Starting a Substack: On the Machine Frontier

This is the Substack link. 

Here's what I mean by the Machine Frontier, a concept that was central to my book on technological catastrophes, Inviting Disaster.

An English dictionary of 1721 defined frontier as “the Limits or Borders of a Country or Province.” In the US, the word came to mean an unsettled wilderness that was ripe for exploitation by restless – sometimes reckless – entrepreneurs.

America's geographical western frontier has long vanished, but I see similar dynamics along the machine frontier: a mix of danger and opportunity that offers innovators new, sometimes dramatic, gains. But building out such niches brings a higher risk of error, since safe and reliable methods have not been established.

My posts, then, will highlight cases where new tech needed new thinking. 

Consider what happened in January 1969 at the Hungarian Carbonic Acid Producing Company, at Répcelak, Hungary. The company was in the business of removing CO2 from natural gas and selling it. The liquid was stored in small cylinders as well as in four big storage tanks, cooled by ammonia refrigeration. The gas arrived at the plant with traces of water in it that had to be removed. On occasion this stray water caused gauges, fittings, level indicators, and even safety valves to freeze shut. But the plant kept running.

On December 31, 1968, the plant shut down with the indicators showing at least twenty tons of liquid COz in each tank. The plant opened again late on the night of January 1. Running short of cylinders to store the liquid CO2, operators directed the flow into storage tank C, which was supposed to have plenty of capacity. About a half hour later tank C exploded, and its fragments blew apart tank D.

The twin explosions killed four people nearby and ripped tank A from its foundation bolts, tearing a hole about a foot across. In escaping furiously through the new opening, the pressurized, liquid COz acted like a rocket propellant. Tank A took off under the thrust, crashing through a wall into the plant laboratory, dumping out tons of liquid CO2 across the floor, and instantly freezing five people where they stood.

The deluge left the room at a temperature of -108°F, starved of breathable air, and covered with a thick layer of dry ice.

While popular history tends to focus on seemingly overnight successes, over the long haul the greatest rewards on the machine frontier will go to innovators who proceed on solid facts and exhaustive testing. When experiments are unsatisfactory, they correct and move forward. If that means scrapping a design and starting over with a clean sheet, that's what they do.

One use for AI: Keeping an eye out for forestry hazards

I visited my brothers' tree farm in Missouri last week, in time to help clear storm damage by operating their Cat skidsteer. Storm: as in a likely F1 tornado in early May that toppled many dozens of big trees on their property. First priority was to open the roads, followed by salvaging hardwood saw logs. 

This is me climbing into the cab after chaining a log onto the road, taking care not to trip on the grapple. Tripping here would be a good way to break a leg. 

Here's how their road looked before being fully cleared: A tangle similar to what big woods loggers called "slash." The biggest logs of white oak and walnut were close to three feet in diameter, disease-free and more than 150 years old. 

But logs weighing a ton or two aren't easy to salvage in this location. This was a steep hillside, dense with brush and rock outcrops. The cut log below reflects the slope angle. 

Note the tangled nature of the downed trees. My brothers have years of experience with chain saws and their risks, but commented that clearing trees in this setting poses a bigger danger than the saws themselves. And it can be hard to monitor those dangers, which make logging one of the highest-injury jobs in the country.

Consider that when cutting a log, the operator at the Stihl is watching the saw-cut closely, wary of several things. Often a fallen log requires an undercut, bringing the bar close to chain-damaging rocks. More pressing: is the log under a force that will send something rolling or flying when cut? Will it settle and bind the bar, or worse, catch the tip of the bar, flipping the saw backward?  

Given the need to pay attention at close range, it can be hard to see what might threaten from above or from a few yards to the side. 

Overwatch could be a useful job for an AI- and LIDAR-equipped phone once those are capable of real-time visual processing. Such a tripod-mounted phone could warn about initial shifting of what loggers call a widow-maker, a broken tree that's hung up on a standing tree, and ready to fall during logging operations. With knowledge of tree physics, it could warn that a branch has come under terrific compression and will lash out when cut. 

A person could do this job, but in my limited experience with small-scale logging, there's so much to do that nobody's available to do the overwatch job, however important. 

Mistake-Makers, Unite!

Another reminder to join the Mistake-makers’ club ! 

Thinking back of mishaps in my family, it strikes me that the most dangerous place for us has been the countryside, rather than around the home or on the highway. Example: Missouri has its share of venomous snakes: both my mom and dad were bitten by copperheads. 

As a kid visiting my grandparents' farm I foolishly wanted to see what the blades of the PTO-driven sickle bar mower felt like, and that sent me to the doctor to put back part of my fingertip. Here's what a rear-mounted sickle bar looks like: wicked!

As a teenager, my middle brother was driving an old style nose-wheel tractor on our grandparents’ farm and ran over a hay bale with a rear wheel, which caused the tractor to tilt and balance on the front gear and one rear wheel for a heart-stopping moment. It landed upright and life went on. Here’s what that 1954 tractor looked like:

My dad rolled our Case backhoe on a steep hill when one side of the rear brakes failed- the machine had a ROPS cab and that saved him. A backhoe is extremely useful around a farm but the big steel boom and dipper on the back gives it high center of gravity ... which makes it tippy.

My most recent close call happened at my brothers’ farm. We had been piling up old logs and branches from the river for burning. The piles were about twelve feet high and sixty feet across. Starting the burn was no problem, with enough diesel fuel and a propane torch. Here's a brother at work. 

I volunteered to tend the pile from upwind, using our Cat track-mounted skid steer. I should have used our backhoe. A backhoe is a good-sized machine, so that puts the front-mounted bucket a good ten feet from the operator’s seat. 

A skid steer puts the operator much closer - these machines have a short wheelbase and a small bucket, so driving forward to shove unburned logs into the pile puts the operator face to face with the log heap. There’s no safety margin, given how close the bucket is to the operator. Here's the farm's second skid-steer to show its compact form factor. I'm balancing (not lifting) a glue-lam footbridge beam. 

Giving my attention to the top of the burn pile, I didn’t notice one four-inch diameter log pointed at me, the end of which was shaped like a blunt spear. As I drove forward, it punched through the windscreen and rammed the seat support, stopping a few inches from my right leg. A few inches over, and that would have not been an easy injury for a surgeon to solve … 

What almost happened that day is one more reason I'm not a believer in Murphy's Law. But I am a believer in learning from one's own mistakes. 

Coping with Change in Documentary-World

This might be mildly amusing ...     

When in 2003 I started doing commentaries for History Channel and National Geographic Channel, I greatly enjoyed traveling to New York, Toronto, Boston, and LA, where I met up with a director and a crew handling sound, video, and logistics. Usually there was a "black car" for pickup at the airport. This from the Inviting Disaster series:

The fun continued through the History Channel's "Titanic at 100" show,  my high point of seeing quality production in action. With 3D magic the Lone Wolf crew converted a surplus hangar in Maine to a parking spot for the wrecked Titanic, if it were to be hauled up from the deeps. I'm the tiny person on the left. 

But now it's 2024 and documentary TV has lost a lot of sponsors. They've become earnestly budget-minded. 

NHK, the Japanese equivalent of PBS, interviewed me on Zoom last year for their series "The Error," so I didn't get to travel any further than a table in my office. I don't have a wall-sized bookshelf of weighty volumes for the Expert's Background, so I settled for a wall and a poster. 

This photo is from my attempt to illustrate how frantic the situation was among technicians at Three Mile Island Unit 2, about 4:00 AM the day of the core meltdown. Not sure how well it translated to the Japanese audience ...

Luckier Still: More recollections of the writing life

Continuing the previous post, thinking of memorable times on the job and while researching a story:

• During an expediter run on a construction job in 1980, I was assigned to make a stop at a dynamite wholesaler. I left with my VW Rabbit carrying a hundred pounds of DuPont Tovex, sporting a nifty triangular sign on my rear window: DANGER - HIGH EXPLOSIVES - KEEP BACK 300 FEET;
• Accompanied an Austin police officer on a weekend-night shift. When he went into a house to check on a domestic dispute, he pointed to his shotgun and said "If there's trouble, feel free to use this;"
• Spent a morning with Moulton Taylor, inventor of the first practical flying car;
• Had a lengthy talk with Harrison Ford about his time in helicopters; 
• Climbed a tower crane during a construction-machinery trade show in Houston;
• Jumped out of a helicopter during water-rescue practice with the LA County Fire Department;
• Attended a reunion of Vietnam-era pilots who flew for the CIA front company, Air America;
• From Henry Kaiser's key man Clay Bedford, I heard how the shipyard at Richmond, California, built a 9.000-ton Liberty ship in less than five days;
• Joined an afternoon of counterfeit-product raids with a private detective, sheriff deputies, and lawyers from the Disney Corp;
• While doing stonemasonry, learned that hitting a big slab of limestone with a sledgehammer makes a very loud "bong", lasting less time than striking a brass bell but about as loud (This requires the slab to be perched atop other rocks, so the vibrations aren't dampened);
• "Rode the block" from the top of a Kansas oil rig, but declined the crew's invitation to join in heaving chain around a spinning drill pipe (this, after seeing one roughneck's mangled hand);
• Learned how to drag oak logs up a hillside with a choker cable and a winch;
• Spent many happy hours running a Case backhoe; 
• Rode with archaeologists in a Bell 206 helicopter doing fieldwork above the Arctic Circle; and
• Made a teeth-clenching drive up a New Mexico mountain hauling a trailer-mounted air compressor and drilling equipment:
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Lucky, Lucky: The joys of feature writing

These are frustrating times for nonfiction writers, between AI competition and advertising's massive shift from print to search engines, streaming, and social media. Many magazines no longer have the budget for long-form articles requiring lots of research and travel. 

Nonetheless! After 44 years of nonfiction writing, and well over a hundred articles and columns, I feel lucky to have started work before the Internet. With all the research and travel needed, it kept me in student-mode throughout.  

It's a time when the uber-wealthy are paying a lot for "experiential" events, like playing a bit part in a movie, hunting for treasure, or climbing Mount Everest along with a hundred others seeking that killer photo atop the summit.  

Meanwhile, feature writers on a beat like mine are paid to go into places not otherwise open to the public, and report back. Over the years I was allowed into locations including these: 

• To the top of a Texas radio tower under construction;
• Into a nitroglycerin factory in Missouri;
• Into the flight deck of the B-2 Stealth bomber, followed by time in the simulator that the pilots use;
• Ride on a training flight with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers;
• Drop into a deep tunnel under Brooklyn, to watch workers scale rock off the chamber's ceiling after a blast; 
• Ride on a helicopter doing maintenance on live, high-voltage transmission lines in Pennsylvania;
• Accompany firefighters into a burning trailer;
• Go into the Ohio State Prison to interview a safecracker;
• Go into Jet Propulsion Lab at 2 am to watch a transmission to the Voyager 2 spacecraft; 
• Spend days aboard an offshore drilling ship, 120 miles off Louisiana;
• Go into Cheyenne Mountain's "battle cab" command center;
• and to hear the terse command from my guide in the wreckage of the World Trade Center's Customs House: "If I say it's time to get out, just follow me!" (And good advice it was - a section we had visited collapsed a day later)

OpenAI's Chatbot on Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin"

 

I'm a fan of this classic silent movie, and wondered what the computer banks behind OpenAI might say about it. My prompt to the ChatbotGPT: "Analyze the significance of the motion picture Battleship Potemkin to Russians under the Putin regime"

Chatbot's answer: 

The motion picture "Battleship Potemkin" holds significant significance in Russia under the Putin regime in 2022 due to its portrayal of revolutionary ideals and the struggle against oppression. In a time when political opposition is heavily suppressed and the government exercises strict control over media and information, the film's message of rebellion and resistance resonates with those who seek change and freedom.

Furthermore, the film's depiction of the 1905 mutiny on the Potemkin serves as a reminder of the power of the people to rise up against injustice. This message is particularly relevant in a country where corruption and human rights violations are widespread, and where the government often ignores the voices and needs of its citizens.

Additionally, "Battleship Potemkin" serves as a reminder of Russia's rich cultural and artistic history, and its ability to produce powerful and impactful works that continue to inspire and inspire generations. In a time when the government often promotes a narrow, nationalist narrative, the film serves as a counterpoint and a reminder of the country's diversity and creativity.

Overall, "Battleship Potemkin" holds significant significance in Russia under the Putin regime in 2022 due to its portrayal of revolutionary ideals, its reminder of the power of the people, and its celebration of Russia's rich cultural and artistic heritage.