Massive work period coming to a conclusion.

May post this weekend, but blogging resumption by mid-week next week is probably more likely.

A few things to follow in the meantime:

The participatory decepticon in all of its glory: fake McCain spokesman punks the press, creates new reality.

Leaked list of British National Party members turned into map mashups: scary. Leaked list of BNP members with names added to make people's lives hell? Very scary.

Combo artifact from the future/participatory decepticon: "New York Times Special Edition."

Lost photographs of the Hiroshima bombing aftermath.

Re-thinking the use of empty big box retailers.

Chinese automakers to buy two of the big three US car companies?

New Honda Insight to have button to boost efficiency.

Google map mashup of global piracy events.

The last Viridian Note. Chairman Bruce, you did good. Thank you.

Smart, good people combining openness and design consulting with innovation for the public good: Collective Invention.

As I've noted, this weekend I'll be speaking at two different events in the SF Bay Area. I finally have the times for my talks, for those of you wishing to make sure you don't stumble across me by accident.

For Global Catastrophic Risks on Friday in Mountain View, I've been convinced somehow to give two presentations, the first at 10am, and the second as a closing set of observations at 4:45pm. I think Hughes got me to agree to this while I was still under the influence of jet lag. I call shenanigans.

For the Green Festival San Francisco, I'll be speaking at the "Mezzanine" location at 4pm on Sunday. I'll be talking Green Futures, but I'll be up against Greg Palast and the "Shamanic Cheerleaders," so I suspect the audience will be most generously described as "intimate."

Tickets still available for both.

Tick tick ticking in my head.

• Nature Does Geo: Nature's blog offers a handy chart comparing the costs and uncertainties surrounding the various commonly-discussed forms of geoengineering. Clip & save!

(Note: More bars="better," not necessarily "more of this.")

• Score One for Vernor: Augmented Reality goggles are so twen-cen. For real augmentation, go for the contact lenses. University of Washington engineers have come up with a key precursor technology: contact lenses with integrated circuitry. Vernor Vinge included them in his novel Rainbows End, and they make a lot of sense. If you don't mind sticking something into your eyes on a regular basis, I suppose.

• PAC DOGS: It's been mentioned by a few other folks, so it's probably not news for most of you, but: Pentagon researchers want to deploy robots in packs in order to "search for and detect a non-cooperative human."

Another commentator often in the news for his views on military robot autonomy is Noel Sharkey, an AI and robotics engineer at the University of Sheffield. He says he can understand why the military want such technology, but also worries it will be used irresponsibly.

"This is a clear step towards one of the main goals of the US Army's Future Combat Systems project, which aims to make a single soldier the nexus for a large scale robot attack. Independently, ground and aerial robots have been tested together and once the bits are joined, there will be a robot force under command of a single soldier with potentially dire consequences for innocents around the corner."

So, robots that hunt down "non-cooperative humans" at the behest of their human master. Or perhaps the robots are simply the extension of the human-technology ecosystem, expanding the reach and capacities of the human.

This is right out of Transhuman Space, by the way.

• Not Quite a Forest: You have 61 trees on this planet. Please don't lose them.

"What do Americans think of Singapore?"

Three different people, all government officials, asked me some variant of that question. And all three times, they eventually made it clear that they were wondering how often "caning" came up in discussions of the country.

I had to tell them: Pretty much every time.

Singapore is a nation coming to terms with its own identity. The habit of many of the people I conversed with was to speak of Singapore as a developing country. But, at least in terms of infrastructure and commerce, Singapore is clearly an industrial -- or, really, post-industrial -- nation. Singapore is the quintessential leapfrog society: from the mass transit to the information grid, from the sparkling malls to the global cuisine, it could easily stand as a full citizen of the first world. But that shift, from a tiny, scrappy "spot" in the heart of Southeast Asia to world-class city/state, has been a bit jarring. Practices that they saw as appropriate for the former -- like caning -- now seem vaguely embarrassing.

The "air-conditioned nation" label in the title of this piece comes from a book of the same name, by Singapore journalist and essayist Cherian George. It's more than appropriate: Being a mere two degrees off the equator, Singapore's weather defines humid. As a lifelong California boy, the heat didn't bother me, but I reeled from the moisture in the air. While the residents clearly tolerate it better than I could, a shift is underway that adds to the identity crisis.

Over the past couple of decades, according to the locals I spoke to, Singapore has started to put air conditioning everywhere. Head down a sidewalk, and every open business doorway offers an arctic blast. I started to expect to see micro-storms emerge as the warm, moist air from the outside runs into the cold, dry air in the stores.

As a result of the increasing ubiquity of "aircon," complaints by locals about the humidity are on the rise, as well. More than one person I spoke to described Singapore, sheepishly, as a "nation of whiners." I didn't see that, myself, but that's hardly the point: It's how they see themselves.

But there's one last twist to the evolving identity of the country. Singapore was, originally, a near-barren island off the tip of Malaysia, with little in the way of population. The country's populace is entirely a result of colonialism, as people from a variety of nearby nations came in to work and trade with the British rulers. After post-British rule by Japan and then Malaysia, Singapore gained independence in 1965. The architecture of the city is a lovely mix of ultra-modern and century-old buildings, and many of the streets carry the names of colonial-era British personalities.

Walking back to my hotel last night, after wandering the riverfront -- where boats that once carried small trade cargo now carry tourists, and where colonial government office buildings now hold restaurants and shopping centers -- it struck me: Singapore has turned its colonial past into an amusement park.

Underlying this evolution, however, is a stark sense of insecurity. I was invited here to talk about risks and uncertainty, and nearly every group I spoke to asked about terrorism and technological threats. Environmentally, Singapore is utterly dependent upon its neighbors and global trade for its resources. If there ever was a country vulnerable to open source warfare and system disruption, Singapore is it.

So on the minds of many Singaporean government officials, and likely many citizens as well, is a troubling dilemma: Who are we -- and how much longer will we even be around to ask that question?

Even thousands of miles away, the intensity of this moment is incredible.

(This is an amazingly cool project, one I'm deeply honored to be a part of. I know a lot of you out there have ideas that should be seen by this group -- the deadline for submissions is November 7, so get to work.)

THE 2009 BUCKMINSTER FULLER CHALLENGE JURY ANNOUNCED

OCTOBER 31, 2008 NEW YORK CITY — The Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) has announced the members of the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge jury. The jury will select the winner of the Challenge, to be announced to the public in May 2009. The jury will confer the prize at a public event at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in June 2009.

The members of this year’s jury are:

ADAM BLY, named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Bly is a powerful voice for science literacy in the 21st century. Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Seed magazine and Seed Media Group, winner of the 2006 Independent Press Award for Best Science and Technology Coverage;

JAMAIS CASCIO, pioneering futurist and scenario planner, Co-founder, Worldchanging.com; Director of Impacts Analysis for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology; Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies; Research Affiliate at Institute for the Future; Scenario Design Lead for Superstruct, the “massively multiplayer forecasting game;”

EDIE FARWELL, respected systems thinker and sustainability expert, former Director of the Association for Progressive Communications and current Program Director of the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program of the Sustainability Institute, which aims to apply systems thinking and organizational learning to economic, environmental and social challenges;

HELENA NORBERG-HODGE, A passionate activist for biological and cultural diversity and leading analyst of the impact of the global economy on cultures around the world. A linguist by training, she was educated in Sweden, Germany, England, the U.S., and speaks seven languages. Founder and director, International Society for Ecology and Culture; Co-founder, International Forum on Globalization;

JOHN AND NANCY JACK TODD (serving as a team), John Todd is a celebrated ecological designer and winner of the 2008 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, he has been named TIME’s Hero of the Planet among many other honors. Nancy Jack Todd is an accomplished author and the editor of Annals of Earth. Her most recent book is A Safe and Sustainable World: The Promise of Ecological Design;

GREG WATSON, a renewable energy expert, community organizer, and educator. Watson founded the Dudley Street Initiative, served as Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture, and currently serves as senior advisor to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

“As the news gets more troubling, the challenge to each of us gets more critical. My father anticipated many of these challenges and addressed his life’s work to solving them, now we hope to identify others, all over the world, who are doing the same. This year’s jurors will bring their own extraordinary work and experience to bear to select a design science innovator who is pushing the boundaries of what is possible to help us face these challenges. We are honored to have their participation and begin this important work together,” said Allegra Fuller Snyder, Buckminster Fuller’s daughter and Chair of the BFI Board of Directors.

THE DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES IS MIDNIGHT (EDT) ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 7TH 2008

For the call for entries, instructions for how to enter, reference materials, and much more, visit http://challenge.bfi.org

To read about last year's winning entry, visit http://challenge.bfi.org/winner_2008

To view entries to the 2008 Challenge, visit the Idea Index http://challenge.bfi.org/ideaindex

Watch the Buckminster Fuller Challenge movie http://challenge.bfi.org/movie

Contact: Matt Barron, Tel: 718.290.9283, Email: challenge@bfi.org

The good folks at Worldchanging asked me to offer up a hundred words for what the new president of the US should do in the first hundred days in office. I figured that most of the folks they asked would come back with some kind of environmental thing (and I guessed right), so I went a different path. Here's my reply:

Jamais Cascio, Co-Founder, Worldchanging/World-Builder-in-Chief, Open the Future

Although the present crises demand much of our time and attention, the next president must have a longer-term view of the challenges we'll face this century. The creation of an official Foresight Agency -- pulling in talent and insights from across the spectrum of official government departments -- would both formalize and legitimize the practice of looking ahead at emerging threats, technologies, and opportunities. The UK's Foresight Directorate offers an example of how this might work. We can no longer afford individual departments looking only at their narrow areas of interest; we need a cross-disciplinary view of tomorrow.

Mildly self-serving, perhaps (although I wouldn't expect to get a job with said Foresight Agency), but it's something that I strongly believe. Futurism is a tool for making better decisions about an increasingly complex and uncertain world -- and better decisions are desperately needed right about now.

Other folks weighing in include Bill McKibben, Simran Sethi, Hunter Lovins, and (of course) Bruce.

Here's the speaker list, as of late October:

• Anders Sandberg PhD, Oxford University
  “Global Catastrophic Risks: An Overview, and Caution about Risk Assessments”
• Eliezer Yudkowsky, Research Associate. Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
  “Cognitive Biases in the Assessment of Risk”
• Feng Hsu PhD, Head, Integrated Risk Management, NASA
  “Critical Issues of Global Catastrophic Risks - a Worst Case Scenario Assessment”
• William Potter PhD, Director, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
  “Reducing the Risks of Nuclear Proliferation”
• Martin Hellman PhD, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
  “Risk Analysis of Nuclear Deterrence”
• Bruce Damer, CEO of The Digital Space Commons, director of Contact Consortium
  “The Risks of Asteroid Impacts”
• Mike Treder, Executive Director, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
  “Nanotechnology’s Global Risk and Promises of Resilience”
• Kattesh V. Katti PhD, Director, Cancer Nanotechnology Platform, Professor of Radiology, University of Missouri
  “Green Nanotechnology: An Economic And Scientific Initiative For the Future Of Human Civilization”
• Alan Goldstein PhD, CEO of Industrial Nanobiotechnology
  “The A-Prize: Tracking The Global Race To Break The Carbon Barrier”
• J. Storrs Hall PhD, author Beyond AI
  “The Weather Machine: Nano-enabled Climate Control for the Earth”
• George Dvorsky, Director, IEET
  “Risks Posed by Political Extremism”
• Jamais Cascio, IEET Fellow, and research affiliate, Institute for the Future
  “Building Civilizational Resilience” (hey, that's me!)
• James J. Hughes PhD, Exec. Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
  “Strengthening Transnational Governance to Mitigate Risks”

$100 if you buy your ticket now, $150 after November 1.

What's missing? I'm surprised that there isn't something explicitly bio-related on the list, either pandemic disease or engineered bioweaponry. I'd also like to see something about cross-issue reinforcement (i.e., how sub-catastrophic problems can mutually boost each others' awfulness), but that might come up in discussion.

Nothing about robots stealing our medicine, either. Maybe next time -- if there IS a next time!