Filed under: Amazon, Bruce Schneier, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: bruce schneier, direct publishing, free, game theory, jim downey, Kindle, Science Fiction, writing, www youtube
The other day I posted a video clip which nicely demonstrated one particular aspect of “game theory” and mentioned that it tied in to Communion of Dreams, though I wasn’t explicit how (nor did I explain what I found so interesting in the clip). Partly this was just due to my being preoccupied with the Kindle promotion that day, and partly it was because I like to leave people to figure things out for themselves.
Well, yesterday Bruce Schneier, whom I have mentioned here a number of times, posted an excellent explanation of what was so interesting about the clip (which has been making the rounds). Here’s the gist of the explanation:
Think about Nick’s strategy. He can’t trust that Abraham will split. More importantly, he can’t trust that Abraham will do what he said, because it’s in Abraham’s best interest to say one thing and do another. So he changes the game. He offers to split the pot outside the game — set up a meta-game of sorts — and removes Abraham’s incentive to lie.
Read the whole thing – it’s only a couple of paragraphs long, and nicely goes over exactly why this strategy works.
And that is also why I thought it had such a strong connection to Communion of Dreams: because in one very real sense, the whole book is about what happens when you unexpectedly ‘change the game’. The character of Chu Ling is the key in this regard, both literally and metaphorically, and that is why I had to have her as a game theory prodigy.
Just thought I’d share that.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Arthur C. Clarke, Astronomy, Carl Sagan, ISS, Kindle, Marketing, movies, Music, NASA, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: 2001, art, aurora, direct publishing, free, jim downey, Kindle, music, NASA, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, technology, video, writing, www youtube
From Chapter 3:
Wright Station was one of the older stations, and its age showed in its design. The basic large wheel structure, necessary when centrifugal force simulated gravity, was still evident, though significantly altered. The station hung there as they approached, motionless. The aero slowly coasted toward a large box well outside the sweep of the wheel, connected to the wheel by an extension of one of the major spokes. This was the dock, and it was outside the AG field.
Sound familiar?
Though I do think that were someone to film Communion of Dreams, this scene would more closely reflect this reality, taken from the ISS:
Still, it is fascinating that we have already so deeply connected music with space imagery. And that what is seen as a pale blue dot in the distance is, up close, a living world with a thin sheath of atmosphere – a wisp, glowing green.
Tomorrow is a promotional day: the Kindle edition of Communion of Dreams will be free for any and all to download. Share the news.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, DARPA, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Titan, Writing stuff | Tags: augmented reality, DARPA, jim downey, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology, Titan
A friend who recently read Communion of Dreams sent me a link to this item this morning:
DARPA sets sights on high-tech contact lenses
(Phys.org) — A Bellevue, Washington, company specializing in display technology based on eyewear and contact lenses has sealed a deal with DARPA. Innovega, which says its technology can open a “new dimension to virtual and augmented reality applications,” told the BBC earlier this week that it has signed a contract to deliver a prototype of its iOptik display system to DARPA. That system consists of special contact lenses and eyeglasses. The product is touted to be a better solution than bulky heads-up display systems of the past. Screens sit directly on users’ eyeballs and work with a pair of special lightweight glasses.* * *
Users can look at two things at once, both the information projected and the more distant view. The retina receives each image in focus. The engineers used nanoscale techniques to develop the lenses, so that they can work as a focusing device with the glasses. The ability to focus the near-eye image is achieved by embedding optical elements inside the iOptik contact lens, according to Innovega. The micro-components do not interfere with the wearer’s normal vision.
* * *
The company says its system affords the human eye to see near-to-eye micro-display information simultaneously with the surrounding environment. Beyond DARPA, the company anticipates its technology can be used by the general public, but it will take a few years for that to happen. The product is undergoing clinical trials as part of the US FDA approval process. Possible applications might be gaming, watching big-screen 3-D movies, and future augmented reality devices superimposing images on reality. According to Innovega, the technology may be available to the public towards the end of 2014.
There’s also video of how the technology works, using a camera with one of these contacts mounted on the surface of the lens. It’s pretty cool.
Four years ago I wrote about the first big breakthrough with this kind of technology, and noted that the article I was referring to said the technology should reach the stage where DARPA would be able to start testing a functional version in “three to five years.”
Just for fun, here’s a passage from the beginning of Chapter 8 of Communion of Dreams when the main character first descends to the surface of Titan:
Jon nodded, slipped between the seats, through the door of the airlock. Locking it, he started the cycle. He felt a crinkling of his environment suit as it compensated for the increasing pressure, then the indicator light turned green and the hatch opened. He looked out into a thick, dull red fog. In the distance a strobe flashed. Sidwell’s compound.
Jon went out the hatch, down a couple of steps to the ground. As he cleared the small craft, his pc connected to Sidwell’s datastream broadcast. An overlay appeared before his eyes, pale lines of light outlining buildings in the distance. Nodding to the two guards waiting, he followed them toward the compound.
As I’ve said many times before, it’s always fun to see these technologies I envisioned becoming reality.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Book Conservation, Depression, Health, Kindle, Marketing, Music, New Zealand, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, depression, direct publishing, jim downey, Kindle, money, music, taxes, travel, writing
This is . . . difficult.
Difficult because it is hard to see myself this way. Difficult because it is largely taboo in our culture. Difficult because I’m still struggling with it. Difficult because reality sometimes comes as a shock.
Last year was a hard year for me, as I said earlier:
Because 2011, while it had some good things about it, was mostly just painful. Literally. In many regards, I’d just as soon forget the bulk of it.
But I hadn’t quite realized just how hard it was until confronted with some numbers yesterday. Those numbers were on our tax returns, collected from the accountant.
Yeah, like I said, taboo. You’re not supposed to talk about income in our culture, at least within certain limits. I won’t stray too far over the line, but I will say that there was a reason that I was feeling frustrated and angry last year about the response to my writing efforts. That reason amounted to having an income so low that after deductions, we owed *no* taxes to either the state or federal government in the final analysis. Well, we had to pay the ‘self-employment’ tax, but that’s it.
Do you know how little you have to make in order to not pay any income tax? Well, trust me, if you don’t, you don’t want to, at least not by direct experience.
It was due to a combination of things. The recession had squeezed my book conservation business all along, limiting the money people had for something so discretionary, but last year was the worst. And the pain from my intercostal tear was very limiting until very recently. And I sunk way too much time and energy into getting Her Final Year ready for publication and then trying to promote it. Yes, I accept my own culpability for this, and I am not trying to blame or shame anyone else.
Which is why it is difficult to talk about. But facing the hard, cold reality helps me to understand some things. About my self. About my motivations and behavior over the last year or so.
Obviously, I got through the last year OK, thanks to a variety of resources I had. Hell, I was able to travel to New Zealand (a commitment made when things were more flush). And I’m happy to say that so far this year things are looking up. My book conservation work has picked up. My intercostal tear is *slowly* getting better.
And I’m actually selling books. Not too many of Her Final Year yet, but a decent start with Communion of Dreams.
Thanks to all who have helped to change the dynamic. Seriously, just knowing that people find the books worthwhile – that they are willing to tell others about them, write reviews, et cetera, makes a huge difference. I very much appreciate it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Feedback, Science Fiction, Space, Writing stuff | Tags: gratuitous sex, literature, suspenseful novel, writing
One of the more enjoyable aspects of having Communion of Dreams out there is the consistently positive response it is generating. Reading reviews, seeing what others post about it in comments & blog posts, getting messages – all of these help affirm that the work which went into writing the book was worthwhile.
This morning I opened my CoD inbox to find a very nice message from someone who had just read the book. After favorably commenting on my book, and then relating some other books by VERY big-name authors he had read recently, he said this:
The [other author’s] novel mentioned was, I think, his best to date, and while it ended beautifully, there was a darkness behind it that left a tragic feeling when I was done. The other two are very, very grim indeed. I mention all of these because in the absence of the awe and sense of newness of the pioneers of science fiction, most authors take the route of being deliberately cynical–often bolster their flagging motivation with plenty of sex.
I am greatly impressed that you have created a suspenseful novel without gratuitous sex or violence, and paint a hopeful human picture in what could easily have been the run-of-the-mill depressing post-apocalyptic world.
I have to chuckle – it seems almost like a back-handed compliment, though I know it wasn’t intended that way. And in truth, he’s quite right. In fact, this is what I said in regards to that in my return note:
Thanks – both the core story and the decision to leave out the gratuitous sex & violence was very deliberate (as you know) because I wanted the book to be akin to the SF I enjoyed in my own youth. I wanted not just my contemporaries to enjoy the book, but for it to be enjoyable by their kids and grandkids. I agree that it is impossible at this point to recapture the innocent optimism of Clarke and others, but there’s nothing wrong with trying to again find optimism in understanding the limitations of the world – I think we’ve lost that in the last couple of decades.
Anyway – yeah, I’m guilty of being a cynical old bastard. But my book isn’t.
And on that note, a reminder that today is a promotional day: you can get the Kindle edition for free, all day. Help me get the word out, if you would be so kind.
Thanks!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Guns, Predictions, Publishing, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Writing stuff
For whatever reason, recently I’ve had an interest in pickled eggs.
* * * * * * *
Bits & pieces:
“It is late, and things are not getting better.”
“A gun don’t make you bulletproof.”
“Tribal groups who all have their chieftains.”
* * * * * * *
I’ve had false starts, and false hope, before. In some ways, “false hope” is something of a summary of my life.
Anyway, I’ve been doing a *lot* of thinking about the prequel to Communion of Dreams, titled St. Cybi’s Well. I think this is the fourth of fifth time that I’ve started writing it. Before I’ve gotten as far as a chapter or two, outlines for more of the book. Or sometimes just making notes.
This time? We’ll see. At least some people are asking about it after reading Communion. That helps.
* * * * * * *
Yeah, bits & pieces. But none of those . . . fragments . . . necessarily means what it might seem. As I work through a story, I get these summations, these insights into something a character might think or do. I’ve been thinking a lot about Darnell Sidwell, who is the main character of St. Cybi’s Well. That much I’ve known all along.
And thinking about Darnell is risky. Why? Because he and I are tied together in some ways. Well, more than just occupying too much space in my head, I mean. He’s not an alter-ego of mine or anything, but we are close enough in age and cultural experience that I can’t help but compare myself to him at times. And the comparisons don’t always make me particularly happy.
* * * * * * *
For whatever reason, recently I’ve had an interest in pickled eggs.
Not sure why. I don’t remember eating them as a kid or anything. Frankly, I don’t remember ever having eaten one, though I’m sure I must have.
Eggs. Vinegar. Sugar, salt, spices. I like the way the kitchen smells now.
Sometimes you have to experiment.
Jim Downey
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: Alzheimer's, Bipolar, Depression, Health, Hospice, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
Cross posted from the Her Final Year blog. For those who are new to my blog, much of the material in the memoir was stuff I wrote here, first, as we were going through the experience of being care-providers for my Mother-in-law. It is *intensely* honest and personal, but that gives it power – showing others what it is like to be a care-giver through the good times and the bad. Many people have found it to be very helpful.
JD
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, last Sunday’s free Kindle edition promotion was very successful – we had over 400 downloads, from the US, the UK, and even Italy! If you were one of the people who downloaded the book, we hope you are finding it useful in understanding how we went through the arc of being care providers.
The response was so good that we’re going to do it again this coming Sunday. Yup, anyone will be able to download the Kindle edition of Her Final Year for free. You don’t need a special code. You don’t need to enter any kind of drawing. You don’t even need a Kindle – there is a free Kindle emulator/app for almost all computers/tablets/mobile devices. Just go to the Kindle page for the book, and “buy” it for $0.00.
Please help spread the word – tell friends and family members. Post the info to your Twitter or Facebook accounts. Share it with forums for care-givers. We want to get this book widely disseminated so that it can do more good.
Thank you – it has been very rewarding to hear back from those who have found the book valuable either as care-providers or for understanding what care-providers they know are going through.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Civil Rights, Constitution, Government, Music, Predictions, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Wired, Writing stuff
Hmm. Quoting a lot of music lately. Wonder why that is.
It’s not explicit in the book, but there is an implication that the Experts of the government have access to pretty much *all* private conversations and communications in 2052. Having true Artificial Intelligences makes it fairly easy to break most routine security, and that’s why you have things like ‘privacy screens’ and military-grade isolation fields – it’s an attempt to maintain some level of privacy. There are also some explicit passages like this one from the beginning of Chapter Nine:
“After he experienced several instances of unusual dream activity, Jon asked my thin-film counterpart back on Earth to collect data on the subject. Reports in discussion groups, news sources, and public postings on any significant change in the
frequency of dreams or their content. My dup went back through the last year’s datafiles to establish a baseline for the study, then I compared that to activity for the last few weeks. There is a significant deviation from the norm.”
Think about that – Seth, Jon’s ‘Expert’, can casually go back through all the material of the previous year looking for a specific pattern to conversations. That is an immense amount of data, and a similarly immense amount of computing power.
And that’s the world we live in today. If you have any illusions that you have some modicum of privacy from our government, read this:
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
* * *
In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.
* * *
Breaking into those complex mathematical shells like the AES is one of the key reasons for the construction going on in Bluffdale. That kind of cryptanalysis requires two major ingredients: super-fast computers to conduct brute-force attacks on encrypted messages and a massive number of those messages for the computers to analyze. The more messages from a given target, the more likely it is for the computers to detect telltale patterns, and Bluffdale will be able to hold a great many messages. “We questioned it one time,” says another source, a senior intelligence manager who was also involved with the planning. “Why were we building this NSA facility? And, boy, they rolled out all the old guys—the crypto guys.” According to the official, these experts told then-director of national intelligence Dennis Blair, “You’ve got to build this thing because we just don’t have the capability of doing the code-breaking.” It was a candid admission. In the long war between the code breakers and the code makers—the tens of thousands of cryptographers in the worldwide computer security industry—the code breakers were admitting defeat.
* * *
In addition to giving the NSA access to a tremendous amount of Americans’ personal data, such an advance would also open a window on a trove of foreign secrets. While today most sensitive communications use the strongest encryption, much of the older data stored by the NSA, including a great deal of what will be transferred to Bluffdale once the center is complete, is encrypted with more vulnerable ciphers. “Remember,” says the former intelligence official, “a lot of foreign government stuff we’ve never been able to break is 128 or less. Break all that and you’ll find out a lot more of what you didn’t know—stuff we’ve already stored—so there’s an enormous amount of information still in there.”
The article is long, but informative. And frightening. That is, if you have any illusions that you have some modicum of privacy. As they also say in the article: “Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together. ‘We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state,’ he says.”
But are we even that far?
Again, I almost regret that “I . . . see . . . things.”
Jim Downey
*Don’t say words you’re gonna regret
Don’t let the fire rush to your head
I’ve heard the accusation before
And I ain’t gonna take any more
Believe me
The sun in your Eyes
Made some of the lies worth believing
Communion Of Dreams 