New Writings
2024 has seen a blossoming of my popular writing so far, both in terms of my productivity as well as in regard to print and online media featuring my work. With “popular” I mean writing which is directed at a general audience, the interested laypeople, as contrasted to my scholarly writing, directed at my scientific colleagues. It’s fun to write popular science, and meaningful: science should not be restricted to the ivory tower, levels 7 and up. There are three article which I have recently completed and which I’d like to place in quality media. The pieces span an interesting range. These are….
Don’t Fear the AI Reaper
General artificial intelligence is impossible with the computers we have now or anything remotely similar – not because I feel it should be, but because of physics.
This won’t stop the tech pundits from painting pictures of a future either dystopian nightmares or blissful faux-heavens on Earth. I think we’d be well advised to look at these predictions as statements of faith or marketing and not as rational technological extrapolations.
Cephalopod Civilization? Probably no. Still..
A hypothesis called “The Silurian hypothesis” wins the title of “most interesting hypothesis most likely to be false” for all of science. In brief, the hypothesis postulates that previously a species different from ours had achieved high intelligence and technological civilization on this planet. The Silurian hypothesis (named after “Silurian” aliens in the brainy British TV series “Doctor Who”) was initially proposed by two astronomers, Gavin A. Schmidt and Adam Frank, as a thought experiment, to see if it would even be feasible to detect the traces of such a hypothetical civilization which had existed many millions of years ago. Would there still be detectable changes in the sedimentation patterns if someone (not human) had built cities and military bases a hundred million years ago? Would ancient trash dumps be conserved somewhere, somehow? Would there be changes in the patterns of radioisotopes in the rocks as a result of an ancient nuclear war?
Underwater Photography is Different
There is a vibrant photographic community, which has little overlap with the high-brow photography art world, practicing underwater photography: Its practitioners come from the ranks of the scuba divers, field biologists and nature photographers. The community has developed their own ideas what constitutes a good photograph: it greatly values finding rare “critters” such as sea slugs or rare species of seahorses, octopi or scorpionfishes.
Interested in featuring these essays in your magazine? Get in touch! klaus@pacificklaus.com
