It ran along Fourth Avenue from astor place to union square. At its height it housed 48 bookstores. It ran from about the 1880s until night team 60. In the 90 are sensing, all of the stores have shuttered. It has been passed on to my father fred and now to me. Thank you for being supporters and leaders. Tonight we are excited to welcome the power couple composer scientific researcher, doctor kelly whose workers with parasites has been published in numerous scientific journals. Also awardwinning cartoonist known for his daily web comments, saturday morning breakfast club. It is called cereal. It has want the web cartoonists choice award for outstanding single panel comic, multiple times. This duo has been working together for years other podcasts. And they discuss all things nerdy, the culmination of which is this creative and funny collection of comics that examines upandcoming scientific studies including celestial elevators meant to take participants to the moon, no nasa training needed. Theyve also been working on a 1yearold baby. Were thrilled to have cspan book tv here tonight. The event will be available in a few weeks to share with your friends and family were not able to make it. Tonight they will talk and then will open up the mic for questions and they will stick around and sign copies of their book. Without further do, please join me in welcoming kelly and zach to the strained. [applause] hello we are happy youre here, thank you for coming. We wrote a book this is a good audience. The book is about ten emerging technologies that will improve or ruin everything. I study parasites and the other one zach, but we are writing the book we discovered a paper was written in 2011 by a group of undergrads called our talking heads blowing hot air. They looked at the predictive abilities of 26 pundits that rancher mostly right to also mostly wrong. The important thing to us was they also had jobs. I thought we should write a book where we predict future is it doesnt matter if you get it right or not. Then we decided predicting future technology is not particularly how long we think its going to be before theres a space elevator. Whats interesting is what needs to be figured out before that exists. We wrote a book about the technology and major problems we need to overcome and then we talk about how it could make everything more awesome. And also how it could make it horrible to destroy us all. We try to be evenhanded. Well talk to today about one of the chapters and then also one of our notes. We discovered a lot of stuff that was really weird and we couldnt keep it to ourselves. So we decided to share. Youre gonna have to buy the book to find more about this one. So you go,. This is a chapter on ways that you might get to space a little bit more cheaply than our current rocket method and so we explore different technologies. Think theres six or seven paradigms. Some kind of happening in some implausible. For the stock will tell you about a few of them. Thats the rocket. Lets talk about reusable rockets which is just starting to happen. The idea of the rees usable rocket is to make it travel more like plane travel. Imagine every time you wanted to fly you flew over los angeles, jumped to and then the plane exploded in the Pacific Ocean, it would be really cool but expensive. Thats essentially what we do with rockets. Big part of why it cost Something Like 60 million to put something in lower orbit is the way rockets work right now. See you get the most expensive part, the machine itself back you can save money. As these things go, thats not too bad. Spacex was able to do this, they landed part of a rocket. The way space travel works its like three rockets on top of each other. Once youve used up a chunk you dont want to carry the dead weight of the metal. Spacex could take the biggest one and landed on a barge. This is a good first step. Elon musk said the price could go down 50 and if you multiply that by a conversion factor i think they said 30 or 40 which is enormous. Thats whats happening right now. We talk about other technologies were told about by the nasa concept crew including putting a rocket on a giant spring like a pogo stick. To get a little to get it going. We thought a space elevator was exciting. Its essentially three parts, the station we put in the ocean that stays in place. A gigantic cable and a counterweight. And theres an elevator that climbs it. You being to the elevator and it slowly goes up the cable. The people interested estimate they could get stuff into space for about 250 per pound. Thats amazing. Right now costs about 10000 per pound. So 250 a pound would be amazing. The main thing they need to figure out is this middle part. That middle part is kind of important. The problem is in these to be really strong but also cant weigh a lot. It needs to be 62000 miles long. The weight of the cord could yank it down. Somewhat recently there was the discovery of the carbon nanotubes. Its like the width of a hair, very small. Skid were team, together we know the information. So anyway, people manage to get them to be about a foot and a half long. You may remember i said it should be 6,062,000 miles long. It could be Strong Enough but a problem coming up is that economics might be the thing that makes it not happen. For a carbon nanotube you only need about a foot and a half to do just about anything with these tubes on earth. At first it was looking like youre getting the length of these tubes longer and that it flattened out. You could be the person to make it long enough to make it long enough if you can get it moving again. Were doing questions at the end so hold on. The other problem with the middle part is if you can get it long enough, theyre really not very good if theres lightning. So were asking the advanced Concept Group what you do about lightning. Theres a little area in the Pacific Ocean that has never experienced a lightning bolt. So the answer is to put it there and hope the path past tells us what we need to know about the future. The next one is other problems so one other problem were surprised that the scientists have it considered too much is the problem of bringing anything back to earth from space or any paradigm where its chief to get to space. If you do drop something high up from earth is like dropping a nuclear missile. Its even worse because with a Nuclear Warhead it has to go up just right otherwise it will knock itself apart. If you drop tungsten theres not a good way to deflect it. The solution might be worse than the problem. So you might be in a worse position. So thats bad. The other part is probably a permanent quality of life and that theres not a good solution and i dont know how much faith you have in politics but trusting, even if your faith in the American Government there are other governments who would want that cheap access to space. So you might want that base station in the ocean because you might want it to be cosmopolitan be a multinational project because the first nation that has a space elevator has a greatest military advantage and history of ever. Is the ultimate higher grou ground. We dont know the solution. I dont know if anybody does other than some serious laws about what youre allowed to do in space. It might not be that awesome to have cheap access to space. I thought youre going to tell everyone what happened when he cut the cord. What would happen . Anybody have a guess . The other rater falls you could cut it high in the down part would fall. If you have a sling with a rock on if you snipped it you might know no matter where you snippet it goes in a straight line. Thats what would happen with the space elevator. Is bad for the people in the elevator were cool, i dont know. But now you have this ultimate piece of space junk. In a bit of the court attached goes off to the satellite so people are dying but we could lose millions of dollars it is interesting that you can look up what happens if you cut it high. Whiplash due to different forces which means it burns up the cable as a ghost town. I was doing to talk and there is a boy i disappointed when i said probably nothing bad happened. Some of the concerns for cheap access to space, we talk about the idea that you can sling stuff on earth and destroy everyone. But the reusable rockets use a ton of propellants. We were put in a lot more pollution in the air. Thats something we need to decide for okay with. The biggest problem is going to be potentially destroying humanity and if you can trust people that. How could change the world in a sense its obvious. You have cheap access to space. Whats neat as many reasons we dont go to these places is economic like if you are meanspirited economist little paul happen in it is said this is unsustainable. Foreign have of the discretionary budget that year was spent on nasa. Definitely not a return in investment. But if you drop the price by 95 or more it changes everything. Private citizens are not that rich that might change how we feel about things like lunar martian colonies which are very expensive and diverse. If a space elevator was made to work is 10000 to get 1 pound of stuff in space. If the space elevator works you just put everything on the space elevator them build the spaceship in space. We could become a spacefaring species if you could get stuff up there cheap. Thats amazing to imagine. Lets talk about robots killing humanity. We wanted to talk about space instead. Heres one of our favorite notes in the book. This is on how it will end for humanity. Stories about robots interacting with humans. This is a story about weird robots stuff. We came across a company, but uses robots to recognize basis. Is supposed to help the elderly. It keeps trying to escape. Its escape twices like the robot escapes and died on the road. Its kind of tragic. Not ideal is caretaking for humans as is trying to run for its life. The next one is amazing. Rain as an undergrad at harvard university. She was interested in seeing how much undergrads would trust her robots asking permission to enter a door. At least three reasons why they should not be letting robots into the dorms. Apparently privacy is a huge issue. Tourists are interested in getting photos on the inside of harvard dorms. This seems creepy. She said people stick cameras on her window and take pictures. Two, there have been bomb threats recently so theyve gotten emails saying dont let them put into the building. And recently string of thefts. Lots of reasons thats what people in. With a think not to let robots in. Schmidt the robot that she could control sitting at a table. She grew up to one undergrad and say can you let me in the building. 21 of those undergrad said yes. Still a low number, with groups it went up to 71 of the group said yes. So humans are real stupid in groups. The real trick to getting the robots let them it was cookies. The robot came up with a box from a fancy local quick easter and it didnt contain fancy cookies. Snickerdoodles from a local grocery store. If you approach individuals or group with a cookie box you are really likely to get in. Humans will sell each other out for snickerdoodle cookies from the grocery store. Finally, a guy named paul at the Georgia Institute of technology. He wanted to know how much humans would trust robots in an emergency. We had undergrads told they would take a survey. Follow the robot into the room to take the survey and then they release smoke and turned on the fire alarm. The undergrads had a choice. Either follow the robot relieve the way they came in. They know how to get out and were told that almost all decided to follow the robot. That seems crazy. Was nuts after you watch the video. Its a slow moving robot. Nick crawls its way out. So then they had the robot go into the wrong room and circle the wrong room. And then bring them to the correct room. And they still follow the robot from the smoke alarm on a. Lastly, when the robot took the undergrads to room with the lights were turned off and is blocked by couch. It just stood there and then to the undergrads had to be retrieved because they just stayed there. I dont think these are stupid undergrads. Theyre like some of our best and brightest. The point is, we really trust robots. These robots did not look any better than trashcans with a red ribbon around them. So robots dont even need to look that good for us to trust them. If youre robot with a cookie you can pretty much do whatever you want. Theyll just go with it. So thats an example from our book. Thank you for your time and were happy to answer questions about the book, technology and if you raise your hand theres a microphone that will come to you. When you mention carbon nanotubes, is that the filaments and you leave it together into a thicker strand . Is it just one nanotube. If i can nerd out a little bit, theres a quantity called specific strength. Its kinda divided by density but you want Something Like supermans hair way very little and be quite strong. Carbon nanotubes just hit the spot of having the strength but that aside, the moment you start weaving them youre increasing the likelihood of a breakpoint. Any breakpoint is bad. The show is over. If you have a visual of what a carbon nanotube is but little hexagons. If youre missing just one you have a problem. An easy thing. Sounds impossible, but many technologies that meet crazy levels of quality. They all have markets for small improvements. Nobody needs 10 feet of that molecule. You ended with ten. How many did you start with . We started with 50 this was started writing it became clear we went to anything better than may be a wikipedia article on each ones. So there was turned 25 and by the time we finish writing a couple of chapters it became clear ten was the right number and how wordy we are. We tried to find technologies where they werent so new the only thing less was to figure out if it was details then we waited things out the last chapter of our book is a graveyard we spent a month of researching so quantum computing ended up being too complicated to do in a way that was accurate enough. The longest chapter in the book is like 10000 words. We actually wrote about two thirds of it. Was like no jokes we eventually felt like we had better do it properly or not do it. Thats one thats in the graveyard. Its not the only stuff we drop to the book but it was an argument we want to talk about. Stuff had to fit a certain length and be explainable. It also had be something where interested in talking about for month. We mostly picked about ten that we thought were fun that would be too repetitive. On panels you have to allude to kelly disapproving of some of your jokes. Give examples of comics that have been vetoed by kelly. Who told you she has veto power . Of the one she vetoes are my favorite ones to do. He does do them anyway. The best example is the on lubricated single use molecules. I still dont get it, but. Single use molecules. Com. Some people have busy lives. Its interesting. Ive met people who expect me to be super grumpy because i look grumpy on his comics. But im not grumpy which neither our children. How far out are you scrambling every time, comes out or do you have like a months worth. Right this second i have enough to get us through the bookstore but its not easy with kids so that could be a little bit unusual which of these technologies do you think people could script the most . I just wanted to add to that and we talk about this in the book, you can go anywhere for no energy which from a weapons standpoint is a little freaky of the moon to earth it takes more energy than the something from the moon to mars to earth. They dont even have enough to hold themselves so you get enough traction you can actually on a motorcycle which is so cool, but so, what i was going to say i think we have the brain computer interfaces which is the freakiest technology for a couple of reasons like number one, it in an extent you make humans unrecognizable which is a little upsetting there is a weird thing about the interface which is you are basically offloading the last vestige of privacy where youre allowed to pick whatever you want. At the moment the ability to interface you are giving up that last spot and its a little more on them and they matter because the first person that gets one of these to work as an economic advantage that is rather severe. You can get to the situation people have to use it and its already happening in academia they will admit to using brain enhancing drugs, so you already get this market for the brain alteration and we have a nice interface. Does anyone understand what a brain computer interface is . Just a followup to what you said, would you argue that computers and cell phones are not changing how we are and we dont change the same forces . I am kind of skeptical about how much different this stuff makes to the fundamental human process. The way that i would say it is you could take a human being from 100,000 years ago and you wouldnt know them but a brain interface person has different qualities and im just talking about the beginning. Maybe fundamentally altering the human brain process in ways that are more foreign to us than having a thousand friends on facebook. If you follow this technology out to the extent the researchers imagine it will get tocome you get to the point that all our shared with one another. So where do you see the brain computer interface going and the answer that i expected was they will have the ability to move ananyone that we give them. It would have been one big organism and first i wonder how many people think thats so then i asked the other people he interviewed is that something everyone talks about and maybe one day we can load all of our brains into one big cloud and the one big organism. I think that is horrible. Marriages and societies work because that isnt happening and he agreed. He said it could be bad like you could be sitting there watching tv thinking i want to divorce my wife and she would know that in continuously and that would be bad. But he made a good point likes what would that mean for humanity . Would it be Something Different than before, so if we ever get to that point, then weve gone way beyond what its like to have privacy concerns and stuff like that. Something just totally different humans at that point so we will have to wait to see if that is going to happen. Kind of related but separate humans from a years ago being similar, do you think that is also true to talk about how trusting we are both robots now do you think i would have been different to counter Something Like that 100 years ago in the recent development . You mean like trusted technology . The way they trusted them to guide them out of the room and such. I consider the two forces and if you look at the fiction there is a sort of general trusted progress and that now seems naive but on the other hand we are more in touch with computers over time. It is flattering to humans like in order to kill they have to have a time machine and exoskeleton and it turns out like a trashcan with cookies is all you need so we conceive of ourselves being more t