Lots going on the last few weeks. Work, writing, travel. But the biggest of all was that I finally dumped my Palm Centro, which I’ve actively loathed since the day I got it, for a shiny new HTC Hero. Now this is a 21st-century device. I’m still sorting out all that I can do with it, but none of it is the hard slog that it was with the Palm.
There’s a blog post about interconnectedness brewing in the back of my head, partially inspired by the new device. Something about the parallel between the ever-denser connections between people and the connections between neurons in the brain. I know, I know, it’s been done. Which is why I haven’t done it yet; I’m trying to come up with a new angle.
Actually, I’m considering starting up a separate blog for my wonkier philosophical ideas. There’s a lot of weirdness floating around in my head, and somehow this doesn’t seem like quite the place for it. I still own verystrangeloops.com, but I may buy a new name instead. We’ll see.
Anyway, that’s it for now, methinks; I know it’s not much, but it’s late. Tomorrow we go to Harbin once again (only for one night, alas), and so sleep is badly needed. We’ve both been running at full speed for the last few weeks, so even this short of a break will be welcome.
I bought a new digital camera yesterday. My previous one–a Samsung NV10–got its zoom lens crunched in November in what I’m referring to as the NaNoWriMo Bathroom Incident (don’t ask). It had already been having problems, so I’d been thinking about a replacement, but now I actually needed to get one.
One thing that impressed me as I was shopping is that elements of smartphone design are starting to filter back to digital cameras. For example, Nikon’s new Coolpix S70 has an OLED touch panel over its entire back, with an icon-and-gestures interface for nearly all its functions–obviously taking a cue from the iPhone. And it and many other current models had accelerometers, so they could rearrange menus and such based on how the camera was oriented.
I was sorely tempted by the Nikon, especially since its zoom lens is entirely self-contained–and therefore far less vulnerable to abuse than my old Samsung. But that lens was in the upper left corner, where it was far too easy to cover with a finger. And the interface was wonky in some other ways too. I think this makes sense as a direction for the future, but it’s not quite there yet.
In the end, I decided to leave the flash for my next smartphone and get another workhorse–a Canon PowerShot SD960 IS. Small, light and simple, with incremental advancement of features over the previous unit–but probably with more reliability. We’ll see how it goes.
And now, because you just had to have it, a cute-dog picture.
So, anyone got any use for a broken Samsung camera?
Ah. Yes. Chinese. Did I mention that I’ve started teaching myself Chinese?
I’m not sure how it started. I’d been thinking about it for quite some time, but I’d tentatively planned to relearn my German, then tackle Spanish (which I really need to learn, because it’s highly useful in California), then Japanese. I was going to save the hardest one, Chinese, for last.
But somehow, I ended up diving right into Chinese. I think part of it had to do with realizing how important China is going to be in the coming decades, for better or worse. And, of course, Chinese is also highly useful in California, though less so than Spanish.
Also, I haven’t tackled a major intellectual challenge in a while, and after finishing grad school, my brain was starting to stagnate. And, finally, there’s the small fact that Chinese is now the second most widely used language online, and given current trends, will soon be the first. That’s a hell of a lot of content that I don’t have access to, and this is annoying to me. Information sponge that I am. But, then, all of that content gives me lots to work with while learning the language.
And it’s fun! So, I’m going to continue. So far, my approach has been a bit haphazard, but I’m progressing. I’ve even started translating short passages already–though the title of this post came from Google Translate.
(Translating isn’t easy, by the way, since Chinese has no alphabet. There’s no simple order to the characters in dictionaries. There is an organizational scheme, of course, based on the number of strokes it takes to draw the character. But it’s not that simple either. One thing I’ve learned already is that nothing in Chinese is ever simple.)
Now, all I need to do is figure out how to fit this in with work, writing, and everything else. That’s the real challenge.
This afternoon, I participated in an online conference (I refuse to call it a “webinar”) sponsored by ALA TechSource, covering technology issues that came up during ALA’s 2010 Midwinter meeting. It was a lot of fun, and I have to say, it felt good to reconnect with the profession a bit. I should do more of these while I’m looking for library work.
The topics were many and varied, from ebooks to mobile discovery tools, from open source to API’s. One topic in particular, however, is near and dear to me: augmented reality. This term is still new enough that many reading this may not know what it means; the best definition I’ve heard is from MIT educational technology professor Eric Klopfer, who calls it “a digital layer of information spatially overlaid on the real environment”. A good, though rough, example might be Google Earth, which takes the physical world and adds all kinds of spatial information onto it, such as roads, political and economic data, and user data as well–right down to decent places to eat.
The reason I call Google Earth a rough example, however, is that normally “augmented reality” refers to seeing the data on top of the real world, or at least at the same time. Usually this means using a location-aware mobile device to add information to whatever you happen to be looking at. The best current example of that might be Layar, an Android and iPhone app that uses your phone’s camera, GPS, compass and accelerometer to figure out exactly where the camera is and how it’s oriented, and can then show you the same view with added data from a variety of sources.
That might sound confusing, so here’s Layar’s first promotional video, from last summer. It’s still a pretty good introduction.
And the latest version adds 3D graphics, which leads to such weirdness as this:
Which may seem silly, but imagine the possibilities. Moving your car navigation system to your windshield, for example, and having it show you where to go by projecting arrows right on the street in front of you. (Of course, transparent display technology isn’t quite there yet, but it soon will be.) Or, if you’re looking for a restaurant, simply pointing your phone down the street and having it color-code every restaurant it can see according to the reviews it’s gotten.
Or–and this is where I think it gets really exciting–games. Or artworks (like the Beatles image currently on the Layar home page). Or historical images. What did that Scottish castle over there look like when it was new?
Perhaps the most exciting possibility of all is social data. Currently, this is a fairly cumbersome thing to do with these tools, but it can and will become easier. I’ve seen one example lately. I’ve been playing around with a Chinese mapping tool called City8, which gives street-level views of a number of Chinese cities. It’s very similar to Google Street View. But what’s most interesting to me is that they make it very easy for people to add informative placemarks and share them. The following video shows how easily it can be done (in Chinese, subtitled in English; the shared placemarks are at about 1:25):
There’s no reason Google couldn’t do the same, and I wish they’d copy it. Imagine having this kind of social data, combined with Layar’s locational awareness and 3D graphics, all at your fingertips.
As usual, science fiction writers have been the first ones to think about the implications of this. In Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End, people are able to subscribe to seamless virtual-reality environments that completely replace their view of the world–and yet still allow them to interact with the rest of us. William Gibson’s Spook Country has augmented reality artworks–recreating famous crime scenes in the actual locations where the crimes took place. And in Charles Stross’ Halting State, these technologies have grown to be an accepted part of the everyday landscape, with everyone from police to spies to hackers using them routinely to collect information at all times.
Of course, the world usually turns out to be far weirder than even SF writers can imagine, especially when it comes to a technology as potentially disruptive as this. Prediction is a dangerous business. But personally, I can’t wait to get my hands on this stuff (oh, for the day I trade my Palm for an Android!), and I’m looking forward to seeing what applications people come up with.
And now, a fragment of early writing that will never be published elsewhere. (Let us all bow our heads in fervent thanks.)
———————–
At first it seemed that he was simply sitting quietly in his room, waiting expectantly. But then, as the familiar giddiness crept into his head, everything began to change. Suddenly he was lying on the floor, held down as if by invisible Lilliputian bonds; the next moment, he was standing, and he and everything else in the room was a thousand times larger than before. He tried to take a step and moved as ponderously as a mountain. Shortly after, he was sitting crosslegged on the floor, his eyes closed against the distractions of the room. His breathing was deep and calm.
He waited.
—
The eagle fell upwards into brilliant blue sky. It beat its wings in smooth, powerful strokes, pushing, striving for altitude, brushing against an updraft and sliding into it, riding the warm bubble as it rose. Soaring, the bird looked to the horizon and called out in defiance, and was drawing its breath to call again when the buckshot tore through its body, opening its lungs to the air, releasing the breath in a wheeze. Gasping, dying, the eagle watched through dimming eyes as the trees spun up to catch it and
“I don’t know what you were thinking,” I told him, as he took off his shoes. I caught the raw, stale scent of the sweat on his shirt, in my hands. I dropped the shirt into the hamper. “Maybe we should go back.”
He sighed. “Love, it wouldn’t be any better back there, and you know it.” He stared up at me with those blue eyes. God, those eyes. “And we couldn’t be together there. Your mom’d never let me near you. At least here we’re together.”
I looked at him and smiled. He reached out his hand. I took it in mine and
He took a sip of water and resumed typing. Both models provide reasonable scenarios for the emergence of modern H. sapiens. The multiregional evolution model suggests that gene flow would provide the direction for evolution, by spreading new evolutionary changes throughout the species and providing opportunities for natural selection to work differently in various regions. Yeah, he thought, but we can’t connect regional variations between ancient and modern forms. Need to say something about that later. He checked the clock and
So, anyway, Bobby threw the ball to me, and I tried to catch it, but it went a little too high and flew over my head. When I turned around, I saw it bouncing over the sidewalk, and I ran after it, and it only went a little ways out into the street, so I went on after it. When I got to the ball and picked it up, I heard Mom yelling at me to get out of the street, and when I turned around to look at her I saw the truck coming. It was going really fast, too. I started to run and
He barked furiously at the shape in the yard, trying to scare it away. As a result, he couldn’t hear its voice until he paused for breath, and then he heard, “Ringo! Calm down, you silly dog!” Happy and relieved, he walked up to his master and
She pulled the handle and shoved the mower forward, watching with pleasure as the wild tufts of grass were sheared flat and spat out the side of the machine. Won’t take too much longer, she thought. She turned the corner and
Suddenly he had the rope around my neck and was pulling it tight. I felt the skin of my throat tearing under the friction, I felt the pain of the compression, but worse than both of those was the sudden inability to breathe. I instinctively dropped to my knees and rolled forward and
He could smell it as he opened the oven. Perfect, he thought. This is going to be delicious. He reached in with the potholders and
She listened to them shouting at each other for hours. When curiosity finally overcame her disgust, she put a glass up to the wall. She was frustrated to hear words that sounded vaguely like Arabic. She sighed and walked into the kitchen and
I pulled back on the stick and the plane began to climb. Gently, gently, not so fast; good. I hit the switch for the landing gear and
The eggs and bacon sizzled together in a puddle of grease and
Squirt bottle in hand, he crept up behind Chris and took aim. Suddenly Chris turned around and
The dead goldfish floated serenely at the top of its tank and
—
Alex awoke between sheets heavy with sweat. His eyes snapped open, trying to focus on the darkened ceiling above him. His hands were trembling.
Today, my spouse and I somehow got into a long discussion of the Chinese Room argument, and I thought I’d share a little here of what I came up with.
If you don’t know, the Chinese Room (proposed by John Searle in 1980, and summarized nicely at the above Wikipedia link) is a thought experiment about artificial-intelligence work, having to do with the level of “understanding” that can be achieved by an AI system. The idea is this:
Imagine a computer that can understand Chinese. It can read Chinese characters, process them, and produce an appropriate response, that can be read by a native Chinese reader and understood well enough that the reader cannot tell the responses from those that would be given by a human fluent in Chinese.
Now imagine that instead of a computer, you have a printout in English of its algorithm, and a human (who does not understand Chinese) who executes the instructions with pen and paper, and produces the same results. Searle’s argument is that functionally, there is no difference between the computer and the human; and, that since the human operator doesn’t understand Chinese, the computer can’t be said to understand Chinese either–and, without “understanding”, the computer can’t be said to be “thinking”.
I won’t rehash the vast range of discussion that we had about this (particularly since I didn’t take notes). But I do have a reply, which is this: the “intelligence”, if there is any, resides in the instructions, not in the person or machine executing those instructions.
Of course, that would seem to put me in the dualist camp–saying that there’s mind and there’s body and never the twain shall meet. But the experiment, to my mind, is missing one detail: the brain is constantly reconfiguring itself according to new input and data. There are feedback loops between the various symbols in the mind, and these particularly come into play when modeling the behavior of other minds (and most especially when modeling itself). How these symbols are expressed in the brain’s architecture is far from clear, but what is clear is that the hardware responds to changes in the software.
Of course, there’s really no way to answer these questions at all until we figure out what consciousness is, and there are so many competing theories about that that we might be a century or more choosing between them. If it’s not clear from the previous paragraph, I’m a Hofstadterian; I believe that consciousness arises from self-sustaining, self-referential patterns of interaction between the various symbols in the brain. I also think that strong AI might in principle be possible; however, I’m also willing to throw a bone to Penrose and consider that the complex interactions between the brain’s hardware and software might be impossible to duplicate on any other substrate.
But, as I said, it’s hard to find the answers when we’re not even sure how to figure out what questions to ask.
Anyway, this is a pretty good example of the kinds of stuff I get into with my sweetie. I’m definitely with the right person.
(Incidentally, she’s currently reading Peter Watts‘ novel Blindsight, and she got very excited while I was reading her the Wikipedia article on the Chinese Room, because Blindsight apparently deals with many many of these issues relating to the nature of cognition. It’s pretty clear that I’m going to have to read the book–if I can ever squeeze it in among all the other stuff I have to read.)
So I had to get a typing certificate for a job I’m applying for. I don’t want to brag–well, okay, maybe just a little–but every time I’ve taken a typing test, my speed has gone steadily upwards.
Twenty years ago I struggled to do 30 words per minute, which is the minimum for most office jobs (including the one I’m applying for). In recent years I’ve been in the 70’s.
So how did I do today, you ask? 84 wpm, with no mistakes.
I guess there’s some benefit to spending hours every day at the computer, after all.
So here’s a fun little thought to take with you the next time you fly: British intelligence has found that al-Qaeda has started hiding explosives in breast implants:
Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery.
…
“Properly inserted the implant would be virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines. You would need to subject a suspect to a sophisticated X-ray.”
To me, this brings to mind the old line about better mousetraps only leading to better mice. Perhaps, instead of trying ever-more-desperately to defeat the ingenuity of the people who want to kill us, we might try giving them fewer reasons to want to kill us?
Just a thought. But then, I’m a liberal, so what do I know?
Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please! Let it be known throughout the sacred tubes that I, your humble reference librarian, have had the gauntlet cast before me by my beloved spouse to discover the origin of that obscure but oddly compelling bit of cheesy convention: THE VILLAINOUS NECK CRACK.
A bit of explanation. Earlier today, after I spent a pleasant moment amusing myself and annoying my honeybun by reciting at length a bit of Morpheus’ dialogue from The Matrix, she speculated aloud about how it started that the bad guy would crack his neck before a fight. Obviously, she was remembering Agent Smith doing same during one of his endless confrontations with Neo. But, as we well know, this bit of bad-guy action is now seen everywhere from Hollywood to Bollywood. How did this happen?
Now, your average person would stop, shrug, emit a noncommittal “Hmm, dunno,” and leave it at that. I admit I was tempted to do the same myself. But after I foolishly concurred in her questioning, the challenge was cast. I was ordered to go, run the origin of this convention to ground, and bring back its head. And so I set forth into the wild reaches of the Internet, seeking the Answer.
(Note: of course, this bit of idiocy is not limited to villains. Heroes do it too; one example that leaps to mind is Blade II. But we’re focusing on the villains here.)
One of the first stops at which Google drops us on our tour is a review of The Fifth Element, which states of antagonist Gary Oldman: “Though we never see his neck-cracking and pill-taking like in Leon…” Aha! Yes, I thought I remembered him doing that. Léon (also widely known as The Professional) came out in 1994. Pretty far back. Could this be it? Could this cliché have originated with the good Mr. Oldman, one of the most extreme and original bad guys in film? That would be nice.
But we shall not rest until we are sure, or until the trail grows cold. This I swear.
Next, I have the bright idea to look for sites on movie clichés in general. A moment later, while I’m trawling through The Movie Cliches List (which is surprisingly unhelpful, btw), my sweetie suggests to me that it might have originated with Kung Fu movies. This seems reasonable, so I start searching for various combinations of “kung fu”, “neck crack”, “movie”, and “cliche”.
After a few tries, this leads me to some gold: the Cracking Up page at Television Tropes & Idioms. This one points out that, indeed, Bruce Lee and other Kung Fu movie stars were fond of this move. Way of the Dragon, in which Lee royally kicked Chuck Norris’s ass at the Roman Colosseum, is mentioned. Came out in 1972.
I’d forgotten about Bruce Lee doing this–and, given his colossal influence on just about everything having to do with movie fighting, I think that’s about as good a place as any to end the quest. Of course, he probably took that particular bit of stretching badassery from Western boxing or weightlifting, or even from some Wing Chun showoff he saw in the fifties. But it would take a far more obsessed fan than I to trace his sources.
So, here the cinematic neck-cracking quest ends, with the baddest mofo who ever lived–Bruce Lee. I think that’s appropriate, don’t you?
And my sweetie was satisfied as well–which, of course, is all that matters.
So, a couple of days ago we finally got around to seeing Avatar for a second time, after digesting it for a few weeks. Found it every bit as impressive as the first time. And that was the day that it reached $2 billion in worldwide gross. And now we learn that it’s received nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, where it will be competing with several other of my favorite movies this year–The Hurt Locker, District 9, and Up. (If you want a prediction, I’m guessing Avatar for best picture and Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow for best director.)
So, what could I possibly contribute to the massive global swooning over James Cameron’s latest juggernaut? Well, one thing that occurred to both me and my spouse is that Avatar may well be the first science fiction film with a richness and complexity of worldbuilding that equals the best science fiction novels. I see nothing in the second viewing to contradict this. The physics, biology, and anthropology of Pandora are worked out to a degree that one seldom sees outside of, say, Sheri Tepper or Frank Herbert. Cameron spent a good fifteen years thinking about this world, and it’s all there on the screen.
But it wouldn’t have been up there if the filmmaking technology weren’t also up to the task. Cameron wisely delayed making Avatar until it became technically possible to show exactly what he had in his head. As a result, the film has enough detail to flesh out the world without overwhelming the viewer. Such little things as the light shining pink through the Na’vi’s ears, or the bioluminescence under their feet. The first commandment of worldbuilding is “show, don’t tell”, and Avatar shows us plenty.
Now, of course, this was only possible because Cameron had essentially unlimited resources to throw at the problem. But think you on this: what he can do today with $300 million, a major movie studio, and several high-tech companies’ R&D departments on his side, your average pimply teenager will be able to do on a desktop in a decade. Meaning that we’re going to have far, far freakier science-fictional visions to deal with in the near future.
Not that all of them, or even many of them, will be anywhere near as intelligently thought-out and executed. But some will. And those films to come will show us things that we could never have seen before outside of our own imaginations.
Anyway, yes, I loved Avatar. But I’m even more excited about what will come after. Cameron wanted to reinvent the movies, and damned if he didn’t pull it off.
