Weirdness Watch — Meme Alert!

Syracuse University does it by changing the shape of a bacterial protein by firing carefully controlled bursts of laser light at it. A second burst restores its original shape. Since the two shapes have different optical properties they can be used to read and write data. The Syracuse team is currently trying to build a computer memory containing millions of these bits. One problem that has already been identified and solved is that the laser light that ‘reads’ the shape of the molecule also changes its shape and therefore the data that was read. This difficulty was overcome by using one laser to register the information and a second one to reset the molecule to its pre-reading state based on the information gathered by the first laser. Though problems remain in rapidly and accurately directing the laser beams, the researchers expect to have a memory device based on this technology in two years.

The JPL group, as reported in Science, also use lasers with molecular memory devices, but use electrons rather than molecular shapes to encode information. Their proposed device would be made from polymers - identical organic molecules arranged in chains - which would contain electrons. The electrons would jump from one subunit to the next when hit with laser light. By letting the presence of an electron represent a ‘one’ and its absence a ‘zero’, each polymer would act as a string of data bits. Though difficult to create, the researchers point out that it could be built with existing technology. These devices should also be ideal for inclusion in neural network computers which function similarly to our brains. This is the kind of solid research on which we base our extropic visions and projections. We will keep you informed of continuing breakthroughs as we go on and speculate about its future applications.

Warning! A particularly vicious meme has been spotted circulating through the Bible Belt. Look out for this one - the turn of the century will bring more of its type, as millennium fever strikes.

Wierdness Watch - Meme Alert!

by Mark E. Potts

This contribution to EXTROPY’s ‘Wierdness Watch’ comes partly from my own experiences. Early in 1988 an especially virulent ‘meme epidemic’ swept through parts of the Christian community. One of its main vectors was a retired NASA engineer from Little Rock, Arkansas, named Edgar Whisenant. Mr. Whisenant published a book claiming that the ‘Rapture of the Church’ would occur on the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah in September, 1988.

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During August 25-27, Mr. Whisenant was lecturing in a rented room at the Tulsa Convention Center, and appeared as a guest on a local radio talkshow. I listened to his demented prattle for a few minutes, then called in to correct some of the patent errors he was making. He based a good deal of his prediction on the ‘prophecies’ in the Book of Daniel, but I pointed out that the Jews themselves do not consider the Book of Daniel prophetic; rather, they classify it as one of the ‘writings’, along with the books of Job, Esther, Ezra, etc. If they say their own book is not prophecy, who are we to gainsay them? Moreover, modern Jewish scholarship, such as the Encyclopedia Judaica, demonstrates that Daniel is full of mistakes and anachronisms, indicating post-Babylonian (and thus spurious) origins.

Needless to say, this was like news from Mars to Mr. Whisenant. But it failed to shut him up. On Saturday, August 27, I went to hear his final lecture in Tulsa, and was amazed to see how many adults in the audience were being infected by this self-destructive, falsifiable meme. I tried to talk some sense into a few of them, but they became hateful. The True Believers were buying literal armloads of Mr. Whisenant’s book to spread the warning.

To suggest just how serious this epidemic was to become, I soon thereafter heard some stories from several sources that True Believers were pulling their children from school, putting their pets to sleep, charging their credit cards to the limit, and even committing suicide. One of my friends told me that his aunt had handed him her car title and bank account in anticipation that she would be taken while her sinful nephew would be left behind. (Now, he jokes, he’s sorry the Rapture didn’t actually happen.)

One can only dread what would happen if such a meme were to sweep through, say, the crew of a nuclear submarine. ‘Brethren, let’s fire the missiles to speed the Lord’s return!’ The nuclear war meme is tightly bound to the Rapture meme in the minds of many Christians. An informal case study of this linkage is A. G. Mojtabai’s book, Blessed Assurance: At Home with the Bomb in Amarillo, Texas. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986).

If so many people in our own country are that childlike (in a pejorative sense), how can we possibly expect them to deal with changes in human existence as profound as downloading and a-biolysis?

(Editors’ note: We’d like to thank Mark Potts, one of our readers from Tulsa, Oklahoma, for volunteering this material - and for fighting the good fight against irrational memes. We encourage all of our readers to do the same.)

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