Pancakes and art (day 45)

I've mentioned before that I have pancakes every morning.   Since tonight is a late one (btw, if you're a night person are you more likely to have a hard time dying?) I will share my pancake mix recipe and call it a night.  Oh and maybe share some art pieces that I think are ok...

Here is the recipe:
2 cups of unbleached white flour
1 cup of whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup of buckwheat flour
1/2 cup buttermilk powder
1/4 cup vanilla sugar (plain sugar will do but really the vanilla is a nice touch)
1/4 cup freeze-dried cocoa powder (mycryo) (optional but makes it moist)
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

To make a good size pancake you mix about 1/3+ cup with a little more water than that.  I just wing it every morning to get batter that is a little more runny than cake batter.
These days I add coronation grapes but the season is almost over.  Blueberries of course work well.

And here are two art links that I think are all right:
"Best Buy" by Borna Sammak
"Tiny Sketch" competition

A song for this post.

What you don't know (day 44)

Apparently when we go to sleep we forget most of what happened during our day.  Only the unusual gets stored in a way that can be recalled in more details.  The rest gets absorbed and reinforces certain patterns or inhibits them.  The point is that we think we know what happened yesterday but we're missing big chunks.  This gets worse as time goes on.  We have very little recall of what happened last week and even less last month and last year.    There was a book written recently that talks about why life speeds up as we age.  One of the points mentioned was the repetition of pattern with less new or unusual stimulation.  The older you get, the more you've done and seen, and the harder it is to stimulate the brain to create a new memory.   Memories are intimately linked with time perception.  They also mention the fact that a year when you're 60 is not the same as a year when you're 4.  One is 1/60th of a life lived, the other is a quarter.   I'm not sure I buy that argument for life speeding up but it's a worth a reflection.   I know that the older I get the more paranoid I am about what I'm not perceiving either deliberately or through forgetfulness or just plain physiology.  I think about a certain mood I was in a few weeks back and it seems so foreign, like another person.   Yet I know it will happen again.  I'm puzzled by the contrast between immediate control and long term uncertainty.

If you know french, Jacques Languirand spoke about the book mentioned above on his show Par Quatres Chemins.

A song for this post.

The one that got away (day 43)

I'm writing this post at my PC, not the laptop.  I mention this because I think it might make a difference.  You see, I bought this beautiful 24" lcd a little while ago and it doesn't fit in the computer desk which means it needs to sit higher than it should.  So I'm always slightly looking up at the screen -- like a reverent expecting look.  My seat is a little too low so my shoulders are always twitching to scrunch up to my ears.  I'm looking at the wall behind my screen.  Usually I'm looking at the living room through the kitchen.  Context is everything and now I'd like to talk about real estate.

In an interesting twist of fate we met some of our neighbours just a block away from where we live.  They were having a yard sale.  They live in the house that we tried to rent when we came back to Vancouver in 2006.  We ended up losing the bid to another couple probably because we were in Alberta and couldn't be there in person to properly represent ourselves.  The story is actually slightly longer than that but let's just say, since we moved to the area, we've been looking at the unit we didn't get with a somewhat nostalgic gaze. One of the tenants holding the yard sale is a screenwriter and musician from Newfoundland.  He  was delightful and played us a song on the guitar as we discussed the soul-sucking high rents in Vancouver and his choice of DVDs and soundtracks.  He is going back East.  The other tenants showed us their basement bachelor suite and we were stunned when they told us how much they're paying.  They seemed relatively happy to be going back to Florida.  Just as we were leaving the landlady came over and we were able to introduce ourselves. She was very gracious and arranged for us to see the suite that we didn't get.  It is gorgeous.  There is a chance that it may become available in the new year but it is a slim chance.  Having met the tenants, we wish them nothing but good fortune...which would mean they would stay in the suite.  Nevertheless, it was nice to close that loop, and re-open it all in one afternoon.

A song for this post.

Macbook on world trip (day 42)

This is the trajectory for my new macbook pro.  It started in China which was surprising in itself and then instead of heading south from Anchorage to its eventual destination, it crossed the country to New York and Ontario.  Is this a mistake, or a baffling side effect of centralization?

A song for this post.

Unitaskers unite (day 41)

[The new power supply worked. I am happy. My PC is running and maybe even quieter than before. Now I just have to find out where to recycle the old power supply.   It probably could be fixed but no one would bother.]

Today was a glorious day.  I stayed home and answered emails all day.  I didn't see anybody, I didn't talk to anybody and no one interrupted me.  I processed seventy-five emails.  It was a rare day where solitude came at exactly the right time.  As I sipped ginger lemon honey tea,  I felt myself becoming more civil and generous.  As I listened to the birds I felt hopeful instead of resentful.

I try to picture the days when I only had a one or two things to do.  How did multi-tasking become the norm.  I was more productive as a unitasker or at least I was more creative.  There is something about multi-tasking that robs me of the depth needed to make something new and meaningful.   I can do a lot in one day juggling devices, media, and meetings.  But I don't necessarily have anything tangible to show for it.  So many books have been written on this subject.  So many people claim they have the process that will change you from inefficient and overwhelmed to fulfilled and productive.  I believe processes evolve that will fit the context.  If something is not working, I can converge on solutions.   For example, adding Google tasks to my process changed things.  I get less email now because I can add to my task list without having to ask people to email me to remind me of something. 

This week on 'This American Life' they talked about a man who collected Lewis and Clark books until he was able to retire on the proceeds from their sale.   He retired and became a scholar.  He speaks of his new found freedom to explore in such glowing terms.  He's a true unitasker and he is happy.  Maybe this could be next year's resolution -- to become a unitasker and to write a unitasker manifesto.

A song for this post.

Look it up (day 40)

Search engines are the new clerics.  They interpret our requests and tell us where to look for answers.  When people speak of the hegemony of Google they are speaking of the new religion built upon the necessary faith we must have that the big G is benevolent and has our best interest embedded in its cloud.   Short of writing our own search engine (oh the heresy), we need to park our  search faith somewhere.  And Google might as well be it.  They have cute logos, a simple home page, some cool apps and a geek's equivalent of the Hippocratic oath.  Can anything go wrong?  They damaged their reputation a little when they voluntarily censored results in China.  But overall we are inclined to believe that Google is indeed the right agent to be digitizing the world's information.  There's never been a cuter more ambitious behemoth next store.

There is a good reason to be agnostic though.  We should search with multiple partners for the same reason the movie Memento threw me for an extended loop.  We simply don't know what we don't know.   Reflecting on this long enough is guaranteed to send me into a paranoid tizzy.  So diversification is key.  Friends or concerned parties may tell you what you don't know.

The truth is that I don't worry about G very much.  But I read a few blogs where there is much anxious typing about who owns what information and what may happen if the religion turns into an evil cult.   I think they have good points and I am happy that open source alternatives like OpenStreetMap exist to challenge some of the issues inherent in contributing to an infrastructure in which the public has no real stake.   It's correct to worry about the size of an entity that we ultimately cannot control.   On the other hand, at least G cares about what they do.  They seem to genuinely like the cloud and its possibilities.  I am curious about how long this can be sustained.  Part of me is always waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Will G ever have their equivalent of the Vista launch?  I wonder.   But for now, in G we trust.

A song for this post.

I've angered the gods (day 39)

I'm in PC hell yet again.  This time it seems to be my power supply.  The machine just randomly shuts down without warning.  Ugh.  I've just ordered a new power supply and hopefully all is well in a few days.  I'm suspecting my covet of an iMac has brought this fate down upon our household.    The macbook pro that is on its way from China probably also heaved some heavy karma toward my pc. 

I will fix the PC but only until the new iMac comes out and then I'll go through the agony of deciding whether I'm forever jumping ship.   That'll take a month at least.   So I need a good PSU that will last me roughly 3 months.  Not being one to skimp, I got a really quiet one.  There is nothing like a quiet machine.  And on that front Apple has everyone beat.  You could fall asleep to the purr of a Mac Pro.

I really really hope it's the power supply.  The last time I went through a random shutdown problem, it wasn't so easy to pinpoint.  I ended up swapping out the motherboard, the PSU, and tons of memory sticks.  In the end, it was the memory sticks though I could tell you a story about unlikely coincidences that would make the story seem fishy.  It was a long moment of hell.

There is nothing like a hardware problem to make me revert to obsessive geekiness - a state more endured than enjoyed.

A song for this post.

Meet me at the field (day 38)

Today Leila and I looked at stereoscopic footage of soccer and hockey games that she shot over the weekend.  The best thing about it was the outcome of an experiment in which she shot the soccer game with the cameras at ground level.  It works very well projected in the big screen in the studio I think because the screen almost touches the floor.  The green grass of the soccer field appears to join with the floor of the studio.  It remains to be seen how the footage will look in or on the lungs.  After seeing the initial lung mapping tests, it seems that we'll have to do experiment with different texture mapping techniques to get the right 'interior' feel.   Right now it just feels too glassy.  Maybe some kind of vignetting would be interesting so that it doesn't look entirely wrapped around the lungs.    We still haven't seen the new lungs in stereo.  It may give us new ideas for things to try.

We also have some green screen tests we did in Banff which deserve some attention.  Would be interesting to position green screened individuals seemingly inside the lungs.

A song for this post.

A love list (day 37)

I have a hate list.  Does everyone have a hate list?  Probably but I bet not everyone as a well developed formal hate list.  I'm somewhere in between now but in my early twenties I had this thing call the pit which had many levels.   Things and people (mostly people) would get thrown into the pit.  Some people would be given tools to dig themselves out.  Most times these were only small plastic spoons.   One person went so low into the pit that they became a mythical figure haunting the pit with the sound of their nails on the pit walls.  Some people were given bungee cords and although they were occasionally thrown into the pit, they had an automatic reprieve after a harrowing few moments.

My friend Zeenat asked me what is on my love list today.  I don't have a formal love list at all.  But I think, however sappy it may be, a love list might be a good thing to start.  First, what is the correct metaphor for a love list.   A bean stalk?  clouds?  Warm lofty winds?  Oh I know.  Food.  A layer cake.  It works because it's not just layers of cake but there's frosting and cherries and decorations and coulis.   Some people are good frosting, others are more robust cake layers.   Zeenat is definitely sparkles on the cake.  Steve is a mottled chocolate and white cake layer all his own.  My cat Tagi is little bits of almond that are sometimes welcomed and other times just incongruous.  My parents are the plate.  I know it sounds unglamourous but being a plate is the very base of the love cake.  Shannon is well-placed sour cherries.  Nathalie is refreshing slices of pear.  This cake deserves never to be eaten.

A song for this post.

Me and my machine (day 36)

At some point I started having an arms length relationship with the machine.  This does not feel so good.  I probably will go back to manipulating data directly but for now I'm in interface hell.  Yes, I'm in menus with options that I'm not sure about trying to achieve thing that clearly these menus weren't meant to facilitiate.  Often there is a nagging suspicion that perhaps it's not me or the menus, but something wrong in the implementation or an unintended interaction with another plugin or widget.   These mild irritants used to be motivations to go to the code and change things directly.  Now they are stumbling blocks that keep me from getting things done because either I don't have access to the files I need or I simply don't have the time to fiddle.  You see, I've become an administrator.  Administrators delegate.  My problem is that I still secretly long to fiddle.  Sometimes I give in and spend hours tweaking or programming something.  It's like being on a diet and suddenly binging on ice cream.  It feels good in the moment but then the cold hard reality of my inbox hits me in the morning.

I think that for my own sanity I'll have to carve out some time at least three times a week to assuage the programming urge.  I've just ordered a new Macbook Pro and I'm looking forward to working with Field.  I think it could be a nice mix between menus and low level wrangling.

A song for this post.

Stereo ahoy! (day 35)

This week Leila and Thea were here from Montreal to work on the Breath I/O project.  It was worth the stress of carving time from a busy schedule to work on the project in a more sustained way.  The main thing we are trying to work out is a workflow for the output of the Sony HDR-TG1 cameras we are using to shoot stereoscopic footage.   We had great hopes for the little Sony's and I think they will work out in the end but we've hit many walls along the way.  The TG1 is ideal for us because of its small size.  We can mount two TG1s beside each other on a Slik twin camera mount and shoot stereo at varying inter-ocular distances.   Miles built us a remote that controls both cameras so we can start/stop and zoom them in tandem.  Another ideal aspect of the TG1 is that they record surround sound.   With such a small microphone we wondered how good the sound would be.  It turns out to be quite good!   Overall we were pleased with the output of the camera but we started to hit some snags when it came time to edit the video.  The footage is in AVCHD format and the sound is Dolby Surround.   Here is what we know so far:

• The Picture Motion Browser software that comes with the camera will export the video to mpg2 or wmv with surround sound but not full resolution (it downgrades to 720x480)
• Final Cut Pro downgrades the audio to stereo
• Adobe Premiere can import the mts with surround sound and full res, but cannot output surround sound.  We did find a plug-in that may help but it's $295 and at this point we haven't given up on a cheaper solution.  CS4 says it comes with a trial version of said plug-in but we don't seem to have it.
• Stereoscopic Player does not play the surround sound (this is just a minor irritant since eventually we'll be playing the stereoscopic footage in a virtual environment)
• Interlacing is an issue.  The TG1 records at 1080 60i and needs to be deinterlaced to 1080 30p.  

So we currently don't have a workflow that preserves both resolution and surround sound.  The belief that this it must be possible keeps us searching.

Despite these setbacks we had some nice stereoscopic results with the footage that Leila shot of her nephews in track and field, and hockey.  The twin camera mount needs a level so some of the footage  had some vertical disparity but we were able to fix that in post-processing.  We tested the stereo footage on the old lung prototype and it looked interesting.  It kind of looked like the lungs were transparent.  Not exactly what we were looking for but perhaps with a little bit of a bumpy surface on the lungs, they won't look so mirror-like or transparent.

Another highlight was Trent's new model of the lungs.  They look great!  With any luck we'll be working with these on Monday (Leila's last day).

Miles was also around working with different sounds.  Making soundtracks on the fly for the silent videos we were playing.   We talked about different ways of teasing out the deeper resonance of someone voice in real-time.  He showed us an effect in super-collider which may be the start of what we're looking for.

A song for this post.

Mood dips in step with temperature (day 34)

I've noticed that the stock market gyrations need a story.  You can't just say "the stock market dipped by 300 points today".  You have to say "the stock market dipped dramatically following investor doubts about...".   I have read many of these headlines.   Over time an image has formed in my head, helped by the many trading room stock photos.  I picture chemicals (economic indicators) being piped in and landing on the crowds of traders in uneven but clustered patterns.  They there is general barking and howling that spreads to local neighbourhoods.  A frenzy of anxious trading takes place, and when the chemicals subside, exhausted stunned traders reckon with the result.   To put a story on this behaviour is interesting but most surely wrong because the traders are barking out of habit and neighbourly influence as much as reason.   The headlines are like a running commentary on a cock fight.   They create mini-dramas out of very immediate facts.  Some of these mini-dramas will actually fit the facts longer than others and you'll feel good about the narrative arc.  It's good to feel like you might know the next thing that happens, or to feel like a tragedy is in the making.  The anticipation is good.  Good like dessert.

The problem is that eventually drama exhaustion sets in.  There is only one cure for drama: deep engagement.  But how does one actually get beyond the fine grained noise to the deeper currents in financial systems?  It's not clear to me that anyone is even relatively sure of the deeper narrative taking place.  And maybe there is none.  It's quite possible that we've created a machine so mesmerizingly complex and with such high stakes that we're stuck in a fearful narcissistic moment.  This may be one reason to see the movie "cloudy with a chance of meatballs".

There is not real conclusion to this post.  The compulsion to stay at the surface of things because it's more immediately interesting is a trap that eventually robs us of insight.  It's related to discernment in the choice of information we take in.  It's also one of the topics we are researching with the Breath I/O project.  The frenzied consumption of the new eventually leads to shallow breathing and anxiety.  What kind of media consumption leads to a deeper breathing?

A song for this post.

Mirror mirror (day 33)

There is a mirror on the moon - 18 inches square.   If you shine a laser at it, it will reflect the photons back to you so you can calculate the distance to the moon.  The mirror was place there by Neil Armstrong.  The idea of shining of a laser so far away is crazy enough.  The idea that it would actually reflect anything back is crazier still.

Just a marvelling fact today.  That's it.  I need sleep.

A song for this post.

A life without me (day 32)

Let's talk more about bodies in Second Life.  I was watching a talk recorded in SL a few days ago and I eventually had to walk away from the image because the self-intersecting bodies performing strange and repeating 'casual' moves were too distracting.   In that case, and perhaps because it was recorded and not live, I found the whole idea of an avatar presentation in Second Life a little superfluous.  What exactly was gained over an audio broadcast except the visual awareness of audience for the presenter?  If I'd been at that conference in the...ummm...what's the SL equivalent of flesh?  Anyway, if I'd been there,  I couldn't have even walked away from the screen or done email at the same time for fear of my avatar suddenly going zombie like.   Like playing Barbies, you have to be there to strike the poses or it just doesn't work.

Some people say that virtual worlds like SL will be the new browser.   One of the big differences between a browser and SL is privacy.  For the most part, when I'm browsing I don't have crowds looking on.   In SL, if I'm looking at an object or reading a sign or watching a video and someone happens to walk by, they can see what I'm doing.   There are advantages to being seen, primarily meeting like-minded people, but it does break a certain paradigm of the lone surfer which has a lot of advantages too.  For that reason I would advocate for an invisibility mode in SL where you are not seen and you can't see others. Difficulties arise when you effect the world but these difficulties already exist in a web browser when you post on FB for example.   I'm also interested in the possibility of history sliders for portions of the world.  And the possibility of ambient live data rooms where real world data is being piped in and being audio-visualized in real-time.    The two together (a-vis+history slider) would add some insight.

Most fancifully, I'd love to have my avatar develop a separate life.  Why do I need to be there all the time?  Why couldn't she just make friends and develop a personality?  Then I do a 'being John Malkovich' on her and re-enter at will.  She would be like a walking talking recommendation engine.

A song for this post.

A life by any other name (day 31)

I wonder about Second Life.  I feel old when I think that many others wonder why I have to wonder.  There are so many trends to keep track of and one must show discernment.   I've been in Second Life a few times and each time I feel icky and awkward.  The social rules don't apply in the same way and I've been through a few chats that left me feeling a little affronted if not assaulted.   So I decided not to invest much time into it.  The SL headlines wizzed by at dizzying speeds for a while.  The hype couldn't have been more shrill.  Now it's down to a drizzle of headlines and most people have polarized into "i like it, i don't like it".   Maybe it's the disillusionment phase of a new technology where we suddenly see the hard work it'll take to solve the inherent problems.  And the phase where we see that we are still humans fundamentally still looking for the panacea.

In the disillusionment I see realism and I feel better there.  It's like I can have some room to think about what it might mean to carve out a space for myself in that technology.   In the best possible virtual world with the most enlightened avatars, what would happen?  Actually it's the avatar part that I'm not so sure of.  Or rather the humanoid forms that pass for avatars up to now.   Playing the game 'Flower' today made me think of what it might be to navigate information as a petal rather than a human.  I know it's fanciful but it seems a lot closer to the way I feel when I traverse information in a browser for example.   I'm not exactly sure why a body needs to be added.  Sure, the body language is potentially interesting but if it can be faked at the click of a button, what's the point?

I have to sleep.  More on SL tomorrow.

A song for this post.

Just right (day 30)

Two days of bliss and adventure in the Nicola Valley and I now have more apples and plums than I dare look at.  I picture them transforming into pies, crisps, sauces and snacks.  I'm hoping I can be quick enough so none get wasted.  I'm starting to realize that my fascination with fruits and vegetables is not as common as I thought.  Not everyone gets home and has a brief moment of panic at the piles of organic goods needing to be matched and transformed.  It's a good thing I also secretely love the challenge and the leftovers.

The weekend was sublime with many culinary moments worth remembering including cooking okra for the first time and Janek's makeshift souffle with all that was left in the fridge and more (like Doritos).  As we were about to start picking the last of the plums on our last few hours on the farm, a momma bear and her three cubs showed up right by the orchard.  There is an electric fence so they are trained to stay away but they were right by the fence climbing up a Ponderosa Pine.    Four beautiful really cute black, brown and blond bears.   The way they move, so slowly and considered was a great pleasure to watch.  It's hard to believe we can't be friends.   As it was, it was a uncomfortable standoff.  We had to pick fruit and they were too scared to come down from the tree.  The momma bear huffed angrily at us as we started to pick the fruit as far from them as we could.  Eventually we finished with the plums and everyone was much calmer.

Watching momma interact with her cubs, it occurred to me how silent their communication is.   Compared to human families with their constant chatter, guiding, praising, and chastising it seemed so quiet and languid.  Kind of like us this weekend.

A song for this post.

Did I just help you? (day 27)

I have a dilemma.  Do I bring my computer to the Okanagan this weekend so I can write on the blog and not miss a day even though I can't upload (no internet connection), or do I just declare a blog vacation due to a broadband accident?  My obsessive side says bring the computer, there may actually be some cool stuff that happens in the OK.   My adventurous side says no don't bring the computer, do something completely different.  Maybe I'll bring the computer for the option and then see what I feel like when I get there.

Today I went to a great talk at Emily Carr about collaboration.   Jer Thorpe and Simon Levin talked about their projects,  including 'Just Landed', 'Big Picture', 'Glocal', and 'CodeLab'.  An interesting question came up at the end of Jer's talk about the definition of collaboration and whether it is truly a collaborative action to create an art piece or a visualization from data that was contributed freely but with no specific intent toward the author of the visualization or otherwise.   For example. 'Just Landed' takes data from the twitter feed and scans for words that would indicate someone has just arrived in a new location.  The application then looks up where that twitter author comes from and deduces the start and end point of travel in order to visualize it as a dynamic path.   The vast majority of twitter authors whose data was used have no idea the visualization exists.  Is this ok?  For this visualization, I would say yes it's fine and it's wonderful that it was made possible and most people would be pleased to have contributed without having to do anything extra.   The data in 'Just Landed' was anonymized so issues of privacy didn't occur.   But there is a line to be drawn I believe.   That line might just be begged by visualizations because their specific purpose is to make visible derivative data --- trends and patterns.   So while we contribute all kinds of tidbits about ourselves we may not want anyone analyzing that data for things about us that we would rather remain private.  This exact case came up recently when MIT students announced that they could deduce someone's sexual orientation by their list of friends on Facebook.  Well maybe, but should you?  And should you announce that?  In any case, the question remains.  Should there be a pingback when your twitter data gets analyzed for patterns?  Sounds like a logistical nightmare.

The one thing to celebrate is perhaps the overall collaborative intent of sharing such volumes of information.   We obviously didn't have the worst in mind when we slipped into the experiment that is social networking.  That's human nature, and I like that part of it.

Until Tomorrow or Monday,

A song for this post.

delete delete delete (day 26)

Luis Suarez says email can all but be eliminated.  He's down to 30-40 emails a week.  I drool when I hear those numbers.  These days I can never empty my inbox and I feel trapped by the email treadmill.  There are so many conversations that answering an email feels good but there is also a twinge of dread for the response.   The emails that scroll off my screen have a very high probability of never getting answered.  How did it get to this? I used to love email.  I suppose the asynchronous nature of email made us think that time was stretching.  The reality is that it takes way longer to type or read something than it does to have a conversation.  The same action items will result but conversing will get there more quickly.  I realize the benefits of email -- the record keeping, the attachments, the time to think about a response.  But I would say the bulk of my emails don't fall in that category.

Luis just said no more and stopped responding to email.  I'm not sure if he's down to zero responses but it's pretty close according to the talk I heard.   He has instead diverted his email conversations to other media.    He uses social networking tools like Yammer and blogs so he still has the record keeping but shares the information a little wider.   I suppose there would be a small overhead in diverting conversations but over time there would be less traffic in your inbox.   And maybe over time there would be less repetition.  Still, it may be my lack of imagination or cynicism but I have a hard time imagining that more software tools in my life will be better.   I have a task list, several calendars, two inboxes,  four blogs,  an RSS feed reader, and a facebook page.  I haven't even joined Twitter for fear of one more thing to check.

I admit that something has to change in my inbox wrestling moves.  Luis says we need to work smarter not harder.  It's glib.  I suppose I could change my habits in his kind of direction and see what happens.  I wonder if he has a step by step guide.

A song for this post.

Domo Arigato (day 25)

The dream of robot slaves.   There's been lots of talk lately about robots that can walk, run, stay balanced, go up stairs, serve coffee, chop vegetables.    Alongside the talk about new robot abilities there's been nervous hand-wringing about the ethics of having robots among us.  It's funny to me because I actually got into computing science because of a sort of fascination with telling the computer what to do.  Write a program, press enter, and it does exactly what you specified.  At that time, the computer was a semi-conscious thing for me.   I had no real knowledge of the inner workings so it was a capricious being, fighting yet giving in with the right incantation.  I still feel that way but now I know the innards so it has lost a bit of its romance.   So I wonder if acquiring a robot to chop vegetables for me and do laundry might not be a version of my first encounter with the Commodore 64.  Mysterious yet pliable, my robot frenemy.   Here of course I'm talking of the benign affect of telling a robot what to do.   The difference between a robot and a computer is in the potential for harm.  Motility takes computers way beyond the harm of computer viruses and privacy invasion.  Sentience and free will adds a whole level of unpredictability which may swing it towards harmful behaviour.

Asimov's laws three laws (don't harm humans, obay humans, preserve thyself) as a starting point for ethics but they have been found lacking it seems mostly on the basis of the robot's sentience or free will getting in the way.  The conundrum is that we are creating something stronger than us and expect two things:  that it will not harm us and that it will harm the ones we don't like.   It's the fantasy of the gun as a defensive device, again.   We are afraid that we will create the robots a little too much like us and have to deal with mood swings on a scale beyond prozac.  So we need to ask ourselves who's creating the robots?  What are their intentions?  It's unlikely a dove can come out of a hawk's nest so we really need to choose the root genetics of this new line really carefully.  We should feel revulsion at drone attacks.  We should feel disturbed by a robot that looks like a girl and is pleased to repeat any recorded positions when you tap her on the head.  These are real affective behaviours and abilities.  Our relationship with robots informs and is informed by our relationship with other beings.   It would be infinitely better to amplify the best in human behaviour.

A song for this post.

Attention: Requiem (day 24)

This is a requiem for
long talks
videos longer than 10
emails longer than two paragraphs
the long form of thx
days with less than 5 contexts
one conversation at a time
inboxes with less than 100 emails
the joy of receiving an email
news with more than 140 characters
friend as a noun
This is a requiem for my attention span

This is a song for this requiem.