Friend Computer!

October 21, 2007 – 11:46 am

In a couple of hours’ play, I’ve reached stage 13 of Portal, and it’s that sing-song computer voice, goading you along, that makes it work. Tim Bray’s assessment is dead-on: Dear Marketing Professionals; when you think ‘message control’ several generational cohorts of geeky target demographics are thinking about the Portal voice.
Portal may be a spin-off [...]

More like this: , , , , , , | Posted under culture, humor | Comments (2)

3 Laws of Disco Robotics

June 19, 2007 – 7:15 am

Scott Bateman updates Dr. Asimov.

More like this: , | Posted under Science Fiction, linklist | Comments Off

Flocking Road Cones

June 27, 2002 – 12:00 am

Oh man, I love Half Bakery. A writer could do no worse than to stop in and look for versimilitude-creating widgets. For example:
Create a solar-powered artificially intelligent motorised road cone that, through the simplest behaviour model possible ends up grouping around holes in the road.

More like this: , | Posted under science-fiction | Comments Off

The Golem meets AI

July 9, 2001 – 12:00 am

After I saw “A.I.” last week, the conversation on one of my mailing lists turned to the movie. One member commented that the Mechas represent the Jewish people: always living in the shadow, and the sufferance of the gentiles. That comment made me get out my copy of Marge Piercy’s He, She and It.
The novel [...]

More like this: , , | Posted under books, science-fiction | Comments Off

The backstory for A.I.

April 25, 2001 – 12:00 am

There is an immense, multi-site backstory for Kubrick’s Spielberg’s upcoming film, “A.I.”. How much do they have to do with the plot of the film, we’ll need to wait until this Summer. Several sites are now piecing the story together.

More like this: , | Posted under media, science-fiction | Comments Off

The Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things

April 25, 1999 – 12:00 am

Communal authoring at its purest, DIRK builds a cognitive map of connections: A is related to B because of C.

More like this: , , | Posted under Uncategorized | Comments Off

Intelligent Machines: The End of Humanity?

February 14, 1999 – 12:00 am

A symposium considering recent books on AI that suggest the days of organic minds are coming to an end. The session is chaired by Douglas Hofstadter
Link

More like this: , | Posted under Uncategorized | Comments Off

Ken MacLeod on SF after the end of the Future

February 7, 1999 – 12:00 am

MacLeod, who’s written three novels of hard-economic SF which I’m currently reading, replying to Alexi Panshin’s thesis (see The World Beyond the Hill) that SF has nothing to do now that we’ve gone to the moon. MacLeod says SF’s in the same world as the rest of us: our Gods have been taken from us [...]

More like this: , | Posted under science-fiction, writing | Comments Off

Who Will Create Metadata for the Internet?

January 4, 1999 – 12:00 am

Automation cannot currently index the Internet. Human editors are needed, but costly. Indvidual sites have an incentive to index, but no incentive to use a common scheme. An index may be a public good.
Link

More like this: , , , | Posted under Uncategorized | Comments Off

Automated Essay Grading Software

November 10, 1998 – 12:00 am

As featured in Wired News. Try your hand at writing an essay for the system to grade, or plug in a premade sample.
Link

More like this: , | Posted under technology | Comments Off