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Aug. 14th, 2012
Wall Street
Aug. 14th, 2012 06:00 amAmericans are angry at the big-time bankers and brokers, and yet, far from a populist attack on crony capitalism, Wall Street is sitting pretty, looking ahead to a presidential election that it can’t possibly lose. They have bankrolled a nifty choice between President Obama, the largest beneficiary of financial-industry backing in history and Mitt Romney, one of their very own.
One is to the manner born, the other a crafty servant; neither will take on the power.
-- Joel Kotkin at NewGeographpy.com
Mr. Kotkin notes that Wall Street has not had to suffer even one single prosecution under the Obama administration for their malfeasance, and as for Romney, despite the fact that the Tea Party arose from the financial crisis and massive government bailouts, Romney's "idea of populism seems to be donning a well-pressed pair of jeans and a work shirt." In sum, the game isn't changing, and we're just going to keep getting sicker and sicker until... I don't know, maybe the world ends, or at least life as we know it ends, at least for the bottom 80% of us.
One is to the manner born, the other a crafty servant; neither will take on the power.
-- Joel Kotkin at NewGeographpy.com
Mr. Kotkin notes that Wall Street has not had to suffer even one single prosecution under the Obama administration for their malfeasance, and as for Romney, despite the fact that the Tea Party arose from the financial crisis and massive government bailouts, Romney's "idea of populism seems to be donning a well-pressed pair of jeans and a work shirt." In sum, the game isn't changing, and we're just going to keep getting sicker and sicker until... I don't know, maybe the world ends, or at least life as we know it ends, at least for the bottom 80% of us.
Wall Street
Aug. 14th, 2012 06:00 amAmericans are angry at the big-time bankers and brokers, and yet, far from a populist attack on crony capitalism, Wall Street is sitting pretty, looking ahead to a presidential election that it can’t possibly lose. They have bankrolled a nifty choice between President Obama, the largest beneficiary of financial-industry backing in history and Mitt Romney, one of their very own.
One is to the manner born, the other a crafty servant; neither will take on the power.
-- Joel Kotkin at NewGeographpy.com
Mr. Kotkin notes that Wall Street has not had to suffer even one single prosecution under the Obama administration for their malfeasance, and as for Romney, despite the fact that the Tea Party arose from the financial crisis and massive government bailouts, Romney's "idea of populism seems to be donning a well-pressed pair of jeans and a work shirt." In sum, the game isn't changing, and we're just going to keep getting sicker and sicker until... I don't know, maybe the world ends, or at least life as we know it ends, at least for the bottom 80% of us.
One is to the manner born, the other a crafty servant; neither will take on the power.
-- Joel Kotkin at NewGeographpy.com
Mr. Kotkin notes that Wall Street has not had to suffer even one single prosecution under the Obama administration for their malfeasance, and as for Romney, despite the fact that the Tea Party arose from the financial crisis and massive government bailouts, Romney's "idea of populism seems to be donning a well-pressed pair of jeans and a work shirt." In sum, the game isn't changing, and we're just going to keep getting sicker and sicker until... I don't know, maybe the world ends, or at least life as we know it ends, at least for the bottom 80% of us.
Fanfiction
Aug. 14th, 2012 09:00 amWhen I first came onto the Internet and the blogosphere in 2003, one of the many fascinating things I discovered is that there should exist this vast universe of fanfiction - so many people whipping off their variant takes from the world of TV shows and comics and Harry Potter books as well as movies - most of it pornographic, I take it, but that seems natural enough, sex being our primary interest and full-out-soil-the-sheets sex being something that the official fiction cannot really give us, all the ins and outs of it.
I have been impressed by how good some of these writers are, and I would wonder why they do not devote their time and energy to developing some original fiction of their own, to give themselves a chance at making a real place for themselves in the world through their writing, instead of necessarily limiting themselves to a non-remunerative hobby.
All of this is by way of an introduction to a great little argument made on behalf of fanfiction that I came across on Tumblr, apparently by a professor, taking to task those who would belittle fanfiction for not being original. Moreover, I should be able to appreciate that art does not require money and fame. Indeed, for most of us, art has to be an end in itself. It’s like religion but without the promise of heaven.
_ _ _
I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.
Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else. Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character and writes himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool.” He was the original Gary Stu). Milton wrote Bible fanfic, and everyone and their mom spent the Middle Ages writing King Arthur fanfic. In the sixteenth century you and another dude could translate the same Petrarchan sonnet and somehow have it count as two separate poems, and no one gave a fuck. Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot—although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF—and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic. Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school. And Spenser! Don’t even get me started on Spenser.
Here’s what fanfic authors/fans need to remember when anyone gives them shit: the idea that originality is somehow a good thing, an innately preferable thing, is a completely modern notion. Until about three hundred years ago, a good writer, by and large, was someone who could take a tried-and-true story and make it even more awesome. (If you want to sound fancy, the technical term is imitatio.) People were like, why would I wanna read something about some dude I’ve never heard of? There’s a new Sir Gawain story out, man! (As to when and how that changed, I tend to blame Daniel Defoe, or the Modernists, or reality television, depending on my mood.)
I also find fanfic fascinating because it takes all the barriers that keep people from professional authorship—barriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very real—and blows right past them. Producing literature, much less circulating it, was something that was well nigh impossible for the vast majority of people for most of human history. First you had to live in a culture where people thought it was acceptable for you to even want to be literate in the first place. And then you had to find someone who could teach you how to read and write (the two didn’t necessarily go together). And you needed sufficient leisure time to learn. And be able to afford books, or at least be friends with someone rich enough to own books who would lend them to you. Good writers are usually well-read and professional writing is a full-time job, so you needed a lot of books, and a lot of leisure time both for reading and writing. And then you had to be in a high enough social position that someone would take you seriously and want to read your work—to have access to circulation/publication in addition to education and leisure time. A very tiny percentage of the population fit those parameters (in England, which is the only place I can speak of with some authority, that meant from 500-1000 A.D.: monks; 1000-1500: aristocratic men and the very occasional aristocratic woman; 1500-1800: aristocratic men, some middle-class men, a few aristocratic women; 1800-on, some middle-class women as well).
What’s amazing is how many people who didn’t fit those parameters kept writing in spite of the constant message they got from society that no one cared about what they had to say, writing letters and diaries and stories and poems that often weren’t discovered until hundreds of years later. Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them. If you’ve got access to a computer and an hour or two to while away of an evening, you can create something that people will see and respond to instantly, with a built-in community of people who care about what you have to say.
I do write the occasional fic; I wish I had the time and mental energy to write more. I’ll admit I don’t read a lot of fic these days because most of it is not—and I know how snobbish this sounds—particularly well-written. That doesn’t mean it’s “not good”—there are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose. That’s why fic is awesome—it creates a place for all kinds of storytelling. But for me personally, now that my job entails reading about 1500 pages of undergraduate writing per year, when I have time to read for enjoyment I want it to be by someone who really knows what they’re doing. There’s tons of high-quality fic, of course, but I no longer have the time and patience to go searching for it that I had ten years ago.
But whether I’m reading it or not, I love that fanfiction exists. Because without people doing what fanfiction writers do, literature wouldn’t exist. (And then I’d be out of a job and, frankly, I don’t know how to do anything else.)
-- Tumblr
I have been impressed by how good some of these writers are, and I would wonder why they do not devote their time and energy to developing some original fiction of their own, to give themselves a chance at making a real place for themselves in the world through their writing, instead of necessarily limiting themselves to a non-remunerative hobby.
All of this is by way of an introduction to a great little argument made on behalf of fanfiction that I came across on Tumblr, apparently by a professor, taking to task those who would belittle fanfiction for not being original. Moreover, I should be able to appreciate that art does not require money and fame. Indeed, for most of us, art has to be an end in itself. It’s like religion but without the promise of heaven.
_ _ _
I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.
Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else. Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character and writes himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool.” He was the original Gary Stu). Milton wrote Bible fanfic, and everyone and their mom spent the Middle Ages writing King Arthur fanfic. In the sixteenth century you and another dude could translate the same Petrarchan sonnet and somehow have it count as two separate poems, and no one gave a fuck. Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot—although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF—and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic. Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school. And Spenser! Don’t even get me started on Spenser.
Here’s what fanfic authors/fans need to remember when anyone gives them shit: the idea that originality is somehow a good thing, an innately preferable thing, is a completely modern notion. Until about three hundred years ago, a good writer, by and large, was someone who could take a tried-and-true story and make it even more awesome. (If you want to sound fancy, the technical term is imitatio.) People were like, why would I wanna read something about some dude I’ve never heard of? There’s a new Sir Gawain story out, man! (As to when and how that changed, I tend to blame Daniel Defoe, or the Modernists, or reality television, depending on my mood.)
I also find fanfic fascinating because it takes all the barriers that keep people from professional authorship—barriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very real—and blows right past them. Producing literature, much less circulating it, was something that was well nigh impossible for the vast majority of people for most of human history. First you had to live in a culture where people thought it was acceptable for you to even want to be literate in the first place. And then you had to find someone who could teach you how to read and write (the two didn’t necessarily go together). And you needed sufficient leisure time to learn. And be able to afford books, or at least be friends with someone rich enough to own books who would lend them to you. Good writers are usually well-read and professional writing is a full-time job, so you needed a lot of books, and a lot of leisure time both for reading and writing. And then you had to be in a high enough social position that someone would take you seriously and want to read your work—to have access to circulation/publication in addition to education and leisure time. A very tiny percentage of the population fit those parameters (in England, which is the only place I can speak of with some authority, that meant from 500-1000 A.D.: monks; 1000-1500: aristocratic men and the very occasional aristocratic woman; 1500-1800: aristocratic men, some middle-class men, a few aristocratic women; 1800-on, some middle-class women as well).
What’s amazing is how many people who didn’t fit those parameters kept writing in spite of the constant message they got from society that no one cared about what they had to say, writing letters and diaries and stories and poems that often weren’t discovered until hundreds of years later. Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them. If you’ve got access to a computer and an hour or two to while away of an evening, you can create something that people will see and respond to instantly, with a built-in community of people who care about what you have to say.
I do write the occasional fic; I wish I had the time and mental energy to write more. I’ll admit I don’t read a lot of fic these days because most of it is not—and I know how snobbish this sounds—particularly well-written. That doesn’t mean it’s “not good”—there are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose. That’s why fic is awesome—it creates a place for all kinds of storytelling. But for me personally, now that my job entails reading about 1500 pages of undergraduate writing per year, when I have time to read for enjoyment I want it to be by someone who really knows what they’re doing. There’s tons of high-quality fic, of course, but I no longer have the time and patience to go searching for it that I had ten years ago.
But whether I’m reading it or not, I love that fanfiction exists. Because without people doing what fanfiction writers do, literature wouldn’t exist. (And then I’d be out of a job and, frankly, I don’t know how to do anything else.)
-- Tumblr
Fanfiction
Aug. 14th, 2012 09:00 amWhen I first came onto the Internet and the blogosphere in 2003, one of the many fascinating things I discovered is that there should exist this vast universe of fanfiction - so many people whipping off their variant takes from the world of TV shows and comics and Harry Potter books as well as movies - most of it pornographic, I take it, but that seems natural enough, sex being our primary interest and full-out-soil-the-sheets sex being something that the official fiction cannot really give us, all the ins and outs of it.
I have been impressed by how good some of these writers are, and I would wonder why they do not devote their time and energy to developing some original fiction of their own, to give themselves a chance at making a real place for themselves in the world through their writing, instead of necessarily limiting themselves to a non-remunerative hobby.
All of this is by way of an introduction to a great little argument made on behalf of fanfiction that I came across on Tumblr, apparently by a professor, taking to task those who would belittle fanfiction for not being original. Moreover, I should be able to appreciate that art does not require money and fame. Indeed, for most of us, art has to be an end in itself. It’s like religion but without the promise of heaven.
_ _ _
I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.
Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else. Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character and writes himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool.” He was the original Gary Stu). Milton wrote Bible fanfic, and everyone and their mom spent the Middle Ages writing King Arthur fanfic. In the sixteenth century you and another dude could translate the same Petrarchan sonnet and somehow have it count as two separate poems, and no one gave a fuck. Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot—although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF—and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic. Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school. And Spenser! Don’t even get me started on Spenser.
Here’s what fanfic authors/fans need to remember when anyone gives them shit: the idea that originality is somehow a good thing, an innately preferable thing, is a completely modern notion. Until about three hundred years ago, a good writer, by and large, was someone who could take a tried-and-true story and make it even more awesome. (If you want to sound fancy, the technical term is imitatio.) People were like, why would I wanna read something about some dude I’ve never heard of? There’s a new Sir Gawain story out, man! (As to when and how that changed, I tend to blame Daniel Defoe, or the Modernists, or reality television, depending on my mood.)
I also find fanfic fascinating because it takes all the barriers that keep people from professional authorship—barriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very real—and blows right past them. Producing literature, much less circulating it, was something that was well nigh impossible for the vast majority of people for most of human history. First you had to live in a culture where people thought it was acceptable for you to even want to be literate in the first place. And then you had to find someone who could teach you how to read and write (the two didn’t necessarily go together). And you needed sufficient leisure time to learn. And be able to afford books, or at least be friends with someone rich enough to own books who would lend them to you. Good writers are usually well-read and professional writing is a full-time job, so you needed a lot of books, and a lot of leisure time both for reading and writing. And then you had to be in a high enough social position that someone would take you seriously and want to read your work—to have access to circulation/publication in addition to education and leisure time. A very tiny percentage of the population fit those parameters (in England, which is the only place I can speak of with some authority, that meant from 500-1000 A.D.: monks; 1000-1500: aristocratic men and the very occasional aristocratic woman; 1500-1800: aristocratic men, some middle-class men, a few aristocratic women; 1800-on, some middle-class women as well).
What’s amazing is how many people who didn’t fit those parameters kept writing in spite of the constant message they got from society that no one cared about what they had to say, writing letters and diaries and stories and poems that often weren’t discovered until hundreds of years later. Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them. If you’ve got access to a computer and an hour or two to while away of an evening, you can create something that people will see and respond to instantly, with a built-in community of people who care about what you have to say.
I do write the occasional fic; I wish I had the time and mental energy to write more. I’ll admit I don’t read a lot of fic these days because most of it is not—and I know how snobbish this sounds—particularly well-written. That doesn’t mean it’s “not good”—there are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose. That’s why fic is awesome—it creates a place for all kinds of storytelling. But for me personally, now that my job entails reading about 1500 pages of undergraduate writing per year, when I have time to read for enjoyment I want it to be by someone who really knows what they’re doing. There’s tons of high-quality fic, of course, but I no longer have the time and patience to go searching for it that I had ten years ago.
But whether I’m reading it or not, I love that fanfiction exists. Because without people doing what fanfiction writers do, literature wouldn’t exist. (And then I’d be out of a job and, frankly, I don’t know how to do anything else.)
-- Tumblr
I have been impressed by how good some of these writers are, and I would wonder why they do not devote their time and energy to developing some original fiction of their own, to give themselves a chance at making a real place for themselves in the world through their writing, instead of necessarily limiting themselves to a non-remunerative hobby.
All of this is by way of an introduction to a great little argument made on behalf of fanfiction that I came across on Tumblr, apparently by a professor, taking to task those who would belittle fanfiction for not being original. Moreover, I should be able to appreciate that art does not require money and fame. Indeed, for most of us, art has to be an end in itself. It’s like religion but without the promise of heaven.
_ _ _
I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.
Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else. Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character and writes himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool.” He was the original Gary Stu). Milton wrote Bible fanfic, and everyone and their mom spent the Middle Ages writing King Arthur fanfic. In the sixteenth century you and another dude could translate the same Petrarchan sonnet and somehow have it count as two separate poems, and no one gave a fuck. Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot—although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF—and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic. Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school. And Spenser! Don’t even get me started on Spenser.
Here’s what fanfic authors/fans need to remember when anyone gives them shit: the idea that originality is somehow a good thing, an innately preferable thing, is a completely modern notion. Until about three hundred years ago, a good writer, by and large, was someone who could take a tried-and-true story and make it even more awesome. (If you want to sound fancy, the technical term is imitatio.) People were like, why would I wanna read something about some dude I’ve never heard of? There’s a new Sir Gawain story out, man! (As to when and how that changed, I tend to blame Daniel Defoe, or the Modernists, or reality television, depending on my mood.)
I also find fanfic fascinating because it takes all the barriers that keep people from professional authorship—barriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very real—and blows right past them. Producing literature, much less circulating it, was something that was well nigh impossible for the vast majority of people for most of human history. First you had to live in a culture where people thought it was acceptable for you to even want to be literate in the first place. And then you had to find someone who could teach you how to read and write (the two didn’t necessarily go together). And you needed sufficient leisure time to learn. And be able to afford books, or at least be friends with someone rich enough to own books who would lend them to you. Good writers are usually well-read and professional writing is a full-time job, so you needed a lot of books, and a lot of leisure time both for reading and writing. And then you had to be in a high enough social position that someone would take you seriously and want to read your work—to have access to circulation/publication in addition to education and leisure time. A very tiny percentage of the population fit those parameters (in England, which is the only place I can speak of with some authority, that meant from 500-1000 A.D.: monks; 1000-1500: aristocratic men and the very occasional aristocratic woman; 1500-1800: aristocratic men, some middle-class men, a few aristocratic women; 1800-on, some middle-class women as well).
What’s amazing is how many people who didn’t fit those parameters kept writing in spite of the constant message they got from society that no one cared about what they had to say, writing letters and diaries and stories and poems that often weren’t discovered until hundreds of years later. Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them. If you’ve got access to a computer and an hour or two to while away of an evening, you can create something that people will see and respond to instantly, with a built-in community of people who care about what you have to say.
I do write the occasional fic; I wish I had the time and mental energy to write more. I’ll admit I don’t read a lot of fic these days because most of it is not—and I know how snobbish this sounds—particularly well-written. That doesn’t mean it’s “not good”—there are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose. That’s why fic is awesome—it creates a place for all kinds of storytelling. But for me personally, now that my job entails reading about 1500 pages of undergraduate writing per year, when I have time to read for enjoyment I want it to be by someone who really knows what they’re doing. There’s tons of high-quality fic, of course, but I no longer have the time and patience to go searching for it that I had ten years ago.
But whether I’m reading it or not, I love that fanfiction exists. Because without people doing what fanfiction writers do, literature wouldn’t exist. (And then I’d be out of a job and, frankly, I don’t know how to do anything else.)
-- Tumblr
"Do Robots Need a Gender?"
Aug. 14th, 2012 12:00 pmI would think that we were jumping the gun to start talking about how gender-conscious we should be in developing our robots, but people are thinking about it:
Participants were more likely to view the short-haired robot in masculine terms, and suggest it was more suitable for such take-action tasks as "repairing technical devices" and "guarding a house." Conversely, the long-haired robot was perceived as more appropriate for such stereotypically feminine tasks such as household chores and caring for children and the elderly.
[...]
The authors discuss whether it is better to create gender free robots to fight social stereotypes or whether we should create robots that comply with society’s prejudices to make them more acceptable.
I suspect many of us are waiting for the full sex-ready robot. If that era does come, I am afraid that it will be after my time, and that I just have to be thankful that at least I was around for the Internet and e-readers.
(Source: Sully's Dish)
Participants were more likely to view the short-haired robot in masculine terms, and suggest it was more suitable for such take-action tasks as "repairing technical devices" and "guarding a house." Conversely, the long-haired robot was perceived as more appropriate for such stereotypically feminine tasks such as household chores and caring for children and the elderly.
[...]
The authors discuss whether it is better to create gender free robots to fight social stereotypes or whether we should create robots that comply with society’s prejudices to make them more acceptable.
I suspect many of us are waiting for the full sex-ready robot. If that era does come, I am afraid that it will be after my time, and that I just have to be thankful that at least I was around for the Internet and e-readers.
(Source: Sully's Dish)
"Do Robots Need a Gender?"
Aug. 14th, 2012 12:00 pmI would think that we were jumping the gun to start talking about how gender-conscious we should be in developing our robots, but people are thinking about it:
Participants were more likely to view the short-haired robot in masculine terms, and suggest it was more suitable for such take-action tasks as "repairing technical devices" and "guarding a house." Conversely, the long-haired robot was perceived as more appropriate for such stereotypically feminine tasks such as household chores and caring for children and the elderly.
[...]
The authors discuss whether it is better to create gender free robots to fight social stereotypes or whether we should create robots that comply with society’s prejudices to make them more acceptable.
I suspect many of us are waiting for the full sex-ready robot. If that era does come, I am afraid that it will be after my time, and that I just have to be thankful that at least I was around for the Internet and e-readers.
(Source: Sully's Dish)
Participants were more likely to view the short-haired robot in masculine terms, and suggest it was more suitable for such take-action tasks as "repairing technical devices" and "guarding a house." Conversely, the long-haired robot was perceived as more appropriate for such stereotypically feminine tasks such as household chores and caring for children and the elderly.
[...]
The authors discuss whether it is better to create gender free robots to fight social stereotypes or whether we should create robots that comply with society’s prejudices to make them more acceptable.
I suspect many of us are waiting for the full sex-ready robot. If that era does come, I am afraid that it will be after my time, and that I just have to be thankful that at least I was around for the Internet and e-readers.
(Source: Sully's Dish)
The Technological Singularity
Aug. 14th, 2012 06:00 pmI wonder how near we are to the Technological Singularity. That's the predicted point in human history, probably within the next fifty years, when machine intelligence will surpass humans. At that point, machines will start rapidly designing other machines that are even smarter, and things will accelerate beyond the point we can predict. That will be a scary time for humans. It's sort of the same principle as your dog not knowing where you're going when you get in the car. We'll be the dog in that analogy.
-- Scott Adams
We're seeing more of this stuff now. Maybe we could use another Isaac Asimov to take another cut at imagining a future of robot life, if not robot supremacy. Though, you have to be impressed, awed even, over how well he played with these ideas decades before we heard of the Internet, when computers were still in their infancy, known only among a small provinnce of academics and professionals. Maybe the new Asimov can also bring a richer writing style to the game. Mr. Asimov may have been brilliant and far-seeing, but he was rather plain of word.
-- Scott Adams
We're seeing more of this stuff now. Maybe we could use another Isaac Asimov to take another cut at imagining a future of robot life, if not robot supremacy. Though, you have to be impressed, awed even, over how well he played with these ideas decades before we heard of the Internet, when computers were still in their infancy, known only among a small provinnce of academics and professionals. Maybe the new Asimov can also bring a richer writing style to the game. Mr. Asimov may have been brilliant and far-seeing, but he was rather plain of word.
The Technological Singularity
Aug. 14th, 2012 06:00 pmI wonder how near we are to the Technological Singularity. That's the predicted point in human history, probably within the next fifty years, when machine intelligence will surpass humans. At that point, machines will start rapidly designing other machines that are even smarter, and things will accelerate beyond the point we can predict. That will be a scary time for humans. It's sort of the same principle as your dog not knowing where you're going when you get in the car. We'll be the dog in that analogy.
-- Scott Adams
We're seeing more of this stuff now. Maybe we could use another Isaac Asimov to take another cut at imagining a future of robot life, if not robot supremacy. Though, you have to be impressed, awed even, over how well he played with these ideas decades before we heard of the Internet, when computers were still in their infancy, known only among a small provinnce of academics and professionals. Maybe the new Asimov can also bring a richer writing style to the game. Mr. Asimov may have been brilliant and far-seeing, but he was rather plain of word.
-- Scott Adams
We're seeing more of this stuff now. Maybe we could use another Isaac Asimov to take another cut at imagining a future of robot life, if not robot supremacy. Though, you have to be impressed, awed even, over how well he played with these ideas decades before we heard of the Internet, when computers were still in their infancy, known only among a small provinnce of academics and professionals. Maybe the new Asimov can also bring a richer writing style to the game. Mr. Asimov may have been brilliant and far-seeing, but he was rather plain of word.