Keith Henson | |
---|---|
Born | 1942 (age 81–82) United States |
Alma mater | University of Arizona, electrical engineering |
Known for | L5 Society, founding member National Space Society, lifetime member |
Scientific career | |
Fields | electrical engineer, life extension, cryonics, memetics, Evolutionary psychology |
Howard Keith Henson (born 1942) is an American electrical engineer and writer. Henson writes on subjects including space engineering, space law (Moon treaty), memetics, cryonics, evolutionary psychology, and the physical limitations of Transhumanism. In 1975, Henson founded the L5 Society with his then-wife Carolyn Meinel to promote space colonization. In 1987 the L5 Society merged with the National Space Institute to form the National Space Society.
Henson was raised in a military family, and he attended seven schools before seventh grade. His father, Lt. Col. Howard W. Henson (1909–2001), was a decorated (Bronze Star and Legion of Merit) US Army officer who spent much of his career in Army Intelligence. The science-fiction author Robert A. Heinlein heavily influenced his early life. [1] Henson graduated from Prescott High School shortly after his father retired, before attending the University of Arizona and receiving a degree in electrical engineering. [2] [3]
During most of his time at university, Henson worked at a geophysics company and mostly ran induced polarization surveys in the western US and Peru. He also programmed geophysical type cases and wrote data reduction programs for the company. [4]
Henson was known at the University of Arizona as one of the founders of the Druid Student Center, where a campus humor newspaper, The Frumious Bandersnatch [5] [ better source needed ] was published in the late 1960s. He cited an incident while he was a student as a good example of memetic replication. When someone asked him to fill in a form which required him to disclose his religious affiliations, he wrote Druid . His prank was soon noticed by other students and before long almost 20% of the student body had registered themselves as Reform Druids, Orthodox Druids, Members of the Church of the nth Druid, Zen Druids, Latter-Day Druids and so on. The university was forced to remove the religious affiliation question. [6]
After graduation, Henson went to work for Burr-Brown Research, now merged into Texas Instruments, in Tucson, Arizona. He worked on extremely low distortion quadrature oscillators and nonlinear function modules (multipliers, vector adders and root-mean-square). His first patent was a design for a 4-quadrant log-antilog multiplier. He claims to have been fired from an unnamed company in 1972 for refusing to certify an electronic module for a nuclear power plant that failed to meet a required MTBF specification. [7] Henson set up his own company, Analog Precision Inc., to produce specialized computer interface equipment and related industrial control devices. [2] [8] [ better source needed ]
Henson married his first wife, Carolyn Meinel, in 1967 [9] and divorced in 1981. [2]
In 1974, Henson's occasional rock climbing partner, physicist Dr. Dan Jones, [10] introduced him to the space colonization work of Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill from Princeton University. To promote these ideas, Henson and Meinel founded the L5 Society in 1975. [11] [12]
Henson co-wrote papers for three Space Manufacturing conferences at Princeton. The 1977 and 1979 papers were co-authored with Eric Drexler. Patents were issued on both subjects—vapor phase fabrication and space radiators. [13]
In 1980, Henson testified before the United States Congress when the L5 Society successfully opposed the Moon Treaty. The society was represented by Leigh Ratiner. The experience eventually became an article, Star Laws, jointly written by Henson and Arel Lucas and published in Reason Magazine . [14] Timothy Leary was influenced by Henson's work-and credited him in publications when he referred to Space Migration and Life Extension.
Henson's wife, Arel Lucas, was credited by Douglas Hofstadter in Metamagical Themas for suggesting that the study of memes be called memetics. Henson wrote two articles on memes in 1987, one published in Analog and the other, Memes, Meta Memes and Politics, circulated on the internet before being printed. [15]
Richard Dawkins, who created the concept of memes, approvingly cites Henson's coining of the neologism memeoids to refer to "victims who have been taken over by a meme to the extent that their own survival becomes inconsequential" in the second edition of his book The Selfish Gene . [16]
In 1985, Henson, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter signed up with Alcor for cryonic suspension after being convinced by Eric Drexler that nanotechnology provided a method to make it work. Henson's daughter is the youngest member to sign up to Alcor. [17] Following the Dora Kent problems, [18] Henson became increasingly active with Alcor. After Alcor froze their chief surgeon, he learned enough surgery to put several cryonics patients on cardiac bypass. [19] He also wrote a column for Alcor's magazine, Cryonics, for a few years. [20] Henson persuaded Timothy Leary to become an Alcor member, though Leary eventually dropped his membership.
In that same year, Henson moved to Silicon Valley to consult for a number of firms and debugged garbage collection software for the last stage of Project Xanadu.
Keith Henson was working for the company that bought the Xanadu license when Scientology lawyer Helena Kobrin tried to destroy the news group alt.religion.scientology. [21] and later e-mailed legal warnings to participants who had quoted as few as six lines of Scientology texts. [22]
Henson is one of the focal points of the ongoing struggle between the Church of Scientology and its critics, often referred to as Scientology versus the Internet. Henson entered the Scientology conflict when it was at its most heated in the mid-1990s. In 1996, many of Scientology's secret writings were released onto the Internet, and the Church of Scientology embarked on a massive worldwide campaign to keep them from being spread to the general public. Henson examined these writings, titled New Era Dianetics (NOTS), and from his examination of these secret documents, said that Scientology was committing medical fraud. [23] The NOTS documents, he said, contained detailed instructions for the treatment of physical ailments and illnesses through the use of Scientology practices. The Supreme Court decision in 1971 had declared that Scientology's writings were meant for "purely spiritual" purposes, and all Scientology books published since then have included disclaimers stating that Scientology's E-meter device "does nothing" and does not cure any physical ailments. [24] The NOTS procedures, Henson claimed, were a violation of this decision. To prove his claim, Henson posted two pages from the NOTS documents onto the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology. [23] [25]
The Church of Scientology immediately initiated legal action, but Henson did not retract his claims. He was served with a lawsuit by the church's legal arm, Religious Technology Center (RTC). Henson defended himself. After a lengthy court battle involving massive amounts of paperwork, Henson was found guilty of copyright infringement. He was ordered to pay $75,000 in fines. [23] [25] [26] Henson declared bankruptcy in response to the judgment. Henson began protesting Scientology regularly, standing outside Scientology's Gold Base with a picket sign. The organization sought to obtain a restraining order, which was not granted. [23] [26] [27]
Henson was, however, charged with three misdemeanors under California Law: making criminal threats (California Penal Code section 422), attempting to make criminal threats (California Penal Code section 422, charged pursuant to Penal Code 664, the "general attempt" statute), and threatening to interfere with freedom to enjoy a constitutional privilege. [28] Sheriff's Detective Tony Greer, Riverside County lead investigator, said: "In reviewing all of the Internet postings I did not see any direct threat of violence towards the church or any personnel of the church." [23]
The jury verdict of the trial resulted in Henson being convicted on one of the three charges: "interfering with a religion." This misdemeanor charge carried a prison term of six months. On the other two charges, the jury did not agree. [29] Ken Hoden, the general manager of Golden Era Productions (the Church of Scientology's film production facility), claimed that Scientology's allegations against Henson had nothing to do with Scientology fair game policy, and that no such policy existed. [23]
Henson stated his belief that his life would be placed in jeopardy if he went to prison . [30] [ better source needed ] Rather than serve his sentence, Henson chose to enter Canada and apply for political asylum. Henson lived quietly in Brantford, Ontario for three years while he awaited the decision. His request was ultimately denied, and in 2005 he was ordered to present himself for deportation and transfer to US authorities. Instead, Henson fled to the United States and later presented himself to the Canadian consulate in Detroit. Then he settled in Prescott, Arizona, where he remained for two years until his arrest in 2007 by Arizona authorities. [31]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as Henson's supporters on the USENET newsgroup alt.religion.scientology, say that his trial was biased, unfair and a mockery of justice. [32] Henson was prohibited by the trial judge, for example, from arguing that copying documents for the purpose of criticism is fair use. [33] [ citation needed ] Henson was held at the Yavapai Detention Center in Prescott, Arizona, awaiting extradition to Riverside County, California. At the "initial appearance" hearing on February 5, 2007, Henson stated through counsel [34] [35] that he was fighting extradition and requested release.
Judge Lindberg [36] set a court date for March 5, 2007, in the Prescott Justice Court [37] and set release at $7,500 cash or bond, with standard conditions. Henson's release on bond was secured. [38] In spite of these distractions, Henson finished a space elevator presentation for a European Space Agency conference. The paper was presented by proxy on February 28, 2007. [39]
The extradition hearing for Henson was postponed until May 8, 2007, at the request of Henson's attorney and the County attorney. [40] At his release from jail, Henson was handed paper work from Riverside County, including a warrant from September 15, 2000. [41] At the May 8, 2007 hearing, Henson was presented with an arrest warrant and returned to jail. [42] [43] In 2007, Henson was jailed in Riverside, California for "using threats of force to interfere with another's exercise of civil rights". [44] He was released in early September 2007.
From 2007 on, Henson worked independently and with others on the problems of global energy supply and affordable cost, particularly on power satellites for space-based solar power. There he was particularly concerned with launch cost, system mass, waste heat, heat radiators, and economics.
The power satellite work was reported in a series of articles starting with two posted on The Oil Drum [45] [46] and three presented at IEEE SusTech conferences for Sustainable Technology. Henson also was involved in producing videos about thermal power satellites [47] and beamed energy propulsion [48] the latter of which won an award in an international competition. (See Online Journal of Space Communication, Issue No. 18 under Works, below.)
A shorter version was shown at the White House in the last days of the Obama administration by Lt. Col. Peter Garretson and Dr. Paul Jaffe as part of the D3 government-wide contest. [49] [50]
Additionally, he worked over a year for Ed Kelly on StratoSolar [51] when it seemed possible that high altitude lighter-than-air StratoSolar could beat the projected cost of power satellites.
Henson visited Reaction Engines in the UK twice: in 2012 on the way back from a power satellite presentation in Germany ("Economic feedback for low-cost solar energy from space") and in 2016 when he gave a two-hour presentation to the engineering department of Reaction Engines. [52] The latter, plus other, later discussions set the rate of expansion for producing Skylon rocket planes used in the power satellite business cases.
In early 2015, Henson created the Google group Power Satellite Economics where various concerned citizens and experts from various fields can discuss the complexities and benefits of power satellites and related work. [53] [ better source needed ]
Cryonics is the low-temperature freezing and storage of human remains in the hope that resurrection may be possible in the future. Cryonics is regarded with skepticism by the mainstream scientific community. It is generally viewed as a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterized as quackery.
Kim Eric Drexler is an American engineer best known for introducing molecular nanotechnology (MNT), and his studies of its potential from the 1970s and 1980s. His 1991 doctoral thesis at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was revised and published as the book Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery Manufacturing and Computation (1992), which received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992. He has been called the "godfather of nanotechnology".
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures. In popular language, a meme may refer to an Internet meme, typically an image, that is remixed, copied, and circulated in a shared cultural experience online.
Memetics is a theory of the evolution of culture based on Darwinian principles with the meme as the unit of culture. The term "meme" was coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, to illustrate the principle that he later called "Universal Darwinism". All evolutionary processes depend on information being copied, varied, and selected, a process also known as variation with selective retention. The conveyor of the information being copied is known as the replicator, with the gene functioning as the replicator in biological evolution. Dawkins proposed that the same process drives cultural evolution, and he called this second replicator the "meme," citing examples such as musical tunes, catchphrases, fashions, and technologies. Like genes, memes are selfish replicators and have causal efficacy; in other words, their properties influence their chances of being copied and passed on. Some succeed because they are valuable or useful to their human hosts while others are more like viruses.
Gregory Benford is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is professor emeritus at the department of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is a contributing editor of Reason magazine.
Extropianism, also referred to as the philosophy of extropy, is an "evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition". Extropians believe that advances in science and technology will some day let people live indefinitely. An extropian may wish to contribute to this goal, e.g. by doing research and development or by volunteering to test new technology.
The Alcor Life Extension Foundation, most often referred to as Alcor, is an American nonprofit, federally tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization based in Scottsdale, Arizona, United States. Alcor advocates for, researches, and performs cryonics, the freezing of human corpses and brains in liquid nitrogen after legal death, with hopes of resurrecting and restoring them to full health if the technology to do so becomes available in the future. Cryonics is regarded with skepticism within the scientific community and has been characterized as quackery and pseudoscience.
Gerard Kitchen O'Neill was an American physicist and space activist. As a faculty member of Princeton University, he invented a device called the particle storage ring for high-energy physics experiments. Later, he invented a magnetic launcher called the mass driver. In the 1970s, he developed a plan to build human settlements in outer space, including a space habitat design known as the O'Neill cylinder. He founded the Space Studies Institute, an organization devoted to funding research into space manufacturing and colonization.
Anders Sandberg is a Swedish researcher, futurist and transhumanist. He holds a PhD in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, and is a former senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.
The L5 Society was founded in 1975 by Carolyn Meinel and Keith Henson to promote the space colony ideas of Gerard K. O'Neill.
James Hiram Bedford was an American psychology professor at the University of California who wrote several books on occupational counseling. He is the first person whose body was cryopreserved after legal death, and remains preserved at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.
Michael G. Darwin, formerly known as Michael Federowicz, is a former president of cryonics organization Alcor Life Extension Foundation. He was president from 1983 to 1988, and research director until 1992. He was also the founder and president of BioPreservation, Inc., and a cofounder, member of the board of directors, and director of research at Twenty-First Century Medicine from 1993 to 1999.
Frederick Rockwell Chamberlain III and Linda Chamberlain founded the cryonics organization Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Their long and continued history of activism in cryonics make them among the most well-known cryonics pioneers. David Pascal wrote in the November/December 2005 issue of the Mensa Bulletin that, second to the man credited with the original idea for cryonics, Robert Ettinger, the Chamberlains have contributed more than anyone to the field of cryonics.
Constructed in 1976 and 1977, Mass Driver 1 was an early demonstration of the concept of the mass driver, a form of electromagnetic launcher, which in principle could also be configured as a rocket motor, using asteroidal materials for reaction mass and energized by solar or other electric power.
Keith Lofstrom is an American electrical engineer. He has a BSEE and MSEE from University of California, Berkeley. He is more widely known in the space advocacy community for a ground-based space launcher design, the Launch Loop, for which he has been credited by name in several works of science fiction. Frederik Pohl, who used the idea in several of his stories, once wrote that, of all the non-rocket spacelaunch concepts, he liked the Lofstrom Loop "best of all."
Dora Kent was the subject of a 1988 legal controversy about whether she had been murdered to facilitate her cryonic suspension. She was Alcor's eighth patient and the oldest at that time to ever be cryopreserved. She was the mother of Saul Kent, a board member of Alcor. In her earlier years, Kent worked as a dressmaker in New York City.
Dick Clair was an American television producer, actor and television and film writer, best known for the television sitcoms It's a Living, The Facts of Life, and Mama's Family.
Kendrick Lichty Moxon is an American Scientology official and an attorney with the law firm Moxon & Kobrin. He practices in Los Angeles, California, and is a lead counsel for the Church of Scientology. Moxon received a B.A. from American University in 1972, and a J.D. degree from George Mason University in 1981. He was admitted to the Washington, D.C., bar association in 1984, and the State Bar of California in 1987. Moxon's early work for the Church of Scientology involved legal affairs, and he also held the title of "reverend". He worked out of the Scientology intelligence agency known as the Guardian's Office (GO), and was named as an unindicted co-conspirator after the Federal Bureau of Investigation's investigation into criminal activities by Scientology operatives called "Operation Snow White". An evidence stipulation in the case signed by both parties stated he had provided false handwriting samples to the FBI; Moxon has since said that he did not "knowingly supply" false handwriting samples.
Memetic warfare is a modern type of information warfare and psychological warfare involving the propagation of memes on social media. While different, memetic warfare shares similarities with traditional propaganda and misinformation tactics, developing into a more common tool used by government institutions and other groups to influence public opinion.
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