J. Craig Wheeler

As November rolled into December, things percolated along. I applied for a non-fiction award from the Texas Institute of Letters for The Path to Singularity.

 

Impressively competitive books have come out recently. One was Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Nearer, an update of his 2005 The Singularity is Near that I used as a textbook for my future of humanity course. A book discussion group in which I participate associated with the Austin Forum on Science and Technology felt that it was a little dry, but Kurzweil is a god in the field and still holding to his prediction that Artificial General Intelligence (smarter than any human) and Artificial Super Intelligence (smarter than all humans collectively) will happen in 10 or 20 years. Another is Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari. I'm in awe of his writing. This book is about the history and future of network connections. A third book is not exactly new, but relevant and interesting. It is called The Revolt of the Public by Martin Gurri. It was first published in 2014 and republished in expanded form in 2018; very pertinent to the election of 2024. The basic premise is that the rise of the internet allowed "the public" to question "news" passed down from traditional elite-led news authorities. Gurri seems to ignore the value of the traditional curated, vetted, multiple-sourced journalism, but he has some interesting points to make about the roles of "the public" and various authorities.

 

My three-month contract with my publicist Joanne McCall came to an end. Joanne arranged most of my raft of podcasts. It won't be clear for some time, if ever, that I will earn enough to pay her fee, but it was a pleasure and adventure to work with her. I'll continue to work with my publicist at Prometheus, Chloé Hummel.

 

I've tried to track book sales through Amazon, but they only give rankings, and I don't quite know how to interpret being ranked 166,968. That number peaked around Thanksgiving and has trailed off. I'd be grateful for anyone who would log in to Amazon and leave a rating/comment. Chloé says she thinks Prometheus might have sold 1000 copies so far. That won't earn back my meager advance, never mind pay for Joanne. The first print run was 2500.

 

A podcast I had done earlier with Peter Scott was posted on December 2.

 

I'd previously done a pre-interview with Don Murphy for his Journey Through Nature and Science Podcast. I did the real thing with him on December 3, and he posted our conversation on December 10. He's a smart, thoughtful guy, and we had a nice chat. Many of the first podcasts I did were posted as audio only, but some, including Don's, will be released on YouTube, presumably as video. Most of you on this list have never seen me in public without my glasses, but I had decided that, drawing on the New Yorker cartoon "On the internet no one knows you're a dog," I would do the video podcasts without my glasses. I did that with Gad Saad. For this session with Don, I forgot and wore my glasses. I also forgot to position my mic directly in front of my mouth. So much for becoming a podcasting pro. As it turned out, Don only posted the audio of our conversation on his YouTube Channel.

 

Computers! You can't live with them, and you can't live without them. In the background during all this, I had a computer glitch. Around Thanksgiving, I found that the two-factor app DUO on my mobile phone had been deactivated. Among other things, that meant that I could not login to the university IT folks to submit a ticket requesting help. Catch 22! I could not find a phone number for the college IT on the university web site. I thought to call the college to get the number, but of course, they weren't answering phones over the holiday. This was not critical, but a nuisance, especially in regard to my use of Zoom. Several years ago, I stumbled into a convenient Zoom hack. It turns out that if you activate your university link to Zoom, it defeats the obnoxious university constraint of automatically logging one out of any university computer after a few minutes' disuse; not even time for a bathroom break! With this hack, I can leave my home computer on all day. Without my DUO app, I could not fire up my university Zoom account. The result was that I logged in a lot over the Thanksgiving weekend as the university software routinely logged me out. I managed to get the IT number from the college the next week and talked to a friendly woman in IT who re-activated DUO on my phone. 

 

I have a few more podcasts scheduled, but I am belatedly swinging my attention to book signings. I wanted to do one at Book People, our preeminent local Austin independent bookstore. I somehow thought it was appropriate to wait until the book was published on November 19. I contacted Michael McCarthy with whom I had sold some books on commission at Book People. He sent me the form to fill out to request a book signing. It was intimidating! It demanded that arrangements be made three months in advance and that the book signing be around the date of release, two weeks ago. I did the best I could and submitted the form, suggesting a signing event around the end of January. To my surprise and pleasure, I got a response from events manager, Laura Benac, about two hours later, accepting my proposal. I'm scheduled for a signing on January 29, 2025. Jay Boisseau, Director of the Austin Forum agreed to be my interlocutor. Details TBD.

 

I'm going to be in the DC area for a meeting and visiting family two weeks earlier. I've contacted several bookstores in the area. We'll see how that goes.

 

 

Bob Morris is a professional book reviewer of some repute. He wrote a terrific review of "Path," the first I've seen. He also posted it as a comment on the Amazon page on the book where he gave it 5 stars!

 

Morris entitles his review A thoughtful analysis of the potentialities and perils of exponential growth and says:

 

"As I began to read this book, I was again reminded of Vernon (sic) Vinge's essay, "The Coming of Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era" (1993), in which he suggests that "the acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur)."

 

"More recently, in The Singularity Is Near (2005), Ray Kurzweil predicts that "convergent, exponential technological trends" are "leading to a transition that would be 'utterly transformative' for humanity." I was reminded of that prediction as I began to read the sequel, The Singularity Is Nearer, in which Ray Kurzweil explains how and why humanity's "Millenia-long march toward the Singularity has become a sprint. In the introduction to The Singularity Is Near, I wrote that we were then 'in the early stages of this transition.' Now we are entering its culmination. That book was about glimpsing a distant horizon — this one is about the last miles along the path to reach it."

 

"All of this material is relevant to the remarks that follow as I attempt to explain why I think so highly of J. Craig Wheeler and his wide and deep experience. He has much of value to share about various "revolutionary" technologies that have made the business world today more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can recall.

 

"In the first chapter, Wheeler observes that, 'In the past, humans have always, with some turmoil, adapted to new technologies. Technology is now racing ahead under its own momentum. Humans and human organizations tend to lag. Things are currently changing so rapidly that we may not be able to adapt. This is a qualitatively new phase in human existence.'

 

"'The biggest wave can start as a gentle swell in mid-ocean. Near shore, the wave crests and breaks. Picture a surfer on a gigantic wave. With the right timing and balance, the surfer can ride the wave and stay on top. The alternative is being tumbled within the surging surf or in the worst case pounded onto a coral reef. As we try to ride our technological wave, the tumbling may be unavoidable. We must avoid slamming into the reef.'"

 

Wow!  I'm honored to be mentioned in the same context as Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil. Morris quotes some turns of phrase from the book that I rather liked myself. I especially had to laugh out loud when I saw he quoted the last line of the book, "For every 'That hasn't happened,' there is a 'yet.'" My agent Regina Ryan and I wrestled over that short sentence and how to punctuate it for weeks. Thanks for keeping my feet to the fire, Regina!

 

 My publicist, Joanne McCall, asked whether Morris' Amazon review, given under the rating link, can be moved to the Amazon editorial section. She argues that since he's a legitimate reviewer, it would carry more weight there. Chloé Hummel of Prometheus is looking into that.