(source)

Rare earth elements (RRE for short), although being quite common, are difficult to find in profitable concentrations and are known to be used in electronics: everything from mobiles phones to hybrid cars, thanks to their critical role in permanent magnets and catalytic conversion. However, they have a lot more industrial uses, from eyeglasses to superconductors.

Indeed,

Permanent magnet technology has been revolutionized by alloys containing Nd, Sm, Gd, Dy, or Pr. Small, lightweight, high-strength REE magnets have allowed miniaturization of numerous electrical and electronic components used in appliances, audio and video equipment, computers, automobiles, communications systems, and military gear. Many recent technological innovations already taken for granted (for example, miniaturized multi-gigabyte portable disk drives and DVD drives) would not be possible without REE magnets.

Environmental applications of REE have increased markedly over the past three decades. This trend will undoubtedly continue, given growing concerns about global warming and energy efficiency. Several REE are essential constituents of both petroleum fluid cracking catalysts and automotive pollution-control catalytic converters. Use of REE magnets reduces the weight of automobiles. Widespread adoption of new energy-efficient fluorescent lamps (using Y, La, Ce, Eu, Gd, and Tb) for institutional lighting could potentially achieve reductions in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to removing one-third of the automobiles currently on the road. Large-scale application of magnetic-refrigeration technology (described below) also could significantly reduce energy consumption and CO₂ emissions. (Source)

RREs are notoriously difficult and dirty (as in: toxic chemicals used in refinement) to mine, which is why demanding regulation has more or less determined the fate of commercial exploration of the minerals in the USA and a corresponding dependence on China’s exports for the entire world (now at 95% of the global supply).

The geopolitics of these coveted minerals have recently been complicated by China’s cap on RRE exports for 2011. In September the supply was cut off and raised alarms on the Western hemisphere, with somewhat panicked appeals to trade agreements regarding the strategic resource.

The limitation is already having effects on Japan after a ban on oxide exports (one of the forms of RREs) in a recent trade agreement.

The global cap, even in its more recent and tame version, roughly translates into a 30% export cut, freeing those materials to fuel further growth of the domestic production of high-tech, high-demand finished products. China is currently the top producer of RREs and poised to become world leader in the corresponding technologies, thanks to two full decades of technology and knowledge transfer from the West.

In a nutshell, these prized commodities are one of the big issues to watch in technology. Their use in critical technologies – present and future – determines not only their price, but also the development of new products. Therefore, their availability is of the utmost importance, even as the drive for cleaner technologies places steadily increasing pressure on the industry (regulation- and policy-wise) and on prospecting for potential new sources of raw materials.

The double standard of the country’s policy is well known: forbidding any external interference in its information policies and covertly acquiring valuable information through non-traditional channels and using every weapon on the cyber-arsenal to do it. This means that the country blocks free information, but actively seeks to get their hands on protected and valuable data, which might cause several international incidents if it came from anyone else. The use of such technologies to acquire trade and personal information is not new nor indeed limited to China, but the gloves are off in what may be considered the cyber-incident of the year.

On the other hand, if Google actually pulls the plug on Google.cn – that is, if this announcement means business – it signals the end of a long cooperation between the search engine and Internet censorship authorities in China.

The film’s success, of course, has pushed into the background the problem that the moviegoer has to accept a rather unusual amount of weird premises to be able to enjoy this film (one of them being the unexplained – not even mentioned, in fact – remote controlling of a biological body). OK, that is not uncommon. But this being perceived as having some sort of ecological message, coming out in the same month as the Copenhagen Summit, Avatar can be interpreted as some sort of catharsis for our current guilt about the whole state of affairs back here on Earth. Indeed, I felt like the whole experience was a deep escape from our bodies and its needs – the need for a technological exoskeleton that would first allow us to survive and then allow us to rule over and ruin our environment – into a more perfect system in which the connections between all forces were immediately visible and accessible. This idea – that we just cannot seem to be in tune with our surroundings – holds true in several instances in a comparison between human and Na’vi.

While human connections are technologically mediated and are thus highly abstract (emotionally detached remote controllers of deforesting machines do not really need to look around and see the destruction, their job is to keep looking and pushing forward, for example), Pandora is visibly full of deep connections, with which it is possible for all living beings (and not just the humanoids) to exchange information directly and without symbolic mediation with the habitat. This means that anything that happens in Pandora affects in some way all its inhabitants. It is, in short, very simple to know when the moon is at the verge of disaster, whereas on Earth we cannot even agree to curb emissions.

The neural network formed by flora and fauna allows information to flow between all living beings in a way that immediately proves a common origin and a common fate. That link however, is not limited to command and control (it’s not all about hand-eye coordination), but also comprises a deep emotional and religious (in a pantheistic, semi-Spinozistic sense) bond. In other words, the physical link of the plugging of the Na’vi ponytails to the trees and animals is not akin to an USB cable, but something like a temporary mutualism which embodies the interconnection of all living things in Pandora (which seem to share an interface protocol, even though the film does not explore its potential) reinforcing a temporary link with a given creature or segment of the neural network. It becomes evident in the relation the Na’vi have with their land- and air-mounts that this bond allows for physical and representational feedback. On the other hand, humans look around and, for the most part, are detached, only able to see trees, wild beasts and commercial opportunities. Same as on Earth. So human representation of the environment is shallow («Just another hell-hole») and very abstract, centred in the commercial goal of the whole enterprise (unobtanium), in the way of which stand the native humanoids, plants and animals. Even the whole Avatar program is born from the will to displace the Na’vi and access ore deposits.

One might ask why the natives have remained at such a primitive technological state when they have a planetary-scale computer at their disposal. The truth, however, is that their philosophy and religion would not allow them to instrumentalize their surroundings at such a scale. Besides, being able to interpret and commune at such a unmediated level with the flora and fauna of their home world – which also provided a conduit to stored ancient memories and to one another – they would have no pressure to look to any elements as particularly hostile.

The correct interpretation of such a mindset is plainly hard to fathom from within our prevalent attitude towards technology – that is also the reason for me to think that such a film, proposing a new sort of utopia based on ideal communion with nature underlines our own inability to achieve any sort of conclusion about the environment while, at the same time, severing all bonds with Nature has probably become one of our greatest fears. One of the reasons it is so hard for world policy leaders to agree on climate and environmental protection measures is that the several layers of abstractions and representations we use to know the world are fallible. The possibility of a mistake is real, whereas a perfect communication would make it simple to learn the answer for our environmental woes. We will have no such luck, which is why any agreement will not only be imperfect and hard, it will also be very partial and would demand us to keep readdressing it for generations to come – in the good systemic tradition of which we are now so distant.

It seems like one more step in the trend of live-capturing experience I wrote about in a previous post.

The crafts themselves do not seem to have been damaged and the intruders did not control them, but it nevertheless seems to be a hit to the UAV program, which relied on third party technologies – less-than seamlessly integrated. A flaw which, it seems, had been detected but not corrected on the flimsy grounds that the opposition was not sophisticated enough to exploit it. According to the WSJ:

Members of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff discussed the potential security shortfall of drone feeds in 2004 and 2005, according to two officers with direct knowledge of the deliberations. Officers at the time weren’t concerned about adversaries intercepting the signals in Iraq or Afghanistan because drones weren’t yet common there and militants weren’t thought to be technically sophisticated.

The result of this underestimation was the hacking of sophisticated, millions of dollars’ worth UAVs through the use of US$26 software available on the Internet (SkyGrabber). According to the sellers (warning: mangled English),

As we have already been identified, responses to the requests come from the satellite. The satellite transmits data all users in one stream. The data are accepted by all who are in the satellite coverage area. In fact, you can set up your satellite dish on this satellite and we’ll receive the data, which is produced by other users. The program intercepts data of other users, assemble in files and saves files in your hard drive.

It is a very interesting lesson but I’m not convinced the story is being well told. It would mean that the video feeds of the drones are basic Internet video feeds, which makes no sense unless you really want to be hacked into. Even if the builders were interested in doing things on the cheap by using open-source encoding for the video, no one in the right mind would say they are secure enough to be installed in military-grade crafts. In this post, Robert Graham explains it much better.

Despite all this noise, the vulnerability of video feeds would be easily corrected with encryption – indeed, the Pentagon has said it has already been done – , even though it might mean that the use of drones and the crafts’ security has to be rethought. Still, as with all technological solutions, it is quite dangerous to underestimate the abilities of the counterpart, especially when cyberwarfare is the word of the day. You never know where the actual ideas are coming from, because the practice is inherently decentralised, even if the control is not.

Experiences

The idea of a community based on experiences, instead of information or ideas, is very appealing, particularly in proximity contexts. Sharing ideas and web links is one thing, but taking that to the next level would be the equivalent of reality TV for the social web. In a way, Twitter allows this, but within the small brackets of its 140 characters it is not possible to go very far. Google Wave, on the other hand, might make it possible to stream lives as they take place, albeit maybe not in its present beta form. Anything is possible with enough bandwidth and speedy smartphone skills. Everyone is an eye-witness, even if they do not have much to talk about.

The consequences of the actual sharing of what they saw in the blackout are quite diverse. As are the motives for the sharing: exhibitionism? curiosity? hope? loneliness (i.e. the urge to connect to a better future)? In Flash Forward, everyone has different reasons to log onto Mosaic but they are all related to blackout. It became the spiritual experience for which lots of people seem to yearn nowadays.

Big Brother | Panopticon

Mosaic is anything but grass-roots. It can hardly be described as a grassroots Internet start-up venture. Mosaic is set up by law-enforcement specifically to start gathering information that might help in the investigation. That does not mean it isn’t a killer app, but in the context of a planet-wide phenomenon, it clearly addresses what is in everyone’s mind. Of course, it is clear that the public does not know who is behind Mosaic. Nevertheless, it is not that hard to believe something like that might happen. Just imagine a disaster in which everyone had a website to exchange experiences and perceptions – generalized or universal eye-witnessing.

The process does not merit the name of surveillance – which demands an interception of an independent flow of information instead of taking the initiative to create the flow of information. It is more of a creative process of participatory open source intelligence.

In Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance, published in First Monday, Anders Albrechtslund explains:

(…) the role of sharing should not be underestimated, as the personal information people share – profiles, activities, beliefs, whereabouts, status, preferences, etc. – represent a level of communication that neither has to be told, nor has to be asked for. It is just “out there”, untold and unasked, but something that is part of the socializing in mediated publics.

In the Mosaic Collective, the information is not merely “out there”, available for the social ransacking of “friends” and contacts (and the occasional social scientist). Its context is actively created and, therefore, is a hybrid requiring both participation, sharing and the willingness to establish connections based on a vision of the future. Maybe because of that, at least initially, Mosaic is not presented as a law-enforcement tool.

Translations

I do not really think Flash Forward is a great television achievement. It is, however, though-provoking, which usually means it provides something for me to mull during idle or insomnia hours.

Mosaic is a direct link between minds. It does not address real experiences, but the future. It posits the endless fitting of pieces of futures into a giant scroll which constitutes the history of the brief blackout moments. As a history of the future, it links presences and phantoms of a time that should be unknown, but also evokes the darkness – or blankness – of the absence. I. e., it creates in the present a community of seemingly certain existence in a moment some months after the fact. On the other hand, Mosaic presents those who did not see their future with the anguish of the excluded – simultaneously deprived of a future and of the experience of participating in the collective sharing of futures.

Like an irrevocable contract, the penalties of forsaking it are terrible. A blood pact with the future can only be broken through death. The pattern of Mosaic is perfect in that regard because, as a mnemotechnic of the future, creates a margin of exclusion for those who wish for a free future – that is, for the characters that wish for a peaceful status quo existence. It is not by accident that the flash-forward makes some at least one of the characters commit suicide, while another is stopped in the exact moment he tries to blow his brains out. For those who have conflicts with their future, the sudden registry of a forbidden and feared reality projects them to the darkest places of the taboo of their present struggles. That is, their present and their memory is all they wanted. Much like anyone who has ever been wrongly caught in the jaws of law – which brings us back to the point: as most social network services pursue commercial viability by selling clients’ data, trying to keep both groups interested by juggling privacy and exposure, so does Mosaic show a radically different face of what it was made for. It is not that users have internalized or merely shrugged off the panopticon – maybe they just need the connections, the links in the present and with the past, in order to face some sort of future.

As a recent bit of news seems to prove, there is a risk in using these media without giving them too much thought. Is it not that the unconscious often plays tricks on us? Skype, Facebook, LinkedIn, IMs, email and Twitter are very different from one another and those differences make them unsuitable to support the same content. The failure to grasp these glaring differences can and will get people in trouble, and very possibly at odds with institutions with which they are connected. While it is perfectly safe to share a happy picture with friends via IM while you are on sick leave  – or send them to a co-worker, even to your boss if he happens to be a friend -, it is certainly risky to update a public profile without factoring in who might be watching and waiting to make some sort of judgement. Even if the technology has no qualms with one’s private life (even though some services have rather protective rules), one might risk running into less comfortable moral and ethical areas without even noticing.  And this begins to look like a political problem.

Of course, this answer is not complete by any stretch of imagination. It deserved some praise at the time. This piece by Cory Doctorow, entitled Radical Presentism, made me remember that class and that particular answer. Not being a huge reader of SF, I have been exploring it with greater pleasure in the last years as a flanking route to the study of technology in society, which has led me to agree with Doctorow’s conclusion:

Science fiction is a literature that uses the device of futurism to show up the present— a time that is difficult enough to get a handle on. As the pace of technological change accelerates, the job of the science fiction writer becomes not harder, but easier— and more necessary. After all, the more confused we are by our contemporary technology, the more opportunities there are to tell stories that lessen that confusion.

It is apparent that some huge questions about the role of technology have been raised by good SF or good SF authors, which may or may not be scientists themselves. Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, for example, still remain the starting (or at least a talking) point for a lot of discussions on ethics and robotics (example). This stretching of the present represents a way to deal with its tensions, pulling them apart to reveal not only its extreme consequences, but also the paths we are treading now. Like a rubber band, pulling reality by its extremities widens our field of vision into it, which usually makes for a richer questioning of our own choices. That may or may not “lessen our confusion”; I would say it takes us closer to the actual the complexity of a world with which we are less and less able to keep pace in real time.