The Future: The Law of Accelerating Returns

Chad Huskins is the EVVY Award-winning author of sci-fi books such as The Sol Ascendancy.  Check out the first reviews for Zero Star

THE FUTURE
The future has always held an allure for us.  Raymond Kurzweil, a top modern researcher, has said that the entire function of the brain is to predict the future.  If, ten thousand years ago, you were walking alongside a river with spear in hand and saw a lion on the other side, walking in the same direction as you, you would have to imagine what would happen if you continued on your present course (you would intersect and be eaten, therefore, it's best to go in another direction).

So you see, predicting the future is essential to our survival.

We gravitate towards those who say they can take us to a better tomorrow, and campaign slogans such as "Forward Into Tomorrow" or simply "Forward" are obviously meant for us to look ahead.  The advent of science fiction, and its modern proliferation, clearly shows just how much we want to speculate.

In this article, we will be discussing the future, what it holds, and exactly how we can know what it holds.  We will start with the Law of Accelerating Returns, and how it allows us to know (not guess) what's next for us.

The Law of Accelerating Returns
The Law of Accelerating Returns is a term coined by futurist Raymond Kurzweil, a man so knowledgable and accurate with his predictions on technologies of the future that Bill Gates makes sure to read everything the man writes, and listens to every lecture he gives.  The Law of Accelerating Returns goes something like this: the rate at which technology is advancing is growing exponentially, never slows down, is not impacted at all by wars or economic recessions or depressions, and it is so predictable that it allows us to know precisely where we'll be technologically in the future, almost to the year.

Part of it is just doing the math.  It took the human race 400 years for the printing press to reach a mass audience.  It took us 50 years to get the telephone to a mass audience.  It took 7 years for the cell phone to reach a quarter of the population.  Social networks (blogs, wikis, Facebook-style sharing) took only three years.  Kurzweil shows clearly with his research that the rate at which technology grows in power is never--that's right, never--going to slow down, it's never going to plateau (it never has), not as long as human beings exist.  In fact, barring a world-ending asteroid smashing into the Earth, the rate at which technology grows in power and capability is only going to accelerate.

This is one of the reasons that the human genome was mapped so much faster than anyone (even those involved with the research) predicted it could be.  It took researchers seven years to get just 1% of the genome mapped, and they pretty much said, "See?  We told you so.  This is going to take about a hundred years or so to complete."

Meanwhile, Kurzweil was saying, "Nope.  If you're at one percent, then you're almost there."  This confused many, but his notion of Accelerating Returns quickly moved past theory and into the territory of Law when his point was made for him.  You see, if it took seven years to reach 1% of the genome, then the next seven years would yield about 2-3%.  Then, the next seven years would yield another 4-9%, so on and so forth.  (This is what he terms a "doubling".)

And viola, we now have the genome mapped!

This has to do with the compounding of technologies.  Advancements made in, say, information technology, allows for greater communication between biologists, pathologists, virologists, botanists, zoologists, and all the other "ists" of the world.  A single discovery in any of these fields almost immediately bleeds over into other fields of study in surprisingly beneficial ways.

Also, the discovery in one field of study can have multiple applications in various other fields of study: just as an example, advancements in metallurgy allowed for the Watt steam engine to revolutionize travel across waters, which revolutionized trade and travel by speeding it up, which brought goods and services more quickly to places that needed it, which stimulated the economy, which allowed for more funding of other projects, just one of which might be even further developments in metallurgy...

On and on and on it goes, never stopping, never slowing down.  A modern example of this would be how we use present-generation computers to create the next-gen computers, which are always more powerful, with superior computational power.  And, of course, we use those to build the next powerful thing.  (This, by the way, creates an interesting philosophical thought: If computers can essentially conceive of a more powerful computer, albeit with our help, then can we conceive a computer or organic lifeform that's better than us?  The answer appears to be an unqualified yes.  We'll get to that below.)

Back in the 80s, Kurzweil developed a chart that showed how quickly technology was spreading to a mass audience.  He was a little surprised to find that no matter what was going on in the world, no matter how good or bad things were, the level of technology on Earth and the rate at which it was spread across the planet doubled at the same predictable rate as the previous doubling.

Nothing affects it, nothing slows it down, nothing stands in its way.  The future is coming, and nobody can stop it.  This is evidenced by the fact that almost always, whenever a new innovation comes along, multiple people have it.  Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz both invented calculus at nearly the exact same time, though they had never met.  We've all heard about the rush to make social network sites on the Internet, Mark Zuckerberg just stuck his flag in it first.  It was the next logical course of action considering the knowledge and technology of the time.  Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan both invented the light bulb separately.  Lists such as these go on and on.

(Here's a short video showing quantum levitation)

How This Works, and What This Means
The Law of Accelerating returns means we can now predict, quite accurately, where we'll be from year to year, from decade to decade, from century to century.  Kurzweil's predictions have been so spot on in the past that today's leading inventors, businessmen, and researchers all follow his every article, his every prediction.

Kurzweil predicted, to the year, when a "world wide web" would reach the people.  He accurately predicted the mapping of the human genome.  He has said that when he first set out to gather this data, his expecation was that no one can predict the future, that it's far too random.  However, he found that if you measure the underlying properties of information technology, such as the power of computers per dollar, instructions-per-second per dollar, and other such factors, it produces a "remarkably smooth exponential trajectory" that one can follow.  Again, a trajectory that never slows down, never wavers in the good times or the bad.  Nothing has an impact on it.

The future...just...keeps...coming!

Information technology has become the main reason behind exponential growth.  After all, knowledge is power, and that power has to be communicated.  For instance, it's very common now for people to diagnose themselves from the Internet (and yes, while this can't always be trusted, it's still helpful), and many times doctors are finding that their patients now know much more about their own rare disease than the doctors themselves because of constant research on the Internet.

We know more, about ourselves and the universe around us, than we ever have before.  We're living longer, and so therefore we can contribute more to the world in one lifetime.  Advances in dental care, for instance, has greatly decreased infection that once came into the body through cavities and gum disease, which in turn has lengthened lifespans considerably.  These advancements came both in technology and understanding--this is important, because it's not just the tech that's advancing, but our understanding of our bodies, what we are, what we're made of, and what we're capable of (predicting the future) that has advanced us.

It has been said that the future of science is born first in science fiction.  This, at least, makes a strong argument for it.  Our need to predict creates fantasy, and we literally make our fantasies come to life now.

I, for one, am a self-published author, a thing not possible just five years ago.  It's an entirely new set of rules for my career path now.  And yours, too.  And it's only going to keeping changing, so you had better learn to keep up.

(An hour-long video where Dr. Michio Kaku discuesses the next 15 years or so)

Predictions
Kurzweil points out that there have already been nanomachines that go into the bloodstream and, in the near future, blood cell-sized devices will be created that can go into the bloodstream and perform therapeutic functions, and will be able to cure diabetes (one scientist actually cured Type 1 diabetes in mice and they're gearing up for human trials soon).  It lets insulin in, and blocks antibodies.  He also says that it could address limitations in your own white blood cells, and could attack cancer problems much sooner because your white blood cells don't attack cancer (they think it's you).  All of this, he says, is coming in the 2020s.

Kurzweil also demonstrates how we are less than 10 doublings away from producing 100% of the world's energy needs through solar energy alone.  There is 10,000 times more sunlight bathing the Earth every day than we would need to give the entire planet 100% of what it needs, and solar panel technologies are doubling every year (just like everything else).

Researchers now believe that by 2040, most cars on the road will be automated.  Just this year, GM's Cadillac division started on concept cars that are partially automated, and Audi and BMW are slated to do the same.  Google, meanwhile, is pushing for legislation in Nevada that would allow self-driving cars on the road, while at the same time manufacturing a group of autonomous Toyota Prius hybrids.

As for AI...well, we already saw the computer "Watson" defeat various intelligent champions on Jeopardy!, which Kurzweil points out is significant because Jeopardy! is a game show filled with word games, puns, and various plays on words.  This is one of the steps necessary to pass the Turing test (a test of a computer's ability to exhibit human-like intelligence), and it's a key one that Watson and other computers have already surpassed.

Right now, "Watson" is comprised of dozens of computer towers, so many that it fills a large storage area.  However, if you know your history, then you know that the first calculators used to fill a warehouse, and now calculators are just one of a thousand apps on your cell phone.


Questions Raised
All of this, of course, raises boatloads of ethical and philosophical questions, not the least of which is what will our role be in society once technology takes on so many roles once filled by humans.  Will there be job loss?  Some futurists say that there will actually be plenty of jobs, only we can't imagine or describe them now, just as you couldn't describe the job of a computer engineer to a factory worker in the 1950s.

Regardless, I'm reminded of a song by Gorillaz.  "The future...is comin' on, is comin' on, is comin' on, is comin' on..."

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Interview with Hugh Howey, by Chad Huskins

Chad Huskins is the EVVY Award-winning author of the new epic military sci-fi novel Zero Star, available now on Amazon.

If you've spent enough time in the world of self-publishing, it's impossible to miss the story of Hugh Howey.  His Wool series hasn't just skyrocketed him to the top of the game, it's also kind of changed the game.

He is undoubtedly the "Cinderella story" of the self-publishing world.  Here's a fellow that went the non-traditional route.  Rather than listen to the endless sea of rejection letters that await 99% of us, Hugh Howey opted for self-publishing on the Amazon Kindle program, and then watched as the first in his series took off.  Seeing its popularity, he quickly scrambled to write more in the series, and eventually caught the attention of Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian, who optioned the Wool series for film.

Howey has been understandably busy these days, between his duties as family man and writer, but I recently had a chance to pin him down and ask him a few questions, author to author.

HUSKINS:  Hi, Hugh.  Thanks for joining us here at Realm of Ideas.  First, just let me say that I’ve only just started to read your Wool series, and it is fantastic.  I picked up on it in an article for CNN.  It seems like you’ve had a heck of a year.  Can you tell us a little about what it felt like when it first started changing, what was going on in your and your wife’s head when this success started coming around so suddenly?

HOWEY:  It started in October of 2011. Sales began picking up and reviews started trickling in. At every stage of this wild ride, my wife and I have looked at each other in disbelief. Just when you think things have gotten as nutty as they possibly can, something bigger and crazier happens. So, in one sense, it’s seemed sudden, but really it’s been a very long upward journey full of many neat surprises.

HUSKINS:  Wool is a post-apocalyptic series taking place in the subterranean Silos.  Are you attracted to the post-apocalyptic genre, the themes in The Road and The Walking Dead, or did you have a specific story you were trying to tell and felt that only a post-apocalyptic setting could suffice?

HUGH:  The latter. I had a story I wanted to tell, and it only made sense in a wasteland setting. This isn’t the type of story I read or normally write. It’s just the world that the first short story needed to take place in.

HUSKINS:  Describe your writing process.  Myself, I prefer silence.  Do you listen to music, or write in silence?  Do you have a schedule you try to maintain?

HOWEY:  I prefer silence, also. I write best in the morning, so I get up and start immediately and try to go straight to lunch. I usually break around 10:00 in the morning to check email and post on Facebook and Twitter. My goal is to get a good 4-6 hours of writing or revising in each day. It’s just me and a laptop and my dog.

HUSKINS:  You’re pretty much the “Cinderella story” of the self-publishing world.  Can you describe how this happened?  That is, did you merely put the book up on Amazon Kindle and “wait and see,” and then just get lucky, or were you constantly promoting it on Twitter and Facebook, marketing it and so forth?

HOWEY:  I didn’t promote Wool until after it was already taking off on its own. The best thing you can do to give yourself a shot at success is to keep writing and publishing. The sort of sales you get from tireless marketing are the kind that require more marketing to maintain. In order to have a blockbuster, you need readers telling each other about the work, not you telling enough people that you get a sale or two. I know a lot of writers will disagree with me on this, but I wouldn’t spend a lot of time on marketing until you have five or six novels or a few dozen short stories under your belt. Just write. And don’t expect to make it big, that can be dangerous. Write because you love to, because you have to, not because you want to get rich.

HUSKINS:  When you were first starting with the ideas for Wool and other stories, did you find that your wife, friends and family were supportive of you?  Did anyone think you were crazy for trying your hand at writing and publishing?

HOWEY:  Nobody thought I was crazy. Everyone I encountered had mad respect for me. Writing is a very common aspiration. Very few people stick with it to completion, and so it mostly draws awe from others. It’s similar to the admiration I have for those who stick with a musical instrument or a foreign language until they become proficient. I’ve had nothing but support and encouragement from friends and family. In fact, I started writing primarily to hand my stories to people I knew!

HUSKINS:  I’ve read that you’ve drawn inspiration from some of the “awesome women” in your life.  Besides your wife, what other great women have inspired you?

HOWEY:  My sister and my mother. Both are brilliant women with enormous hearts and mountains of courage. I aspire to be more like them in many ways.

HUSKINS:  You were a yacht captain for a while, and traveled the globe.  Miss it?  Still do it?

HOWEY:  I don’t miss running other people’s yachts. It’s a lot of work and it takes you away from family. My dream now is to get back on a sailboat of my own and take it around the world. I think within a decade that I’ll be on my way.  (NOTE:  Since we had this discussion, Hugh has done just that.)

HUSKINS:  What else do you do with your time besides writing and family time?  Have any hobbies that keep you occupied?

HOWEY:  I love to take pictures, especially of people. My dog keeps me busy with long walks and fetching sticks (that would be me fetching the sticks, mostly). My wife and I really enjoy our time together reading or watching a film. We’re very boring people.

HUSKINS:  What are you reading now?

HOWEY:  The latest Jon Ronson book. This man is a genius. He’s hilarious, and I love the way he strings words together. I highly recommend all of his books.

HUSKINS:  Lots of writers and artists have that “watershed moment” when they decided they wanted to write and create.  For me, it was reading Sphere by Michael Crichton when I was like 15.  It kind of planted the seed, which grew into a burning desire.  Was there a book that did that for you?

HOWEY:  Ender’s Game. I was 12, and it was when I knew I wanted to be a writer. The fact that Card was a fellow North Carolinian made that dream seem attainable.

HUSKINS:  Wool has been optioned for film by Ridley Scott, the man behind the original Alien, Gladiator, Blade Runner and numerous other epics.  Tell us how that came about, and what was it like?  Did you get a phone call from an agent, e-mail?

HOWEY:  My agent sent Wool around Hollywood. One of the people who got a copy and loved it was Steve Zaillian, one of the top screenplay writers in the business. He loved it enough to send it along to Ridley, who also fell in love with the story. This duo bought the option in conjunction with 20^th Century Fox. They are set to produce, though I doubt either of them will write or helm the work. They have a lot in the pipeline.

I did receive an email from Ridley. He was busy with the release of Prometheus at the time, but was extremely complimentary of the book. It’s amazing that someone of his stature sat down and read something I wrote from cover to cover. That’s humbling.

HUSKINS:  Did you or your family ever have a big celebratory moment for all of these achievements?

HOWEY:  We’ve had a lot of little celebratory moments. Mostly meals out. My way of celebrating is to go get pizza and maybe splurge for a beer. Or go eat somewhere with a view of the water.

HUSKINS:  Thanks for chatting, Hugh.  But before you go, we have to ask you for any piece of advice you can give to writers out there, or artists of any kind for that matter.

HOWEY:  If you love creating, then do it. Art should be an outlet for everything except our desire to get rich. You’ll go mad with that as your motivation. If you view it as a hobby, but one you take seriously enough to generate the highest quality output possible, then the sky is the limit. But that’s just me. There are a million other ways to handle being an artist, and I’m sure most of those alternatives are superior to my way.

(To find out more about Hugh Howey, visit his website www.hughhowey.com.  To find his fabulous Wool series, go here: http://www.amazon.com/Wool-Omnibus-Edition-ebook/dp/B0071XO8RA/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1354623922&sr=1-2&keywords=wool.

Find me on Facebook, and on Twitter @ChadRyanHuskins

"Lady of Drith" now on Amazon!

Hey guys, thanks to those of you who supported the Kickstarter.  Lady of Drith is now up on Amazon.  I hope you guys enjoy!

BUILDING "DRITH"

For those of you who don't know, Lady of Drith has been a project in development for a little while now, and with the manuscript completed and the artists finishing their touches on the world, we're approaching the home stretch.  If you want to see our synopsis, click here.  If you want to see more of our artwork, click here.  Or else just enjoy the art from our artists below.

If you like what you see, please follow this blog for more, and check out my science fiction work The Sol Ascendancy.  Or check out my horror series, to which I recently sold the film rights, Psycho Save Us.

Our Lady of Drith walking through the streets. (Art by Jack Baker)

A statue of Loraci, the goddess of justice, who peers down at all mortals and judges them cruelly. (Art by Axel Torvenius)

Sometimes, the city of Drith is hit by terrible magic storms, called fellstorms, thought to be left as a curse on the city by some long-dead and forgotten sorcerer.  (Art by Axel Torvenius)

The above image is from artist Lucas Durham, who has worked with Fantasy Flight Games and other fantasy-driven ventures.  While the portrait below is from portrait artist Nathan Seay.  Nathan's piece will be included in the book itself, as the main character, Drea, is a lady who is expected to train in the feminine arts, which includes drawing and art.  Of course, she also dabbles in one or two of the masculine arts...

This portrait is of a certain senator, who will come to influence Drea's life in ways she never expected.

Rain Guards - the protectors of the Imperator, the Senate, and the city walls.  Here we see a Prefect.

The Problems with Publishing Today (Part 1: Competition)

A writer's path is fraught with a smattering of obstacles, ranging from writer's block to the endless stream of people hammering away at their confidence by continually asking, "Why do you want to be a writer?  Why are you putting yourself through this?  Why not do something else that makes more money?"  While frustrating, none of these problems compare to those presented by the Beast that is the publishing world.

If you're a writer, I mean a real writer with your heels dug in and your heart set on it, then you will find a way to get through the writer's block and the people whittling away at your confidence.  That just comes with the territory.  What you're not ready for, what none of your writer's training has prepared you for, are the closed doors and the silence you are going to receive from the publishers and literary agents of the world.  Nobody tells you about that.

If you've finished a novel, or a series of them, it can be astonishing how many people you know will say to you, "Wow!  You've finished an entire manuscript?!  Why haven't you sold it yet?"  The answer they privately think to themselves is, He must not be very good.  At least, this is what you suspect.  And here's the real horror...Maybe they're right.  How would you know that you suck?  (We'll get to this topic in a later blog.)

Many almost certainly assume that because of the recent technology explosion on Earth, it can't be that hard to submit and be discovered.  Can it?

You want to tell people that there's something you have to say, that it's worth saying, but that the path to becoming published has become only more difficult because of technology, not less.  Technology has made it so that everyone--and I mean everyone--thinks their work should be read.  They've ran it through a spell check once or twice, maybe a grammar check, and, since Microsoft Office said it all checks out, it must be good to go, right?

With the advent of things such as Microsoft Office, competition between writers became fierce.  And, unfortunately, spell check--that wonderful, beautiful tool--just made things so much more difficult for us.  For, you see, there are the three spellings of "there", "their", and "they're", and the computer doesn't always know which one you mean, so...

Yeah, bad (or, shall we say, incomplete?) writers think they're good simply because their computer can find no error.

Here's something interesting to think about.  Once, when people wrote on typewriters, it was a monumental achievement just to finish a full manuscript--all that messy business with white-out made it a nightmare for editing.  If one had the patience, one was only in the running with a scant few others who had the same rare patience to finish a work and edit it.

Now, since word processors make things so much easier and faster, publishers and literary agents must wade through mounds upon mounds of would-be writers, and your piece is just another layer to that mound.

This is just one of the obstacles that hamper your search for a publisher willing to listen: competition with others.  The planet is now 7 billion strong.  Everyone wants a job doing something they love.  Computers are everywhere, even in your hand as you walk about, and they all have a spell check and grammar check that remove your responsibility to KNOW the difference between "there", "their", and "they're".

Seven billion people.  Everyone wants their dream job.  Computers making it easier to check spelling and grammar but not quality.

You do the math.

(to be continued in Part 2: Chasing Trends)

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Visit my website:  www.forestofideas.com