Alastair Reynolds – Permafrost

Spre sfârșitul secolului, cam atunci când aș împlini 100 de ani, dacă voi ajunge vreodată la această vârstă venerabilă, ecosistemul Pământului s‑a prăbușit, și odată cu el civilizația umană. Colapsul a început aproape pe nesimțite, cu o rată crescută a extincției insectelor, un efect care se propagă însă rapid la alte specii, inclusiv în oceane, care va afecta plantele, dependente de insecte pentru polenizare, apoi animalele, lipsite de sursele lor de hrană. În doar trei decenii, din omenire nu mai rămân decât grupuri izolate, supraviețuind de la o zi la alta din rezerve pe terminate. În taigaua rusească, una dintre aceste rămășite de civilizație încearcă un ultim efort de a salva omenirea de la dispariție: proiectul Permafrost.

Am remarcat de multe ori că Alastair Reynolds e unul din puținii autori SF cu capacitatea de a scrie atât romane de dimensiuni colosale cât și povestiri (relativ) scurte la aceeași calitate. În povestirea de față atacă un subiect complicat, care poate cu ușurință să alunece în absurd și neverosimil: călătoria în timp. N‑aș putea spune că abordarea lui e originală, dar metoda lui minimalistă de intervenție în trecut se potrivește unui povestiri scurte, lăsând mai mult loc pentru acțiune și personaje. Pe scurt, nu avem clasicii călători care se întorc în timp, ci doar efecte cuantice speciale, care printr‑un efect de superpoziție fac posibilă comunicarea între particule din prezent și trecut. Proiectul Permafrost folosește aceste perechi Luda ca să proiecteze gândurile unei persoane înapoi jumătate de secol în mintea altcuiva, pentru a opera o intervenție limitată, dar de precizie chirurgicală.

Facebook Newsroom: “Simplifying Payments with Facebook Pay”

Facebook Pay will begin rolling out on Facebook and Messenger this week in the US for fundraisers, in-game purchases, event tickets, person-to-person payments on Messenger and purchases from select Pages and businesses on Facebook Marketplace. And over time, we plan to bring Facebook Pay to more people and places, including for use across Instagram and WhatsApp.

Deborah Liu

It would be easy to assume that Facebook is walking back on its grand Calibra plans, after many of its launch partners dropped out of the Libra Association. On the other hand, a separate payment product could be Facebook’s way to test the viability of a larger-scale rollout – and, if successful with customers, to argue with regulators and governments that people want alternatives to centrally managed currencies. At some point down the line, I could even see Facebook quietly swapping the Facebook Pay backend to Calibra, hoping few people will be smart enough to notice…

New display options for Twitter’s site and progressive apps

After implementing their Windows app as a Progressive Web App more than a year ago, Twitter made constant improvements to this shared version that powers their mobile web site as well, for example re-adding multiple account support – although I haven’t managed to make this work yet. Recently, the desktop site was also replaced with this new, fresher experience. Naturally, many people complained vocally, as with any change, regardless how small. One top complaint was the display density, that the font used is too large, and so too few tweets were visible on the screen. Fortunately, with web technologies this can be easily fixed, and just last week Twitter released a new setting to address this, as well as other customization options.

The Baffler: “Big Mood Machine”

In Spotify’s world, listening data has become the oil that fuels a monetizable metrics machine, pumping the numbers that lure advertisers to the platform. In a data-driven listening environment, the commodity is no longer music. The commodity is listening. The commodity is users and their moods. The commodity is listening habits as behavioral data. Indeed, what Spotify calls “streaming intelligence” should be understood as surveillance of its users to fuel its own growth and ability to sell mood-and-moment data to brands.

Liz Pelly

This article goes out of its way to make Spotify’s collection of data about listening habits sound nefarious (notice the heavy use of emphasis to signify her outrage), in the same way that Facebook’s data collection sparked numerous scandals, starting with Cambridge Analytica. There are two major issues with this narrative, and unsurprisingly the author never stops to address any of them.

Olaf Stapledon – Last and First Men

De obicei, o recenzie de carte începe cu o secțiune descriind premisele și personajele majore, dar acest roman, antic după standardele genului science-fiction, e greu de încadrat după șabloanele obișnuite. Așa cum autorul ne avertizează din prefață, scopul lui a fost să schițeze o epopee de dimensiuni mitice a dezvoltării viitoare a rasei umane, de la Primii Oameni din prezent (pentru el anii ‘30 ai secolului XX) până la finalul îndepărtat al ultimilor noștri descendenți, miliarde de ani în viitor. Ca urmare, mi‑e destul de greu să vorbesc despre rezultat în comparație cu romane mai convenționale.

We must achieve neither mere history, nor mere fiction, but myth. A true myth is one which, within the universe of a certain culture (living or dead), expresses richly, and often perhaps tragically, the highest admirations possible within that culture. A false myth is one which either violently transgresses the limits of credibility set by its own cultural matrix, or expresses admirations less developed than those of its culture’s best vision. This book can no more claim to be true myth than true prophecy. But it is an essay in myth creation.

Deoarece romanul acoperă o perioadă de timp fără precedent aș zice în întreaga istorie SF, îi este imposibil să se fixeze prea mult pe detalii. Puține scene au personaje individuale și dialog, majoritatea seamănă mai degrabă cu pasaje din tratate istorice sau sociologice. Lectura lasă în mare o impresie seacă și impersonală, deși nu e lipsită de momente grandioase, unele prin sublimul lor, dar cele mai multe tragice. Ceea ce o saga familială ar face cu personajele ei, conducându‑ne de‑a lungul vieților lor de la naștere la moarte, Olaf Stapledon realizează la nivelul întregilor civilizații umane, cartografiind apariția, creșterea și decăderea lor de‑a lungul eonilor, uneori întrerupte de pauze imense, în care puținii supraviețuitori sunt reduși înapoi la stadiul de sălbăticie. În cursul acestor curente tumultoase avem ocazia să întâlnim societăți de‑a dreptul utopice, altele de o cruzime la limita inumanității.

The New York Times: “After SpaceX Starlink Launch, a Fear of Satellites that outnumber All Visible Stars”

Alex Parker, a planetary astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute, noted on Twitter that if nearly 12,000 of these satellites orbit, they could soon outnumber all of the stars visible to the naked eye. And even if just 500 are observable at any given time, Dr. Drimmel warns that it will be difficult to pick out constellations among those moving lights.

It sounds dystopian, Dr. Casey said.

Most of the frustration stems from the fact that discussions about the impact of this project did not take place before launch. And it may only be the beginning.

It truly is the tip of the iceberg, especially as we get into a world where you have multibillionaires with the ability and the desire to do things like this, Dr. Nordgren said.

Shannon Hall

Speaking of irresponsible behavior in space, let’s not forget about Elon Musk, a prime example of arrogance and irresponsibility. Two months ago, SpaceX started launching satellites for the Starlink constellation to build their space-based Internet service and… astronomers were outraged at the implications. And I have to admit, I was as well! No matter the benefits in connecting the poorer and more remote areas of the world, the fact is it’s a unilateral decision by a company (one can even say one man!) that will reap all the profits, while the rest of the world has to deal with the consequences.

Wired: “SpaceIL’s Crashed Spacecraft spilled Tardigrades on the Moon”

A scanning electron micrograph of a water bear. Like regular bears, tardigrades have claws, which help in locomotion. Image: Bob Goldstein and Vicky Madden

Half a world away, Nova Spivack watched a livestream of Beresheet’s mission control from a conference room in Los Angeles. As the founder of the Arch Mission Foundation, a nonprofit whose goal is to create “a backup of planet Earth”, Spivack had a lot at stake in the Beresheet mission. The spacecraft was carrying the foundation’s first lunar library, a DVD-sized archive containing 30 million pages of information, human DNA samples, and thousands of tardigrades, those microscopic “water bears” that can survive pretty much any environment—including space.

But when the Israelis confirmed Beresheet had been destroyed, Spivack was faced with a distressing question: Did he just smear the toughest animal in the known universe across the surface of the moon?

Daniel Oberhaus

Fascinating story – especially the little known detail about the Apollo astronauts below. It’s unlikely that tardigrades would interfere with the Moon’s environment – considering they could have arrived there without human intervention – but I still think the protocols for bringing Earth life into space should be more restrictive. As we are gradually returning to space with private initiatives alongside the existing large national programs, the risk of contaminating pristine worlds increases, if not deliberately, then by negligence and accident.

Fortunately for Spivack and the Arch Mission Foundation, spewing DNA and water bears across the moon is totally legal. NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection classifies missions based on the likelihood that their targets are of interest to our understanding of life. As such, missions destined for places like Mars are subject to more stringent sterilization processes than missions to the Moon, which has few of the necessary conditions for life and isn’t at risk of contamination. In fact, Spivack isn’t even the first to leave DNA on the moon. This honor belongs to the Apollo astronauts, who left nearly 100 bags of human feces on the lunar surface before they returned to Earth.