Meeting notice: 11-17-98; 7:30 pm.

Until further notice we will meet at the Royal East
(782 Main St., Cambridge), a block down from the corner
of Main St. and Mass Ave.

Suggested topic: the nature of social planning in a
pervasively unpredictable world.

Verner Vinge, the science fiction writer, recalls how
at one time SF writers felt up to portraying societies
thousands and even millions of years into the future.
These were not supposed to be alternative timelines or
fantasy worlds but straightforward extensions of the
present, only to enormous distances.

Over the past few decades, he observes, his colleagues
have suffered a loss of faith in their ability to look
for any significant time into the future.  The reason
is that predictions depend for their comprehensibility
on the number of relevant changes being fairly small.
It is difficult to say anything very useful, or even
describe, a universe that has been exploring a very
large number of variables for any length of time.

Increasingly sf writers are coming to the belief that
the next 50 years are likely to affect so many
interacting factors simultaneously that no description
of the late 21st century can have any inherent
plausibility or persuasiveness. Thus many sf writers
have either taken to writing about the very near future
(Bruce Sterling) or alternative worlds (Greg Bear).

SF writers are not the only people in the society who
make predictions.  Directly or indirectly almost
everyone who tries to accomplish anything over time
periods of more than a few months relies on them.  If
the environment is in fact becoming increasingly
chaotic, then a fairly broad range of socially and
economically important activities, from working for
social change to building businesses to having
children, are about to take on a new burden.

Can we predict what we will happen when more and more
people start throwing up their hands, shrugging their
shoulders, and saying 'It will be as Chaos wills it."?
Or is this an example of the kind of prediction that
can no longer be made?

(Anyone wishing to explore Vinge's thinking on this and
the related topic of the Singularity should look
at the discussion on
http://www.extropy.org/eo/articles/vi.html.)

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Last time I reviewed a speech by Martin Schmidt, the
incoming director of the Microsytems Lab, on
microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS.  In the text I
said that Drexler has called MEMS "NT on training
wheels". Marcus Krummenacker writes that this
observation is usually credited to Paul Saffo of The
Institute of the Future.

I also said that MEMS have the disadvantages that their
design is highly dependent on the details of the
specific application.  This means they lack the market
scale required for the large production runs critical
to the pricing model of microprocessors and memory
chips, apparently making the technology so expensive
many possible markets will be out of reach.

Richard Eckhardt argues that generality of application
is a function of design, and it is way too early to
give up on finding a general-purpose MEM.  Joost Benson
attacks the point from the other direction, arguing
that MEMS can be built with fab plants that now are
obsolete from the point of view of microprocessor
production, and which are therefore available for
pennies on the dollar of their original construction
costs.

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Nanonews

UPTON, NY - Biochemists have for the first time
"morphed" a plant enzyme, turning it into another
enzyme with a different function through genetic
manipulation.
http://www.pubaf.bnl.gov/pr/bnlpr111298.html

Protein folding gives ground.
http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/acs_utpf.html

Buckytubes in flat panel displays
http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/ub-pacnw.html


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