New on the blogroll: Robot Gossip. I was linked via Engadget’s coverage of India’s new plan for building a gigantic robot army. While I was trying to think of a tech support joke, though, I found a whole page full of much more interesting tidbits. For instance, this guy: which can manipulate otherwise awkward objects with the all the agility of an elephant’s trunk. See video of him in action here. Oh, DARPA, your moral ambiguity just makes me love you more. Also, this: Generated by a cute little robot with its own aesthetic criteria. I’m glad more of these are coming out, since it forces the issue. The algorithm combines initial randomness, positive feedback and a positive/negative increment of ‘color as pheromone’ mechanism based on a grid of nine RGB sensors. Also the ‘sense of rightness’ – to determine when the painting is ready – is achieved not by any linear method, time or sum, but through a kind of pattern recognition system. |Link| The best part, just like the filmmaking robot, is that it signs its own name:

Interesting interview with William Gibson by PRI about the NSA wiretapping scandal. You can listen to the entire interview here. Gibson comes in about 35 minutes in. I can’t explain it to you, but it has a powerful deja vu. When I got up this morning and read the USA Today headline, I thought the future had been a little more evenly distributed. Now we’ve all got some… The interesting thing about meta-projects in the sense in which I used them [in the NYT editorial] is that I don’t think species know what they’re about. I don’t think humanity knows why we do any of this stuff. A couple hundred years down the road, when people look back at what the NSA has done, the significance of it won’t be about terrorism or Iraq or the Bush administration or the American Constitution, it will be about how we’re driven by emerging technologies and how we struggle to keep up with them… I’m particularly enamored of the idea of a national security “bubble…” Technologies don’t emerge unless there’s someone who thinks he can make a bundle by helping them emerge… I’ve been watching with keen interest since the first NSA scandal: I’ve noticed on the Internet that there aren’t many people really shocked by this. Our popular culture, our dirt-ball street culture teaches us from childhood that the CIA is listening to *all* of our telephone calls and reading *all* of our email anyway. I keep seeing that in the lower discourse of the Internet, people saying, “Oh, they’re doing it anyway.” In some way our culture believes that, and it’s a real problem, because evidently they haven’t been doing it anyway, and now that they’ve started, we really need to pay attention and muster some kind of viable political response. […]

One of my biggest problems in philosophy is that not very many people do what I do. The Cyberneticists in the 50s came close, but the continental philosophers are prone to use ‘technology’ as shorthand for a discussion about whatever aspect of society they want to talk about, and consequently they never really engaged the problem of technology directly. I draw a lot of my own work from the analytic work in Phil Mind from the 80s and 90s (which in turn was a response to the AI guys in the 50s and 60s), but really thats only because that’s the literature I know the best; I am definitely taking oblique lines to that whole discussion. I’m sort of embarassed to admit it, but there are definite similarities between what I am working on and the Singularists. I’ve talked about the Singularity before, so I wont go into my quasi-Davidsonian spiel about how there’s no real sense to make of entirely incomprehensible intelligences. I’ve never really felt comfortable making these arguments, because I have trouble treating anyone calling themselves a ‘futurist’ or ‘transhumanist’ seriously. But apparently other people are taking them seriously, because they are having a big conference this weekend at Stanford. I don’t know how much credit to give this fact- their sponsors, aside from the hosting institution (?), are kind of ridiculous, and they quote people on the home page like Gates and Hawking who have nothing to do with the conference, which is rather disingenuous. Plus, I’m sure these guys take their increasing popularity and ‘success’ as evidence that their claims are accurate, which is just self-confirming bullshit. But then again, maybe I can see this as an employment opportunity. Make a name for myself arguing against these guys. I dunno. At the very least, I […]

about the singularity. So D&D is having a thread about the Singularity convention, and I posted the Ted Chaing short story “The Evolution of Human Science”, which is perhaps one of the more convincing discussion of the human condition in a posthuman world. Its only 3 pages, and I strongly recommend a read. In any case, the goons were busy jerking each other off over technology and how we can’t hope to ‘catch up’, and they ignored my post. So I posted a brief defense of Chaing’s portrait of the future: The point is that we don’t have to catch up, and there’s no reason to think that we can or need to. Even with a bunch of metahumans wandering around being incomprehensible, the human condition will be roughly the same: we will still be curious about our world, we will still employ our technology, science, and engineering techniques in attempt to increase the quality of life, and our technology will continue to have unforeseen consequences on our life. Its the human condition that we should be worried about, and the singularity gives us no reason to think that will change whatsoever. But once we admit that, the claims of the singularists boil down to ‘technology in the future will be CRAZY you have no idea’. Well, no shit. The reason why its so popular, though, is because we, as a society, have almost no tools or resources for explaining and understanding the technology we surround ourselves with, and Kurzweil is one of the first people to come around and give it some sort of sense. If it has a pattern, it is more stable and comforting. But the whole thing is still quasi-mystical cultish nonsense. deus novus machina To which Hemogoblin responded with this extremely elegant post: Hemogoblin posted: […]

Give me my Metaverse now. The product is equipped with a pair of liquid crystal display (LCD) screens, roughly the size of a human pupil _ 4.2 millimeters by 4.8 millimeters _ in both lenses. “Weighing just 2 grams each, this micro LCD would be the world’s smallest and lightest screen available. The weight of the video glasses would be also fine at 58 grams,” Kowon vice president Park Hong-tae said. Park continued Kowon did not compromise the all-important visual quality to minimize the display size because the miniature screen features programs at 320X240 pixels resolution, similar to that of digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB). “We attempted to make MSP-209 users feel they are watching a 32-inch TV at two meters away, with our miniature LCD embedded into glasses,” Park said. |link via Engadget| Korean broadcasting on demand is so far ahead of ours that they are getting ready to pipe it right into your glasses. These sets are supposed to retail for around 200 bucks. 200 bucks. Goddamnit.

You probably shouldn’t read this post. (01:25:59) Kirk Fisher: did i tell you about the baby whos head came off? (01:26:10) eripsa@gmail.com/Gaim: um, no (01:26:21) Kirk Fisher: i was working in L&D on thursday night (01:26:40) Kirk Fisher: and there was a prem delivery (01:26:46) Kirk Fisher: and the baby was low on 02 (01:26:53) Kirk Fisher: and the doctor tried to pull on its head (01:26:56) Kirk Fisher: and the head came off (01:27:11) Kirk Fisher: and they had to take the woman to surgery (01:27:14) Kirk Fisher: to do a dnc (01:27:21) Kirk Fisher: to get the rest of the baby’s body out (01:28:08) eripsa@gmail.com/Gaim: holy shit. like it detached? or it just dislocated? (01:28:20) eripsa@gmail.com/Gaim: did they get it back on? did it survive? (01:28:26) Kirk Fisher: came off. completely (01:28:28) eripsa@gmail.com/Gaim: jesus fucking god (01:28:30) Kirk Fisher: no, it died (01:28:51) eripsa@gmail.com/Gaim: wha.. how does that even happen? (01:29:03) Kirk Fisher: no idea (01:29:12) Kirk Fisher: evidently the doctor hadn’t seen that happen before either (01:29:22) eripsa@gmail.com/Gaim: poor woman (01:29:27) Kirk Fisher: but another doctor who came later told us that he’d heard of that before (01:30:20) eripsa@gmail.com/Gaim: was it dead before that happened, or was it that that killed it? (01:30:40) Kirk Fisher: it probably would have died anyway (01:30:48) Kirk Fisher: but it was still barely alive (01:30:56) Kirk Fisher: its o2 was way down (01:31:24) Kirk Fisher: so it actually died from the decapitation (01:32:03) eripsa@gmail.com/Gaim: well thanks for the bedtime story (01:32:39) Kirk Fisher: yeah, i thought you’d like it

Another installment of my far from regular series of philosophers and their discussion of technology. You can see previous installments here. This time: Arnold Gehlen, from Man in the Age of Technology (1957). The following is from the first chapter of this book, entitled “Man and Technique”. Gehlen uses the German term ‘Tecknik’ (translated as ‘technique’) in much the same way Heidegger uses the term ‘technology’, to include both our tools and machines, and our various scienfitic and engineering methods and procedures that help us organize and structure our environment. If by technique we understand the capacities and means whereby man puts nature into his own service, by identifying nature’s properties and laws in order to exploit them and to control their interaction, clearly technique, in this highly general sense, is part and parcel of man’s very essence. It truely mirrors man– like man himself it is clever, it represents something intrinsically improbable, it bears a complex and twisted relationship to nature. … Like man, [technique] is inventive, resourceful, life-fostering and at the same time life-destroying, involved with primeval nature in a complex relationship. Technique constitutes, as does man himself, nature artificelle. … Scientific research employs ever-new technical devices; nature is forced open through technique. The scientist much reach an understanding with the technician, for each problem is defined by the not-yet-available equipment required to solve it. Advances in theoretical physics, for instance, depend no less upon electronic computers than upon the brains of physicists. … The fascination with automatisms is a prerational, transpractical impulse, which previously, for millennia, found expression in magic– the technique of things and processes beyond our senses– and has more recently found its full realization in clocks, engines, and all manner of rotating mechanisms. Whoever considers from a psychological viewpoint the magic which cars exercise […]

From the OED: obsolescence, n. 1. a. The process or fact of becoming obsolete or outdated, or of falling into disuse. b. spec. The process whereby or state at which machinery, consumer goods, etc., become obsolete as a result of technological advances, changes in demand, etc. Cf. planned obsolescence s.v. PLANNED ppl. a. 2. 2. Biol. and Med.a. The gradual disappearance or atrophy of an organ or part; persistence of an organ, tissue, etc., without function or activity; (also) spec. the penultimate stage in the evolutionary loss of a character, or in the extinction of a species.

As some of you know, I’ve been working on a theory of obsolescence. I dont have it very well developed, but I’ve been talking about it, if only to spread around the fact that I am working on it now, lest I be credited as a copycat after someone else comes out with a fully developed theory. In any case, this topic will probably take more space on this blog as I get around to filling the theory out and work on the details. In the mean time, you might want to listen to this podcast: The Leonard Lopate Show interviews Giles Slade (mp3) If human history reserves a privileged place for the Egyptians because of their rich conception of the afterlife, what place will it reserve for the people who, in their seeming worship of convienence and greed, left behind mountains of electronic debris? Its a really interesting interview, and discusses the rise of planned obsolescence in consumer culture, the role of women and Sputnik in legitimizing the practice, and the future of technological waste. Slade just published a book, Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, which I just ordered and am looking forward to reading over the summer. It deals mainly with the consumer aspects of obsolescence, so I think my philosophical theory is safe. For now.

Thats right, the robits. From New Scientist: ‘Baby’ robot learns like a human The robot consists of a one-armed torso with a pair of cameras for eyes and a grasping hand. It has an in-built desire to physically experiment with objects on the table in front of it and an ability to assess different forms of interaction and learn from mistakes. If the robot fails to grasp an object securely, for example, it remembers and tries a differently strategy next time. One unbidden skill developed by Babybot was the ability to roll a bottle across its table. You can see video of the little guy in action here and here (right click, save as). He’s pretty damn cool, and the way he moves is really quite child-like. I love the way you can track his line of sight. By the way, I hope the term ‘robit’ gets picked up (and attributed to me) because ‘Robocub’ is dreadful. edit: I should comment on this as well- “The idea is fantastic,” says Steve Grand, founder of UK robotics research company Cyberlife Research, who has also worked on simple learning robots. “It’s the only way you can research the development of intelligence or artificial intelligence.” However, Grand believes fundamental differences between the human brain and computers used to control learning robots like Babybot may mean that such machines can never become as intelligent as us. What he means, of course, is that the robot can never become intelligence like us. Of course the bot is already intelligently engaged with its toys, though it isn’t really that smart or sophisticated about it. Turing said over 50 years ago was that the path to machine intelligence was to develop child-like machines that can learn like humans, and this shows we are well on our way […]

They’re made out of meat This is a short film based on a short sci-fi story by Terry Bisson. I ran across this story in Andy Clark’s book Mindware. This is a pretty good adaptation. edit: damn it, I can’t do the youtube embed thing because the coding on this page is completely fubar.

Alright, I’ve been sitting on my ass for too long. If I’m going to be serious about procrastinating, then I’m going to put some effort into it goddamnit. Time to get back to what I do best: talking about robots. The talking robotic doll tells its owner how much it loves her and welcomes her home when she walks back into the house. The majority of buyers are retired women who live alone. “Many elderly people buy these dolls, they think the dolls are actual grandsons and granddaughters,” says Yuko Hirakawa from Tomy. “You can speak to the doll and she will tell you she loves you so much. If you hold the doll, the weight is the same weight as a small infant.” Apparently, it provides comfort for lonely women who hold it in their arms. |link| The only thing creepier than that doll’s soulless eyes is the BBC’s blunt way of talking about the elderly. And for something completely different: Dr Will Browne, of Reading’s School of Systems Engineering, together with Professor Ian Postlethwaite and Dr Liqun Yao (Leicester), created the system that fuses the human and computer knowledge of a rolling mill and uses that combined understanding to produce high quality plates of aluminium – potentially saving manufacturers millions of pounds. … Knowledge elicitation involves establishing important facts and heuristics (rules of thumb) from plant experts, whereas data mining is the process of analysing data, often using advanced artificial intelligence techniques, in order to identify patterns or relationships. ‘The fusion of these two techniques produced an expert system that successfully rolled aluminium plate without significant shape defects’, said Dr Browne.|link| To all the doubters, I ask: why isn’t this genuine collaboration? Why are you so compelled to insist that this expert system doesn’t understand anything except metaphorically?