Filed under: Amazon, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Expert systems, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff
Via my Her Final Year co-author, this fairly light but interesting look at the current tech which is very much the precursors of what I envision in Communion of Dreams:
5 Exciting Innovations That Will Change Computing in 2012
Technical innovations are incoming in the next year or so that promise to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds like never before, whether that’s controlling your computer with gestures, opening programs with your eyes or extending the menu options for touchscreens with wearable devices.
There are a number of things they feature in the slideshow which gave me a chuckle, they’re so clearly direct ancestors of what is in Communion. Such as the Keyglove:
The Keyglove is a wearable, wireless, open source input device that boasts unprecedented flexibility and convenience for all kinds of computer applications.
With exciting potential for gaming, design, art, music, device control and even data entry, the glove-based system’s multi-sensor combinations mean it could be programmed to offer one-handed operation of many systems and software.
But this had me laughing right out loud, from the last of the five entries:
We predict that the press-a-button-and-speak method will become outdated as smart virtual assistants — which offer an AI-powered, conversational style solution — emerge.
Gee . . . a smart virtual assistant. Now, *there’s* an idea I never considered for the future. Well, maybe this passage from page 6 does sort of hint at that:
“Hi Seth.” Jon just talked to the not-quite thin air next to him. It was common enough to see people walking through the halls, or sitting at their desks, chatting with someone invisible. He could have Seth give him the feed for the images of the other experts, and see their ghostly manifestations, if he wanted.
His expert was one of best, one of only a few hundred based on the new semifluid CPU technology that surpassed the best thin-film computers made by the Israelis. But it was a quirky technology, just a few years old, subject to problems that conventional computers didn’t have, and still not entirely understood. Even less settled was whether the experts based on this technology could finally be considered to be true AI. The superconducting gel that was the basis of the semifluid CPU was more alive than not, and the computer was largely self-determining once the projected energy matrix surrounding the gel was initiated by another computer. Building on the initial subsistence program, the computer would learn how to refine and control the matrix to improve its own ‘thinking’. The thin-film computers had long since passed the Turing test, and these semifluid systems seemed to be almost human. But did that constitute sentience? Jon considered it to be a moot point, of interest only to philosophers and ethicists.
Heh. You know, reading that again, I’m pleased with just how much of the entire story of the book is foreshadowed in those couple of paragraphs. It’s almost like I planned it or something.
Anyway, another countdown of a sort: this coming Saturday and Sunday, all day both days, the Kindle edition of Communion of Dreams will be available for free to any and all who want to read it. And in preparation for that, I would ask that anyone who has had a chance to read the book to please go post a review on Amazon, or at least give the book a “Like” there. Building that sort of recommendation base will really help – thank you very much!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, Expert systems, Google, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech
This news item is making the rounds:
What’s next? Perhaps throngs of people in thick-framed sunglasses lurching down the streets, cocking and twisting their heads like extras in a zombie movie.
That’s because later this year, Google is expected to start selling eyeglasses that will project information, entertainment and, this being a Google product, advertisements onto the lenses. The glasses are not being designed to be worn constantly — although Google engineers expect some users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed, with the lenses serving as a kind of see-through computer monitor.
Well, they aren’t contact lenses, but they are very much exactly the sort of ‘cyberwear’ tech that I stipulate as standard for the world of Communion of Dreams. And as I mentioned four years ago.
The future’s so bright, you gotta have goggles. Complete with a primitive A-series expert called “Android.”
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Augmented Reality, George Lucas, Humor, movies, Science Fiction, Society, Star Wars, YouTube
I can be a bit of a curmudgeon. A grump. A misanthrope. Anyone who’s read my blog for a while knows this.
But sometimes, people impress the hell out of me. Oh, I’m not talking about the sorts of things that cause a lump in your throat. You know, self-sacrifice . . . being kind to strangers . . . saving a defenseless animal . . . that kind of thing. No, I’m talking about how people can be remarkably creative and intelligent. Like this:
Yeah, it’s two hours long. You don’t have to watch it all at once. Just look at it in bits and pieces. It’s OK, because you know the story, and the thing was *designed* to be sampled:
In 2009, thousands of Internet users were asked to remake “Star Wars: A New Hope” into a fan film, 15 seconds at a time. Contributors were allowed to recreate scenes from Star Wars however they wanted. Within just a few months SWU grew into a wild success. The creativity that poured into the project was unimaginable.
Just watching the amazing approaches that different people took to telling each slice of the story is pretty mind-blowing. Everything from bad acting with pretty good mock-ups of the scenes, to sock puppets, to incredible animation, to re-interpretations using animals, and on and on. It’s really damned impressive.
And of course, so is the brilliance behind the idea, and seeing it to completion.
Yeah, sometimes people impress the hell out of me. I’ve been laughing my ass off watching this thing.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Babylon 5, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Wall Street Journal
A good friend sent me a review in the WSJ about Physics of the Future. Here’s a good excerpt from the review:
That is the core message of Michio Kaku’s “Physics of the Future.” Despite its title, the book is not so much about physics as it is about gadgets and technology, described by Mr. Kaku—professor, blogger and television host—on a wide-ranging tour of what to expect from technological progress over the next century or so.
Much of the terrain Mr. Kaku surveys will be familiar to futurists, but less technically oriented readers are likely to find it fascinating—and related with commendable clarity. The changes that Mr. Kaku expects range from the readily foreseeable to the considerably more esoteric.
Augmented reality—in which useful data overlay what we see with our eyes—already exists in rudimentary form on smartphones, but Mr. Kaku predicts a time, only a decade or two away, when a much denser information stream will be fed directly to our retinas by contact lenses or optical implants. Want to fix a car, perform emergency surgery, or prepare a gourmet meal? The app will tell you what to do—and guide your work. Have trouble learning a foreign language? Expect a useful universal translator to do the work for you. And the ability to connect computers directly to human nervous systems will drastically improve the lives of those who are paralyzed, blind or deaf—as it is already beginning to do. Eventually, we may know the sort of virtual worlds illustrated in science-fiction novels like Greg Egan’s “Permutation City.”
Hmm . . . sound familiar? This is exactly the sort of tech I stipulate as being pretty mature (completely developed and integrated into everyday use) in Communion of Dreams.
Fun. I may have to get a copy of that book.
Jim Downey
(Thanks to ML for the link!)
Filed under: Art, Augmented Reality, Bipolar, Blade Runner, Comics, Health, Humor, movies, Science Fiction, Writing stuff, YouTube
You know, this whole thing made a lot more sense at 3:43 this morning.
To quote from a favorite character*: “Let me ‘splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”
I recently gave an example of the . . . creative froth, let’s call it . . . that I always live with. I think particularly when I am in the middle of a creative endeavor this stuff is a lot closer to the surface, as I am now with working out all the characters, setting, plot, et cetera for the prequel to Communion of Dreams. It’s like the barrier between the conscious and subconscious parts of my brain becomes . . . thinner. Connections become easier.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
A number of my friends are or were cops. Last week I was amused by the video going around which was a fan-made movie of an oddball webcomic called “Axe Cop.” Here it is:
Bizarre, eh? Most of my friends thought so. I thought it was hilarious.
Anyway, at about 3:42 this morning I woke up from a dream. Just *Boom* – wide awake. It’s the damned Prednisone (I’m taking another course of it for ongoing efforts with my rib/lung pain) – a common side effect, and one which seems to be hitting me harder this time around than previously.
I had been dreaming. About an “accidental cop.” Someone who had been a cop previously, but then had moved on. The situation developed that he was drafted back into being a cop. Think Rick Deckard being convinced to resume detective work in Blade Runner.
Well, upon waking, in just a few short moments, I developed a whole backstory to the dream, ideas on characters, plot for future development, et cetera. I toyed for a moment with the idea of pitching it as a screenplay, perhaps TV pilot.
Madness, of course. And I realized that when I woke up more completely. But thinking it through, I came to the conclusion that what happened was something of this kind of progression:
- Cop.
- Ex-cop.
- Axe Cop.
- Accidental Cop.
I blame the Prednisone. And a strong manic swing.
Jim Downey
*Inigo, of course, whom I have discussed previously in relation to my own history.
Filed under: Art, Augmented Reality, Music, Predictions, Publishing, Society, tech, Weather, Writing stuff
Last night, in the middle of a particularly impressive blizzard, I came in to my office to check the weather online and get the latest news. I clicked on the link for my favorite weather website, and was thoroughly confused. No, they had the blizzard there. But they had completely changed the design of the site – the switch had been made while I had dinner and watched a movie.
There at the head of the newly redesigned site was a friendly little note that scared the shit out of me:
Notice Anything Different? Click here to find out what’s new and improved at Weather Underground!
Oh, no!!!!
* * * * * * *
Three classic anecdotes/sayings, all related, but each with a slightly different lesson to offer:
1. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
2. Two cowboys are working on a fenceline. Without warning, a rattlesnake bites one of the cowboys on the leg, and he falls to the ground writhing in pain. “Do something!” he shouts at the other cowboy. The other cowboy draws his revolver and first kills the snake, then takes careful aim and shoots his buddy in the leg – right where he’d been bit. The first cowboy screams, “why the hell did you do that??” The second cowboy responds, “I don’t know how to treat a snakebite. But I know how to treat a gunshot wound.”
3. One evening, a guy is walking back and forth under a streetlight, looking down and obviously searching for something. Another fellow walks up and asks “lose something?” “Yeah, my keys,” says the first guy. “I’ll help ya look,” says the second. They spend about a half hour looking all around the lamppost. Finally the second guy says “I don’t see them around here anywhere.” “Oh, I didn’t lose ’em here. I lost them down there by the corner.” “Then why the hell are you looking for them here?” asked the second guy. “Light’s better here.”
* * * * * * *
I clicked the link, and got the explanation: they were introducing their new design tonight! After 2 years of hard work and functionality testing, they were confident that everyone was going to LOVE! the new site!
They were wrong. I didn’t love it.
And seemingly neither did a bunch of other people, as I found out on their blog and FaceBook page. Sure, some folks liked the ‘clean, fresh’ look (what, is this a mouthwash or something?) but a whole lot of others didn’t. Gone was a nice large page which gave you everything at a glance – current conditions, a small radar image, and easy to understand graphics forecasting conditions for the next five days. There was a ton of information there, and you could see everything easily, then go into further detail with just a click. It had been replaced by a series of smaller boxes slightly left of center, which contained much less information and in a smaller font. You could still find everything, but you had to scroll down the page or click tabs to do so.
* * * * * * *
1. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
This is perceptual limitation. Quite literally, you see the world in just one way. There is no ‘other’ option – there’s not even an awareness that another option is possible.
We all have this for some things. It can be a religious belief. Or sexual orientation. Or how to cook. Or a thousand other things. We just see one way that things are, and are completely blind to any difference, usually very stubbornly so.
* * * * * * *
I couldn’t for the life of me understand why they had done this, why they had made the change they did. It was clearly an inferior product – harder to use, large amounts of whitespace on my monitor for no good reason. Until someone use said that the site had been “iPadized” – that is, formatted for the iPad.
Ah.
* * * * * * *
2. Two cowboys are working on a fenceline. Without warning, a rattlesnake bites one of the cowboys on the leg, and he falls to the ground writhing in pain. “Do something!” he shouts at the other cowboy. The other cowboy draws his revolver and first kills the snake, then takes careful aim and shoots his buddy in the leg – right where he’d been bit. The first cowboy screams, “why the hell did you do that??” The second cowboy responds, “I don’t know how to treat a snakebite. But I know how to treat a gunshot wound.”
Here is still a functional limit, but one based on an awareness that there are other potential choices. That doesn’t really change things – there is still only one thing to be done, at least in the current time frame, no matter how clumsy it is in practice. Perhaps later you can learn about the other choices, turn them from being purely theoretical into actual options.
* * * * * * *
After much complaining and gnashing of teeth on the part of many commentators, someone at Weather Underground added a “Classic Site” link to the above announcement. Word quickly spread of this, with people explaining how to change the necessary bookmarks and whatnot to get back to their preferred website design. I did – it was nice to have all the functionality I expected back.
Of course, others now started to chime in that they liked the new look, and that the complainers were just resistant to change.
* * * * * * *
3. One evening, a guy is walking back and forth under a streetlight, looking down and obviously searching for something. Another fellow walks up and asks “lose something?” “Yeah, my keys,” says the first guy. “I’ll help ya look,” says the second. They spend about a half hour looking all around the lamppost. Finally the second guy says “I don’t see them around here anywhere.” “Oh, I didn’t lose ’em here. I lost them down there by the corner.” “Then why the hell are you looking for them here?” asked the second guy. “Light’s better here.”
This one is really similar to #2, but I think with one subtle yet important difference: there is an awareness of the limitations of a given tool/choice, but it is nonetheless still so appealing that it gets used in ways which are really inappropriate or counter-productive.
* * * * * * *
And here I think the mistake was made by the web designers. Perhaps they didn’t intentionally set out to optimize the new site for devices such as the iPad – it is entirely possible that this has just become a prevailing design aesthetic because of such devices, and since they are relatively new, the whole aesthetic seems new and exciting.
Technology changes things. Long poetic narrative was suited for oral presentation or a scroll-format codex – with the development of the book form we know now (pages gathered together) back around the first century, that probably had an impact on the decline of that literary form, since the necessity to flip pages back and forth tends to break up pacing. Old 78 rpm records could only play for about four minutes – the slightly smaller discs about three minutes – and so that became the standard length for popular songs. LP records opened up musical possibilities and so saw experimentation with longer songs. There are countless other examples.
But that’s just my perspective – based on my preferences and expectations. I’m not used to using an iPad, and don’t own one, so do not consider it as an option. It could well be that such a format will become the standard – and those of us with large monitors still tied to a desktop machine will be nothing more than dinosaurs. Until the next big change comes along and redefines things again. (Perhaps the cyberware augmented reality systems I predict in Communion of Dreams? We’ll see.)
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube
Man, I so love to see technology advancing to exactly what I was envisioning for Communion of Dreams. And when I say “envision”, I mean that literally:
That’s from Word Lens, a company who came up with instant-translation software you can use on your smart phone. And it’s just brilliant.
That’s *exactly* the sort of tech I projected for CoD – there is a reference early on to the main character asking his AI “Expert” to load a program to allow him to understand Mandarin in real time, and to provide him with an augmented-reality text for responses that he could read in order to allow him to communicate with a young girl from China. Yeah, that is more advanced than what we see in the vid above, but not that much moreso.
Wow.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, Predictions, Psychic abilities, Science, Science Fiction, Society
As I’ve noted recently, I’m pretty much a hard-nosed skeptic. But as I said in that post:
But I am much less willing to invest my energy into any enterprise which doesn’t seem to be well grounded in proven reality.
“Proven reality.” Well, what constitutes proof?
* * * * * * *
The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. Two variants of psi are precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process. Precognition and premonition are themselves special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual’s current responses, whether those responses are conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective. This article reports 9 experiments, involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for retroactive influence by “timereversing” well-established psychological effects so that the individual’s responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur. Data are presented for 4 time-reversed effects: precognitive approach to erotic stimuli and precognitive
avoidance of negative stimuli; retroactive priming; retroactive habituation; and retroactive facilitation of recall. All but one of the experiments yielded statistically significant results; and, across all 9 experiments, Stouffer’s z = 6.66, p = 1.34 × 10-11 with a mean effect size (d) of 0.22. The individual-difference variable of stimulus seeking, a component of extraversion, was significantly correlated with psi performance in 5 of the experiments, with participants who scored above the midpoint on a scale of stimulus seeking achieving a mean effect size of 0.43. Skepticism about psi, issues of replication, and theories of psi are also discussed.
* * * * * * *
Communion of Dreams is about a re-evaluation of reality. As I note on the homepage for the book, a dust jacket blurb could read in part:
When an independent prospector on Titan discovers an alien artifact, assumptions based on the lack of evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence are called into question. Knowing that news of such a discovery could prompt chaos on Earth, a small team is sent to investigate and hopefully manage the situation. What they find is that there’s more to human history, and human abilities, than any of them ever imagined. And that they will need all those insights, and all those abilities, to face the greatest threat yet to human survival.
* * * * * * *
That .pdf above comes from the site of DARYL J. BEM, Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. His work is starting to get some real notice. Why? Well, here’s a nice summation:
Dr. Bem, a social psychologist at Cornell University, conducted a series of studies that will soon be published in one of the most prestigious psychology journals (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). Across nine experiments, Bem examined the idea that our brain has the ability to not only reflect on past experiences, but also anticipate future experiences. This ability for the brain to “see into the future” is often referred to as psi phenomena.
Although prior research has been conducted on the psi phenomena – we have all seen those movie images of people staring at Zener cards with a star or wavy lines on them – such studies often fail to meet the threshold of “scientific investigation.” However, Bem’s studies are unique in that they represent standard scientific methods and rely on well-established principles in psychology. Essentially, he took effects that are considered valid and reliable in psychology – studying improves memory, priming facilitates response times – and simply reversed their chronological order.
And a very good description of one of the specific experiments:
Perceiving Erotic Stimuli from the Future
The first experiment described in Bem’s new paper involves perceiving erotic stimuli from the future — specifically, perceiving whether an erotic picture is going to appear in a certain location or not. As usual in empirical psychology, the experimental setup is a bit involved — but if you want to really appreciate the evidence for precognition that Bem has obtained, there’s no substitute for actually understanding some of the experiments he did. So I’m going to quote Bem’s paper at some length here, regarding his first experiment.
The setup was, in Bem’s words, as follows:
One hundred Cornell undergraduates, 50 women and 50 men, were recruited for this experiment using the Psychology Department’s automated online sign-up system. They either received one point of experimental credit in a psychology course offering that option or were paid $5 for their participation. Both the recruiting announcement and the introductory explanation given to participants upon entering the laboratory informed them that
[t]his is an experiment that tests for ESP. It takes about 20 minutes and is run completely by computer. First you will answer a couple of brief questions. Then, on each trial of the experiment, pictures of two curtains will appear on the screen side by side. One of them has a picture behind it; the other has a blank wall behind it. Your task is to click on the curtain that you feel has the picture behind it. The curtain will then open, permitting you to see if you selected the correct curtain. There will be 36 trials in all.
And the result? From the same source as above:
1. “Across all 100 sessions, participants correctly identified the future position of the erotic pictures significantly more frequently than the 50% hit rate expected by chance: 53.1%.” (which is highly statistically significant given the number of trials involved, according to the calculations shown in the paper)
2. “In contrast, their hit rate on the non-erotic pictures did not differ significantly from chance: 49.8. This was true across all types of non-erotic pictures: neutral pictures, 49.6%; negative pictures, 51.3%; positive pictures, 49.4%; and romantic but non-erotic pictures, 50.2%.”In other words the hypotheses made in advance of the experiment were solidly confirmed. The experiment yielded highly statistically significant evidence for psychic precognition. Much more than would be expected at random, given the number of subjects involved, the Cornell students were able to perceive the erotic stimuli from the future — but not, in this context, the non-erotic ones.
* * * * * * *
[Spoilers ahead.]
In Communion of Dreams the discovery is that we live in a reality which has been subject to artificial controls on our psychic abilities. Why this was done is unclear, and exactly what range of ‘natural’ psychic ability humans have isn’t known. These are things which I may explore at greater length in subsequent books (hint, hint.)
But I do find it fascinating that there are these cracks in our current perception of reality. Little glimpses into perhaps a greater understanding. There may not be a concerted effort to hide the truth from us, as in my book, but there is something going on, some way in which our scientific theories only ride along the surface of a wave without penetrating it. Perhaps we exist not in the moment, but in a moving field of possibilities, some of which are so powerful that they echo backwards in time.
It’s something to consider. Playfully.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Aldous Huxley, Augmented Reality, Government, Health, Music, Psychic abilities, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Synesthesia, Writing stuff
Almost 30 years ago I took psilocybin for the first time. I repeated the experience several times over the next couple of years, and have largely spent the time since making sense of the whole thing. Some of this is reflected in Communion of Dreams: descriptions of synesthesia in the book were based largely on my own experiences while under the influence of ‘shrooms, and the use of ‘auggies’ (drugs designed to increase neural processing) were also inspired by those experiences.
But the use of psychedelics was largely from another time. Not the first instance of my having been out-of-phase with the rest of society.
So it’s somewhat surprising to see new research being conducted using these drugs. Research which really should have been conducted decades ago, were it not for the paranoia of the “Just Say No!” years. This weekend’s edition of To The Best Of Our Knowledge provides a nice insight into this:
It’s taken decades for study of mind-altering drugs to be taken seriously. Now a handful of scientists are at the forefront of new research. One of them is Roland Griffiths is a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins. He’s just turned his attention to psilocybin, a classic hallucinogen commonly known as magic mushrooms. He tells Steve Paulson about his findings.
And:
We hear a clip from Annie Levy who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In the late stages she took part in an experimental study designed to see if taking psilocybin could help with the fear and panic about dying. In her case, taking a single dose was a life-changing experience in her final months.
It’s a shame, really, that the therapeutic use of hallucinogens has been stymied for so long. There is such a long tradition of using these drugs to access deeper insight and spirituality in many cultures that one is almost tempted to say that humankind’s evolution has been influenced by psychedelics as much as learning to use fire. That we have cut ourselves off from these natural psychotropics is a shame – and again is reflected in Communion of Dreams in how we have artificially lost part of our natural birthright.
Jim Downey
*From the Moody Blues, of course.
Communion Of Dreams 