To some readers this collection of nine short stories may seem like just that — another collection of stories. It’s so much more though.

The major theme throughout is Asimov’s ability to condense human ethics down to three laws that machines must follow. These three laws seem perfect.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The robots — run amok though. Maybe the three laws aren’t perfect. Maybe humanity’s idea of ethics is wrong.

Asimov creates a compelling world, one where essentially humans make the errors. The three laws are, afterall, created by humans.

I was unfortunate enough to only find a copy with the Will Smith cover that said, “One man saw it coming.” If you’ve seen the movie, but haven’t read the book, you’ll be in for a real shocker. They’re nothing alike. The movie (I assume because I haven’t read the other books in the Robot novels) is loosely based off the novel’s theme of robots going wrong.

The tales throughout are nonetheless gripping. I hardly put the book down, finishing in one night. I’m not sure if Asimov’s intentions were to warn against advancing technology or to just have fun, but I feel there’s some message here — if we are to create highly-intellingent beings, we need to know what we’re getting into. Artificial Intelligence isn’t bad, but it might not necessarily be controlled by what humans view as right/wrong.

Asimov is a wonderful storyteller. No matter what your views are on technology. No matter whether you like science fiction. You should give this book a read.

I started reading Thomas L. Friedman’s book sometime in late December or early January. It was a bit of a long book. Well, I read a lot of other things since then and now. But, I’m finally finished and am astounded. The book has opened my eyes to the situation America is in, that the world is in.

First, you must understand what he means when he says the world is flat. To define it simply, it means that there is now a level playing field, that everything isn’t necessarily controlled from the top down. America is still the world’s superpower, but the rest of the world is steadily catching up. Many will soon catch up and quite possibly surpass us economically and technologically.

He gives a detailed analysis of the 10 flatteners effecting the world right now, starting with the date 11/9/89 — the fall of the Berlin Wall. Next up was the date Netscape went public, 8/9/95. If there are any two dates you might want to know about before stepping into this book, those would be the two. They changed the world forever.

Another date to keep in mind is 9/11/2001. There’s no need to explain what happened that day on the surface, but underneath, something else resulted — America started shutting its doors in ways that could possibly make it not so super-powerful in the coming years.

The world is catching up with education. Fewer and fewer students are graduating in the vitally important fields of mathematics and science. However, in places such as India and China, most students get degrees in those fields, and we are closing our doors to many of those students. That factor, and many others, are causing us to lose ground. More American companies are going global, and they’ll hire the best from anywhere. “And we still do hire lots of Americans,” said Craig Barrett, Intel’s chairman. “But today we can hire the best talent around the world and be successful.”

Many services are being outsourced. Called any customer support number anytime in the last few years? There’s a good chance you didn’t talk to an American.

Friedman isn’t arguing that the flattening of the world is a bad thing. He’s arguing that America needs to wake up. It’s hard to stay innovative when you’re at the top. Those other countries have something to shoot for — America. America has to create something to shoot for, which is harder.

“Does your society have more memories than dreams,” Friedman asks. When you have dreams, you have a goal you’re aiming for. When you have memories, you’re thinking about the past. Let those memories overtake the dreams, and you’re country is doomed to lose its ground.

What the author wants to stress as the most important thing of all for America is education, specifically education in science and math. The moment we took over the world is the moment JFK decided to make these fields more important. It was the moment America decided that math and science would save our country. The moment it became something to strive for. And largely, America has lost that. Nobody’s interested in those fields anymore. That’s probably why I’ve encountered few American math or science teachers.

The next most important thing is that America cannot wall itself in. It will only slow our progress down. If we’re shutting out those people who are the best and brightest in those fields, we’re losing the people who will carry us into the future as leaders. We’re cutting off globalization, and that’s a bad thing.

I have to note that a major part of the book focuses on how anyone can make a name for him or her self. Since the world is becoming flat and losing the top-down heirarchy of previous workplaces, the little guy can actually make a difference in this new world. Take a look at YouTube or Ebay. There’s a definite change happening. Cultures are starting to understand other cultures. The little guy is making money with his Internet-based business. The world is changing drastically.

I can hardly cover the amount of material Friedman covered in his book. He focused on many fields, companies, and countries while researching. You must know that the Internet is a driving force behind the flattening of the world. There are also those who can take new technology and destroy this process. Mostly, the flattening of the world means better lives for everyone. He’ll ask you how many countries have gone to war with each other that has a McDonald’s. You’ll see there’s none, except for a few minor skirmishes.

Overall, Friedman does a good job laying out where we are now, what the future holds, and what we must do about it. America might not stay on top forever, but we should at least be prepared to live and work in a flat world.

Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future

Anyone who’s kept up with some of my book reviews knows that I’ve been reading about biological enhancement and what the future holds for the human race. When I first saw the title of James Hughes’ book, I immediately thought I would read about further proof that we are on the brink of a biological uplifting of our society—a social change so vast that the world as we know it will be redefined.

But, Hughes brings us sci-fi optimists back down to planet earth. It’s all right there in the subtitle, “Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future.” So, what does he mean by “respond”?

He means we, as a society, need to have a conversation about what the next 100 years will bring, and what exactly we’re going to do about it. The next 50 years. The next 10 years.

He recognizes that there is a need for a serious discussion of bioethics. He recognizes that Francis Fukuyama, appointed to the President’s Council on Bioethics, was the wrong man for the job.

Most importantly, he notes that the term “citizen” will have to be redefined.

I think he may go a little off-chart by putting the great apes in the same classification as human children and demented and mentally disabled adults. But, I won’t argue too much there because numerous studies have shown that those great apes might have something that we attribute to consciousness, self-awareness.

He notes that he attended a conference where a transgendered person spoke of being the first of the transhumans. So, is this the first step? Thus far, the U.S. hasn’t been extremely tolerant of the transgendered, but I can see that changing in the future. We’re never tolerant of difference at first. Eventually, people start seeing things differently as time passes on. We’ve seen that with women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement, and are now beginning to see a gay rights movement.

The next movements may involve the transhuman movement—rights for the biologically enhanced. This is where the trouble may start. In the other movements, humans were equal in intelligence and physical attributes, for the most part. However, without a serious discussion of the dos and don’ts of biological enhancement, we may create a species of man that is vastly more intelligent and physically superior.

Without the proper steps taken to ensure their rights, we could put ourselves on the brink of another civil war. Or, a world in which humans version 1.0 are enslaved.

With writers such as Philip K. Dick and other greats, whose words tell how humans must fight against future technology, we’ve become accustomed to think of danger when we think of technological advancement. Hughes believes that “If there is to be a future for progressive politics it has to come from a rebirth of a sexy, high-tech vision of a radically democratic future, a rediscovery of the utopian imagination.”

Maybe that’s what we’ve lost, the ability to imagine a future where things might just actually work. A future where disease is erradicated. Where war is rare. Life is fullfilling.

Hughes is an optimist. However, he also has a realistic view of our world. With so much argument over moral permissibility in today’s society, how are we going to face tomorrow’s? We must respond.

Let me start two days ago. All of sudden on Monday night my I-can’t-live-without-it Nokia (I’m not sure what model) cell phone shut off randomly. No keys were touched, no toilet water broke its shell (another long story altogether), no direct sunlight burnt its organs. It just shut off. All by itself. I figured it needed a break. It has been working extra hard lately.

Two days pass. Mr. Nokia (I see my phone as a male, so no sexist comments here, that’s just the way it is) keeps taking breaks. Why? I don’t know. I gave it a few good hours of rest by letting it sleep at times during those two days. And today, of all days (why?), he decided to die. And when I say die, I don’t mean pretend die. I don’t mean it’s life source (battery) ran out, or that he needed yet another break. I mean he literally died.

He broke down and died, like an old mule who’s been over-worked through 20 years of field-tilling and laying it down to produce numerous muling-crumb-snatchers. He fell over in the heat of the day and just layed there.

Okay, is that enough metaphors and analogies for ya’? I guess so. So, I took Mr. Nokia (I still want to call the cell phone that now for some reason) to the vet (oh gosh, I’m still doing it). I took the phone to Cingular to see what the problem was. Of course, they told me what I just told you. The cell phone is dead. I had two options: buy a new one from them (the cheapest one was $219) or get a cheap $50 phone from Wal-Mart and switch the SIM card. I chose the latter. The reason I had to do this was because I wasn’t eligible for an upgrade for another three months. Therefore, they weren’t willing to work with me. They couldn’t bother helping out a broke college student who can’t afford the $4/month insurance fee. Cell phone companies, Blah!

I got a new phone from Wal-Mart. A Sony Ericsson something or another. Cheap Plastic. Cheap Parts. Cheaply Made. Fifty-three dollars after tax. It does have a decent ringer on it though. I might actually consider just getting myself a new phone whenever I feel like it and replacing the SIM card for now on. It would keep me from having to sign a two-year contract to get a cheap phone that won’t last from Cingular. Just keep their service and get whatever phone I want from Wal-Mart or wherever else I can find Cingular phones. Not a bad idea if you ask me. Of course, I would have never found all this out if it wasn’t for the guy at Cingular who felt it wasn’t worth the money to buy one of their phones for three months. I’m sure if it was longer he wouldn’t have let me in on this little secret.

One other point of interest and I will be off of this whole cell phone subject, save your phone book to your SIM card. I never knew you could do this. So, now I have to get all of my numbers back, some of which will be lost forever, probably. Remember, save your phone book and whatever else you want to keep to your SIM card.

Anyway, there was a little hope and promise in this awful day; something that brightened my spirits while dealing with the cell phone debacle. Moments after my phone died forever, while I was working at the library, I found half a sheet of paper with quotes on it. Here’s what it read

Flesh goes on pleasuring us, and humiliating us, right to the end. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

Few of us have lost our minds, but most of us have long ago lost our bodies. ~Ken Wilbur

Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.

“We turn skeletons into godesses and look up to them as if they might teach us not to need.”

X Futura Condensed

That’s exactly how it looked on the sheet of paper, except the “X” is a little bigger. I can’t reproduce that here with text.

But, it was sort of an omen, a prophetic sign to let me know that life will get better. The reasoning behind this is that I’m doing Body For Life again. I think the quotes were given to me by divine intervention in some way. And I’m a fairly big skeptic when it comes to divine intervention. I’m not the type of guy who will tell you everything happens for a reason. I’m more along the lines of getting what you put into things. There’s no such thing as predestination kind of guy. That’s not to say I’m not religious or spiritual, I just have a slightly different take on some things. I’m getting off subject now.

The paper was there, wedged between a bookshelf and a book. I found it while I was placing books on the shelf in the monotonous cycle that is my job. I have to take into account what is meant by finding this. I can’t just throw it out the window without giving it so much as a second look. It means something, though that last quote is a little distant from the other three. But they are all interrelated, and I found them. I found them in only my second week of the Body For Life program.

The quotes definitely lightened the load for the day. It renewed that bit of lost motivation I had gained from the death of my cell phone. I almost didn’t work out today because I had to run around town and get a new phone, but those quotes stood in my mind. And I’m still on track because of them. Whether it was fate laying her hand down on me or just a freak coincidence, it did something for me.

If that sheet of paper plays no larger role by existing in this universe other than its role today, it motivated me to do my lower body work out, it restored some of my faith in the unknown, and it made me a better person, if only for the few measly hours left in the day.