Science Fiction

Two years ago I had the pleasure to take a short course entitled "How Physics Inspires Science Fiction" at the Vienna University of Technology. Later if suffered a subtle change towards the more accurate "How Science Inspires Science Fiction". Although it might seem a say-nothing title with the intent of coating a do-nothing course (which would still make an excellent excuse to travel to Vienna) the course revealed itself to be surprisingly interesting.

As the title suggests, the course was about the way actual/real Science influences Science Fiction. I was amazed to discover that many authors are extremely meticulous when writing their fiction stories, constraining them with the laws of Physics and others. Two examples, Rendezvous With Rama and The Wind From The Sun immediately come to mind. But if the stories are so accurate in Scientific terms, then why are they considered Science Fiction?

Catch is, even though the behaviour of objects (in its most general meaning) appears to be correct, there may be unfeasible underlying assumptions. An author may, for instance, speak about a realistic space ship which would cost 1e20€ to build, or made of materials with excessively high welding temperatures. In this sense, Science Fiction strolls ahead of Science, waiting for new technologies and procedures to make it possible.

Another possibility is to leave unmentioned important details (the ones that make something unthinkable at the time of writing), thus avoiding the necessity of lying / making things up. This is even more interesting, in that it allows the author to predict events far more distant in the future. I believe this to be the case of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, as well as others.

In both cases it is clear that the inverse relation also exists; that is, one could take a course on "How Science Fiction Inspires Science". I was therefore excited to wait and see any of those stories come true, wondering how long it would take. Turns out the future was much closer than I'd thought.

The Wind From The Sun, already refered to hereabove, fantasised about space ships powered by solar energy, through the use of solar sails (thus the wind in the title). Believe it or not, a solar plane such as that already exists. The Solar Impulse is capable of carrying one passenger and has already proved itself capable of flying day and night (26 consecutive hours) without fuel. Current challenge is to achieve an all-around the globe travel in 2015. You can check the project here; I recommend watching some of the videos with the project's dreamers. They are truly inspiring.

So let's not make the same mistake as Philipp von Jolly when he stated that " (...) almost everything is already discovered (...) ". If running out of ideas, just pick a book and make it true.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

Strike

The number of labour strikes that took place in Portugal over the last couple of years is, without a doubt, astonishing. The phenomenon is certainly related to the recent economical crisis. Perhaps we should rather say the acknowledgement of the crisis, which might be far more ancient in itself. Either way strikes are a natural response to the decay in work conditions in a democratic regime. But will they actually lead us anywhere (good)?

Although some might believe that the drop in work conditions are due to their bosses' pure evilness, I for one am firmly convinced that it is rather linked to the companies' bad finantial situation. Or the state's for that matter. And obviously a strike will hardly help a struggling company's efforts; in fact it will most likely make it worse. Being a control engineering student I can't help but shiver at the thought of such positive feedback. And we all know know major economical consequences can derive from minor issues, when such loops are in place.

Still, that is no reason for not joining a strike. After all a strike aims to reveal the workers' discontent towards something they find unfair; the company's finantial situation is, from this perspective, irrelevant. Moreover, from a purely rational point of view it is advantageous for each single individual to join the strike, although that might not be the case for the collective (more on this on a coming soon post). So the problem is not the people who join the strikes; instead, it lies inside the mechanism itself. A self-feeding reaction with negative consequences should be avoided by construction.

There are other reasons to consider strikes a poorly-designed mechanisms. For starters, its working principles. Strikes intend to cause social unresst not by making people aware of the workers' conditions but simply by causing upset. In other words, the impact of a strike does not depend on how valid the workers' point of view is but rather on how many they people they can annoy. This clearly doesn't make any sense. Ironically, the highest impact strikes also make people angry at the workers themselves, finding their struggle (or at least their means) less legit. Nevertheless, social pressure and unrest will still make them the most successful in terms of forcing an executive decision which leads us to what seems like a silly antithesis: the most supported strikes are the ones people less agree with.

Another apparent debatable trait is the repeatability. If a strike for reason A does not succeed in reaching its goal then it is simply repeated the next week or month. And the one after. At some point it starts sounding dangerously close to blackmail.

Then where does the solution lie? Abolishing strikes does not seem to be the answer. It should be somewhere in the middle (as it always is), a clever reforming or modernization of this complaint mechanism. I speak of modernization because it seems to me that strikes were the perfect (perhaps the only) alternative when workers were isolated for their clients and the outside world, rendering them easy prey for exploiting bosses. Nowadays, with mobile phones and news channels and internet it is not all obvious (at least to me) that this is a perfect-so-do-not-touch mechanism.

In particular, I believe that a renovated strike must have an awareness raising component. This could be done quite easily, by having the workers show up at their posts (or somewhere else if the job does not require direct contact with the general public) and, instead of doing their jobs, spread information on their cause through fliers or their vocal cords. Please note that shouting catchy phrases with no practical meaning whatsoever is not constructive criticism. This would also be a killing blow for the somewhat public belief that many join a strike just to have a day off at the beach. Most certainly other improvements could be done; if we manage to re-invent strikes so that they do not imply loss of productivity (with all its negative consequences both for the company and its clients) then we'd be on the right path.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

Underworld

A few years ago I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of an interview with a fugitive from a prison camp in North Korea. His testimony seemed material taken from a book (perhaps a mixture of "Fahrenheit 911" and "1984"), or something you would read in a historical description of the 15th century. It's both shocking and unbelievable that things like that still happen. Here, now.

The man was born in prison, arrested (if you can apply the term to one who's never been free) for a long forgotten crime perpetrated by an unknown ancestor. He had no contact with the outside world, which he didn't even know existed. Forced labour and starvation were a constant, but there was no desire to escape since that was considered normal: it was all that he knew.

At age 14 he saw his brother and mother executed, charged of intenting to escape.  He himself reported them to the guards. Why would he do that? Because that's what people did in his world: work, starve and rattle on the ones who carry dreams of freedom. It didn't seem sad or wrong at the time, it simply was what you were supposed to do. He was then tortured to make sure he didn't share the escape intents.

Years later he met a new prisoner, from China, who had so lived in the outside world. Marvelled by the stories of a place where you could eat as much as you wanted, he decided to escape with his friend. In the run for it, his companion got electrocuted to death by an electrified fence; he crawled his way to freedom over the dead body.

Now, a citizen of the free world, he tries to raise awareness for the situation in North Korea. He does not understand why Western news' channels are only concerned with the North Korea's head of state's new wife, while ignoring entirely the prisoner camps and the regime's opression. How can we possibly explain ourselves?


Filipe Baptista de Morais