A scan of a Modern Mechanix article from December, 1951 shows how orbiting satellites will be able to police the world. Kinda. The article itself focuses solely on military advances in rocketry — there is no discussion of how these Space Cops would be able to keep the peace beyond the assumption that being able to launch a satellite would give a nation the capacity for global tyranny. Still a great find.

(Via boing boing).

Ad astra has a new special report covering the renewed attention being paid to Space Based Solar Power as a solution for a range of strategic and environmental issues:

One quick highlight was this amusing anecdote on the reasons behind the subtle shift in nomenclature for this concept from “Space Solar Power (SSP)” to “Space Based Solar Power (SBSP)” (which I missed earlier on the Space Solar Power (SSP!) blog):

Many people familiar with the concept of space solar power (SSP), or solar power satellites (SPS) wondered where and why after 40 years of consistency, the Pentagon would decide to rechristen it “space-based solar power,” or SBSP.

If one is trading many e-mails, typing space solar power gets tedious. So like any good military organization, abbreviations become the language of choice. But in the early stages, one of the core study members had a firewall that would kick-back or “disappear” any e-mail with “SSP” in it. Apparently some monetary, provocative, or medical scam had used the acronym, and it was thus blocked by a spam filter. Despite pleadings to allow these official e-mails, the IT powers-that-be would not relent. Therefore the recipient begged for a re-title of “SSP” to “SBSP” so the e-mails could get through. So, a four-decade history of common nomenclature was replaced because of IT inflexibility, or alternately, because of some illicit spammer that had an alternate definition of SSP.

Little off topic, but these two essays / presentations on using Web 2.0 technologies for activism and organizing have really inspired me recently:

Here Comes Everybody: Clay Shirky
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2008/02/shirky

and Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism, Ethan Zuckerman
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007877.html

Both presentations are optimistic about the potential of Web 2.0 technologies (or the internet in general) to enable activist groups to coordinate and build movements for social change. I’m partly interested in this for my day job but also to help figure out how a tool like this could be useful for more than research.

As a counterbalance, I tried sifting through last month’s First Monday which devoted an entire issue to “Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0.” Most of the essays were more Kritikal (read: academic) than I expected, approaching Web 2.0 from Foucauldian or Marixst perspectives (ex. “wikis as a tool of our corporate overlords to get proletariats to work for free” etc.) that tweak my wonkish pragmatism.

As for the project itself, I’m almost finished with the base code for the next generation of the project but decided to take a detour to rework the interface (thus the theoretical research) but I am still planning on releasing it on opendebateengine.com this Spring as an open source project. I’ll move all of my theoretical / engine-related blog postings over there, leaving this space for news about space lasers and picking on China hawks.

For anyone active in academic two-person debate, I’ve generated a new version of the popular backfile dump of all arguments and evidence on the site. With over 160 arguments in this update, the backfile checks in at a ridiculous 510 pages so printing it out isn’t an option. I’m working on a new print option for individual argument pages but will keep updating this file more regularly.