“Hello, I’m the Snackbot,” it said in a voice not unlike that of HAL 9000, from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” as its rectangular LED “mouth” pulsated to form the words. “I’ve come to deliver snacks to Ian. Is Ian here?”

I responded affirmatively. “Oh, hello, Ian,” it said. “Here is your order. I believe it was a granola bar, right?”

Yes, it was. “All right, go ahead and take your snack. I’m sure it would be good, but I wouldn’t know. I prefer a snack of electricity.”

Please do read on. If only for Cynthia the chuckling cocktail robot.

Of course, if we’re being serious, the article does suggest that robotics is a dead-end industry that won’t make the leap to the services economy for a long, long time. It’s also pessimistic on the wider philosophical issue of human interaction with embodied AI.

Sorry, Snackbot.

Californian historians have voted to slap protected status on 100 bits of Apollo mission debris strewn on the Moon’s surface… because they were made by companies in the Sunshine State:

And while some of the garbage might seem like, well, garbage, California is just one of several states seeking protection for the items in the face of possible lunar missions by other nations as well as a budding space tourism industry.

In New Mexico, home to early Apollo test sites like the White Sands Missile Range, a similar measure is expected to be considered by the state’s cultural properties review committee in April.

Beth O’Leary, an assistant professor of anthropology at New Mexico State University and an expert in “lunar archeology,” said she had screamed with delight when she heard the news from California. But she admitted that persuading people to safeguard Apollo’s space junk was often a challenge, if only because it is on — you know — the moon.

“I don’t think anyone argues with it being a major event in the history for humanity, right up there with the invention of fire,” Ms. O’Leary said. “But people don’t tend to think of it as something we need to be protecting.”

I sense this is mostly about nudging UNESCO towards making the Apollo landing zones into a World Heritage Site. Or at least I hope so. Because I’m fairly sure California’s claim constitutes a violation by the United States of Article II of the Outer Space Treaty 1967. Which provides:

Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.

According to this LAT piece, Ms. O’Leary aims to get round the Outer Space Treaty by extending the historical preservation order only to the items of detritus, not the site where they are found. Hmm. Somehow I don’t see the International Court of Justice falling for it. You pass a preservation order because you have the intent to do some preserving in the future – that would need access to the site. I don’t think you can split the two.

Interestingly, Article VI of the Treaty provides for the United States’ international responsibility in this kind of situation, and also requires it to regulate private actors (space tourists, enterprising lunar Indiana Joneses, etc.). The United States is also responsible for the actions of the California State Historical Resources Commission under the LaGrand principle.

So it’s odd, to say the least, that the NYT reporter gave the story a flippant write-up. The nature of acquisition is not really important under the law of territorial sovereignty. More depends on whether other potential claimants respond with contesting or stronger claims. There is now a little bit more incentive than before for emerging lunar powers – China, say, or India – to defect from the Treaty regime and press on with economic exploitation or manned settlement of the Moon, as competing claims. I doubt we’ll all be laughing when Indian vyamonauts are graphite-bombing Chinese Helium-3 facilities off the Tycho crater, will we?

Other space-faring states would certainly be ill-advised to acquiesce to the United States’ assertion of lunar sovereignty by virtue of a few Californian historians. The Preah Vihear judgement provides a warning against inaction.

And that case, of course, showed the dangers of allowing even the most well-meaning cultural claim to collide with international law.

… But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way – he can better answer than anyone else. And doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of bill must have run something like this:

“Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.
“whaling voyage by one ishmael.
“BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.”

Photo: Flickr/threefishsleeping. (Creative Commons).

Osama bin Laden will be killed or captured this year.

Which, when you think about it, is an interesting black swan to put among the strategy and diplomacy pigeons circling around Afghanistan and Pakistan.

My late father, a man that had no other advantages than experience and his own natural parts, was nevertheless of a very clear judgment, formerly told me that he once had thoughts of endeavouring to introduce this practice; that there might be in every city a certain place assigned to which such as stood in need of anything might repair, and have their business entered by an officer appointed for that purpose. As for example: I want a chapman to buy my pearls; I want one that has pearls to sell; such a one wants company to go to Paris; such a one seeks a servant of such a quality; such a one a master; such a one such an artificer;some inquiring for one thing, some for another, every one according to what he wants. And doubtless, these mutual advertisements would be of no contemptible advantage to the public correspondence and intelligence: for there are evermore conditions that hunt after one another, and for want of knowing one another’s occasions leave men in very great necessity.

Philanthropic support for journalism in an age of free news:

I have heard, to the great shame of the age we live in, that in our very sight two most excellent men for learning died so poor that they had scarce bread to put in their mouths: Lilius Gregorius Giraldus in Italy and Sebastianus Castalio in Germany: and I believe there are a thousand men would have invited them into their families, with very advantageous conditions, or have relieved them where they were, had they known their wants. The world is not so generally corrupted, but that I know a man that would heartily wish the estate his ancestors have left him might be employed, so long as it shall please fortune to give him leave to enjoy it, to secure rare and remarkable persons of any kind, whom misfortune sometimes persecutes to the last degree, from the dangers of necessity; and at least place them in such a condition that they must be very hard to please, if they are not contented.

and Facebook:

My father in his domestic economy had this rule (which I know how to commend, but by no means to imitate), namely, that besides the day-book or memorial of household affairs, where the small accounts, payments, and disbursements, which do not require a secretary’s hand, were entered, and which a steward always had in custody, he ordered him whom he employed to write for him, to keep a journal, and in it to set down all the remarkable occurrences, and daily memorials of the history of his house: very pleasant to look over, when time begins to wear things out of memory, and very useful sometimes to put us out of doubt when such a thing was begun, when ended; what visitors came, and when they went; our travels, absences, marriages, and deaths; the reception of good or ill news; the change of principal servants, and the like. An ancient custom, which I think it would not be amiss for every one to revive in his own house; and I find I did very foolishly in neglecting it.

From Chapter 35, Book 1 of the Essais by Michel de Montaigne. Web 2.0 essayist and all-round Renaissance man.

NB

Original sixteenth-century French here.

Well, I have to help restore karmic balance some way.

1 The G20 in 2050. Another data point adding to the emerging consenus that China will be the world’s largest economy in just over twenty years, barring political developments which the authors say they can’t predict.

I will try one prediction: there won’t have been a G20 for a long time by 2050.

2 This is supposed to be about India’s economic position in 2109, but it says more about China’s underrated position today: “The Chinese haircut industry alone might be larger than the economies of many small countries.” And so on.

Incidentally, both links show how very difficult it is to measure economies using GDP and the variations thereupon.

Flickr/bazril

Willy Lam, in a piece headlined ‘Equals at Last, for Better or Worse’:

For the first time, the leaders of the United States and China talked as equals. And the rough parity between an apparently declining superpower and a fast-rising quasi-superpower has major global implications for issues including regional security, nuclear proliferation, trade, climate change and human rights.

Chinese GDP, 2008: $4.33 trillion. US GDP, 2008: $14.2 trillion. Military spending as % of GDP, China: 1.96%; US: 4.28%.

Conversely, of course, the United States and China have talked as veto-bearing equals on the United Nations Security Council since 1971. Not 2009.

I give up.

The Cultural Revolution seems to have produced among the Chinese the same sort of manic drive that the pioneer and immigrant experiences produced among the Americans. The people who endured Mao’s horror have seen the worst life has to offer and are now driven to build some secure footing. At the same time, they and their children seem inflamed by the experience of living through so much progress so quickly.

“Do you understand?” one party official in Shanxi Province told James Fallows of The Atlantic, “If it had not been for Deng Xiaoping, I would be behind an ox in a field right now. … Do you understand how different this is? My mother has bound feet!”

1. It is estimated by at least two Western scholars that the Cultural Revolution killed between 750,000 and 1.5 million people in China. As many people again survived permanently scarred both physically and psychologically. Unlike David Brooks, I am not comfortable making sweeping generalisations about a billion-odd human beings in one go, but I believe that many Chinese people see the Cultural Revolution as an unmitigated disaster for their country. So much for “manic drive”. Nor would I go around alluding to the Revolution as “progress”.

2. Becoming “driven to build some secure footing” after witnessing “the worst life has to offer” (incidental note to editors: murderous ideological zealots are not natural occupational hazards of life) is not evidence for faith in the future. Surely the opposite – it is a pragmatic hedge against continued uncertainty, and the product of a frightening recent past. In any case, Chinese consumer spending has been rising at a rate of 8 or 9 per cent per annum in recent years, two and a half times the American rate. Surely this is true evidence for ‘futurity’, and indeed China’s continued strong economic growth. You don’t spend unless you have faith in a higher income in the future to make up for it.

3. Since Deng Xiaoping was purged not once but twice during the Cultural Revolution, and began the reforms of 1978 in order to repair the vast economic damage left by the Gang of Four, I very much doubt that he would have appreciated the New York Times’ apparent amalgamation of the two events.

4. I am not very impressed by David Brooks’ grasp of either economics or Chinese history. Particularly when this history is mangled into a mere accessory to another country’s self-regard.

A new gap will develop. Respect for Western ideas will remain, but respect for Western practices will diminish, unless Western performance in governance improves again.

…Here, too, as the 21st century unfolds, we will see the exact opposite outcome. The return of Asia will be accompanied by an astonishing Asian renaissance in which many diverse Asian cultures will rediscover their lost heritage of art and philosophy.

There is no question that Asians will celebrate the return of history. The only question is: Will the West join them in these celebrations, or will they keep waiting for the end to come?

Reality:

‘Tension grows between India and China as Asia slips into cold war‘
- The Times, 12/11/09

‘Chinese petitioners held in illicit ‘black jails’, report claims‘
- The Guardian, 12/11/09

‘Cambodia’s embrace of ex-Thai leader stirs tensions‘
- The International Herald Tribune, 12/11/09

‘Protesters clash with police in Nepal‘
- The International Herald Tribune, 12/11/09

‘Clinton appelle à la libération “inconditionnelle” de Suu Kyi‘
– Le Monde, 12/11/09

Nice try, Mr Mahbubani.

(Not that strong economic growth and democratisation throughout Asia are all doom and gloom, obviously. I am just making a point).

NB

The brain damage joke isn’t funny, by the way. I can only presume that humour receives criminal sanction in Singapore. Much else does, after all.