[inaudible conversations] good evening. Welcome to the strand i am nancy and i am the owner so with a little bit of history founded 1927 by my grandfather and was founded in the era known as book role along fifth avenue and at its height house to 48 bookstores throughout the 1880s through the 1960s they have all shuddered leaving the streets and to be passed down from my a father and now to be. So thanks for being supporters and readers. Tonight were very excited to welcome a power couple from scientific researcher dr. Kelly and zach his work with parasites has been published in scientific journals and Award Winning cartoonist from saturday morning breakfast club. It is called serial. [laughter] for outstanding single panel comic the dynamic duo has a working together called the weekly weinersmith on darr podcast it is a funny collection of comics including terrestrial elevators in also working on a oneyearold baby. [laughter] were thrilled to have booktv here tonight it will be available in a few weeks to share if you could not make it but the format tonight they will talk then we will open to your questions and then sign copies of their book so nobly assured me to welcome kelly and zach to industry and. [applause] hello. We are the weinersmith we are happy worse year thanks for coming. [applause] the book is called soonish i am kelly and exact weinersmith writes for cereal when we started to write this book a paper written in 2011 by undergrads at Hamilton College are talking heads blowing hot air to look at the productive abilities ranging from mostly white right but also mostly wrong but for those that had jobs we could write a book it doesnt matter if we could write or not. [laughter] so then we decided predicting future technology is not particularly interesting how long they think it will be but what is interesting day gearing up the space before it exists so to talk about technology the the juror problems to make that happen and how we could make everything more awesome and also horrible. So we will talk today about cheap access to space selassie were doing research we discovered a lot of stuff that was weird and we cannot keep it to ourselves we decided to share that we will not talk about this in particular you have to buy the book. But if one of the Amazing Things we uncovered. So this is the chapter on all sorts of ways with that current conventional rocket message is a long chapter so with the view of those i guess talk about reusable rockets that is to make it travel so imagine every time you went to fly from new york to los angeles the plane exploded in the Pacific Ocean it would be cool but expensive. That is what we do with rockets. That is why it cost 60 million to put a small payload because of the way the rockets work right now so with the most expensive part of the machine back that is a negligible part of the cost. So space acts spacex they party did this three rockets are stacked so once you use up one jong cato want to carry the dead weight so you drop into the ocean so the first stage landed on a barge. The first up that what elon musk said with his conversion factor i think they said 30 or 40 . That is what is happening right now we talk about other technologies by the nasa group including putting the rocket like on a pogo stick. One thing that was exciting was a space elevator that is three parts a station in the ocean that stays in place, with a gigantic table with a counterweight which is a rock and an elevator that climbs that is slowly goes up the cable and the People Better interested estimate they could get stuff up into space to madrid dollars her lb right now is about 2,000 per lb. So that would be amazing savings. So what we need to figure out is the middle part. [laughter] that is kind of important. It needs to be really strong but it cannot way a lot 62,000 miles if it weighs too much the way to come down so it needs to be lightweight and recently the discovery of car bin and tubes it is the with the of the hair. Less than a human hair. Very small. Together we know all of disinformation. We are a team. [laughter] it is about a foot and a half long also 62,000 miles so we have a long way to go but it might be strong enough. But here was a problem economics may not make this happen. For terrestrial purposes you only need a full and a half to do just about anything you want to do on earth so lets first drying up the projections they ever getting longer and faster but then it flattens out so you could make them long enough to get that moving again being better reason why we need very long carbon tubes called on to that. The other problem with the of middle part if it isnt long enough it is a very good were asking the advanced guard of about lightning. There is a little area in the Pacific Ocean as far as we can tell has experienced a lightning bolt purpose of the is our is to put it there and hope. [laughter] to apply never changes. [laughter] other problem like death from the sky . [laughter] one other problem is a fundamental problem bringing anything back to earth or even paradigm to get there it is like dropping a Nuclear Missile a Nuclear Warhead mechanism has to go just right but if you drop thompson which is the equivalent in Nuclear Explosion there is not a good way to deflect that. Made use a Nuclear Weapon to knock it over now youre in a worse position. The part it is a permanent quality of life there isnt a good solution i dunno how much faith you have of politics but and those of its cheap access to space the other reason to have a base station in the ocean because one to be cosmopolitan. With that impersonation with the greatest military advantage. The ultimate Higher Ground literally. With some serious flaws in space is to have cheap access to. And what happens when you cut the cord . Yes. If you cut the cable on the space elevator . Can you guess what happens . You could cut it high but if you have a sling you know, no matter where used if it goes up in a Straight Line that is what happens with the space elevator. With the people in the elevator. [laughter] but now this ultimate piece of space junk if it goes off through the satellite and knocks them out people are dying that we could lose millions and millions of dollars. Thats true. Agent what happens if you cut it hired there is a whiplashed with all the other forces acting on it which is more gratuitous. Some of the concerns to destroy everyone . But also those reusable rockets to put more pollution in the air so the biggest problem with aeronaut you can do that with people. But. And with access to space one of the reasons it you are a meanspirited economist that if this is sustainable it is 4. 5 of the discretionary budget. Definitely not a return on investment. But with private citizens Small Companies could have broad access to space that could change with the colonys. If a space elevator could be made to work with 10,000 for tungsten into space in the works all this stuff you bring it up into space there you go explore the universe. So that his mind blowing and amazing for me to imagine. Cheap access to space but that is enough about killing humanity. [laughter] so we decided to talk about space tonight to. Of how it will end for humanity interacting with humans. So when we come across it is designed to assist him in his specially the elderly and that is his job and keep trying to escapement at least twice. [laughter] so it is a funny story. Ended is kind of tragic because they die on the road but maybe not caretaking for humans but the first robot story. So an undergrad at Harvard University how much undergrad asking for permission to enter . So apparently a huge issue. So that does seem creepy to me. And then to take photos so that those privacy concerns there were bomb threats recently not letting anybody into the building so she made a robot wall sitting at a table there is just one undergrad but now the coach let me in an 21 percent said yes. Lower number may be higher 71 percent said yes. So the real trick to let them in was cookies. So the robot came up with a box from the cookie store it did not have fancy cookies but if your approach individuals or groups so that is the lesson and then the final story and wanted to know how much they trust robots . So there were these undergrads following the robot but then they came into the room to modify the alarm and follow the robot out to safety lets be clear they know how to get out of the building that we were told they decided to follow the robot. Watching the video it is a slow moving robot. [laughter] they know how to get out so the next thing first they have to go into the wrong room then bring them to the correct room but then when the smoke alarm went off and then the lights were turned off in two of those had to be retrieved waiting for the robots to do something else. The Georgia Institute of technology. But we really trust robots. And with those trash cans with a ribbon around it. So if you are a robot with a cookie watching for those undergrad. Thinks for your time. [laughter] we would be happy to answer any questions. If you raise your hand there is a microphone. Talk about the car bin and the tubes is a woman to gather . Better is a strand of carbon nanotubes with how much force. Like superman tear gas to be very might be strong as the love that specific strength but the moment you start weaving them any breakpoint is bad c were literally talking about 100,000 kilometers long molecule. Can you even imagine honeycomb shape but if you miss one of those carbons it isnt an easy thing. It sounds impossible but there were technologies meeting those crazy levels with those improvements to use those composite materials are released with that quantity. How many did you start with . We started with 50 then it became clear we couldnt get many more in grief felt satisfied to do with deeper dive then we did 25. By the time we finish writing a couple of chapters refigure 10 with the right number with how worthy be our. You couldnt tell that was a bunch of crackpots or so far along it was just details so we would we those out in that we thought economics could not work. Then talking about the graveyard that we spend one month researching so quantum computing was too complicated to do in a way that we felt was accurate enough. I cannot explain that. [laughter]. Questioning but in the hande also good to disapproving some of the jokes. So some examples of the comment. Who told you she has veto power . Those are my favorite ones to do a. So you dont do them anyway and the best example of that is the single use monocles. [laughter] [applause] i still dont get it. He sells them in packs. I dont know how that happens. Its interesting. People expect me to be super grumpy because i look grumpy and the comics but neither are the children of the time. [laughter] are you scrambling the night before or do you have a months worth of comics . We tried to get a little bit but its not. If im being good, i try t trieo but that is unusual. Which of these technologies do you think people could screw up the most or would be the worst situation . I do think it is the same that zachary talked about so the fact we talked about asteroid mining and they are a major important part of making that happen and having the ability to his petrified giving the humanities track record. I want to add to that we talked about this in the book. You could go almost anywhere for no energy. The example is from the surface from the moon to earth. They dont even have enough to hold themselves into a little sphere so it is so cool. We do a chapter on the brain computer interface which for me is the freakiest technology for a couple of reasons. You make them kind of unrecognizable which is a little upsetting but you are basically offloading the privacy. But the ability to interface you are giving up that last spot because probably the first person that gets one of these to work to boost the memory, etc. Has economic advantage that is rather severe. I think it is like 20 or 25 of lead academics will admileague o using brain enhancing drugs so you are getting this market for the brain alteration. Its going to change the way that our brains work. Does everybody understand what the brain computer interface is . We dont have the same economic forces for those. I am kind of skeptical about how much of a difference this makes the fundamental human process. You can take a human being from 100,000 years ago and they wouldnt know the difference but the brain computer interface has different qualities. If you iterate that over 50 years it may be fundamentally altering in different ways that are much more foreign than a thousand friends on Facebook Like a large casual acquaintance group. The researchers imagine it will get to the point all of our thoughts are shared with one another. We were talking with he erwin ai asked him where do you see the brain computer interfaces going eventually and the answer i expected his quadriplegics will have the ability to move any limb we give them and they will just have to think about it. But the answer he gave me is we will be able to load off our thoughts onto a cloud and we are going to share our thoughts and be one big super organism. I wonder how many people think that. For most interviews but one day we could probably load our brains into one cloud and be one big organism. I feel like that is horrible, but but if you look both marrias and society work because that isnt happening. So, or he agreed and said you could be sitting there watching tv and think to yourself and she would know that instantaneously and that might be bad. But he made a good point what would that mean for humanity and i feel like if we ever get to that point, then weve definitely gone way beyond what its like to have the privacy concerns about facebook and we are totally different kinds of humans at that point and we will wait to see if that is going to happen. Kind of related to what you said do you think that is also true for trusting we are using robots now 100 years ago you mean the trusted technology its something we develop. On the other hand we are more in touch with computers all the time, so i dont know. If you look at a movie like the terminator it is flattering like in order to kill us to have to look at tying machines and the exoskeleton and it looks real it turns out a trash can with cookies is all you need but its less trusting than we are in the moment in terms of the historiography of it i dont know, my guess would be an im reading some economic stuff that is less trusting than we were 50 years ago but that doesnt mean we are less trusting of robots. I dont have a definitive answer to this question. Which emerging technology or concept do you think has been the most poorly communicated to the public by scientists . It is such a complicated topic but part of why we decided not to do it is they universally felt like they never get the right and i dont know if youve read about quantum computing but it is a computer that will sort of be faster somehow and so a couple things is highly suspected but not this proven. Its almost certainly the case pretty much everyone we talked to but we dont know if it shakes out. In addition, they only sold a narrow class of problems thats bigger than we initially thought but its not like another computer it has to be applied in addition to all those problems involve a step where you have a classical supercomputer coming in to do something the quantum kind of is absolutely wonderful, but maybe if you read a bit about it quantum computing can break the encryption algorithm that is most common and that is probably true, but from what i understand there is no reason we couldnt switch off of several other types of problems that it doesnt help with so whatever you want to call it, the crypto military advantage is highly questionable. The idea that on some level and interpretation using all of the multiverses to get into your ex is email, thats pretty cool, but i highly encourage you there is a wonderful book by jonathan dowling. The book makes it sound worse than it is, but you couldnt understand what with a little patience if you are a bit nerdy white city. How does this actually work . You have a space elevator connected and then it would sort of travel up and in order to give power to it you have to beam it up and so there have been prize contests to figure out how to beam power to keep it going and it carries itself up. Do you have more to add to that . There are different ways you might. Some evidence you can use the cable to transmit power, but its tricky we might blo load se superconductors or copper they dont have the specific strength to hang on the cable, so you are pretty limited on corruption. But the way i would like to say it, you hear a news item that is like a Big Development and the hardest problem is the middle part. Everything else is like engineering and the closest thing to magic, so we might not even have the right substance yet. I am curious how much of this was reporting to people and how much was picking through articles, manuals and books . We read a painful number. For every chapter i interviewed three or four people on the field and then we go to that many people for comments and then additionally, we try to send out some extra people so they can doublecheck. If youre interested in the whole process on how we wrote the book tomorrow night at caviar, which is a bar youre going to do the whole podcast episode recorded live. I went through and checked every single sentence because we forgot we were going to need to write a bibliography. It is an academic article from the book of proceedings were the mouth of the researcher and we didnt do like celebrity researchers. We tried to find people whose names seem to come up often and then we get in touch with them. It hopefully shows not just in the depth of research but i suspect even if youre interested we have something you probably havent heard about so that was the goal. Favorite parasite and by. I am not just a creepy person. We discovered a kind of parasite that needs to kill its host in order to complete its life cycle and it infects a wasp tha of lis and tree branches so it makes a little compartment and undergoes development and if it doesnt get infected it chews out a little hole and flies away that once it gets infected it makes it chew a hole and then plugs up with its head and dies there. We call that the crypt keeper. It was already determined after we keep this outfit we didnt get to pick that. But we named it after those who track his brother and leader scattered his body parts. I wonder if you ever got frustrated writing about something and a brandnew development so how do you deal with that . The answer would have been drinking but i was pregnant at the time for most of this book. The two main problems we had were causing us in the states chapter then we finished the augmented reality. If you had this augmented world you could get the augmented world interacting in the real world. If you do have the right to ask them to get rid of that and what are the rules there. So we were able to say indeed they could use things that were not happening and then you say please stop being jerks. Please get him out of there. And i think that nintendo complied. It did end up being more work thabut it was more useful just adding that in the. You have some sort of device that covers your vision and include certain parts of the world giving you the perception so you could imagine you have one where a little drag and insulting up and down. And pokemon it would be like pikachu or something exploding so geographically somewhere in the ideal augmented reality they would have a shadow cast and make a specific noise when they walk across and in addition have some way of knowing. There are some things coming out so theres a sort of academic distinction that is made. Now that you are done writing the book [inaudible] theres a couple of guys out there named brian and its, well usually its what they are about as she is super enthusiastic and has told everyone everything. So, pro immigration, nonfiction graphic novel with economists and learning a bit about that and then just my usual reading schedule a. Thats all ive got up to right now. Based on your experience [inaudible] [laughter] when we first started dating him our activity was to go to the library and work all day than during the lunch break and at night walk back and talk about what we learned. I wanted to do all the interviews and i didnt. One of us wouldve write a draft and primary literature. That is how it works for us one is for any given task someone is the leader. It doesnt matter who but someone needs to be the one who feels the responsibility for failure. Thats whats needed for the chapter. So for the chapters were writing the book, one person eventually was in charge of the veto power and how it was done but you dont do that when its muddy people start to get mad at each other because they feel like it is someone elses responsibility or they are not doing they thought they were going to do, so make sure that its clear. You are the jerk if you dont speaspeak up even if you feel le the other person is the problem. Its also pretty good. Having a thick skin helps. You spend a month researching and writing a chapter then you send it to your part or and they are like start over. Well, i would like this to be a good book so i will start over. Its like no matter what it doesnt feel great to hear that. But if you have a good working relationship. Which one of you is the stronger leader and a better writer . I am the best at both. Thats the answer. [laughter] right here. If all of the technology could be completed in your lifetime [inaudible] i think that for all of these technologies, we would be in line with these dont like the fact 25 of the line. Brain computer interface, maybe i would try one i want to make sure that it works on the people before me. I dont want to be the first of august is over later. We are very risk adverse and much researching things from the safety of our home. We have one home. One of our many manchin. [laughter] the two that are hard to say it would be bad in any case one is Precision Medicine like the molecular and the other is on the bio printing. We sometimes get asked are there any that you just dont want, and there are not a lot of serious ethical issues with improving medicine or the ability to compete. For the Precision Medicine we talk about editing peoples genome to solve problems and i think theres a lot of discussion that still needs to have been about whether or not it is okay so the Precision Medicine still has some things. Between different good to the doctor to get 10,000 if they are wrong or a polls to be couples s positive thing you find out you have ten things you dont actually have, so it sounds kind of boring with the deep statistical problem. You both talk about how much work you put into this book. Thank you for that. I wonder if there is a topic you ever came away from and thought i dont want to read anything about that again. I was the one doing research on the quantum computing but i had to go onto others. There was one chapter not mentioned in the book that got cut very late. The manuscript returned and had 11 chapters and it was advanced Nuclear Fission reactors, so that gives you the type of reactor that we have right now but with advanced features and i was pretty sick of the ibm and i think it is a pretty good chapter and one of the best. Theres this thing that is important that i still dont know how it works but the Nuclear Reactors are very from the aerial view of yo a very vey simple machine. Easier to explain than the combustion engine. Its quite simple. So, it was fun, but it was very tictac in terms of details. Its been around in some form or another since the 40s, so a lot of this stuff when we said to ourselves we are going to research the reactors it sounds like it is going to be really weird and most of them have to do with safety features so its like its super interesting and doing a detailed discussion of why you might want helium as a moderator instead of coming to know, it is just not for everyone perhaps. We are talking pretty abstract in the shape of things so that makes it way easier to research. You read about nuclear stuff and all these tiny variations in thing in your mind starts to wobble with the complexity of it all. Should we mention that its your birthday . [applause] thank you. Thank you, thats it. [applause] we are going to move on to the signing if we could have the first rows line up. [inaudible conversations] our next speaker is overseeing a renaissance of the companys culture and strategy in the three and a half years since he became a ceo. At the first book of his