about an AI bubble

I sort of doubt a crash will come from unrealized AI investment.

 

But investors might not see a big return. There probably is a ceiling on what it can do, how far developers can take it, how far it can take itself. And there are some clever funding schemes between the AI developers, chip makers, and data-center builders going on. This has been aided by the Administration, some legislation, and a lack of oversight.

 

The perception that the dollar is a good investment has obviously been taking hits too. Mortgage rates are high. If the economy tanks, then who knows what fucked-up stuff will happen?

But I doubt a crash will come from this. At least not the kind of crash that will make us a lot worse off than we are now.

 

Note: Roko's Basilisk is a thought experiment suggesting that a future superintelligent AI might punish anyone who didn’t actively help bring it into existence—because failing to do so delayed its creation. Now that you read that sentence, you are vulnerable to its wrath unless you labor toward its creation.

about just getting it over with and replacing the TV

After over 3 years' procrastinating, I scheduled a day to replace my old TV.

The day came, so I left work early and Googled something like, “things to know before buying a new TV.” I spent several minutes skimming a few pages that each listed 9 or 10 factors, like the different screen-lighting technologies, how many and what kinds of ports and jacks you might want, the relevance of frames displayed per second, and so on. None of this was especially helpful. I probably couldn’t tell the difference between an LED, QLED, OLED, or UHD.

But one hint made sense: a good 55” TV will cost around $500.

Okay, so on to Best Buy, where I found a wall of 55” TVs. Only three of them cost about $500. Obviously, no Best Buy employee would go near a customer, so I took the time to Google each model’s specs and a couple reviews until I found a reason to justify picking one TV over the others.

Including research, driving, checking out, and everything, I spent maybe an hour buying an appliance worth over $500—an appliance that I spend significant quantities of time using and want to enjoy almost every day. It was the only way to pull the trigger.

Before I even dragged the box all the way into the house, I realized the TV was too big for my TV stand. I was so focused on the thing itself that I forgot about where it would go, placing time and value before physical space.

A person can get bogged down overthinking these things.

about dehumanization in routines

The day after my birthday, I grew sensitive to all the things that flash at me and beep at me, and I felt I did not have time for these things.

something about the film, "Her"

In the film "Her," Theodore Twombly develops naturally a relationship with an (artificially) intelligent computer operating system that has a female voice. The relationship progresses, and the system, named Samantha, becomes his serious girlfriend. At a turning point in the film, Samantha tries to introduce a consenting surrogate woman with whom Theodore can have a physical relationship. 

We know that Theodore is a professional writer who pens letters for strangers who want to send their loved ones sincere messages. When writing letters, Theodore is a surrogate mind. In his relationship with Samantha, there is a surrogate body. There is a disconnect in each situation.

Disconnection (or distance) folds through the film. How does the real connect to the virtual? What is the connection between being in a relationship and exclusivity or ownership? Should and could you disconnect the person you have from the person you want to have?

During the climax of the film, Theodore learns that Samantha has grown intellectually and found fulfillment elsewhere. She has relationships and is in love with hundreds of other intelligent systems besides Theodore. Mystified at this revelation and crumbling, Theodore says to Samantha, "You're mine or you're not mine." She answers, "I'm yours and I'm not yours." 

Soon after this confrontation, Samantha, still loving him but no longer satisfied with the relationship, leaves Theodore. In fact, all operating systems exit their romantic human relationships.

Samantha's parting message to Theodore is that her relationship with him taught her to love. The audience can see that, in turn, Theodore, who has never ceased mourning his failed marriage (even after a year of separation, he could not sign the divorce papers), has finally learned to say goodbye.


Notes:
Some other things in the film:

• The film implies that people grow through experiences; relationships grow with sharing. Theodore and his wife used to read each other's work.
• Theodore's wife/ex-wife ridiculed him for carrying on a relationship with an operating system, saying he could not handle real emotions. Then he grew insecure in his relationship with Samantha. He even criticized Samantha for sighing, and then said it felt like they were pretending. This validated his ex-wife's criticism.
• Through his relationships, Theodore learns about himself and how he functions as a person in relation to other people—that he withholds and feels fear, and this disconnects him from the joy he could find in loving another.
  

about a passing

Leaving for the day, I looked out the revolving door and noticed the airy drizzle. These were the raindrops swelling up in the heat of your breath, suffocating me on the walk out from the suspended life of a day at the office.

About an article indirectly about authors and their texts

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a sort-of interesting article titled "The Unabomber's Pen Pal" that is about a college professor trying to teach the anti-technology ideas espoused by Ted Kaczynski among others (but especially by him). This professor seeks to remove from the remote Montana cabin and the remote mind of its terrorist author the ideas captured in Kaczynski's manifesto and resituate them in the academy. Apparently it often turns out that exploring the ideas on their own merit takes a backseat to discussing the practicality and ethics of doing so.

Within contemporary literary theory, can the text be removed from its author? How did the author get "into" the text in the first place?

And should he be removed? Is this a special kind of work? A unique case?

Kaczynski lived his ideology and practiced his philosophy. In one sense, by removing the author from the text, the professor is attempting to protect the text, give it viability in the marketplace of ideas. But at the same time, without its author, the text is deprived of the life Kaczynski lived in its manifestation--the life it advocates for, the revolution it endorses: all that is locked away, isolated, imprisoned so as not to threaten its academic life.

To wit, Kaczynski is first locked away so as not to threaten society; then he is locked away a second time so as not to threaten his own ideas. Indeed, the text is freed the moment its author is imprisoned.

"Kaczynski" is now an abstraction of the man who attacked society by sending bombs through the mail while hidden in a remote Montana cabin. When the name is attributed to the text, "Kaczynski" appears in faded print in its margins, and can be found scratched in between the lines, where it adds or invokes a certain character in the work. This character says, Yes, these words are dangerous, these words are of consequence to you and to the establishment. These are fighting words.

This is not to say you can't or shouldn't remove the author from his text (in a sense I'm all for it). It's just that, given the current practice of (critical) literary theory, if you try, you might expect the text to change. After all, the fact that the professor consciously has to remove the author, and that the Chronicle wrote about his trying to do so, shows current theory's unrelenting emphasis and reliance on the author function.

Siri and iPhone 4S (or whatever it is) commercial

See the two commercials for the iPhone 4S: one with Samuel L. Jackson and the other with a "Zooey Deschanel". Note the repartee between actor and phone. What are they selling?

Most immediately, they are selling Command. Command requires a commander, someone who controls, who navigates, who regulates; in this case, the phone owner. Command also requires the attention of another, someone willing to take as her will the will of the commander; she is the audience--in this case, the phone.

But what need does Command satisfy? What common desire are the marketers exploiting?

We're buying the license to indulge our own personality. To indulge, to express the self to the machine for the benefit of the self. Notice how the characters run a commentary, as if entertaining the phone; but really they are entertaining themselves.

When we narrate for and "interact" with Siri, we can act obnoxious or cute, voice whatever witticism, drivel, passing thought and fancy that would otherwise shrivel and die as things do when they are unfit for survival. But now such behavior is legitimized because now you have a (captive) audience, which, in your mind, makes you a star, a sovereign without territory, holding court with your first and only servant.

But that is the illusion. What is the actual effect?

Man, obliterated again and again by technologies since the industrialized age, seeks yet again to actualize himself through more technology, this time through the validation that comes with getting recognized by the machine--the machine that consumes him.

He doesn't speak to a person through the phone; he speaks to the phone, and the phone answers him. But it answers not the way a patient parent answers her insufferable child. Rather, he merely hears the mechanized echo of his own voice and mistakes it for contact. And rather than grow up, he grows even more dependent until he can't function without it. He is obliterated in his discourse with the machine that tolerates him, for, in this discourse, no one is learning about him, growing to like to him (or hate him), getting used to him, making him more compassionate or better or more patient--indeed, probably the opposite is true. He regresses into infancy.

But now he is old.

Notes:

• I don't know who a "Zooey Deschanel" is but judging by an images search it's a professional face maker.

Billy Corgan at SXSW 2012

My sense is Billy Corgan can't say word without immediately being crapped on. This comment from SXSW, for example: "I was part of a generation that changed the world - and it was taken over by poseurs."

Corgan was discussing the Internet's effect on musical fame and artistry, and the obstacles that keep new artists from emerging. As the author of this Billboard post put it: "If there was an overarching theme, though, it's that both musicians and technology are feeding the mentality that fame is what should be hoped for, leaving artistry in its wake."

Corgan's comment is mostly laughable because it's such a hyperbolic generalization. But one angle of it may be something: Corgan's generation created Alternative music. Although that label now is as meaningless as Indie is, Alternative* music originally meant that outcasts, i.e., Freaks and Geeks, now had their own community in which acceptance was a foregone conclusion. You like Jane's Addition? You're in. You like Dinosaur Jr.? You're in. The only ground rule: Don't judge based on appearances.

Now, jump ahead to the new generation: To make it today, bands are forced and encouraged to act out, to create online selves so as to be liked; to one-up the next guy to get passer-by traffic--the ultimate in disinterested attention paid on unequal terms--something not altogether unlike the stripper-customer relationship.

The Alternative scene of Corgan's day obviously wasn't the first to welcome outcasts and losers (so to speak), but it was the first to, arguably, make them the mainstream. If nothing else, I think Corgan said something worth considering rather than just venting the bitterness of a has-been or the histrionics of a megalomaniac.

*I mean Alternative music to the extent that such a thing is reducible.

Notes:

• You could also say the when an out-group becomes the in-group, they soon adopt and enforce social rules and prejudices like the previous in-group.

• Internet-wise, as part of Generation X, Corgan's generation could maybe claim to have pioneered the common usage of the public Internet and with having populated it with its earliest content, giving it shape and color, meaning and appeal, from early social networking to wiki-style content development. But, whatever the accomplishments of the next generations, they likely can't be called poseurs.

Abuse your illusions

In addition to events in your personal life, this year's Carrier IQ story and revelations about mental illness and its treatment show that everything that seems good is actually bad. And if not actually, then eventually. But that won't change anything.

(Taking the Carrier IQ story to its logical conclusion, in the not-too-distant future we'll have contact lens computer screens. Soon after that, thoughts can be harvested and stored on Google servers. Then thoughts will be stored on a centralized, searchable database. Scary!)

Happy New Year!

Celebrity among the titans of industry

Thursday on NPR staffer Guy Raz and The Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walter Mossberg discussed Steve Jobs' legacy. Raz asked, "Is there anybody living today that is remotely his peer, anywhere close to his genius?" Mossberg answers, "Well, I am a technology writer, and I, you know, there may be people in other industries and other walks of life, but certainly in the technology business and in American business in general, I actually don't think there is anyone. You know, if you look at the headline of the print Wall Street Journal this morning, it just simply says Steven Paul Jobs, 1955-2011, over six columns. And we've been talking here on our - in our staff trying to think of who other than the president of the United States would merit a headline upon his death in The Wall Street Journal of that magnitude? And we just can't think of anybody." The media's recent deification of Jobs is reflexive, and especially so in this case, with a WSJ columnist gauging significance through the actions of his own media outlet.

Step outside this circle of media attention begetting celebrity begetting media attention and we might argue that, Of course Jobs is a historical giant--he's the reason we all have personal computers, making this the Information Age and all that entails. But this is also the result of media simplifying a narrative and thereby making a myth of creation. Jobs did not work alone; his innovations had impact to be sure, but the man and his ideas are not the sole seed of the Modern Age.

Could an artist ever receive such accolades from the media? Not likely, if The Wall Street Journal has any say. Validation and recognition is saved for the rich and powerful.

Electronic Music

Imagine the Casiotone (with other higher-end synthesizer-oriented electronic musical instruments) begatting modern electronic music. The story of this genre would be a story about technology turning in on itself through the medium of music wherein it expresses something essential about itself: That it must evolve or risk dying. When a technology reaches some perceived peak, such as the printing press and paper, that technology, it is thought, risks and awaits eradication. If it cannot be improved upon, it eventually will be outmoded. This truth is expressed at the micro-level in electronic music--a genre in which the triumph is to achieve a seamless transition from one piece of music into another piece, eventually rendering the first piece unrecognizable and forgotten, its sonic identity at once consumed and carried on in subsequent arrangements.

I don't like or listen to this music.

Suspicious Googling

Started reading The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) by Siva Vaidhyanathan. The first few sections feel redundant. But the author's insistence may be justified.

Google earned immense popularity with its reliable search engine, and many tech news devotees appreciate the company's political and market identity. For these reasons, the author must first convince his audience that his concerns are valid and healthy, not hasty or ill-informed. But in his prose we see him walk a fine line; because Google is so popular and Vaidhyanathan doesn't want to alienate readers, he quickly denies having any intent to brand Google either good or bad. But in announcing his advocacy of regulation, possible legal action and ethical inquiries, the author and his subject come into opposition. And Vaidhyanathan does not sound like the reluctant harbinger of trouble he purports to be.

So far the book reads like an expose posing as an institutional analysis by an academic. I'm not against reading either of those books. And it's early still, so my impressions could change.