miller's Back Porch Writer site interviewed me Tuesday morning about writing, the Darkside Trilogy, hosting the Genesis Radio Show and more.
To listen to me being on the other side of an interview follow this link: Back Porch Writer Radio Show
I’ll let this one speak for itself. Download a copy if you’re looking for a good #Halloween read.
I stumbled onto Gerald Dean Rice on Facebook and saw the new cover for this book and thought I’d give it a shot. Three stories just 37 pages and it’s less than a dollar.
This is a very short collection but it does make for a good introduction to Rice’s work. Each story is solid and while they aren’t gory they are in a style that reminds me of The Twilight Zone, or even Night Gallery. This is classic horror and done well.
I’m glad I stumbled onto Rice and plan on reading as much as I can from this guy. He knows how to craft a story and after I read the last one in this collection I was upset because it was over. If you love classic horror that relies more on story telling than violence and gore pick this up. You won’t be dissapointed
Originally, this appeared one year ago as "This Is What It Looks Like." Europe just got a taste of it recently. Sandy occurred one year ago today.
Sadly, our political leaders figuratively whistle in the dark; play mythological fiddles while Rome burns (Nero never did it). Congressman Joe Barton believes "wind is a finite resource," and harnessing it would RESULT in global warming. Hill Heat reports Congressman Kevin Cramer believes "global warming is fraudulent science to promote wind farms." It would be laughable if only these men didn't have the levers of government behind their lack of training in STEM fields. The fact Cramer's name correlates well with the "Seinfeld shutdown" is pure irony. Life and physics are not a "multiple choice exams": you can't make it up as you go for very long. Laws of nature have abrupt ways of asserting themselves, and it doesn't grade on a curve.
What is not fraudulent: I opted not to go to my college homecoming last year due to Hurricane Sandy careening towards the eastern seaboard last year. What was not fraudulent is how many people went "Lord of the Flies" over gasoline: driving up from NYC and New Jersey; police called to break up fights at gas stations. What was sadly not fraudulent is these and other elected officials not voting for emergency relief since it didn't affect their constituents.
I am going to #GHOE this year, and taking a week off from posting. I am grateful for the training my university gave me in laws of physics, chemistry, Calculus, engineering, to make a real difference in the world. It all started with a chemistry set; it lifted a child from a sometimes violent existence to something wondrous. It is this wonder I'll pay homage to in Greensboro, NC. See you in a week...
In Austin, Texas I witnessed the caravans from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: Interstates 10 and 45 packed headed towards Austin and Dallas respectively.
Houston received the first wave of fleeing masses of humanity from Louisiana. Churches and shelters in the three cities put up cots and sleeping bags as fast as they could; clothing and canned foods were donated; homes opened. We were brothers, sisters, cousins, friends: suddenly any differences were rendered utterly meaningless: "Vanity of vanities" said Solomon. I became used to life in "tornado alley," and the Texas colloquial phrase of "hunkering down," but nothing like shelves emptied at the grocery stores; sudden influxes of students from 9th Ward NOLA.
Moving from Texas to New York last year, my wife and I experienced Hurricane Irene, which was described at the time a once-in-a-lifetime event as far as its power (hurricanes and tropical storms have affected NY before). Sandy has now proven that comforting logic wrong, coupling winds, flooding, rain, and possibly tornadoes and snowstorms. Last year, the one and only snowstorm happened on Halloween, downing power lines made heavy by wet snow caught on autumn leaves and tree branches that snapped under the great unexpected weight, leaving families without lights; heat. We took in friends that lived in Hyde Park due to that: their children had an increased commute to school when it started again. In Irene's aftermath: Insect populations flourished that in times past should have passed on in seasonal death. Our power blinked in and out before it settled then, but I'm not so sure we'll be as lucky. I hope we are.
WE WILL HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS: soberly using critical thinking skills, (which, as a nation we show ourselves remarkably bereft), not sound bites and slogans. We have lawyers as administrators of the republic: lawyers argue. Eight of the top nine government posts in China are held by engineers and scientists according to Forbes. Accordingly, they will move to economic prominence, no dominance in 2016, or at least by the 2020s. Narry a tax exempt creation museum on the Sino land mass.
Perhaps it's too late to solve it, and the carbon producers can revel in their profits merrily, having obfuscated truth and fact in our elected officials on science committees; literally running out the clock until...we are here.
And, great wealth only matters: when you have a functional planet to spend it on.
Site: Climate Change Refugees
You Tube: Real Time With Bill Maher
Do the Math: 350.org
Your memories will truly outlive you by eons...
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Back in 1956, IBM introduced the world’s first commercial computer capable of storing data on a magnetic disk drive. The IBM 305 RAMAC used fifty 24-inch discs to store up to 5 MB, an impressive feat in those days. Today, however, it’s not difficult to find hard drives that can store 1 TB of data on a single 3.5-inch disk.
But despite this huge increase in storage density and a similarly impressive improvement in power efficiency, one thing hasn’t changed. The lifetime over which data can be stored on magnetic discs is still about a decade.
That raises an interesting problem. How are we to preserve information about our civilisation on a timescale that outlasts it? In other words, what technology can reliably store information for 1 million years or more?
Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of Jeroen de Vries at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and a few pals. These guys have designed and built a disk capable of storing data over this timescale. And they’ve performed accelerated ageing tests which show it should be able to store data for 1 million years and possibly longer.
These guys start with some theory about ageing. Clearly, it’s impractical to conduct an ageing experiment in real time, particularly when the periods involved are measured in millions of years. But there is a way to accelerate the process of ageing.
This is based on the idea that data must be stored in an energy minimum that is separated from other minima by an energy barrier. So to corrupt data by converting a 0 to a 1, for example, requires enough energy to overcome this barrier.
The probability that the system will jump in this way is governed by an idea known as Arrhenius law. This relates the probability of jumping the barrier to factors such as its temperature, the Boltzmann constant and how often a jump can be attempted, which is related to the level of atomic vibrations.
Some straightforward calculations reveal that to last a million years, the required energy barrier is 63 KBT or 70 KBT to last a billion years. “These values are well within the range of today’s technology,” say de Vries and co.
Physics arXiv:
Towards Gigayear Storage Using a Silicon-Nitride/Tungsten Based Medium
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expert
1. somebody skilled or knowledgeable: somebody with a great deal of knowledge about, or skill, training, or experience in, a particular field or activity
2. highest rank of marksmanship: in shooting, the highest grade of marksmanship
3. highest-ranked shooter: in shooting, somebody who has achieved the grade of expert
Synonyms: skilled, skillful, practiced, proficient, professional, knowledgeable, adept
It started right before the dawn of the 21st Century, the hand-wringing with regards to the "information superhighway" and access to it by minorities, or the fear of lack of access to what was then essentially emerging as a global database. Knowledge is power, advantage; hope.
Expertise, as the definition above suggests, can be acquired from skilled practice; repetition its mother; skill its patriarch. What is now understood as muscle memory, ancients mystified as "no mind." Expertise suggests a teacher-disciple relationship, tutelage and qualification from some combination of observation and tasks performed. It used to be an earned credential that qualified for a specific line of work endeavor.
C Everett Koop, MD was US Surgeon General under the Reagan Administration - known for infuriating gay and conservative activists alike - targeting the former for AIDS, and advising sex education as early as the 3rd grade with instruction on the proper use of condoms to prevent disease - lent his name to a business and a web site: DrKoop.com. It's headquarters I passed often in Austin, Texas on the MOPAC expressway, also known as Loop 1; also derided as "segment 1," since a true loop around the city has been thus far impossible to achieve. It was not a successful venture according to the Texas Tribune (June 2000): In mid-March the financial newsweekly Barrons gave the company just three months to live based on its rapidly dwindling supply of cash, and a report by drkoop.com’s auditors to the Securities and Exchange Commission similarly called its long-term survival into question, noting that it had “sustained losses and negative cash flows from operation since its inception.” Twice before, the auditors had warned about the company’s financial health, but investors paid no attention. This time, however, they did: The dire news slashed the price of drkoop.com’s already depressed shares another 43 percent to $3.56 on March 31. On April 29 the stock was trading at $2.75.
The site now reflects to Health Central, may Dr. Koop rest in peace. Hopefully, their financial situation is not as dire as reported in 2000. However, one of the causes of the dot com bubble bursting was the notion of assumed expertise and viability because of the existence of a web site. Venture capitalists threw money at start ups with abandon and aplomb, knowing how to make money in the old world; arrogantly not perceiving or researching the viability of their gambits in the cyberspace of the then emerging new one. They fed and inflated the bubble.
I say assumed because pre-Google, one had to study for and pass a test administered by most librarians on the Dewey Decimal System. Knowledge was and is precious, as well as the development of basic research and critical thinking skills. With the diminishing importance of Dewey Decimal and the perceived public lack of Boolean logic in search engine queries, we have collectively lost our curiosity; our ability to separate the biblical "wheat from chaff"; to discern facts from loudly declared opinions. We are thus participant in inflating a bubble of dangerous ignorance.
The democratization of information has meant we have access to a global database: true. Teenagers as a demographic however, tend to use it to keep up with one another, bored with any other application; knowledgeable with regards to the opinions of other peers versus laws of nature, mathematics or critical thinking. Pundits have become entertainers, the lines blurred utterly between Comedy Central and so-called Cable News. Networks have sued for the right at the very least, to not run a story unfavorable to a major sponsor; many hired to disseminate information or disinformation in prime time are not educated nor trained in journalism, nor increasingly do actual journalists feel it is their duty to hold power accountable in a democratic republic.
Conspiracy theories used to be passed around on pamphlets by fringe groups whose meeting places you had to seek out and find on your own. Now: you may join a chat room, and become angry about anything fed you via cookies after a few search engine queries. The fringe are not only mainstream; they are AstroTurf movement, wielding power in principalities and higher offices of gerrymandered localities; temporarily shutting down democratic republics.
It is a power reinforced by uniform resource locator, the digital equivalent of preaching to a choir of the already convinced; similar to teens online - tweeting during the State of the Union; playing poker during senate hearings on Syria - our political leaders seem only interested in the echos within their own bubble chambers, reinforcing unyielding opinions. And like some pundits and most developing teenagers, they do not have to be skilled in governance to win higher office. Thomas Gray said "ignorance is bliss"; George Orwell "ignorance is strength." And when this bubble pops, there will be massive casualties.
Related links:
Successful Workplace: Is social BPM the end of focused expertise?
The Atlantic: The End Of Expertise?
Forbes:
The End of the Expert: Why No One in Marketing Knows What They're Doing
