Update — Workmate / Lifemate Ancestor

Here’s an update on the Siri program that seems to be an ancestor of the Workmates and Lifemates in Aquaria and Machina Obscura.

Siri is capable of understanding natural speech to retrieve information and perform various tasks when requested just as Wally does for Xyl.  I expect it won’t be long until Siri and programs like it also carry databases of task-specific information as Wally does.  It might not be NetRunning methods, exploits and illegal warez like Wally, but I can see such a program for a lawyer carrying up-to-the-minute legislation, law, precedent and procedure.

Siri is now available for free for the iPhone, and available in the App Store.

Augmented Reality – Today and in 2230

When Xyl returns to her old stomping grounds of Little Cairo, she arrives at the Bazaar where she first met her best friend Pepper –

The sound levels of the bazaar always threatened to give Xyl a headache.  She grinned as she walked through the airlock’s blast of fresh air and into the giant high-ceilinged room, one great open space subdivided by pre-fab partitions into tiny open-air delicatessens and cafs and shops.  Two Security men beside the door in the standard anti-shock/anti-ballistic vests and helmets scanned her as she walked in, their heavy tazers swinging to target her and then away.  Even now, nearly three months after the Walking Dead riots, Security still lived high-strung and hypervigilant.  Advertisements flashed on viewscreens above the crowds that thronged the aisleways between the shops, and her nanos switched into Augmented Reality mode as she walked in the door.  Prices and sales alerts flashed into existence in her visual field, popped up for three seconds before fading out as she passed by the products they indicated.  The bazaar’s Info icon remained in the bottom right of her visual field, a simple blue question mark.

And today, courtesy of the Great Bird of Cyberspace himself, William Gibson (via Twitter @GreatDismal) –

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Questioning the Predictions

For many years I was a member of the World Future Society.  I let my membership lapse because it seemed the quality of the articles in their magazine, the Futurist, seemed to decline and I didn’t see it improving.  In 2008 I considered signing back up, but then we were informed at work our installation would be shutting down and within 5 months I’d be transferred elsewhere, and put it off due to the move.

Aside from that, I have still sometimes check up on their website, from which many of their articles can be accessed.  To be honest and fair, they do an admirable job on their website – there’s a lot of info there, free for the reading with no paywalls.  They also have a budding YouTube channel, on which I have just watched a video outlining their yearly predictions for 2010 and beyond.  And I have a bit of a problem with it — perhaps not a problem per se but several questions, not just with the WFS but with the tone of the futurist community in general.

The “gee whiz” predictions — the confirmation or not of extraterrestrial life, living on the Moon or in orbit, nanotechnology solving every ill, effective immortality, direct mind-to-computer connections — are mental cotton candy.  It tastes really good, but there’s nothing there but sweetened air that rots your teeth.  We have problems now that need a futurist solution, and we need to think of the downsides of technologies that will be coming within the next few years and begin coming up with ways to mitigate or lessen the impact.  Let’s take nanotechnology, for example.  Nanoassembly, either directly in a vat or nanobots or via 3D printer, promises an end to scarcity, a world where we can design our own lives and the things we have around us.  Okay.  But if everything becomes all but free, it becomes disposable.  If it becomes disposable, the garbage will begin to pile up very very quickly.  How are we going to deal with all that garbage?  We don’t even deal with the garbage we have now, we just bury it.  The problem is going to only grow worse in the times ahead, possibly exponentially.  And then there’s the changes to the culture.  If everything’s disposable, what is the purpose of permanence?  What about heirlooms, keepsakes, sentimental value?  Why keep your grandmother’s Waterford crystal when a plastic mug costs only pennies, is unbreakable and can be microwaved safely?  Where does a family’s heritage go when no one wants it anymore?

I see no predictions for dealing with air, water or soil contamination, all of which have major impacts on vast regions of the planet and billions of people, not to mention the animals poisoned or killed by such pollution.  I see no predictions for dealing with the dangers of crime and the deteriorating social environment.  What’s the use of slowing or stopping aging if the environment will kill you?  I grew up walking around suburban streets in bare feet or flip-flops, cracking open and eating hickory nuts I picked up off the ground and riding my bike alone half a mile down the main thoroughfare of my home town to buy comic books.  No sane parent would allow their kids to do any of that now.  What kind of kids are we raising when they can’t play unsupervised, can’t run around in a wooded area and discover nature, can’t be responsible for themselves?  It’s more than “helicopter parenting”.  It’s life in a fish bowl.  Kids will be so sheltered and their lives so contained that they will not know how to live once they are grown up and on their own.  They’ll learn to be afraid of unstructured environments, and be afraid to explore.

I guess what gets me is that so many of these projections are either so large they would require billions of dollars and political willpower, or they’re frivolous or vague to the point of irrelevance.  The large-scale projects such as a hydrogen fuel economy, a biofuel economy, geoengineering to stabilize the climate, changing to a sustainable energy model, will all require vast sources of capital and political will.  These things will not happen.  They’re pie in the sky.  There will never be the political will to carry out these projects until it becomes economically advantageous for the special interests that dictate to the government.  When the profits of the petroleum and pharmaceutical and healthcare industries begin to decline or when they determine they can make more money by using these new technologies, then maybe it will happen.  But not before.  As for the other predictions, why should I care if the elderly are playing video games more?  And what relevance does the confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligence have to my life here on Earth?  Will the discovery of ET create jobs?  Will it make college tuition free?  Will it make the streets safe for my kids to ride their bikes alone?  No.  And being able to live for 150 years is a pleasant thought, but am I going to be able to get a job when I’m 65?  Or will I have to live those 85 remaining years on welfare?  And if so, who’s going to pay for it and where will the money come from?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the “gee whiz” stuff.  I’m a science fiction writer and that kind of thing is meat and milk to my imagination.  But there’s more to it.  We have to think about what is relevant, what is likely, what is realistic, and what consequences the coming technologies will have on the people who have to live with them.  One of my fondest wishes is to be uploaded into a robotic body, to leave Earth and spend the rest of my electromechanical life exploring Mars.  Do I honestly think it will happen?  I think one day the technology will exist.  Will I myself manage it?  No.  Not in my lifetime, and even if it becomes possible it will be a long time between the invention and general availability to the public.  I know this flies in the face of many predictions that are accepted as baseline (here’s looking at you, Mr. Kurzweil).  Let’s just all remember that all of these prediction, no matter how well researched, are opinion and theory.  Until I open my optics to the sight of Mariner Valley stretching out before me into the hazy Martian horizon, it’s not fact.

No Cyberpsychosis?

New Scientist has an article about a study showing that tool use actually alters the brain’s body map to include the tool as part of the body.

I am somewhat chagrined to tell you that I did not address the issue of what cybernetic parts may or may not do to the people of the year 2230, mainly because technically every character was a cyborg.  All of them had nanobot interfaces and collectives of medical nanos.  Pepper, Kham and others had cybernetically-enhanced vision.  Jodo, Xyl’s twin brother, had been completely rebuilt by nanomedical means after Kham shot him and he fell out a 237 story window.  Nano-enhanced muscles were fairly common among the gang culture that Xyl, Pepper and their friends lived in.  The culture of 2230 had reached a point where gross use of cybernetics (mechanical arms, hands, legs, etc.) had fallen out of fashion.  It still existed, but it was simply seen as unnecessary and needlessly expensive and fraught with problems.  They were no less cyborgs for being nano-enhanced or nano-reconstructed, it was simply that their mechanical parts were counted in the billions and could only be seen clearly with electron microscopes.

The label of “cybernetic organism” is a broad category denoting a spectrum rather than a black and white line.  A cyborg is an organism that lives by a synthesis of organic and artificial systems, either for purposes of replacing the function of damaged organic parts or to gain capabilities beyond those of the natural form.  There are cyborgs walking among us already here in 2009.  Anyone with an implanted pacemaker or a cochlear implant is a cyborg because those machines take over the function of damaged organs to restore function (or provide it for the first time in the case of many profoundly deaf people who had no hearing at all before their implants).  Insulin pumps also could qualify as a cyborg part since they provide a vital function to the body of regulating insulin, and soon there will be an implantable version as well.  These first cyborgizations are a matter of survival for the people who have them.  One day, that won’t be the case as cyborgization for enhanced capabilities becomes possible.

But by another perspective on the cyborg spectrum, we are all cyborgs.

Let me introduce you to my cyborg alter ego, a 2007 Honda Fit called Gumdrop.

My Baby Gumdrop!

If you broaden the definition of “organism” sufficiently, Gumdrop and I are a symbiotic cybernetic organism.  Gumdrop provides me with the capability of cruising at 70 mph on the highway along with music and information via the CD/Radio.  I have also added two other enhanced capabilities, a GPS for navigation and a cellphone for long-distance 2-way communication.  As Gumdrop is a hatchback, there is also an enhanced cargo-carrying capacity.  But Gumdrop is only a car.  It can’t go anywhere without the organic system (myself) to provide guidance, fuel, and maintenance.  Gumdrop not only gives me such enhanced capabilities but provides vital functions for my life — enabling me to go to work, shop for groceries and other necessities of life, and protecting me from the elements and potential harm while we are on the road.  Like most people, I would not be able to live without my car.  Taken together as one organism, we become one entity — a four-wheeled, GPS-guided, cellphone-connected, Loreena McKinnett-singing cyborg.

Similarly, if you use your computer or smartphone or PDA as an external memory archive (via Evernote, a personal wiki, or other life-organizing and recording software), or as a means to gather information you would not have access to otherwise (Google, Wikipedia, etc), and you can’t function without it and feel as if a body part has been cut off when you do have to go without it — you’re a cyborg.  Your parts are simply not physically implanted within you, but provide enhanced capabilities and function all the same.  Someday these devices will be implanted as well.  It won’t be long.  There are lots of people working on it.  Clearly with that feeling of absence when without the technology, our brains are already incorporating these tools into its perception.  It is becoming part of us, accepted by the brain as part of the body.  You don’t have a smartphone anymore.  You have a body organ that can access the Internet and make phone calls.

All right, so what does it mean?

In the RPG games Cyberpunk 2020 and ShadowRun (and other cyberpunk-based games) there is the concept of cyberpsychosis.  It’s portrayed as a mental illness, a psychosis involving a deep-seated rejection of a cyborg’s mechanical parts, a reaction to the intense dehumanization brought about by parts or all of one’s body being replaced with mechanical construction.  The metaphor seems to be that one is paying for these enhancements literally with one’s humanity, often quantified in the game mechanics as “humanity points”.  But if our brains are accepting the technology we acquire as parts of our bodies, are we becoming dehumanized by it?  Or are we becoming more human?

What do we use the great majority of this technology for?  We use it to communicate, arguably the most human of characteristics.  We use it to organize, correlate, and store knowledge, again extremely human activities.  We use it to enhance our physical capabilities.  What are the three most important characteristics that separate us from our closest primate relatives?  Speaking, Culture, and Use of Tools.

So I would argue there will be no cyberpsychosis.  We are doing nothing new by becoming cyborgs.  We are simply progressing in human evolution, just as we did when we first learned to speak, share our knowledge, and use a sharp piece of flint to skin an animal.

Dream Gadgets

Have you ever really sat down and thought about what your dream gadget would be?  What functions would you truly want and use?  How would it change your life?

 

Think deeply about it.  What can technology do that would radically change your life for the better?  You personally, not the world in general.  Now think how it could be done.

I’ve thought about it, and here’s what I’ve come up with.  I’ve kept this fairly realistic — all of this is either possible now or should be in the next 5 years.  In most cases it’s simply a matter of putting pieces that already exist together.

Hardware:

Hand-held or wearable unit
Built in Camera
Low-resolution, short-range projector
Bluetooth foldable keyboard (optional accessory)
Bluetooth eyeglasses display (later, contact lenses)
Bluetooth earpiece/microphone
5gig processor
5TB SSD

Software:

Expert social system
Personal wiki
Augmented Reality
Personal Information Manager system
Health / Psychological monitoring
Phone / GPS / QR Code reader
Browser / E-mail
Voice recognition

Most of this you will no doubt find familiar, with the exception of the “expert social system”.  This is something I’ve been coming up with in my head lately.  Here’s how it works.

I’ve become fascinated by the possibilities of tags and tag clouds.  What if everything — not just articles on Wikipedia or books on Amazon, but everything – had tags associated with it?  Events, objects, people, places, e-mail, photos, literally everything.  Even you yourself.  Your unit acts as a life manager, a constant log-file of everything you do, everywhere you go, all your interests, the work you do, the calls you make, the people you associate with.  All of this is stored in your personal wiki, searchable by date or tag or association.  Objects and places in the real world would have something similar to QR Codes that would be readable by the camera on your unit, and show up on your Augmented Reality view if they have a web presence or info available.  People who have their units set to transmit would also show up on the Augmented Reality and their associated info and tags — according to whatever level they feel comfortable making public.  You’d see all this via the eyeglasses display, or later via contact lens displays.  The glasses or contacts could also track eye movements and that could become your cursor — you focus on something and click a button on the unit or (later) activate a subcutaneous pressure switch to activate whatever you have chosen.

So where does the “social” part come in?  Your unit would have an expert system that would build up an increasingly detailed virtual model of you.  It would gather tags from everything you do, everywhere you go, the people you associate with, the subjects and context of your e-mails and interests.  All of these tags become your personal tag cloud.  The frequency of use of each tag raises it higher in the tag cloud rankings.  From this, the expert system weights each object and then constantly searches out similar tags and associations, which it would then suggest to you.  Let’s say my tag cloud’s highest ranking subjects are anthropology, Jungian psychology, science-fiction, computers, popular science videos, writing and books.  My unit would search out events, people, places, and things that have the highest correlation to these tags and any strongly associated tags and then suggest them.  Let’s say the unit finds a new public lecture series on Jungian psychology and mythology being offered by a local college.  It would suggest it to me and ask if I’d like to schedule it.  If I say yes, it automatically schedules the times into my calendar and will remind me of it at appropriate intervals.  It will also note the tags associated with the event and add in any new tags to my collection or add points to tags I already have, thus increasing their relevance scores in my tag cloud.  It would do the same with people, making me aware of people around me who have similar interests.  It would be a way to meet people with whom I would already have a lot in common, and most likely in a context where we’d have something to talk about.  That kind of thing would be a godsend for people like me who are not the most social of folk, who have trouble finding anything to talk about to strangers.

The unit could do the same with regards to work and education.  Let’s say I get laid off from my job.  The unit would be able to search for possible new jobs that have my top tags associated with them, factoring in commute distance, education and experience, and even Myers-Briggs type.  If I need help with career counseling, I have the unit search for a career counselor in my area and contact them.  The unit could automatically generate a resume with my education and experience and my top tags.  The counselor would have all the info needed to begin working with me immediately, and could advise me on any education or preparation I’d need to help my future prospects.  The unit could also suggest relevant college courses or resources for strongly associated tags on a continuing basis, to help keep my knowledge of my field current and expand my knowledge of related fields.

The unit would also be capable of a certain level of health and psychological monitoring.  It could be programmed to record everything I eat and call up all relevant nutritional data.  It could advise me on calorie intake and help keep me on my diet.  It could also deduce when I may be withdrawing from people and the world by my level of activity and social contacts, or if I’m under too much stress or doing too much.  In the future it will also be possible that the unit would be able to gather more direct info from implanted sensors to keep a check on vital signs and biochemical levels within the body, and to automatically call for help if something went wrong.

The unit would not be artificially intelligent per se — but it would increasingly seem so the user.  As time goes on the unit would have an ever more complex model of the user, and thus its suggestions would be increasingly more relevant.  It would not preclude learning new things or acquiring new interests, it could easily be programmed to suggest things associated with lower ranked tags or associations to provide a wider variety of experiences.  It could act as a social intermediary, providing a means of introduction to people who have common interests.  And of course it could provide directions, book hotels and flights, send e-mails, schedule appointments, provide information, make phone calls, and all the other mundane things we ask our phones and computers to do for us.

The longer I think of this dream gadget the more I realize how deeply it would impact my life.  The personal wiki would save everything I come across, from articles I read on the ‘Net to books I want to buy.  The unit could retrieve info I need from the ‘Net and store it all for me for later reading or watching, like news and blog articles and YouTube vids.  With the tags associated with each thing it could suggest increasingly relevant information and ideas.  If units like this came into popular use it could lead to a total rethink as to what constitutes education and knowledge — sitting at desk in a college classroom would be only one way of a myriad to acquire an education, and the old academic categories would blur even more than they are today.  Groups of people could find each other more frequently on the grounds of common interests and temperament, not simply by random chance.

That’s my dream gadget.  What’s yours?

Pepper, the Eye of the Beholder, and the Moon

Xyl’s best friend and mentor, Sgt. Damien Pepper, is a history buff.  He loves what he knows as “Pre-Millenial” history — the 1960’s through the turn of the Millenium.

In this scene from Aquaria, Pepper reveals a discovery he’s made out in the Wastelands.  He and his gang are scavengers and he’s found an old telescope and some science books.  When I was writing this scene, I imagined the Eye of the Beholder to be a 12 or 14 inch Meade LX-200, a fairly advanced consumer model with an electronic targeting and tracking system.

“So I’m fartin’ around with this thing, gee whiz, lookee that, there’s Jupiter and all the moons going around it, there’s Saturn.  Then I read something in one of the books that threw me for a loop.  It said that in 1969 people had landed on the Moon.  That over the next three years, up until 1972, there were six missions that landed a total of twelve men on the Moon.  Now if any of you clowns remember your history — the which I doubt, since kids forget stuff almost before it makes it between one ear and the other — the human species has never gone beyond Earth orbit.  Anyone who bothers to look up that time in history knows the history of the old Pre-Millenial space programs:  that there was a President back then who upped the ante on the Russians and committed his government to landing a man on the Moon in only eight years.  And that’s all on the strength of one fifteen minute suborbital jump and a hell of a lot of failures when their rockets blew up on the launch pad.  Sounds to me like a couple of kids daring each other to do something stupid, but it was a big thing back then.  So they had two successful projects, Mercury and Gemini, and the big deal was going to be the Apollo program.  That’s the ones who were going to the Moon.  But our history textfiles now say that the first Apollo spacecraft, Apollo 1, blew up on the launch pad during a test.  Killed three men, Grissom, White and Chaffee.  Our history says that after that the country lost heart, and there was a war going on, and Apollo was scrapped for being too dangerous and too expensive and technically impossible.  Our history says that after that we started only concentrating on near-Earth orbit work, space stations, commercial and industrial stuff.  Our history says that no one’s ever been to the Moon.  But here’s this book from 1983 that says a dozen men had landed on the Moon.  And they left laser reflectors and a lot of stuff behind.  So I figured, well, maybe I can see it with this telescope.  Moon’s only a quarter million miles away, shouldn’t be a problem.  Then I got this bright idea that if I could find where this Apollo 11 had landed, I could use a target scope from a rifle and see if it bounced back from the laser reflectors.  That would be the proof, wouldn’t it?  So that’s what I did.  And it worked.”

 

Pepper stopped and turned to look at Xyl.  “C’mere, kid.  You gotta see this.  All of you, anyone that wants to see it, stick your eye here at the eyepiece just like you’re looking through a rifle scope.  You ain’t gonna believe your eyes.”

“Pepper, you’ve been claiming that Geneva’s one big conspiracy theory ever since I’ve known you,” Xyl said, not moving from her place leaning against the bot-car’s door.

“Yeah, well now I’ve got solid proof.  C’mere and look at this, willya?”

Xyl sighed, pushed herself up and went to him.

Gray filled the field of view, a variagated gray pocked with several perfectly round craters cut out as if by a cookie cutter, some worn away until they made only shallow depressions.

“Okay, now hold onto your hat, I’m gonna up the magnification,” Pepper said beside her.

The field blurred and resolved again, and something square that glinted with gold leaped into resolution.  Four spindly legs radiated from the corners, ending in the circles of landing pads.  Smaller shadows of other items that she couldn’t quite make out, and the dust around and between appeared lumpy and uneven.

“Okay, here we go again.  Now watch that bright square, I’m gonna hit the targeter,” Pepper said at her side.

Again the blurring, and suddenly she saw unmistakable human bootprints.  And beside them a bright rectangle blazing white with the reflected light of the sun.  And a moment later a tiny red dot blinked in the center of the reflectors.

She pulled away from the eyepiece and looked up at Pepper’s somber expression.

“Y’see,” he said quietly.  “I was right this time.  There’s an old Pre-Millenial United States flag up there too.  People went to the Moon.  But all our history says we didn’t.  And you gotta wonder why, ’cause if we did then everything changes.”

“What do you mean?” Kham asked as Jodo bent to look through the eyepiece.  “What’s it change?”

“Think about it, kid.  If we could make it to the Moon in 1969 — two hundred and sixty-one years ago — why haven’t we been doing it all this time since?  Why haven’t we gone to Mars, to the moons of Jupiter?  Why are there twelve billion people stuck on this planet when there’s all that real estate out there?  I’m betting that by the turn of the Millenium we had the tech to set up colonies on the Moon and Mars at the very least — we’ve got the tech now.  We’ve recycled everything from plastic to metal to silicon to water for decades because we’ve already used up everything we could reach here on Earth.  Who makes a profit out of twelve billion people stuck on this dirtball?  You find that, you’ll find out who’s holding us back.”

And now, the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter has given us exactly what Pepper saw through the Eye of the Beholder.  Scroll down to the detailed view of Apollo 14’s landing sight.

The chapter of Aquaria when this scene takes place was the turning point of the story, the point at which Xyl realizes that even the government wasn’t what it seemed.  The global government in her day is far less of an influence on the world than the corporations, and exists merely as a form of administration for the monetary and healthcare systems and the global Security forces.  The global government headquarters are in Geneva, but the real power in the world resides in the upper echelons of Microlera and Intelligon and others like them.  Except, of course, they have the power to change history.  When all information is digital and that information is at the mercy of an Artificial Intelligence, all you know as fact can be changed in the blink of an eye.  What you know as certainties can vanish when it’s only an arrangement of electrons in a datastream.

–Scene excerpted from Aquaria by Carol E. Meacham, used here by permission of the author.

“But What Do You Use It For?”

“But what do you use it for?  What do you do with it?”

These questions came from my mother during a recent conversation.  She was asking me about my computers and my electronic-infested life, and could not understand why I am so attached to my computers and gadgets.  My step-father had asked me not long before “what do you do with your computers?” and as I listed off all the things I do on the computer even I was struck by the sheer length of the list.  When my mother asked the same question I simply said, “Everything.  I do everything on the computer.”

The questions brought into sharp focus the chasm of the electronic generation gap.  Remember when our parents just didn’t understand our music?

It pointed out to me especially how far apart we are in the fundamental mind-set.  A question like “what do you do with it?” with regards to computers and the Internet seems ludicrous to anyone under the age of about 45.  Computers are so integral to our lives that we never think about it.  Computers are extensions of our brains, our memories, our voices.  Computers are our tools, our communications, our toys.  They facilitate every aspect of our lives.  They are part of us.  They amplify us.  We are becoming cyborgs, integrating these machines into our thoughts and lives so much that we feel as if a vital body part had been amputated when we’re away from them.

But our parents aren’t like that. The digital divide isn’t between the people who have computers and those who don’t.  That is a problem of economics and can be solved by a variety of means.  What cannot be solved is the fundamental mind-set that cannot live in a symbiotic relationship with the machine.  Our thinking has diverged from that of our parents in a way that signals a bedrock disconnect in the culture.  When I was in that conversation with my mother I had the most profound feeling that I was of some strange new species speaking to one of the species from which I evolved — there was that uncrossable gulf between us.  My species had just begun its journey into the future.  That of my mother would stay where it was.  That variant of homo sapiens had come to the end of its journey at the shore of an endless ocean of data and signal.  My kind had evolved flippers and were playing in the waves just off the shore.

I like to think it would have been different if my father was still alive.  My father built his own radios and stereo equipment, and he’d wanted to be a pilot.  The first electronic thing I can remember was one of the first Texas Instruments scientific calculators that my father had acquired.  I remember sitting and staring at the album cover for my Dad’s copy of the soundtrack of 2001, with its paintings of a moon colony.  I think my father might have made the jump to this new way of life.  He would have learned to build his own computers, and would have spent endless hours tweaking them.  He would have bought the $300 control yoke and spent his Saturdays flying simulated fighter planes in all the simulated air battles of World War II.  My dad could have made himself at home on the computer.

He would have been 68 years old today.

And oddly, I think I have an answer for my mother now.  I wouldn’t have sent an e-mail to my father today.  I’d be home with him, helping him tweak his computer or install the software for that new control yoke and headset.  I’d be helping him fix the digital camera he’d installed in his remote-controlled airplane for do-it-yourself aerial photography.  We’d be in Best Buy together, picking out a new video camera or TV.  There are some things you can’t do on the computer.  But we can still share the things we love to do with the people who love us.  The computer merely enables us to do so in a more efficient fashion.  It doesn’t fundamentally change the fact that we love each other.

To my father, Edwin Elvis Meacham, Jr.  Happy birthday, Dad.  I miss you.

Ancestor of Distributed Computing of 2230?

From the history of 2230 (see the second post of this blog for full text):

The technique of distributed computation — using thousands, even millions, of computers to process massive amounts of data during unused processor cycles — enabled researchers to do in days what would have taken decades of tedious work. Such rapid numbercrunching accelerated developments in dozens of areas. Designs evolved, radio signals analyzed for extraterrestrial intelligence, computer-generated life evolved and survived in virtual environments, and hundreds of potential cures assessed for effectiveness against known disease characteristics.

And now, from Singularity Hub:

Create an AI on Your Computer

This article outlines just the sort of thing that really set the world of 2230 in motion — distributed computing to use hundreds of thousands or even millions of computers to tackle huge projects in small timeframes.

When I was writing that part of Aquaria I also had in mind an article I’d read in Scientific American about a computer program that literally evolved electronic circuits.(Scientific American, February 2003.  See the teaser for the article here.)  The idea that a distributed computing program could be used for evolving electronic circuits seemed to me to be just the thing for an innovation explosion.  The thing would spit out so many circuit designs that millions of electronics engineering grad students would spend their entire careers just figuring out what they all did and what they were good for.  Sure, it would spit out a lot of useless stuff — but when it’s coming up with a billions designs a year, “one in a thousand” becomes commonplace.  And for the one in a million that really hits the jackpot — well.  That’s what science-fiction is made of, isn’t it?

Ancestor of WorkMates / LifeMates of 2230?

From the Mercury News (www.mercurynews.com)

Siri Lifts Veil on Intelligent Assistant

You’ll note it’s an app for the iPhone, which would put it at the proper size for a WorkMate and LifeMate from my stories (I actually imagined Wally’s unit to be a PalmPilot type device).  It responds to natural language, which all WorkMates and LifeMates do.  This app is actually closer to the LifeMate version, but I suspect expert systems and technical database plug-ins won’t be long in coming.

Transhumanism Isn’t What We’ll Gain, But What We’ll Give Up

by Carol E. Meacham

(auntyproton@gmail.com)

Project 2230

In the course of reading up for the topic of transhumanism for Project 2230, I came across a few opinions from what’s called the “bio-luddite” camp.  One of the questions they ask that has stuck in my mind is this (in paraphrase) :  “Why would anybody want to replace their body, in whole or in part, with mechanical parts?  Why in the world would anybody want to upload their mind into a machine?  What can a mechanical body do that a human body can’t?”

My friends in the Singularity and transhumanist communities have many answers to these questions, most of which I’m sure you’ve all heard if you are at all interested in these subjects.  I have another view, one that may or may not be welcome in the argument.

It is not so much what mechanical bodies and mind uploading will give us as what it will take away.  Or rather, what the transhumanist movement believes it will take away.  The hoopla has been over the assumed capabilities that mechanical parts and bodies will give to an individual, the assumed aspects of immortality, the efficiency, the ability to live and work in environments for which human anatomy is unsuited.  But I think that this idea of a mechanical body appeals because along with all these capabilities the mechanical body will somehow take away the perceived “bad” aspects of being human.  In this case, “bad” equals all those things which are most difficult to live and deal with — emotions,the very things that make us human.

In the popular view, machines are often called “soulless” and often portrayed as emotionless.  They are believed to have no conscience, no moral sense, and no mercy in dealing with humans.  In human terms, this makes them “evil”.  I think, however, that deep under the moralizing and condemning of the “evil machine” is an element of envy.  Machines are freed of all the messy human stuff that we have to put up with every moment of our lives.  They have no emotions — they don’t have to put up with embarrassment, shame, guilt, jealousy, grief, sadness,infatuation, frustration, fear.  Machines do not have these emotions and so are not hindered by them.  They aren’t encumbered by an inescapable human morass and can act uninfluenced by anything save precise logic.  This is a state of being that I think many people would choose for themselves, if such were available.  These emotions are often overwhelming even to a relatively well-adjusted person.  Why not choose to live without them?  Why not choose to eliminate something that consumes vast amounts of time, energy, and thought often to no good end?  Emotionality leads to trouble.  Machines, in existing without such, are able to operate without the interpersonal friction that can doom any endeavor — politics, status-seeking, envy, sexuality.

Humans are confronted not only with their own emotions but inundated by the emotions of others on a daily basis.  And not only in face-to-face interactions but now available 24/7 on the news and the Internet.  War, conflict, politics, the general inhumanity that people can inflict upon each other comes crashing in on us from all sides.  Machines, on the other hand, don’t do that.  Machines are not plagued by millions of years of evolution trying to ensure that the best and strongest of the human herd breed and produce lots of offspring.  In this day and age, politics, wealth and power have replaced success at the hunt.  Machines don’t fight over such things because there’s no emotion there.  Survival for a machine is predicated on far different factors than it is for a human.  Machines work best and most efficiently when they cooperate.  Machines get things done.  I think humanity underneath it all is envious of that.

As for the idea of “soulless” machines — yes, they are soulless.  But no one has been able to conclusively prove via scientific methods that humans have a “soul” either.  Definitions for “soul” vary widely and are usually vague and made of inherently unprovable factors.  No one has ever found a region of the brain wherein the “soul” resides, nor what it’s function is.  I have always wondered what one does with a “soul” anyway.  From what I have seen of the standard dogmas, a “soul” seems to be something akin to a subway token that you have to have to get into an equally vaguely defined “afterlife”, the qualities of which are determined by how clean you have kept said token.  This aspect of the argument simply does not apply to machines.  They are not afraid of death.  They are not afraid of loss of consciousness.  They are not afraid of losing a “self”.  They will not be afraid of anything.  Fear is an emotion, and they are free of that.  Machines, by their nature, are mass-producible and can be made identical.  When one fails, another will take up the task.  It is not the individual that is important, it is the goal the machine or collective of machines are engaged in.  Survival is preferable with regards to conservation of resources and energy, but it is not the primary function of a machine.  So in that respect I think humans envy machines and secretly want to be machines — so that we no longer have to fear death and loss of the individual consciousness.

Ultimately, yes, transhumanism is about transcending the limitations of the human physiology.  Yes, it will enable us to leave Earth, colonize Mars, colonize the moons of Jupiter, and travel to other stars.  Yes, it will enable us to make the most of our lives, to enhance our lives by giving us new senses and new capabilities.  There is noDRM on the human genetic code.  We are open source.  There is no agency that will slap us with a lawsuit for remixing our genetics, or adding in mechanical parts.  The highest goals of humanity — ending war, disease, poverty, prejudice — would be admirably served by wise use of the technologies we will see in the coming decades.  But I can’t help wondering if maybe it’s in part to escape the painful parts of human existence, a sort of cowardly ducking out.  One might see it as a sort of cheating, of trying to cross the river without paying the ferryman his due.  We are still human now.  If we really want to transcend what it is to be human, we have to deal with all of it.  If we don’t, we won’t have transcended anything at all.

Contact me at auntyproton@gmail.com