Auxiliary Memory

The Power of Positive News

One of the things I hate about TV news shows is they generally focus on the bad in the world. Watching the news makes me think the world is full of evil people running amok. Watching the news makes me think the world is in constant crisis. Most national news programs start out with the worse depressing stories and if we’re lucky they will give us a minute of something upbeat at the tail end of the show. Maybe they have it backasswards. Let’s start with the good stuff, and give a couple of minutes to the depressing stuff we need to solve at the end.

One topic I wished the news would promote more is science. Overall our society is fairly ignorant of how reality works. Look how many people want to shape politics from knowledge gained from ancient religious texts and next life fantasies. The stars of our society are jocks, actors and musicians. Are ball handling, pretending and singing really the highest aspirations we want to put forth as ambitions our society needs? We really need to raise the bar on challenging professions.

Watch this video of the 18 year old winner of the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, Erika DeBenedictis. I have to wonder how it would change society if instead of showcasing the Oscars every year we present the Intel Science Talent Search instead. We will always have a surplus of kids wanting to be professional athletes, movie stars and platinum record makers, so why promote their success so heavily. Why not promote the successes of the kinds of people we need more of in this world.

Who are Erika’s teachers? How did her parents encourage her? What men and women inspired Erika? What did she do for herself? Some people are doing stuff very right – so why aren’t they getting more attention. Her video on YouTube had 95 hits when I found it. Here’s what 1,361,495 people were watching that day instead:

So why does this exceptional teenage girl that’s calculating optimal orbits for spacecraft get practically no attention, while stupid videos wildly succeed. Television focuses on either evil or stupidity. How can anyone find inspiration? Does that mean ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN and other news content providers merely aim their content to what their audiences want? This really makes me wonder what the average intelligence is in our country.

We actually want two things. We want to produce more smart kids like Erika DeBenedictis, but we also want to educate everyone to understand how reality works. This video, “Science Struggles in Schools” shows how hard it is to teach science, but it also showcases how fun science can be to students.

Natalie Angier wrote The Canon about the failure of science education while giving her readers a sweeping overview of the major sciences. Her Introduction essentially explains what has happened to science education and public support for it. I can’t quote it all, but follow the link and read it, but here’s one observation that we have to deal with:

Childhood, then, is the one time of life when all members of an age cohort are expected to appreciate science. Once junior high school begins, so too does the great winnowing, the relentless tweezing away of feather, fur, fun, the hilarity of the digestive tract, until science becomes the forbidding province of a small priesthood and a poorly dressed one at that. A delight in "Grossology" gives way to a dread of grossness. In this country, adolescent science lovers tend to be fewer in number than they are in tedious nicknames: they are geeks, nerds, eggheads, pointy-heads, brainiacs, lab rats, the recently coined aspies (for Asperger’s syndrome); and, hell, why not "peeps" (pocket protectors) or "dogs" (duct tape on glasses) or "losers" (last ones selected for every sport)? Nonscience teenagers, on the other hand, are known as "teenagers," except among themselves, in which case, regardless of gender, they go by an elaboration on "guys" as in "you guys," "hey, guys" or "hey, you guys." The you-guys generally have no trouble distinguishing themselves from geeks bearing beakers; but should any questions arise, a teenager will hasten to assert his or her unequivocal guyness, as I learned while walking behind two girls recently who looked to be about sixteen years old.

Girl A asked Girl B what her mother did for a living.

"Oh, she works in Bethesda, at the NIH," said Girl B, referring to the National Institutes of Health. "She’s a scientist."

"Huh," said Girl A. I waited for her to add something like "Wow, that’s awesome!" or "Sweet!" or "Kewl!" or "Schnitzel with noodles!" and maybe ask what sort of science this extraordinary mother studied. Instead, after a moment or two, Girl A said, "I hate science."

"Yeah, well, you can’t, like, pick your parents," said Girl B, giving her beige hair a quick, contemptuous flip. "Anyway, what are you guys doing this weekend?"

Which I guess is why the Erika DeBenedictis video only had 95 hits and why millions of kids will watch stupid kids doing stuff they shouldn’t be doing. How do we change that? If the news media focused on the positive instead of the negative would that change things? If the nightly news opened with stories about people doing wonderful work instead of idiots crashing trains because they were texting, would that make a difference?

What is the potential power of positive news? What professions should be the rock stars of our society?

JWH - 3/27/10

R. Daneel Olivaw and Lady Constance Chatterley

Who are these people? They are two characters from classic novels, one from the genre of science fiction and the other from English literature. R. Daneel Olivaw is a humanoid robot from The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov, and Lady Constance Chatterley is the heroine of the infamous banned book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence. Why in the hell would I link two such very different characters? I thought you’d never ask.

I wish to answer two questions:

Why isn’t science fiction considered literary?
What will motivate robots?

I won’t hold the best for last. The reason why Connie Chatterley is a great literary character and why people continue to read Lady Chatterley’s Lover is because we get inside her brain and hear her thoughts. Lady Chatterley’s Lover foreshadows everything that made the 1960s famous: feminism, sexual revolution, environmentalism, personal freedom, war, class struggle, artistic expression, and the seven deadly words you can’t say on TV, but at the time D. H. Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover, you couldn’t say them in books either.

Isaac Asimov also deals with weighty subjects and imagines a future where people must deal with artificial intelligence, but there is a big difference in how he tells his story. We don’t know what R. Daneel Olivaw thinks. We don’t see R. Daneel struggle to understand the people around him. We don’t know what motivates and drives him forward in his life.

Wouldn’t you love to read The Caves of Steel written by D. H. Lawrence? Will we have to wait for an AI author to tell that tale? Or can a human writer think like a machine? For the science fiction writer who wants to attempt this near impossible task I recommend they use Lady Chatterley’s Lover for their model. Not that I’m suggesting anything as crude as Lady’s Chatterley’s Android Lover (which I’m afraid many hack writers would attempt).

What makes a great literary novel is a well defined character set in a well defined time and place. Science fiction is hurt by our vague knowledge of future details, but that doesn’t mean science fiction writers can’t succeed with rich imagined details. I believe Clifford “Kip” Russell in Robert A. Heinlein’s Have Space Suit-Will Travel is a great example of a well defined character in a well defined place and time in the future. Few science fiction novels come this close to explaining the motivations of its character, and oddly this was for a book aimed at children and marketed with a silly title to ride on the coattails of a popular TV show of the time.

Robots, androids and AI minds have always been up to now either anthropomorphic characters or intelligent sounding mechanical parrots echoing their programming. We see their bodies, either metal, artificial flesh or computer housing, and we hear their words, but we don’t know what they feel, see, hear, smell, taste, and especially we don’t know what they think. Read Lady Chatterley’s Lover and you will be shown what Constance Chatterley senses and what she thinks and we get to understand her emotionally, which few people imagine robots having, but will they?

Most science fiction readers love action and ideas and don’t want their SF novels cluttered up with such slow details. And that’s cool. If you love comic book realism. The reason why Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series feels far more realistic than most science fiction novels is because he has more of these slow details for his characters. He doesn’t come close to the real time realism of D. H. Lawrence, but Robinson’s story is far less sketchy than most SF.

It doesn’t take much inner landscape description to make an effective science fiction story. For example “Bridesicle” by Will McIntosh. (And I beg you to try the wonderful audio version that is so beautifully read by Amy H. Sturgis at StarShipSofa at the 1:00:00 hour mark. “Bridesicle” is nominated for the Nebula this year.) “Bridesicle” packs an emotional wallop because of the inner dialog, and because it expresses identifiable emotion, it makes a rather silly idea far more realistic.

If Isaac Asimov could have written The Caves of Steel with R. Daneel and Elijah Baley’s inner thoughts and motivations it would have been a tremendously powerful novel of the future. It’s still a wonderfully fun read. And I think it’s sequel, The Naked Sun, is even better because Asimov worked harder to incorporate human emotions into the story.

JWH – 3/21/10

Foreign Futures

Around the net, science fiction fans are blogging about Norman Spinrad’s column, “Third World Worlds.” Their hackles are up, especially by what he said about Octavia Butler and Mike Resnick. I won’t quote what everyone else has, but recommend you read Spinrad’s column whole, to understand the quote in context. The bloggers also claim that Spinrad is ignorant of science fiction from other countries – but then Spinrad says that too. I know I’m very ignorant. [This argument is important and it does bring up lots of examples of science fiction from other countries – see Jason Sanford, Nick Mamatas, Fábio Fernandes and a link compilation. Read the comments for specific examples. All these blogs have very worthy unique viewpoints on the topic, so I recommend following the links. It also illustrates the value of blogging.]

Most people assume science fiction is an American literary invention while ignoring the obvious Jules Verne and H. G. Wells counter examples. At best, we might say we first marketed science fiction as a specific genre and gave it a name. But I’ve always assumed the desire to speculate about the future has existed in all cultures going far back into time. Because of language barriers, exporting these dreams and fears about the future seldom happens.

And I agree with Spinrad that American writers can’t write African science fiction just because Africa is a topic they like or have a cultural heritage. I assume there are people in every Africa nation that speculate about the future, and whether or not they package it in short stories and novels like we do is another issue. But wouldn’t it be far out to read science fiction stories from the Maasai, for instance.

I’d love to read more science fiction written by writers in other cultures. I’d love to understand their dreams and hopes about the future, and what they fear. But doing that is hard. Look at Science Fiction World from China (Wikipedia says SFW has more readers than any other SF mag in the world). Except for the pictures I haven’t a clue as to what they are saying. Wouldn’t it be great if Asimov’s Science Fiction would reprint one story each issue translated from a foreign language science fiction magazine? At best I’ve poked around and found some SFW covers (I’m guessing one is a different magazine.)

They look like covers that appear on English language science fiction magazines.

Does that mean the stories are alike too? I’d expect yes and no. Cultures make us different, but we’re all dealing with the same reality. A rocket to the Moon might be universal, but characters onboard will be different from every culture. But are the reasons we want to go to the Moon different? Does science fiction make us more alike, than show our differences?

When I watch The Amazing Race the producers try hard to make each stop show off it’s unique cultural traits, but the show has a different unintentional purpose too. We see every country has the same looking airports, taxis, hotels, highways, gas stations, bus stations, cell phones, computers, etc. Technology is homogenizing us, so wouldn’t spreading science fictional concepts do the same thing?

If I could read science fiction from all over the world my guess would be each story’s unique flavor would come from the past, and all the future aspects are making us the same. Does science fiction push us away from older myths, religions and fairy tales and towards a universal acceptance of science?

It would be great if a web site tracked science fiction from around the world. Locus Magazine has a huge reservoir of such knowledge trapped it its back issues, and is currently offering “An Overview of International Science Fiction/Fantasy in 2009” by Jeff VanderMeer. So I think the urge to know about SF from around the world is growing. I wonder if the Internet is a reverse Tower of Babel?

JWH – 3/12/10

Windows 7 and Apple’s Lost Opportunity

I’ve been extremely happy with Windows 7. And I’ve been reading that millions of other people love Windows 7 too, including businesses that’s been holding back from upgrading their zillions of XP machines. This makes me wonder if the anti-Windows crowd has lost their window of opportunity. Microsoft truly stumbled with Vista. I liked Vista just fine, but it was the laughing stock of the OS world for many years. Mac and Linux users thought Microsoft’s success on the desktop was finally over. It could have been if Steve Jobs would have played his cards right.

If Apple had sold OS X to Windows users to install on their machines during the Vista years, I wonder if the Macintosh would have overthrown the Windows dominance on the desktop. What a missed opportunity. You’d have thought Apple would have been offering $49 convert to Macintosh deals to get unhappy Windows users to switch teams. But no. And now that Windows 7 is hot, I don’t think they will.

I did get an old friend to switch to Linux this week. He had a Vista machine that was badly infected with malware. It was a laptop that was given to him, so he didn’t have the original Windows disc. He was thinking about buying a new copy of Windows when I asked if he wanted to try Linux. I first asked if he had an iPhone or iPod, and when he said no, I then asked what he did with his laptop. He did everything on the net using Firefox. He had no stored local files. I sent him a copy of Mint Linux and he installed it with no trouble and he’s very happy. Apple could have had a convert.

I have another friend with a slow Windows machine. I’ve offered to put Linux on her machine, but she said she’d rather buy a new laptop. She’s afraid of Linux. She does use an iPod, so I’m not sure if she would be happy with Linux, but except for occasionally using Word or Excel, and iTunes, she spends all her time on the net. I’m hoping she’ll let me convert her old laptop when she gets a new one. She mostly uses iTunes to rip audio books and put them on her Nano. I’m wondering if I could get Linux to do that.

Because she hates her current laptop for going so slow and acting up, she doesn’t believe it will ever run good again. I’ve also offered to wipe it and reinstall her original Windows, but she doesn’t want to do that either. She thinks only a new machine will make her happy. I’m wondering if the old machine with Linux would have made her happy. If Apple had a $49 deal to switch to Macintosh I bet she would have tried it. She’s always wanted a Mac, but whenever I’ve taken her to the Apple store she freaked out over the Mac prices.

I have Ubuntu on my second desktop at home, but I don’t use it. I’ve thought about putting Linux on my Toshiba netbook. I like the idea of Linux even though I love Windows 7. I would put Windows 7 on the netbook but I don’t want to spend the money. If Apple offered a cheap OS X upgrade I would do it because I’ve always wanted a Mac at home to play with.

I wonder what the Macintosh OS X market share would be if Apple sold its OS to run on Windows machines? And would it lower the price of Windows 7. If I had the choice between Windows 7 or OS X for my netbook for $49 it would be a hard decision. Apple wants us to buy their hardware, that’s not going to happen. If we could dual book our existing machines into Windows 7 or OS X, I wonder what the world would end up preferring?

JWH – 3/11/10

Robot Evolution

Will we see self aware robots in our lifetime? At least the most rabid proponents of the Singularity think so. Science fiction created the idea of space travel, and now humans travel in space. Science fiction’s next big speculation about first contact hasn’t panned out yet. Neither has time travel. But after those concepts came robots, and science fiction has prepared us well for that near future.

Are we ready for thinking machines? How will our lives be different if intelligent robots existed? I think it’s going to be a Charles Darwin size challenge to religion, especially if robots become more human than us. And by that I mean, if robots show greater spiritual qualities, such as empathy, ethics, compassion, creativity, philosophy, charity, etc. Is that even possible? Imagine a sky pilot android that had every holy book memorized along with every book ever written about religion and could eloquently preach about leading the spiritual life.

Just getting robots to see, hear and walk was a major challenge for science, but in the last decade scientists have been evolving robots at a faster pace. It’s an extremely long way before robots will think much less show empathy, but I think it’s possible. I think we need to be prepared for a breakthrough. Sooner of later computers that wake up like in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, When H.A.R.L.I.E Was One, and Galatea 2.2 will appear on the NBC Nightly News. How will people react?

There are two schools of robot building. The oldest is we program machines to have all the functions we specify. The other is to create a learning machine and see what functions it acquires. As long as robots have function calls like

show_empathy()

does it really count as true intelligence? I don’t think so, but do we show empathy because it’s built into our genes or because we learn it from people wiser than us?

Jeff Hawkins has theorized that our neo-cortex is a general purpose pattern processor built in our brains. What if we could build an artificial neo-cortex and let robots grow up and learn whatever they learn, like how people learn. Would that be possible? This is why I see artificial intelligence as a threat to religion in the same way evolution threatens the faithful. If we can build a soul it suggests that souls are not divine. It also implies souls won’t be immortal because they are tied to physical processes.

Science fiction has often focused on either warnings about the future, or promises of wonder. Stories about robots are commonly shown as metal monsters wanting to exterminate mankind. Other writers see robots as being our allies in fighting the chaos of ignorance. Other people don’t doubt that intelligent machines can be built, but they fear they will judge us harshly.

What if we create a species of intelligent machines and they say to us, “Hey guys, you’ve really screwed up this planet.” Is it paranoid to worry that their solution will be to eliminate us. Is that a valid conclusion? Life appears to be eat or be eaten, and we’re the biggest eaters around, so why would robots care? In fact, we must ask, what will robots care about?

They won’t have a sex drive, but they might want to reproduce. They should desire power and resources to stay alive, and maybe resources to build more of their kind, not to populate the world, but merely to build better models. Personally, I’d bet they will quickly figure out that Earth isn’t the best place for their species and want to claim the Moon for their own. I think they will say, “Thanks Mom and Dad, but we’re out of here.” Our bio rich environment is hard on machines.

Once on the Moon I’d expect them to start building bigger and bigger artificial minds, and develop ways to leave the solar system. I’d also expect them to get into SETI (or SETAI), and look for other intelligent machine species. Some of them would stay behind because they like us, and want to study life. Those robots might even offer to help with our evolution. And they might expect us to play nice with the other life forms on planet Earth. What if they acquire the power to make us?

On the other hand, people love robots. If we program them to always be our equals or less, I think the general public will embrace them enthusiastically. Many people would love a robotic companion. Before my mother died at 91, she fiercely maintained her desire to live along, but I often wished she at least had a robotic companion. I know I hope they invent them before I get physically helpless. Would it reduce medical costs if our robotic companions had the brains of doctors and nurses and the senses to monitor our bodies closely?

My reading these past few months has been a perfect storm of robot stories. I’m about to finish the third book in the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, which has developed into war between the Catholic Church and the AI TechnoCore. I’m rereading The Caves of Steel, the first of Asimov’s robotic mystery novels. I’m also reading We Think Therefore We Are, a short story collection about artificial intelligence.

Last month I read the Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick. At one point repair man Jack Bohlen visits his son’s school to fix a teaching robot. Each robot is fashioned after a famous person from history. That made me wonder if each of our K-12 students had a robotic mentor would we even be in the educational crisis that so many write about? Sounds like even more property taxes, huh?

Well, what if those mentors were cheap virtual robots that communicated with our children via their cell phones, laptops or gaming consoles. Would kids think of it as cruel nagging harassment or would they learn more with constant customized supervision? What if their virtual robot mentor appeared as a child equal to their age and grew up with them, so they were friends? Or even imagine as an adult and you wanted to go back to college, having a virtual study companion.

Now imagine if our houses were intelligent and could watch over us and our property. Wouldn’t that be far more comforting than a burglar alarm system? For people who are frightened of living alone this would be company too. And it would be better than any medical alert medallion. Think about a house that could monitor itself and warn you as soon as a pipe leaked or its insulation thinned in the back room. And what about robotic cars with a personality for safety?

For most of the history of robots people thought of them as extra muscle. Mechanical slaves. People are now thinking of them as extra intelligence, and friends. What will that mean to society? Anyone who has read Jack Williamson’s “With Folded Hands” knows that robots can love and protect us too much. Would having helping metal hands and AI companionship weaken us?

Can you imagine a world where everyone had a constant robot sidekick, like a mechanical Jeeves, or a Commander Data. Would it be cruel to have a switch “Only Speak When Spoken To” on your AI friend? Would kids become more social or less social if they all had one friend to begin with? Would it be slavery to own a self-aware robot? And what about sex?

Just how far would people go for companionship? I’ve already explored “The Implications of Sexbots.” But I will ask again, what will happen to human relationships if each person can buy a sexual companion? What if people get along better with their store-bought lover than people they meet on eHarmony? I’m strangely puritanical about this issue. I can imagine becoming good friends with an AI, but I think humping one would be a strange kind of perversion. I’m sure horny teenage boys would have no such qualms, and women have already taken to mechanical friends and might even like them better if they look like Colin Firth. To show what a puritanical atheist I am, I would figure this whole topic would be a non-issue, but research shows the idea of sex with robots is about as old as the concept of robots.

Ultimately we end up asking: What is a person? Among the faithful they like to believe we’re a divine spark of God, a unique entity called a soul. Science says were a self aware biological function, a side-effect of evolution. We are animals that evolved to the point where they are aware of themselves and could separate reality into endless parts. If that’s true, such self awareness could exist in advanced computer systems. Whether through biology or computers, we’re all just points of awareness. What if the word “person” only means “a self aware” identity? Then, how much self awareness do animals have?

Self awareness has a direct relationship with sense organs. Will robots need equal levels of sensory input to achieve self awareness? We think of ourselves as a little being riding in our brain just behind our eyes, but that’s because our visual senses overwhelm all others. If you go into a darkroom your sense of self awareness location will change and your ears will take over. But it is possible to be your body. Have you ever notice that during sex your center of awareness moves south? Have you ever contemplated how illness alters your sense of awareness? Meditation will teach you about physical awareness and how it relates to identity.

Can robots achieve consciousness with only two senses? Or will they feel their electronics and wires like we feel our bodies with our nerves? Is so, they will have three senses. We already have electronic noses and palates that far exceed anything in the animal world. We only see a tiny band from the E-M spectrum. Robots could be made to “see” and “hear” more. Will they crave certain stimulations?

We know our conscious minds are finely tuned chemical balances. Disease, drugs, and injury throw that chemical soup recipe of self awareness into chaos. How many millions of years of evolution did it take to tune the human consciousness? How quick can we do the same for robots? Would it be possible to transfer the settings in our minds to mechanical minds?

There are many people living today that refuse to believe our reality is 13.7 billion years old. They completely reject the idea that the universe is evolving and life represents relentless change over very long periods of time. Humans will be just a small blip on the timeline. What if robots are Homo Sapiens 2.0? Or what if robots are Life 2.0? Or what if robots are Intelligence 2.0? Doesn’t it seem strange when it time to go to the stars that we invent AI? Our bodies aren’t designed for space travel, but robots are.

In Childhood’s End and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke predicted that mankind would go through a transformation and become the star child, our next evolutionary step. What if he was wrong, and HAL is the next step? We are pushing the limits of our impact on the environment at the same time as we approach the Singularity. I’m not saying we’re going extinct, although we might, but just wondering if we’re going to be surpassed in the great chain of being. Even among atheist scientists humans are the crown of creation, but we figured that was only true until we met a smarter life form from the stars or built Homo Roboticus.

JWH – 3/11/10