And the World Changed...

1979

• Apple Computer is incorporated, and manufactures the first 'personal computers'. Over the next five years, Mr. Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates accidentally annihilate all pragmatic motivation for converting the U.S. from the English system of measurement to the metric system of measurement. [George Fisher's explanation]

1995

• HTML is invented, immediately leading to the creation of the Internet on top of a communications network originally designed to function after a limited nuclear war. The social shock is so severe it will a priori take at least three generations to fully adapt to this technology. The public education system as we know it accelerates its (slow) decline.

Near Now

• Abstract of Ezra Tashizin's M.S.(?) thesis in philosophy. [©1999] I cannot write the body of this thesis convincingly. First, I do not have the philosophical expertise required. As if this was not enough, Ezra Tashizin has a very different belief system than mine.
  • Please email me if you think you can write an early draft of the body of this thesis. If I find the results sufficiently close in spirit to what I'm fantasizing, I will post it here. (Of course, the copyright belongs with the original author -- and I will remove my posting if the author so requests.) Multiple early drafts are welcome. READ THE ABSTRACT: I will not accept candidates for early drafts that violate the abstract's scope, do not clearly give due care to the issues, or that are identifiably of a different philosophy or religion than Ezra Tashizin's. Small pieces are fine (this thesis is fairly long...)
  • The college/university is subject to literary revision. I need one based in California, that could actually accept this as a thesis for a degree. Diploma mills are unacceptable. Informed opinions about the suitability of various colleges and universities are welcome; please email me with your opinion, and a "concise" explanation of the correctness of your opinion.
    • Opinion count: no opinions received and analyzed yet.
  • If you can actually judge whether this is a Master's or a Doctoral thesis, please email me with your opinion, along with a "concise" explanation of why your opinion is correct. If I get sufficiently many opinions, I will use them in making an informed revision.
    • Opinion count: M.S. 0, Ph.D. 0

Ezra Tashizin's Thesis + 9 years

• Luke Isaiah O'Kohr takes an Introduction to Epistemology class in California. The textbook is Ezra Tashizin's thesis.

Somewhen before Ezra Tashizin's Thesis + 19 years

• Red China attempts to conquer Taiwan militarily. [I have no idea whether Red China succeeds or fails]. In retaliation for U.S. defense of Taiwan, Red China and/or North Korea target various key areas in the states of Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, and Nevada with ICBM's.
  • The U.S. retaliates by outright annihilating key military bases in Red China and North Korea with FAE strikes, considering these to be just as destructive as nuclear weapons -- and having more favorable political consequences.
  • In the following decade, the electric grid in California, Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada is reconstructed with experimental nuclear-hardened technologies. At least one hundred universities must be completely recreated in California, Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada; these reconstructed universities are also hardened against both nuclear and conventional warfare with experimental technologies. The state of Washington does not use these experimental technologies when reconstructing. The phone network has a similar reconstruction pattern (experimental hardening against nuclear and conventional warfare in California, Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada, no experimental technology in Washington).

Ezra Tashizin's Thesis + 19 years

• The O'Kohr Foundation is founded in California. This foundation is dedicated to those whose severely incapacitating psychological deviancies defy all known conventional treatments.

Ezra Tashizin's Thesis + 21 years

• Reuters blunders across indirect evidence that someone admitted to the O'Kohr Foundation, when it was opened, is now holding a 4.0 GPA as a freshman in Electrical Engineering at Wichita. This is suppressed because the fact the admission occurred is protected by U.S. Federal law.

Ezra Tashizin's Thesis + 27 years

• Russia (and closely allied Slavic nations) complete their transition to a resource-based economy (started in 1999/2000). All Slavic currencies cease to legally exist. Since no Slavic currency has been printed or minted for the past decade, this is a minor legislative cleanup. Hard foreign currency has been used mainly for international trade for at least five years. The Slavic implementation of a regulated capitalist economy flourishes, freed of the distortions imposed both by the quest for profit, and by central planning of the economy.
• The former freshman is now working on his M.S. at UCLA. His unofficial (as in fringe science) project gets the attention of M'yashin B'Torah, an ultraconservative Jew who is fearful that Daniel's Seventieth Week is about to begin.
  • About six months later, this GTA's "observer sensor network" provides the definitive, replicable, objective evidence required to convince the Israeli Prime Minister to renege on his plans to sign the first Mideast peace treaty to have a chance, ever.
  • The Six Minutes War ensues. After this, all hostile Arabic Moslem countries are now conquered by Israel. While Israel was the defender in the Six Minutes War, it seemed unreasonable to the Knesset to formally expand Israel's borders. Instead, Israel tries to reconstitute the conquered nations with more favorable governments, and creates an area organization: JHVH's Domain. [Yes, this reorganization takes at least several years, possibly a decade.]

JHVH's Domain + 2 years

• One family is so impressed by the effectiveness of the O'Kohr Foundation's mental discipline treatment for their 14-year-old with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD], that they tried it on two younger siblings that were also affected. It worked equally well. [Ritalin had recently failed on the 14-year-old because of his age.]
  • The objective of the O'Kohr Foundation's mental discipline treatment for ADHD is to teach the affected person to coordinate his or her multiple attention tracks. At least, that is the rationale for this highly unorthodox treatment methodology.
    • It turns out that Henschle's gyri are the brain's attention center...and that a medical abstract in a Cambridge CD-ROM database [in or before 1997] documented that prenatal thyroid hormone resistance was fairly reliable at inducing ADHD, with a significant chance of physically duplicating the Henschle's gyri in women as well as men. (Of course, my extrapolation of this is highly unconventional, and is neither medical nor psychiatric advice! I'm certain that if you have access to the CD-ROM database in question, you can find this abstract: I made a hard-copy printout once. I think I got it by querying the Cambridge Life Sciences database on "Attention Deficit Disorder".)
  • The mental discipline treatment's objective is to enable above-normal functioning that relies on ADHD. That is, treating ADHD pharmacologically becomes a medication-induced mental disability!
  • The family proceeds to Web-publish the O'Kohr Foundation's mental discipline treatment for ADHD, as explained for their child's instance. The medical establishment backlash is horrendous. After the dust settles, the O'Kohr treatment paradigm is accepted as generally effective (and the advisable first treatment) by the State Boards of Health in California, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona -- in defiance of the Federal agencies' denial of this.

JHVH's Domain + 7 years

• Fourth Reich Enterprises incorporates in a nation that is corporate-state friendly. Fourth Reich Enterprises immediately establishes diplomatic relations with JHVH's Domain. Their corporate charter definitely favors positive eugenics, biotechnology, and environmental augmentation -- and is anti-racist with a vengeance....

JHVH's Domain + 10 years

• Slavic medical care attains First World effectiveness. The Slavic nations are a functional international political unit, known as the Slav EconZone. Areas bordering the Slav EconZone start exploiting the easy access to preventive vaccinations.

JHVH's Domain + 13 years

• In an effort to deal with a particularly terrorist sect of anti-genetic engineering environmentalists (which is coincidentally almost entirely Sino-African), the FBI initiates a sweep targeting Sino-African U.S. citizens. This sect has managed to totally shut down three different farms, in the span of three hours with FAE explosives, four days before the sweep starts. These farms were used to breed infertile corn, wheat, and rice (respectively) by the corporation that currently has licensed (or holds) this biotechnology patent (developed in 1999-2000 by Monsanto).
  • I know this doesn't comply with the U.S. Constitution. Neither did the McCarthyist hunt for Communists in the 1950's, nor the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans in detention camps in WWII. "There is nothing new under the sun." It should be noted that the state of war did impair the application of the U.S. Constitution in WWII -- but there is officially no such state of war at the time of this incident.
  • Very early in the sweep, a critical person for one of the electric utilities placed a call to his supervisor i.e. CEO -- and left his mobile phone software-locked on. His CEO was able to provide a live feed of the arrest warrant being read to this person -- immediately documenting that the warrant was unConstitutional.
  • Since the effective implementation of this warrant would shut down most public utilities, and many county governments, the state police immediately start to shut down the FBI arrest attempt. The U.S. President construes the effects of the warrant as an act of war against the United States -- making serving the warrant treason, and equally the authorization of the warrant. The War Powers Act is invoked; the U.S. Army is deployed to assist the state police in shutting down the FBI arrest attempt. Chaos ensues, but the military eventually succeeds.
  • The U.S. Congress appoints a task force to analyze how this social disaster happened, and how to prevent it. The task force determines that due to severe cultural divergence, the Second American Civil War has become a significant possibility. They estimate that if this direct conflict between state and federal law enforcement is not prevented, the United States could fragment into between four and six different nations. Probable boundaries for these fragment-nations are determined, based on infrastructure and societal relations.
  • More detailed analysis shows, however, that the strains that could trigger the American Civil War are centralized in California/Oregon/Nevada/Arizona. The question of whether the Second American Civil War could be prevented by a solution similar to the U.K.'s departure from India (and its less-successful mirrors, 1999+ East Timor from Indonesia and Kosovo+Montenegro from Serbia) is considered.
  • Scientia is created by a series of subtle legislative maneuvers spanning several years. The intent is to controllably 'reverse-colonize' California, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona. National-level institutions are gradually replaced over a span of several years (by analogy with 2000-Ecuador). The U.S. Federal District court (after gerrymandering) for California, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona becomes the Scientian Supreme Court. Default citizenship in Scientia is still U.S., rather than Scientian. Scientia's Constitution evades the question of forcing citizenship shifts on the masses by defining the rights of U.S. citizens very broadly. [In particular, two-thirds of Scientia's House and Senate each must be U.S. citizens. These must use virtual conferencing, because some physically must be at Washington D.C. .... It is quite possible for a bill to die in the U.S. Congress but pass the Scientian Congress.] Scientian citizenship cannot be inherited, and requires passing a series of highly unethical exams modeled after even more unethical 1960's psychological experiments. [The main improvement is that the applicant for Scientian citizenship is adequately informed of the nature of the exams.]

Scientia + 7 years

• The Zen Scanner is invented in California. Formally known by a highly technical name, the Zen Scanner uses advances in algorithmic power, quantum mechanics, and general relativity to do real-time extrapolations of space-time. Quantum mechanics requires being able to effectively solve the differential equations of physics in spacelike directions, as does magnetism in General Relativity. The Zen Scanner is an FTL scanner -- as such, it is soundly rejected by most of the scientific community as a hoax. Notable exceptions are Scientia, JHVH's Domain, and the Slav EconZone.

Scientia + 9 years

• A combined theoretical research effort by Scientia, JHVH's Domain, and the Slav EconZone extrapolates a warp drive from the technical blueprints of the Zen Scanner, under the assumption of an FTL ether. Each has a slightly different extrapolation....

Scientia + 10 years

• It proves impossible to conceal the starcraft construction projects of Scientia, JHVH's Domain, or the Slav EconZone. The EU, Red China, and India attempt to use their well-developed industrial espionage networks to acquire the stardrive plans. On the other hand, the United States spontaneously spawns over twenty speculative IPOs out to reverse-engineer the stardrive plans.
  • After all, as former CIA Director James Woolsey put it regarding the 1994 Echelon incident around March 20, 2000: "True, in a handful of areas European technology surpasses American, but, to say this as gently as I can, the number of such areas is very, very, very small. Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing." It is much easier for America to reinvent technology than to espionage it....
  • In contrast, many Red Chinese and Indian corporations continue to be on the U.S. EAR 774 export-control blacklist for their remarkable ability to extract restricted technology out of anything more advanced than a paperclip.
  • The EU proves too confident of what they think 'science' is, and cannot quickly fathom the design plans. Red China and India, being accustomed to blending science and religion, have an easier time -- after they recover from the initial shock that Scientia, the Slav EconZone, and JHVH's Domain are using very different blueprints for the interface between the Zen Scanner and the warp drive.

Scientia + 11 years

• Two U.S.-based IPOs figure out how to build a warp-FTL "radio/TV", and a compact artificial gravity generator -- in spite of not reinventing the warp drive. This does not enhance the credibility of either the Zen Scanner or its corresponding warp drive.

Scientia + 12 years

• The race to explore nearby star systems begins. The initial entrants are Scientia, JHVH's Domain, the Slav EconZone, India, and Red China. The scientific paradigm shock is incredible.
• Initial design speculations for industrial, and military, bases on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are considered. These assume the use of an artificial gravity generator to render the base at near-Earth gravity.

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