There is a really good article on Turing in The New Yorker this week, that goes into much greater detail both on his life and work, and the Enigma problem. As a bit of a teaser: From The New Yorker: CODE-BREAKER In 1938, Turing was awarded a Ph.D. in mathematics by Princeton, and, despite the urgings of his father, who worried about imminent war with Germany, decided to return to Britain. Back at Cambridge, he became a regular at Ludwig Wittgenstein’s seminar on the foundations of mathematics. Turing and Wittgenstein were remarkably alike: solitary, ascetic, homosexual, drawn to fundamental questions. But they disagreed sharply on philosophical matters, like the relationship between logic and ordinary life. “No one has ever yet got into trouble from a contradiction in logic,” Wittgenstein insisted. To which Turing’s response was “The real harm will not come in unless there is an application, in which case a bridge may fall down.” Before long, Turing would himself demonstrate that contradictions could indeed have life-or-death consequences.

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http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6725/aibo5gu.jpg Image Hosted by ImageShack.us From Cnet nets: Sony puts Aibo to sleep According to a company representative, more than 150,000 Aibos have been sold since they went on the market in 1999. But the overall company is in the midst of an historic belt-tightening, and the robotics unit didn’t make the cut. “Our core businesses are electronics, games and entertainment, but the focus is going to be on profitability and strategic growth,” said Sony spokeswoman Kirstie Pfeifer. “In light of that, we’ve decided to cancel the Aibo line.” … The demise of Sony’s robots do mark a victory of sorts for U.S. robot makers like iRobot. Most U.S. manufacturers years ago decided that little market demand existed for robot companions and instead aimed their research and design efforts at robots that would perform jobs that are mundane, repetitive or too dangerous for humans. Workhorse Technologies, for instance, invented a robot that combs abandoned mine shafts. The scene is set for the future of robots. Lets take this news as closure for the prologue, and get right into Act I, Scene I. Addendum: Aibo in action.

Ars Technica reports on a lawyer looking for an easy case against Google. he had the bright idea of writing a bunch of random thoughts like the following: The Smoke Detector: I’m so worried about it being a voyeur camera that whenever I return home, I take it down from the wall, pry it open, and carefully inspect its constituent parts. It might be an unreasonable thing to think or do, but it’s the only way I can get to sleep after I’ve been out. Truth is, even sometimes when I’ve not been gone I re-check the smoke detector just to make double sure I didn’t miss anything the last time around. And, thus far, it’s been safe. Not once have I seen anything remotely looking like a camera part inside the smoke detector. But they’ve gotten good with technology, now. I probably wouldn’t be able to tell, anyway. Tomorrow, I’m moving that thing to the hallway. He put it up on his site, and waited for the Google spiders to catalogue his ‘work’ on their servers, and then sued em for 2.5 mil. The judge who made the ruling sided in favor of Google on all counts, and it would otherwise be an entirely uninteresting case except for the precedent it sets. From Ars technica: Judge: Google cache kosher when it comes to copyright The judge ruled that Google could not be held guilty of “direct infringement” because such infringement requires “a volitional act by defendant; automated copying by machines occasioned by others not sufficient.” Because Google’s indexing is automated and the purpose of the indexing is not generally to infringe upon copyright, the judge ruled that they could not be held liable. You can read the entire decision here (PDF). Its short and worth the read. Two important […]

I wrote the previous post on accident. I was meaning to post a sarcastic response to a review of a new biography of Turing. I ended up writing a draft of the first half of my prelim proposal, and have since lost my sarcastic edge. Now I just want to lay down. From Scientific American: A Tour of Turing Leavitt’s focus is elsewhere, however. It is on Turing as the gay outsider, driven to his death. No opportunity is lost to highlight this subtext. When Turing quips about the principle of “fair play for machines,” Leavitt sees a plea for homosexual equality. It is quite right to convey his profound alienation and to bring out the consistency of his English liberalism. It is valuable to show human diversity lying at the center of scientific inquiry. But Leavitt’s laborious decoding understates the constant dialogue between subjective individual vision and the collective work of mathematics and science, with its ideal of objectivity, to which Turing gave his life. Turing, of course, was unappologetic and unflinching in his sexuality towards anyone who knew him well; the idea that his defense of machines was somehow a sublimated plea for sexual equality is just silly. But let’s hope for the sake of my project that this notion of ‘fair play’ doesn’t rest on one man’s obtuse metaphor. For those that don’t know his tragic tale, Turing was eventually driven to suicide on account of persecution. From his Wikipedia article: Turing was a homosexual man during a period when homosexuality was illegal. In 1952, his lover, Arnold Murray, helped an accomplice to break into Turing’s house, and Turing went to the police to report the crime. As a result of the police investigation, Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray, and they were charged with gross […]

Keep the ball moving. The list: 1) Nature and machines 1a) With Descartes, and all philosophers who worried about the determinism of the new science, mechanization was to be associated with natural processes- with the laws governing matter and the mindlessness of the animals. Man, in an effort to distance himself from the machine, was also distanced from nature itself. Thus the dualisms of mind over body, and of reason and intelligence over mere mechanical processing 1b) The machine’s position in relation to nature has shifted as our understanding of the natural world has grown. Now philosophers are by and large naturalists of some stripe or other, with few exception. And yet we still fear an alliance with the machine. Man is now natural, and the machine has become unnatural. The machine is the product of design; its rhythms don’t carry the beat of biological life but of function and technology and modernity. Corollary: The mental vs material distinction becomes updated on the naturalist view as a distinction between the natural and the designed. Although the naturalist is committed to the claim that a machine in principle could do everything a human could, because “humans just are such machines”, the design distinction permits the naturalist to in fact draw a sharp distnction between what humans do and what a given machine does. That machine X can perform task Y is a reflection of its designer, and not of the nature of X itself. Thus, without sacrificing his committments to naturalism, man can still draw a safe distance between him and the machine. Remark: The problem of design runs much deeper than the debate over the place of machines in nature. The lamentable evolution ‘debate’ that occupies so much time and energy among even those who otherwise have no philosophical or […]

http://img484.imageshack.us/img484/5363/roboxquestion2dj.jpg Image Hosted by ImageShack.us Last year was a big year for robots, but two particular stories stood out in the minds of the press. The first was the rather big difference between the Japanese and American approach to robotics- we want our bots functional, they want theirs with personality. Thus, you end up seeing robots and technology overtly displayed in Japan, while in America we tend to hide our tech behind the scenes. But the big story was the baby boomers, and how we’ll need robot slaves to help them all change their diapers within the next 10 years. While the Japanese are building robots for their elderly because their elderly would rather work with plastic and silicon than foreigners, we’ll need em because we have so many damn old people. The upshot is that robotics has taken focus on human-centered companionship. From the University of Hertfordshire: Cogniron: Cognitive Robot Companion Summary of Research Objectives: The overall objectives of this project are to study the perceptual, representational, reasoning and learning capabilities of embodied robots in human centred environments. In the focus of this research endeavour is the development of a robot whose ultimate task is to serve humans as a companion in their daily life. The robot is not only considered as a ready-made device but as an artificial creature, which improves its capabilities in a continuous process of acquiring new knowledge and skills. Besides the necessary functions for sensing, moving and acting, such a robot will exhibit the cognitive capacities enabling it to focus its attention, to understand the spatial and dynamic structure of its environment, to interact with it, to exhibit a social behaviour, and to communicate with other agents and with humans at the appropriate level of abstraction according to context. Thus we have the makings […]

I have a habit of posting daily with long articles. But there is no reason not to post frequently with short commentary as well. From Alan Turing: Intelligent Machinery A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline is in effect a universal machine Of course, you also need to know how to read and carry out the appripriate instructions, but these are supposed to be ‘mindless’ activities. Question: does Turing leave that bit out in the above quote? If not, is it part of the man, his tools, or his discipline? Addendum from the same article: Insofar as we are influenced by [arguments against machine intelligence], we are bound to be left feeling uneasy about the whole project, at any rate for the present. These arguments cannot be wholly ignored, because the idea of ‘intelligence’ is itself emotional rather than mathematical.

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/5779/p938360reg2fp.jpg Image Hosted by ImageShack.us AKA: Silly Putty Facts: – Known as ‘Potty Putty’ in England – Is a viscoelastic liquid, which means it will act as a liquid over long periods of time, but as a solid in the short term. – A good demonstration of the above can be found here – After a long period of inactivity, silly putty will turn into a pool of silicone. – Erotic art employing silly putty can be found here and here. (NOT SAFE FOR WORK). I do not know if these pieces are still in tact. – I personally prefer silly putty art like this. – From the MIT page on silly putty: Ironically, it was only after its success as a toy that practical uses were found for Silly Putty®. It picks up dirt, lint and pet hair, and can stabilize wobbly furniture; but it has also been used in stress-reduction and physical therapy, and in medical and scientific simulations. The crew of Apollo 8 even used it to secure tools in zero-gravity. – I use silly putty as a stress reliever, as a nail-biting deterrent, and as a public speaking tool. I also play with it in classes while I am thinking. Prof. Wagner does the same with a Slinky, which is really the Fintstones to Silly Putty’s Jetsons. – Silly putty absorbs dead skin cells after constant use, making it sticky. The average piece of silly putty lasts 3 days of constant use before becoming too sticky and viscous to be sanitary. I stick used silly putty on the wall next to my computer to poke while I wait for programs to load. – Unless under high stress, Silly Putty likes to remain continuous. It is impossible to disentangle two pieces of silly putty once they have […]

‘Respected’ colleague Patrick linked to a pretty good dumb blonde joke. Some observations about this joke: 1) It is rare to see a new joke created. I seem to recall an Asimov story about this, but I can’t remember its title. 2) The internet is making the joke. No one who links to it makes the joke. The internet makes the joke. 3) Theoretical basis for 2: ‘dumb blonde joke’ has roughly the same meaning (in non-extensional terms) as ‘generic joke’. Although the internet’s greatest asset is its specificity, it is only able to act autonomously in extremely general terms. 4) I really mean it. No person made this joke. No one. Don’t believe me? Then tell me who did. Any one person you provide will be insufficient for joke-hood. 5) Implications of 2: The internet has a pretty lame sense of humor. 6) Patrick’s sense of humor is just that much worse than the internet’s. No one else involved in this joke combines the joke with random other self-involved blogging bullshit. 7) This joke, of course, isn’t new. But the blogohedron conducts information like lightening. 8) From 6: I respectfully request that no one link to this post either. The chain shouldn’t have come this far to begin with. 9) From 7 and 8: consider me grounded. 10) Searching for Asimov’s story, I came across this factoid: he has works in every major category of the Dewey Decimal System except Philosophy. How about that.