My Views On Topics of Interest to Me

Outsourcing - February 27, 2004
The number of jobs that have left the United States over the last 36 months in order to boost corporate profits by reducing the costs associated with direct labor are stunning. Literally millions of manufacturing jobs have gone away - almost certainly forever, in most cases. And in some cases, this is a pretty natural thing; lower value added work has always flowed from the United States to countries with less developed economies, and provide opportunities for those who will work for less money. Essentially, when a person has NO money, even a fraction of the money paid to US workers looks pretty good, and so companies tend to move their work to those countries that offer that lower cost structure. This cycle has repeated itself several times in this country, as we have moved from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy to a service economy to an information or knowledge based economy. However, two elements have fundamentally changed that make this continuing evolution especially onerous for the United States.
First of all, the interval of time between these major changes is collapsing. It used to take hundreds of years to move between major economic models. For example, to go from agriculture to industry as an economic base took about two hundred years. More recent shifts economic foundations have taken mere decades, and now the interval is only years. The ability of the American workforce - or any other workforce - to adapt to such sweeping change is stretched to the limit. Reinventing one's self through retraining and starting over again in a new field becomes more difficult with age. Yet as these shifts occur more frequently, that reinvention is more and more likely to be needed for each year of work experience.
Secondly, the population of the United States, like any population, is a distribution of more and less intelligent, more and less motivated, and more and less skilled people. The majority of the population will not be able to migrate to dramatically more sophisticated jobs before their expected retirement age, and this means that they are likely to lose their jobs as corporations continue to outsource their work.
Most blue-collar manufacturing jobs are already gone. Interestingly, the area experiencing the most significant growth in outsourcing these days is Information Technology. In the US, where the Gross Domestic Product is $35,000 per capita, and unemployment stands at 5.8%, a typical programmer's salary is $70,000. In India, where the majority of such jobs are being relocated, the Gross Domestic Product per capita is $480, the unemployment rate is 8.8%, and the average wage of a programmer with similar skills is $8,000. By the way, the population of India is many times that of the United States, and a person making $11,000 per year in India is making 22 times the annual per capita income! So how many jobs are leaving the US and headed overseas? Current projections - See Wired Magazine's February 04 issue - are that between now and 2015, we will lose 1.6 million clerical and admin jobs, 472,632 Information Systems jobs, 348,028 professional jobs, 288,281 management jobs, 226,564 sales jobs, 184,347 jobs in architecture, and 141,051 jobs in other fields.
I don't pretend to have a solution for this problem all worked out. I believe there is a solution though, and it has perhaps more to do with innovation and technology than anything else. I believe that we must put the insights, innovativeness, and energies of our best minds into the development and deployment of new technologies. I believe that fields such as nanotechnology and information science (especially artificial intelligence powered by higher-order mathematics) can provide opportunities to break completely new ground. However, we must use our world-renowned American ingenuity to make these new technologies usable by our current woirkforce, and effective deploy it at their level.
In the same ways that computers were basically impossible for the "commoner" to use before Apple's Macintosh and Microsoft's Windows operating systems were developed, the fields of nanotechnology and AI are out of the reach of even educated Information Technology people in the United States today. We need to change that, and soon. If we don't, we will find that a major part of our existing population has been left behind in terms of their ability to sustain their current standard of living, and our national resources will be completely diluted into a global economy. The average American will live at the same - extremely diminished - quality of life as the average world citizen.

Knowledge Creation - March 2, 2004
Here's a bit of a mind-stretcher, and I think this concept fits pretty well with some of my notions about quantum physics and information systems (see article referenced in �My Beliefs About the Nature of Our Universe� section of this site).

In an article entitled �Knowledge Creation: The Quest for Questions� by Bruce LaDuke in the January-February Issue of The Futurist, this hypothesis is developed around the role of the knowledge worker:

I work for a business, and in order for my efforts to be profitable for that business, I must learn to work with knowledge of that business and its products. The whole scenario makes sense, except for the fact that this knowledge worker is only one aspect of business and is not the most important. The more important role of the knowledge creator has not been realized or mastered. The Information Age is one of collecting knowledge and making it available to the masses (publishing). With the advent of computers and networks, society may have more knowledge and sophisticated electronic tools to manage this knowledge, but with all this sophistication, the paradigm continues to be about simply collecting and publishing/retrieving knowledge.
What about our effectiveness in producing NEW knowledge? Ideas are not accidental. Individuals usually follow a defined and predictable path that they do not have knowledge of. I deas can be purposed. The next quantum leap and new era of accomplishment for mankind is bound up in the move from emphasizing knowledge workers to emphasizing knowledge workers IN PARTNERSHIP WITH KNOWLEDGE CREATORS. While the knowledge worker works with existing knowledge, the knowledge creator works with knowledge that does not yet exist. This process absorbs concepts like creativity, creative problem-solving methods, innovation, genius, and knowledge creation.
A question alone is a miniscule indication of the absence of knowledge, while all questions combined comprise the entire perceivable realm of the unknown. Questions arise where knowledge structure is absent. Hence, the first line of the question is found at the cutting edge of any discipline or topic. Cutting-edge solutions are those that have converted contextual questions into new knowledge. The knowledge creator's role is to collect and process these contextual questions within the realm of anti-knowledge and to convert these to new knowledge. Questions individually are like little flags planted in the context of a new idea. Collectively, these questions form a structure of an emergent concept or idea. It is absolutely critical to realize that questions and ideas exist in a future structure and are not random accidents. Forcing structure upon this unknown realm by categorizing questions and ideas actually results in new knowledge. This is because these questions and ideas only exist as a shadow of knowledge to come, which is structured.
Since most knowledge work is performed in "silos", it is often the interdisciplinary individual who is able to "bridge the gap" and move a concept forward. Knowledge is one and, within its perfect state, is structured. Disciplinary silos work against this structure. Interdisciplary knowledge creators can help to make this single structure seamless by answwering questions common to one or more knowledge domains.

I think most of us have experienced this situation. A lot of the value that people bring to any discovery process stems from their backgrounds in dis-similar fields. It all has to do with context. Carpenters do a better job on new home construction when they know something about plumbing. Science teachers need to understand mathematics. In the business world, product designers need to understand what is readily manufacturable, and how their decisions impact the total cost of the product. In the broadest sense, the more diverse a person's experiences are the better he/she will be able to see and apply new models to existing problems, and envision answers.
I was recently at an aircraft manufacturer who was struggling with the fact that the company's most experienced aircraft maintenance troubleshooters are likely to retire soon, and much of the company's ability to serve their customers would walk out the door with them. I understood this problem, because it is a microcosm of the aging of the baby boomers - a hump in the population distribution that is moving through the US demographich environment. This executive reported that previous attempts had been made to develop expert systems (computer based tools) that could diagnose the reported problems using the recorded knowledge of the existing experts, and recommending solutions, but the effort had failed. That prior effort, I recognized, had been based on decision tree technology that is prone to the kind of errors they were experiencing. The expert systems which could work best are based upon pattern recognition and anomaly identification, NOT decision trees. I cited examples from the medical field, the field of litigation research, and the industry of oil field discovery. None of these industries have much overlap with aircraft production and maintenance on the surface of things, but when one looks at the underlying process of identifying root causes and recommending solutions for problems, the process is very similar indeed. Where did I come across this? From some work I had been doing in the areas of quantum physics and artificial intelligence.
Now, the concept of defining and perhaps later automating this process of knowledge creation will require that we establish generic constructs and deploy those constructs (or contexts) in new applications, not normally within their purview. That really does appear to me to be a new and fertile frontier, filled with interesting opportunities.

The Future of the Internet - March 4, 2004

The George Washington University Forecast of Emerging Technologies project (GW Forecast) has been operating for more than a decade, and polls industry, academia, and futurists about information about the predicted growth and availability of new technologies. Recently, a series of specific predictions were made by GW Forecast related to the internet, and I think they might be of general interest, so I will summarize them here. I should point out that industry watchers generally regard a new technology to be entering the "mainstream" when it has achieved a 30% penetration level in it's target market.
High-speed (broad-band) internet access will be in 30% of all homes by 2004
30% of all commercial business transactions will be conducted online by 2006
30% of all music, movies, games and other entertainment sold online by 2007
30% of all goods and services sold online by 2007
30% of all training performed online by 2008
50% of the world population has access to PCs and the Internet by 2017
Internet sales are taxed by major nations by 2007
30% of all banking, investment, and other financial transactions performed online by 2007
30% of all newspaper, journal, magazine and book publishing performed online by 2010
30% of all voting performed via ATM-like machines on the internet by 2012
30% of government services such as auto registration, licenses, etc. handled online by 2010
Virtual learning (distance learning via the Internet) is primary teaching delivery tool in 30% of coursework by 2014
Wireless web phones and similar hand held devices in use by 30% of population by 2009.

As I mentioned in an earlier entry on Outsourcing, we will need to make what is still considered to be "high technology" usable by people that have no specialized education in order for the American "middle class" to continue to thrive. During the years I spent in Information Technology in private industry, the tool that made computer systems usable by management and employees alike was something called the Graphical User Interface (GUI). It is the screen that presents itself to the user and says: Click here for this result, Enter data here for that result, and so on. In the future, we will need to move beyond the still-pretty-ugly GUI and existing computer operating systems to something far more intuitive. Non-technical folks should not be required to know how to rename folders and defrag their hard drives to do what they need to do. They CERTAINLY shouldn't have to know how to reload applications and software "drivers" when their systems "crash". Computer systems will need to interact with people more like people interact with people - speaking OUR language rather than the other way around. A few years ago, Bill Gates of Microsoft said:The future lies with computers that talk, see, listen and learn." Sony President Kunitake Ando agreed, saying that he expects the PC to be a more personalized, more intelligent system that acts as a teacher, agent, and guide.
For additional information on this topic, check out "The Intelligent Internet", an article by William Halal in the March-April issue of The Futurist magazine.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), March 5, 2004
RFID is a subset of work being done in a broader research field called "ubiquitous computing". RFID systems are experiencing explosive growth due to requirements placed by major retailers and government entities (most notably Wal-Mart in the commercial products realm, and the Department of Defense in the Aerospace & Defense community) on their suppliers. The promises and potential perils of ubiquitous computing are difficult to overstate, and RFID is illustrative of that situation. Whether you realize it or not, RFID is going to have a major impact on your life and an even greater impact on the lives of your children in the years ahead.
RFID systems are comprised of tags and readers. They resemble, in some respects, those plastic anti-shoplifting tags currently affixed to clothing in retail stores at the shopping mall today. However, rather than merely containing a simple device that triggers an alarm when it passes through a detector at the door, the RFID tag contains an emitter that (either passively or actively) communicates information about exactly what it is, and thereby enables the systems that read the tag to track when and where that tag is. Now, imagine such a tag attached to virtually everything. On items sold in stores, it enables automatic inventory counts and reordering of low stock. In manufacturing, it enables managers to track raw material, manufactured work-in-process, and finished goods shipments through distribution all the way to the customer. In the world around us, it would enable things like stolen cars to be tracked and recovered in minutes or hours, city and county governments to automatically generate a monthly bill for each automobile owner who utilized toll bridges equipped with readers, and customs officials to be notified when an incoming or departing container carries biological agents, explosives, and weapons. In your home, readers buried in the surfaces of doorframes, walls, and appliances read tags sewn into your clothing (or perhaps one day embedded under your skin) track your movement as you arise in the morning and start up the coffee maker or the shower and raise or dim the lighting levels as you move from room to room. The refrigerator will alert you before you leave the house that you are out of milk, or even trigger an e-mail to your office e-mail inbox that reminds you pick up milk on your way home. Tags embedded in individual dairy products in the refrigerator could also notify you as they reach or pass their respective expiration dates. Unlike the precursor technology of bar codes, RFID tags can be encrypted and buried inside the structural components of cars, containers, and other structures (including human beings) so that they are invisible, and still perform their function. As a result, they will be difficult to forge, remove or disable. RFID tags are already replacing the magnetic stripes on employee badges, and it seems inevitable that they will do so on credit cards soon.
The technology itself works in two ways: low-frequency systems (less than 100 megahertz), and high-frequency systems (greater than 100 megahertz). The high-frequency devices can be read wirelessly at distances exceeding one meter, even in situations where they are densely packed. In both cases, the reader contains an integrated circuit that signals an oscillator, creating a current within its internal coil. That current generates a magnetic field that powers the tag. When the reader interacts with the tag, a current is induced that flows into, and is captured by a diode. The voltage captured in the diode grows until it activates the tag's integrated circuit, and the tags fires of its identification code. Inside the reader, high and low levels of digital signal produce the 1s and 0s that turn a transistor on and off. Variations in the resistance of the circuit that result from the turning on-and-off of the transistor generate a varying magnetic field that interacts with the reader's own magnetic field. Those variations are sensed by the coil in the reader, which converts those variations back into a digital signal, and thereby perceives the tag's identifier code. (The high-frequency devices employ antennae to reflect back or absorb incidental radio frequency energy, reading the amplitudes of the reflected signals to identify the unique number of the tag, rather than using variations in the resistance of the circuit in the tag to emit the signal. RFID technology is already being employed by early adapters to track merchandise between factories and stores. Wal-Mart has announced that it will require its top 100 suppliers to place high-frequency tags on all cartons and pallets shipped to its stores. The US Department of Defense has also mandated that its suppliers adopt high-frequency RFID labeling by 2005.
The upside of RFID technology is reduced labor (people would no longer be needed to count and report inventory, etc.) and far greater security in terms of knowing where everything is, where it has been and for how long, and so on. The downside is a perceived invasion of consumer privacy. While most folks think it would be great to simply push their shopping carts through the checkout area and have everything scanned at one time within a second or two, fewer of us are interested in having our buying patterns and the inventory of products in our homes available to data bases of marketing organizations. Personally, I get FAR too many telemarketing calls now - I don't need the local grocer calling me to ask me if he can deliver a new jar of pickles, since the ones in my refrigerator have expired. There are still some technical challenges facing this technology. Among them are the orientation dependency of the tags and readers, the relative ease of blocking RF signals, the average cost of an RF tag (now about 25 cents per tag), competing technical standards for tag protocols (a problem that was also present in bar coding deployments). These challenges will be overcome; it's just a matter of time.
In an excellent article on this topic in Scientific American (January 2004), Roy Want states: "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it." Examples abound, and run the gamut from fluoridation in our drinking water to pasteurization of milk to grounded electrical outlets in new home construction to social security numbers. This one is going to be huge.

Internetworking, March 31, 2004
Came across an interesting article in the latest issue (April 04) of MIT's magazine Technology Review by Michael Fitzgerald describing a current growth industry called internetworking. Fitzgerald says: "The premise behind this new social-networking technology is simple: you may know a lot of people from work, college, church, or your neighborhood, but you probably don't know exactly who their friends are - and forget about their friends' friends. But join an online social network and invite a few acquaintences, and the software will begin to reveal previously hidden second - or third - degree connections that can lead to an interview, business meeting, or tee time with that elusive potential client or employer. With venture capital firms lining up to invest, and more than a million subscribers already signed up, automated social-network analysis has become one of the hottest trends to hit information technology since the dot-com bubble. More than 30 social-networking startups have been launched in the last three years, backed by tens of millions of dollars in venture investments, and their services go well beyond those of the now-familiar dataing sites....".
"LinkIn, a business-focused networking site operating from Mountain View, California, is fairly typical. Users create a profile on site, which can be as basic as a name and a set of business interests or as broad as an entire work history. They can search for people they know on the site - typing names or affiliations into the LinkedIn search engine - and invite them to join their networks by creating linked-in profiles of their own. Invitations can be created piecemeal or by uploading entire e-mail contact lists to the site. LinkedIn's software can automatically send and track invitations and issue reminders to people who are slow to join. Once connected, users gain access to their friends' connections and can use LinkedIn's search engine to search the resulting network for, say, officers or employees of a specific company. If a search produces the name of someone they'd like to meet, they can use the network to ask for an introduction. It might sound a little convoluted, but it's simple in practice - and users claim that they get tangible results."
I think this is a pretty interesting concept, but I do wonder about it. How long will it take, if this starts to catch fire, until some kind of screen has to be put in place to keep invitation introductions at bay the way Internet Service Providers are struggling now to get spam filters in place to block the electronic "reams" of unwanted e-mail from rolling in?
Anyway, among the sites mentioned are LinkedIn.com, Tribe.net, Spoke.com, and Visiblepath.com.

Future Shock

An article by Istvan Banyai in the April 5, 2004 Issue of Fortune Magazine predicts the top 10 companies of 2054. Here is the list:

1. AmazonBay - "Companies like Amazon Bay - the first comppany to break $10 trillion in revenue - don't just sell things. They meticulously create a highly personalized shopping experience for the consumer. In the vastly wealthier and almost universally connected world of 2054, shopping is mostly virtual. People wirelessly make instant purchases of almost any scale - ranging from micropayments for information (like an address) to financing a house." The article goes on to speculate that AmazonBay will be the largest of the "Transaction Envelope Companies", and that by 2054, it will have 1.8 billion subscribers - mostly in Asia.
2. Toyota - Why Toyota? Because in 2054, "growing populations of affluent workers in Asia can finally afford them. Although the world population has stabilized at around 8 billion, with each successive decade both India and China have seen 100 million people climb out of poverty and into the market for a car." The author goes on to predict that by 2054, Toyota will be the undisputed king of automobile manufacturing, and both GM and Ford will have evolved into sales/marketing firms.
3. Sinogazzon - "The first fully integrated natural gas company - combining production, shipping, and gas distribution - came into being in 2025." The author predicts that Sinogazzon will be the product of a merger between the Chinese distributor Sinogaz with the already merged conglomorate Gazzon (the product of Russian Gazprom and American Exxon). HE further projects that the company will achieve dominance in the industry by supplying the 1.5 billion Chinese who need fossil fuels to drive their cars, heat their homes, light their offices, and manufacture products for the earth's other 7 billion inhabitants.
4. Sinobiocorp - "Unlike the US and Europe, where people were squeamish about bio-enhancement, Asia embraced the chance to improve on nature. Vast aging populations in China, India, and Japan created a market hungry for the cures of the new biology. So the new life-science giants grew mostly in Asia in drugs, agriculture, and bioindustrial processing. Sinobiocorp and other such companies have made Hong Kong the center for the most advanced health care in the world, with life-extension the fastest-growing business. The maximum life span is headed toward 150."
5. Indosoft - "Computers woke up in 2043. But revolutionary change in the software business began to be dominated by their Indian talent. Over time the netwok of global Indian clans moved their center of action from the U.S. to India."
6. IBM - "Possibly the single most significant moment in business during the FORTUNE 500's second 50 years was the day in 2023 when IBM introduced the BohrBox, its first quantum hypercomputerfor office use. Quantum computers enabled the solving of incredibly complex problems like climate forecasting, missile defense, and traffic management." In this new marketplace, companies like IBM are driven by "bit fees". They chargse a small fee for every bit of the unimaginably large amount of data manipulated and moved for their customers."
7. Pattelco - "In 2054, the technology that is redefining our lives is telepresence, and the key company is Pattelco. The Indian software giant, originally a software startup of the Patel clan, bought the remnants of AT&T in 2025 and incorporated the long-distance company's initials in its name when it launched the telepresence (TP) industry. As with telephones and PCs before them, nearly every room, public and private, at home and at work, is now equipped with telepresence devices. They are either wall-mounted displays or projection units that create the illusion of another location half way around the world or just down the hall. Every TP device comes loaded with Pattelco's 'Be There' software as the standard operating system, creating vast licensing revenues for the Patel clan along with the stupendous flow of bit fees Pattelco gets for rendering all those lifelike images."
8. Nestle - "Once known forchocolates and baby formula, Nestle dominates nutriceuticals, the new class of foods that bridges the gap between agriculture and drugs. Europe remains the trendsetter in lifestyles, food, and fashionand Nestle, the continent's largest company, got a jump on the competition in the nutrifood biz by funding intensive anthropological research to better tailor its products to local cultures in the emerging world. Nestle focuses on the biology of healthy people rather than sick ones. For example, its famous line of Smarties chocolates now contains stem-cell memory boosters. The new Lean & Clean Cuisine frozen meals are programmed to automatically lower cholesterol and lower trans fats."
9. Nanobotix - "A product of the first wave of consolidation in the nanotechnology startups, Nanobotix, in Palo Alto, has been the pioneer in manufacturing on the atomic scale. Its scientists first cracked the code on how complex molecules in natural systems form more complex structures - such as proteins that become full-size human beings - then began applying what they learned by "programming" molecules to create electronic devices. In 2042, Nanobotix introduced its most advanced product, the desktop factory."
10. News Corp - People want to be informed and entertained in greater numbers than ever before. And after holding back the tide of digital distribution for more than two decades, News Corp. switched direction in 2010 and led the trend of making all types of media available on demand - newspapers, magazines,books and music. The hottest new thing in ubiquicasting is the company's media-telepresence service. For a substantial bit fee, anyone can be a sports hero or a movie star or any other dream - advanced computer technology virtually embeds a person in the event."

I think this is a really interesting rendition of the future - quite optimistic, with no mention of terrorism, crime, and so on. My guess is that security firms will be quite formidable be 2054, and that the form, but not the existence, of criminal activity will not have changed. Progress is ALWAYS a double-edged sword. I also think it's interesting that in this view of the future, most of the leading companies and the most advanced lifestyles (health care, technology, etc.) are centered in Asia - most notably in China.

Why We Love - The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love by Helen Fisher, Ph. D.

I just finished a book by anthropologist Helen Fisher on the nature and chemistry of romantic love. As I expected, it was quite interesting, and often insightful. As an anthropologist who clearly believes that mankind has evolved over millions of years, many of her hypotheses around WHY people do what they do - including the reasons for physical dimensions and chemical interactions of various regions of the brain, are pretty suspect to a guy like me who holds fast to creation as the origin of the universe, and of all living things - including men and women. However, the science of the biological research here seems quite sound, and the original sociological research conducted for the book itself is both simple and fascinating. I won't go chapter-by-chapter through the book here, as I have in the case of others (such as The Purpose Driven Life exercise on my "Beliefs About God and Religion" page), but just try to touch on what were for me some highlights of the book. The book itself is nearly 300 pages in hardback, published by Henry Holt and Company, 2004.
Dr. Fisher defines romantic love as a combination of the following 17 elements: 1) Focused attention - "The love-possessed person focusses almost all of his or her attention on the beloved, often to the detriment of everything and everyone around them, including work, family, and friends.", 2)Aggrandizement of the Beloved - "The infatuated person also begins to magnify, even aggrandize tiny aspects of the adored one.", 3) Intrusive Thinking - "One of the primary symptoms of romantic love is obsessive meditation about the beloved. You simply can't get your beloved out of your head." 4)Emotional Fire - "No single aspect of 'being in love' is so familiar to the stricken lover as the torrent of intense emotions that pour through the mind. Lovers ride a kite of exhilaration so swift that many find it difficult to eat or sleep.", 5) Intense Energy - "Loss of appetite and sleeplessness are directly related to another of love's overwhelming sensations: tremendous energy., 6) Mood Swings - "Romantic passion can produce a variety of dizzying mood changes ranging from exhilaration when one's love is returned to anxiety, despair, or even rage when one's romantic ardor is ignored or rejected.", 7)Yearning for Emotional Union - "A state of need. Perhps no single phrase in all of literature so clearly captures the essence of passionate romantic love. So deep is this need for emotional union with the beloved that psychologists " believe the lover's sense of self becomes blurred.", 8) Emotional Dependence - "Lovers also become dependent on the relationship, very dependent. Because lovers are so dependent on a beloved, they suffer terrible 'separation anxiety' when they are out of touch.", 9) Empathy - "Lovers often feel tremendous empathy for the beloved.", 10) Adversity-Heightened Passion - "Adversity often feeds the flame. Social or physical barriers kindle romantic passion.", 11) Hope - "Hope is another predominant trait of romantic love. Most still hope the relationship will spring back to life - even years after it has ended bitterly.", 12) A Sexual Connection - "Freud, as well as many other scholars and laymen, have long maintained that sexual desire is a central component of romantic love.", 13) Sexual Exclusivity - "Lovers also crave exclusivity. They do not wish to have their 'sacred' relationship sullied by outsiders.", 14) Jealousy - "In every society where anthropologists have studied romantic passion, they report that both sexes get jealous, very jealous." 15) Emotional Union That Trumps Sexual Union - "Even the desire for sexual intercourse and the craving for sexual fidelity are less important to the lover than the longing for emotional union with the beloved.", 16) lack of Volition and Control - "Romantic love is often unplanned, involuntary, and seemingly uncontrollable.", and 17) Transience - "As love arrives unbidden, it can also steal away. This fire in the heart does tend to diminish as partners settle into the daily joys of togetherness, often replaced by another elegant circuit in the brain: attachment - the feelings of serenity and union with one's beloved."
Along the lines of supporting her evolution-based theories, Dr, Fisher offers up a ton of animal and bird-based behaviors and similarities in the brain functions between animals and men. She describes, as one example of many, the behavior of foxes. "Excessive energy, focused attention on a partner, dogged pursuit, and all the tender licks and nibbles that foxes bestow on one another are certainly reminiscent of human romantic love. And foxes are but one of many species that show aspects of romance. At the beginning of the breeding season or a mating bout, many choose specific partners, then center their attention on that 'special' individual, often to the exclusion of all around them. Devotedly, they follow 'him' or 'her'. They stroke, kiss, nip, nuzzle, pat, tap, lick, tug, or playfully chase the chosen one. Some sing. Adversity heightens their pursuit - just as barriers intensify romantic passion in people. And many become possessive - jealously guarding this mate from other suitors until their breeding time has passed. These courtship traits are similar to some characteristics of romantic passion in humans. So I think animals love." She offers lots of research and clinical test results to support these observations.
Dr. Fisher did quite a bit of research related to human behavior herself, as well as extensive review of the work of others in this and closely related fields. She developed a 55 question test instrument related to experiences with romantic love, and administered it to several hundred people in North America, as well as several hundred people in Asia. (The actual questionnaire is included as an appendix in the book.) She also worked with clinicians to perform Magnetic Resonnance Imaging scans of the brains of two groups of people - people who reported that they were deeply in love, and people who had recently left a strong romantic relationship - to identify changes in the chemical states of various brain regions surrounding these experiences. Essentially, Dr. Fisher concludes that high levels of dopamine and norepinephrine (a chemical derived from dopamine) are strongly correlated to behavior of both animals and humans who are involved in romantic love. In addition, the inverse relationship exists with serotonin. Romantic love seems to be strongly linked to LOW levels of Serotonin. She says: "dopamine and norepinephrine play a crucial role in sexual arousal and heightened motivation in birds and mammals." She reports at length about her findings of elevated dopamine levels resulting in the brains of humans as they are experiencing the various stages of falling into and out of love, and how those levels changed before her (electronic) eyes when subjects looked at photographs of their beloved ones.
The author also reported on various aspects of what men and women find "attractive" in prospective partners. Among others, here are a few elements that Dr. Fisher determined to be significant factors: 1) Mystery - "Both sexes are attracted to those they find mysterious.", 2) Opposites Within Similar Groups - "Most people around the world do feel that amorous chemistry for unfamiliar individuals of the same ethnic, social, religious, educational, and economic background, who have a similar amount of physical attractiveness, a comparable intelligence, and similar attitudes, expectations, values, interests, and social communication skills., 3) Physical Symmetry - "Another biological taste we have inherited from the animal kingdom" (her assumption, of course) "is our tendency to choose well-proportioned mates. Body symmetry can help to trigger romantic love." The author goes on to point out that when evaluating the attractiveness and desirabilty of women, most me chose women whose waist circumference was about 70 percent of their hips.
Dr. fisher reviewed a classical study of ten thousand people in 37 different societies, where scientists asked men and women to rank 18 characteristics in order of importance when choosing a spouse. "Both sexes ranked love or mutual attraction first. A dependable character came second, followed by emotional stability and maturity, and a pleasing disposition. Both men and women said they would choose someone who was kind, smart, educated, sociable, healthy, and interested in home and family. But this sy=tudy also showed a distinct gender difference in romantic tastes. When it came to sizing up potential romantic partners, men were more likely to choose women who displayed visual signs of youth and beauty." The author goes on to note that in her study, "men tended to show more activity than women in brain regions associated with visual processing, particularly of the face." I had to smile sadly when, later in the chapter, the author admitted: "Unmercifully, women take advantage of men's fondness for - and brain response to - visual stimuli." How true.
Dr. Fisher reported some other interesting facts: "Psychologists report that men want to help women, solve their problems, to be useful by doing something. Men feel manly when they rescue a damsel in distress." She also notes: Much of the psychological literature reports that both sexes feel passionate romantic love with roughly the same intensity".
In terms of what characteristics are most important for women, Dr. fisher notes: "Women everywhere in the world are more attracted to partners with education, ambition, wealth, respect, status, and position. As scientists sum this up: Men look for sex objects and women look for success objects. Women are also attracted to tall men. Women like men who sit in a carefree position, a sign of dominance, as well as men who are self-confident and assertive. Women are somewhat more likely to choose a long-term partner who is smart. And women respond to men who are well-coordinated, strong, and courageous - as world literature and legend attest. Women also prefer men with distinctive cheekbones and a strong jaw. Curiously, women who are likely to get pregnant are also more attracted to men with a good sense of humor.
Another observation from later in the book: "As you know, romantic love does not necessarily go hand in hand with the urge to attach to a mating partner over a longer period. You can fall in love with someone from a different walk of life whom you never wish to marry. And you can feel romantic passion for one person while you feel deeply attached to another, usually a spouse. Moreover, you can have sex with someone for whom you feel no romantic love, even feel romantic passion for one individual you copulate with another." Near the end of this chapter, she says: "We were built to love and love again. What joy this passion brings when you are single and starting out in life, divorced in middle age, or alone in your senior years. What confusion, what sorrow this chemistry can generate when you are married to someone you admire, then fall in love with someone else."
The book is truly fascinating. While I don't agree with many of Dr. Fisher's theories about how these chemical pathways came into being, and certainly don't always agree with her perspectives on various aspects of the naturalness or acceptability of human behavior, her research and clinical observations are truly outstanding in many areas. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and learned a lot.