don't explain

Here's something to put it all in perspective. Oh my.

[via Sunil Garg, via kottke]

Carbon nanotechnology is extremely promising. It will provide cooler, smaller circuitry to relieve the rapidly aging silicon technologies, it has given us the Memristor, it will allow us to efficiently target and destroy cancer, build a space elevator, develop fuel cells, and a veritable plethora of other applications. And, with new methods of mass producing them being developed constantly, the future looks bright.

The past week, however, has not been kind to the development of carbon-based nano-technology. First, we found out that longer carbon nanotubes are rather unfortunately similar to asbestos in a disconcerting number of ways, particularly in how the long fibrous tubes behave. There is a chance, therefore, that they may well cause cancer in the same way that asbestos does: long fibers are inhaled, whereupon cells in the lungs, unable to deal with such long, thin fibers, freeze, inflame, and eventually scar and develop into cancer. There is no complete study on the issue yet, but the resemblances are alarming.

As well, it seems that Buckminsterfullerene, better known as the Buckyball, is capable of crossing over lipid cell membranes with almost no effort - this also means that they could, according to the laboratory that ran the computer simulation, cross the all-important Blood-brain barrier, which keeps our brain free of invasions and toxic elements. It remains to be seen what the consequences of buckyball invasion into cells are.

This turn of events is sobering and unfortunate, but that attention is being paid to these types of issues is certainly reassuring.

The point was brought up to me by a good friend a short while ago: once we learn all there is to know about the universe, what will be our purpose in life? What will be the point of existence?

While I disagree with his topical point since part of the essence of humanity is creativity, which knows no bounds, the question does bring to light another essence of our being: our progress as a society is driven largely by knowledge. Ever since we became a collective society, we have constantly been pushed, for various reasons, to seek out new knowledge. The core of these reasons is, of course, to make our own lives easier.

However, our research is not conducted by all of humanity at once, but rather by small communities of people. This presents a problem because while personal knowledge will benefit that person, no benefit will come from research and scholarship until it is made part of society as a whole – until it is made public. Thus, a key component to scholarship and academics is in fact the impartation of the new knowledge to society as a whole.

A different set of problems is associated with this new revelatory goal. The primary method of disseminating knowledge to the public in our modern society is that of the media. The media is remarkably effective at this task, but it is also unfortunately a commercial outfit keen first and foremost on preserving and increasing profit margins – hence, rather than hearing about topics that the public needs to discuss, or freshly discovered gaps in our knowledge, we learn all about what the latest celebrity gossip is: the kind of material that dumbs the public and brings in money. One incredibly public scholarship issue that has been victimized by the media is the incredibly important topic of global warming. Even a Google search on the topic reveals people on both sides of the issue screaming of media injustice.

This has interesting implications on the research I am attempting to do, given that the focus of my research is on the media. This scenario does, however, bring to mind another situation I have previously written about: Mike Wesch's Web 2.0 video. The video is actually an excellent example of exactly the sort of public scholarship we need to hear about the [new] media, as it bypasses the normal and conventional means of information dissemination and public discourse, instead leveraging the very mechanisms it means to critique. This is, then, perhaps a model to follow in the months to come.

As previously seen on Sunil Garg's blog, here is a bit of an exercise in self-reflection.

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He leaves the building in a rush, with a rather battered black Eastpak backpack with what appears to be a staple holding together the right strap. It would immediately appear that perhaps to this person is either unwilling to spend much money, or else does not care about the image he projects. The backpack is worn very low, perhaps in an attempt to fit in with the many others who exhibit this behavior around him. He does not appear to be wearing any accessories, instead sporting a black t-shirt with an Apple logo and the text "Southcenter" centered upon it in cracked white lettering. This suggests that perhaps the person used to be under the employ of Apple at the retail store in the popular Southcenter shopping mall, and perhaps even resides there. Looking on, we find that he is wearing a pair of grey cargo pants. This is striking given the prevalence of jeans in American society, and also because it completes an entirely greyscale ensemble, suggesting this person's favorite color. Two glints of metal draw the eye to one of the cargo pockets - one is clearly the clip of a pen or pencil; it would seem that our subject requires the use of a pen or pencil very often. The other bit of metal is difficult to see and impossible to identify, though the fact that it is clipped to the upper fold of the pocket indicates that it is often needed.

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I'm a bit of a boring person when it comes to clothing. I always wear (cargo) shorts or cargo pants out, a remnant habit from my high school days, when I used to carry around quite a few electronic devices with me - an iPod, a PDA, and cell phone to be specific, and cargo pockets proved handy for these reasons. These days, my laptop is almost always with me in my backpack, so most of these devices are unnecessary. My backpack is also a bit of a remnant - I have had it many years, and it has served me very faithfully. Ignoring the snapped strap buckle, it is in perfectly serviceable shape, and I suppose it may even have sentimental value at this point, having been brought so many places with me. Finally, I have a menagerie of random t-shirts which I wear, a growing majority of which were obtained for free, and the Apple shirt I wore today was no exception. I in fact have never worked for an Apple store, and do not reside in Southcenter, but instead got the shirt for free from a friend who had gone to the grand opening of the store in question. The truth is often disappointingly simple, I suppose.