The Transhuman Comedy

Sullydog, the reviews editor at Escape Pod, tells me my review of Echelon, by Josh Conviser, should be up on Sunday. Unless he's April Fooling me, download it then.

Labels: books, Sf

First, arherring had a comment on the previous post that suggested a superpower is an entity that can do whatever it wants, wherever it wants, whenever it wants. By that definition, there has never been a superpower. Even Rome at its height was constrained by its number of men under arms, its internal politics, and "soft power" considerations, such as the need for favorable omens to persuade it it was carrying out the will of its gods, and the memory of its annihilated legions and lost eagles at Carrhae and Teutoburger Wald. Much as behavioral economics is overturning the Homo economicus of a Randian's dreams, behavioral political science will overturn the national interest of a Kissingerian's. See Robert Axelrod's The Complexity of Cooperation, chapter 4.

Second, I wanted to say a few words about failed superpowers, meaning powers that sought to drive the interpolity agenda in the medium term, but fell short. The two leading examples are France from Louis XIV to Napoleon I, and Germany from 1890 to 1945. Both sought to drive the agenda of continental Europe by winning wars and planting puppets on foreign thrones, but both were opposed in the attempt to reach that status by Britain. The Spanish Armada made clear the only possible threat to Britain was from a power that commanded the continent to such an extent that it could afford to build a massive fleet. Hence, Britain opposed any attempt to command the continent, by diplomacy, by subsidizing allies, and, less frequently, by landing its own ground forces. (Yet even as clear-eyed a power as Britain fell into traps of memory and habit--as late as 90 years after Waterloo, a faction in Whitehall sought an alliance with Germany against France).

A power need not be a superpower to defeat another power's attempt to reach that status: Britain wasn't a superpower from 1588 to 1815, yet foiled France's attempts. Also, a power need not defeat all other powers, even other superpowers, in war to achieve that status: Britain was on the winning side of both world wars, but doing so spent its will and gave the USA and USSR a vacuum to fill. Yet a power most often becomes a superpower by defeating its rivals in war.

Concerning the future, many Americans worry about a US-China war, and for good reason, see above; but India is potentially as likely a source of global disorder and challenge to American hegemony. Will it be or not? More later.

Labels: Eight Futures

Gus tagged me with this meme for my violation of the one-week rule. Weird habits? Me?

1. When I'm done with the shower, after I turn the valve back to the spigot from the showerhead, I lift my foot into the flow of water draining from the spigot. My right foot to start, but I usually dip my left foot in, then go back to my right.
2. Immediately after I step out of the shower, I open the bathroom door and let our puppy run in and lick my lower legs. He doesn't get my legs dry, but that isn't the point.
3. My smartphone has RealPlayer and an adapter to play through the cassette deck on my car stereo, so yes, I frequently listen to Iron Maiden while driving to and from work. (Anyone know if A Matter of Life and Death is as good as the hype?)
4. Liz and I have a partial season ticket package for the local IHL team, the Houston Aeros, and two things annoy the hell out of me during Aeros power plays. The first is that the Aeros sold naming rights to their power plays to a local company, and the PA announcer is contractually obligated, after announcing the opposing team's penalty, to say, "...and the Aeros are on a D&C Storm Solutions power play!" The second thing that annoys me is when the Aeros have gained the attacking zone and are passing the puck to set up a good shot: there's always someone within my earshot who shouts "Shoot!" Let 'em pass the puck, fool; they'll get a shot off soon enough.
5. I've got nothing against Mormons. Yes, I think LDS theology is laughable, and its founding is a mix of charlatanism and delusion; but an objective observer would say the same things about mainstream Christianity, or any other religion validated by longevity and market share. I've had Mormon coworkers, fellow students, acquaintances, and friends. But driving around Houston, every month or two I'll see a pair of clean cut 20-year-old white males, dressed in white Oxford shirts and black trousers, pedalling their bicycles, and in response I'll cry out (with my windows rolled up so they don't hear me) "Los Mormones!"
   

I have to pass this meme to someone? Sorry, Gus, I'll save "pass the trash" for our next poker game.

Labels: five weird habits

Curtis asked for the definition of "superpower" I'll be using in this series. Here it is:

A superpower is an organization that drives interpolity relations in the medium term (decades) and leaves a legacy across polities in the long term (decades to centuries).

I use "organization" to leave open the possibility of non-state actors being superpowers. Another aspect of "organization" is that it excludes the actions of lone geniuses, e.g. Alexander of Macedon or Shaka Zulu, from consideration as superpowers. I'll talk more about future organizations later.

"Polities" instead of "nations" or "states" reflects my reading of Martin Van Creveld: the state as we know it is an invention of European bureaucracies in 1500-1945.

"Drives" implies an active, chosen component. Hence the US, the only entity capable of being a superpower from 1918-1945, was not one because it had no such desire, despite Wilson's international progressivism.

Why "legacy"? It is the residue of that drive; it reflects a psychological impact hardened into memory and culture.

Examples of superpowers?

Rome: Rome drove affairs in the Mediterranean from Scipio's victory at Zama (202 BC, crippling Carthage for good) for about six centuries in the west. Construing Byzantium as Roman, Rome remained a superpower in the eastern Mediterranean until at least the rise of the Caliphate (or Manzikert, the Fourth Crusade, the Turkish conquest of Asia Minor). Rome's legacy? Latin still influences the English language, e.g., viz., etc., sic and its descendants are spoken by hundreds of millions of people with little, if any, ancient Italian descent. Thanks to the Romans, Christianity is a world religion; ten percent of Egyptians still adhere to it after fourteen centuries of Muslim domination. Last point: a European political leader claimed the title "Roman Emperor" until 1806; Franz II abolished the title, not because it had no meaning, but because it had too much meaning to let it fall into Napoleon's hands.

Other examples:

· The Muslim caliphate.

· Classical China--compare the area settled by the Han ethnicity in 200 BC with the area currently ruled by the PRC.

· Britain in the 19th century: it unilaterally banned the trans-Atlantic slave trade and conquered a quarter of the world. No European great powers fought a war without Britain's express or implied permission from 1815-1914, except of course for Bismarck's wars for German unification. Britain's legacy lives on in the prevalence of the common law, the pervasiveness of colonialism in 1880-1960, and the corrupt and inefficient socialist economies across the Third World born when future Third World dictators studied under Keynes at the London School of Economics.

· The USA is obviously a superpower, and even were it to vanish today, the WTO, GATT, IMF, World Bank, and all its other Bretton Woods offspring would survive.

· The USSR? Yes, it too was a superpower, and its legacy is tangible: UN obstructionism and the AK-47, the tool of choice of the DIY guerrillero.

What will "superpower" mean in the future? Accepting arguendo Curtis's view that 5GW is inevitable--a view consonant with both my reading of Van Creveld and my sfnal thoughts on molecular manufacturing, cheap simple robotics, and distributed emergent computing--the time will come when no state has the power to police its territory for criminals and rebels. When no state can prevent pirate and terrorist predations. When no state can conquer territory save by nuclear genocide. Yet within these constraints, some states could be superpowers and drive the international agenda, just as ancient rulers could, in one sense, dominate a large chunk of the world while, in an another, being utterly ignorant of the assets and attitudes of their subjects and the capabilities and intentions of their neighbors. For this reason, the term "superpower" has legs left.

Alternatively, could a non-state actor be a superpower? Picture a James Bond supervillian who really can build a moonbase with a giant "laser" capable of destroying a city; or more plausibly, an organized crime gang using molecular manufacturing/robotics/computing to dominate affairs in Third World slums or the communes of an ethnic diaspora. Whether such an organization can drive international affairs for decades is another question, but it's not automatically ridiculous to ask. I'll leave the question of whether such an organization would leave any legacy other than "you too can become Keyser Soze/Dr. Evil" to the reader.

Labels: Eight Futures

The doctor cleared me for soft chewing yesterday morning. Finally, after six weeks of smoothies, stepping up to mashed potatoes and grits at the end, I'm allowed to eat almost like a grownup.

I would have posted yesterday, but as luck would have it, my firm catered in an anniversary lunch and I gorged myself on lasagna, ravioli, chicken alfredo penne, and tiramisu. The only thing slightly hard on my jaws was the chicken, which came in julienned strips of breast. But the pain was worth it.

Labels: jaw surgery