Keenan's Book Reviews: Search results for Lois Gresh

Mankind is hungry for energy. The United States is a huge consumer of energy, and our lifestyle depends on it. This makes us, and other developed countries, vulnerable. The burning of fossil fuels is leading to a changing climate that could have many negative ramifications. Our dependence on foreign sources of fuel, especially oil, have embroiled us in wars oversees and made us uncomfortable allies with nations that do not share our values.

Chemistry professor Mark E. Eberhart suggests that we need a good energy diet. Unfortunately, after spending a couple of chapters of Feeding the Fire setting up the idea, he ends up having only a little to say about an energy diet in the final chapter of the book.

In between, however, he tells an interesting history of energy from the big bang to our age. He also provides a primer in thermodynamics aimed at an audience that hasn’t studied science or engineering. If the book had purported to be about that, I’d probably be speaking about it in glowing terms. If you’re looking for a book that explains energy and how it works that is written for an audience with little scientific background, this is a good option.

Though most of the book concerns itself with the dispersal of energy through the universe and the development of technology, the energy diet is mainly a matter of policy. The central element of Eberhart’s vision is an “energy-industrial complex” modeled on the way the U.S. military works with industry on the long-term development, delivery and reliability of technology. U.S. energy policy is so disjointed that in practice we have no policy, but with imagination and discipline (and arguably the setting aside of partisanship for matters of national security that transcend it) we could develop a comprehensive policy that gets our efforts moving toward a more secure, efficient and cleaner future. It doesn’t even need to be a perfect policy, just a commitment to take specific actions and set specific standards to make things better over time.

Eberhart has some specific recommendations, especially related to the development of electric vehicles and supporting technolgies. In the 12 years since Feeding the Fire was published, we’ve made some headway on many of them. This is in spite of the fact that we still do not have a comprehensive energy policy.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont

Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher

The Computers of Star Trek by Lois Gresh & Robert Weinberg

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson

I Am Spock by Leonard Nimoy

My Inventions by Nikola Tesla

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Rust by Jonathan Waldman

Eberhart, Mark E. Feeding the Fire: The Lost History and Uncertain Future of Mankind’s Energy Addiction. New York: Harmony Books, 2007.

Saturday, November 24, 2018

New & Interesting Stuff November 24, 2018

Become a Better You by Joel Osteen

The Computers of Star Trek by Lois Gresh & Robert Weinberg

Essentialism by Greg McKeown

The Johnstown Flood by David McCollough

Making the American Body by Jonathan Black

New & Interesting Stuff September 29, 2018

Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

Sunday, October 28, 2018

The Computers of Star Trek by Lois Gresh & Robert Weinberg

Star Trek fans, I’m one of them, have praised the show for the way it has anticipated technology. It used to be quite the thing to compare a flip phone to the Trek communicator.

However, have you ever watched a rerun of the show and seen something that now seems quaint, even ridiculous, especially when it comes to computers? Back in 1999, Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg published observations like this, along with a few kudos for the shows, in The Computers of Star Trek.

The book covers episodes from the original series (TOS), The Next Generation (TNG), Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the films through Insurrection. While all the series, even the more recent prequel series Enterprise, depict a technologically advance future, none are focused on technology. They are more focused on telling stories that deal with the social issues in the periods in which they were made.

Gresh and Weinberg note this: Trek computers are mainly supersized versions of the computers of the time the show is made. In some ways, the Federation computers in the show are throwbacks to 1970s and earlier era mainframes, even though smaller, networked computers were becoming the dominant model when the revival series started in the late 1980s. This continued even as the Internet emerged and became part of the popular culture.

Of course the producers of the show aren’t especially interested in how computers actually work; they want to make an entertaining TV show and sometimes explore what is going on the society around them through the lens of a fictional future. Trek is interesting in this regard because it shows the attitudes of people about computers over time. In TOS computers are regarded with skepticism: computers break down, Spock is a hacker who takes over the ship, artificial intelligences take over planets but get fried by the illogic of emotions. By the time of TNG, computers are ubiquitous and acceptable—everyone uses them—but the threat of the Borg show concerns that computers might take over our lives and cause us to be depersonalized, destroying our individual identities.

An almost 20 year old book can’t help to be out of date, and the authors inevitably miss on some predictions. For instance, in their criticism of Trek’s take on medicine (not very advanced at all except when it is practically magic), the mention Army research into smart shirts that will monitor wearers for vital signs and injuries. It was a tee shirt with sewn in sensors that could be made for $30 (in 1998 dollars). Though we now have a lot of wearable technology, hospitals, soldiers and health nuts aren’t making use of cheap tees that keep track of their status moment by moment.

I don’t bring this up to knock the authors’ predictions. It’s hard to predict the future, especially by projecting from the current state of the art. Trek writers arguably haven’t tried very hard, but the show really isn’t about technology anyway.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in:

A Little History of Science by William Bynum

Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger

How to Build an Android by David F. Dufty

I Am Spock by Leonard Nimoy

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

Gresh, Lois, & Robert Weinberg. The Computers of Star Trek. New York: Basic Books, 1999.