A thought on the power of expecations

Last week the buzz was about the contrast between the real 2015 and what was predicted in Back to the Future II.  And a movie-buff pal reminded me that we'll likely be doing the same in four years with Ridley's Scott's Blade Runner.  That was on top of watching Ironman and The Incredible Hulk within a week of each other.  Then last evening I noticed that Dennis had left a copy of William Gibson's Neuromancer (arguably the seminal work of the cyberpunk genre) laying about, and picked that up for the first time in probably 15 years.

Neuromancer doesn't name the current year, so the future us won't have the navel-gazing satisfaction of critiquing its technological naïveté or marvelling over its Cassandra-like soothsaying.   But something about the book's central conflict made me think about how science fiction (mostly) seems to divide into two camps when it comes to optimising technology:

One camp prefers to optimise for the tools.  Death Stars, phasers, spaceships, mech-suits, tricorders, time-machines, transporters.  You get the idea:  It's a galaxy where a laser-on-a-stick is retro, yo.  Any cybernetic life-form (e.g. ST:TNG's Data or the androids in the Aliens movies or Blade Runner's replicants) provokes suspicion at best.  And, of course, we do not for a second pity Darth Vader for being dependent on machines for his survival.  (Five seconds of imitating his whooshy breathing was enough to reduce my little sister to, "Doreeeeeeen!  I'm telling Mo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-om!!!".)  Small wonder he's been Evil's poster boy for about three generations so far, hey?

The other camp optimises for hacking humans rather than tech.  Radioactive spiders accidentally give us crime-fighters (Spiderman).  Implants can turn us into walking flash drives (Johnny Mnemonic).  Or meat-grinders (Wolverine).  Government experiments of dubious ethical oversight (and even worse quality control) can save Europe (Captain America)...or trash entire city blocks at a pop (The Hulk).  Gibson's weltanschauung might just be the most dystopian of all, however.  On the sketchier streets of Japan's Chiba City, yakuza goons flex vat-grown muscle, the eyes of the fashionable are replaced with cybernetic cameras, and high-rent prostitutes have neural implants that allow them to cater to a client's fantasies literally in their sleep.  Naturally, cosmetic surgery boutiques are as rife as Starbucks in Seattle.

Granted, my experience of SciFi is admittedly rather thin.  Then again, I'm mainly concerned here with the bits that the genre contributes to the general zeitgeist.  And apart from the Star Trek universe, I can't think of any where universally decent standard of living is assured for anyone willing to live under the benevolent--if slightly banal--auspices of a civilisation capable of supporting it.  (For the record, I'm typically okay with that flavour of banal, thanks.  People are capable of amazing levels of productivity when they don't stay awake at night wondering how they're going to pay the bills.)  

Also, so many of popular science fiction's prediction's haven't come true.  An average 21st century #firstworld teenager can't afford a hoverboard.  The 20th century did not host a Third World War, followed by a one-world government.  Thankfully, we're still waiting on the AI insurrection.  And why, for pity's sake, doesn't Siri use Majel Barrett's voice?

And, yes, I've watched enough Mystery Science Theater 3000 to have developed a healthy "It's just a show; I should really just relax" reflex.  Not that it's always a reliable reflex, mind you.  By all rights, I should have been kicked out of the Lon Cheney Phantom of the Opera--ask Dennis.


Yet surely there is a niche in storytelling for a universe in which our species can focus its attention and know-how on bettering our culture--and by extension, our world.  There are certainly demons enough to fight in that battle:

• Institutionalised greed -- including the complicity of the disadvantaged...at least in some cases
• Inane bureaucracies (public and private) that entrench the above greed
• "Charities" that exist only by prolonging the problems they purport to fight
• Fanatics who can't abide a world different from their self-serving fantasies
• Eleanor Roosevelt's "small minds discuss people" paparazzi culture
• The impulse of the Have-Lesses to shut out the Have-Nots so that the former can at least feel superior to somebody (which is, frankly, as much a distinction as being the smartest Kardashian)
• Magical thinking (e.g. "Everything happens for a reason") and the special snowflake syndrome it engenders
• (as Will Smith put it) People spending money they don't have on things they don't need to impress people they don't even like

I mean, Einstein was more sure of the infinity of human stupidity than he was of the infinity of the Universe itself.  If that isn't a BigBad (to borrow a Buffy-ism), what is, I ask you?

Again, much of our futuristic visions haven't come true...yet.  All the same, when we cast our future in terms of our present, all the technology really boils down to is mere window-dressing.  Props for the play.  It means we've given up hope.  At which point our best and most forward-thinking writers of fiction (which, IMO, is heavily skewed toward SciFi writers) might as well get to work on the human race's epitaph.

Of Google and Gestalt

Maybe I have an odd definition of "amusing," but the near-juxtaposition of two Slashdot article picks today made me smile.

The first item is a thought-provoking rebuttal of Elon Musk and Dr. Stephen Hawking's warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI).  Its salient point is that intelligence is not autonomy--i.e. a machine cannot truly have free will.  Certainly, our reliance on AI--as with computers and networks in general--makes us especially vulnerable to its failure(s).  We're sometimes vulnerable to its successes, too.  (Think obsolete livelihoods, cybercrime, etc.)  And when some fool decides to abdicate critical decisions to an algorithm?  Yeah--I think that most of us know the end of that movie.

There's also phenomenon known as "the uncanny valley," wherein computer generated (human) images are oh-so-close-but-no-cigar to life-like that we actually react negatively to them, compared with something more cartoonish.  (Aside:  If you're among those who were creeped out by The Polar Express but think that the minions of Despicable Me are adorable, now you know why.)  In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the android Data notes that he has been programmed not only to blink, but to do so at semi-random intervals so as not to trigger that vague sense of unease associated with the uncanny valley.

And, even being a programmer, I have to admit to being creeped out myself by the accuracy of voice recognition in some automated phone systems.  In the end, it may well be that the market's response to the uncanny valley may forestall an AI bot takeover before the technology is even capable of making it a threat.

In short, we are (probably) a long, long way off from renegade replicants and time-travelling hit-men for a genocidal AI.  Or so The Matrix wants us to believe...  ;~)

At this point, it's tempting to congratulate ourselves for being such inimitably complex carbon-based beasties.  Until we consider the second Slashdot item, which brings home how easy it is to impersonate a human browsing a website.  And not only a human, but a wealthy human.  In related news, Google made headlines last week for stealing a march in the arms-race against the bots--or, more aptly, the people who code them.  (Though I do have to wonder whether the visually impaired will be the collateral damage of that escalation.)

That's the contrast that made me smile, albeit wryly.  To wit:  The bar for "humanity" is set so high in one area of software development, but so low in another.  (Embarrassingly, that latter area is my own.)

As Mr. Etzioni pointed out, part of culture's freak-out over threats of AI is our fear of irrelevance.  Or...do we also fear that we've passed some inflection-point where our lazy, self-fetishising parochialism leaves us open to a palace coup by our digital serfs? Personally, machine learning doesn't worry me half so much as humans who refuse to learn.  But if my Gentle Reader is more of the Musk/Hawking camp, perhaps we can agree that the only viable response is to insist on a higher bar for humanity. 

Frivolous Friday, 2014.09.05: The Geek's Guide to Canadian Politics

(Disclaimer:  This one's mostly geared for friends and colleagues in my old stomping-grounds of La Crosse, Wisconsin.  At least I can look forward to seeing them all again after Canada kicks me out for writing this.)

Yesterday, a Twitter squabble-not-squabble between an NDP supporter and a web marketing expert spilled into my feed.  What started as a complaint about the amateurish design of campaign materials for this month's elections in New Brunswick turned into a debate on the actual topology of the political left. 

After living for four decades and change under the Coke-vs.-Pepsi choice that is U.S. politics, I didn't have an equivalent simile for the menu that New Brunswickers face this year on the provincial level and next year on the federal.

Until now.  Thanks for being my muse, @cbmackay!

Canadian Political Parties as Operating Systems

Windows 8 = The Conservative Party of Canada (a.k.a. the "Tories")

• Is extremely business-oriented
• Relies on advertising blitzes to create reality distortion field
• Leaders particularly enjoy hob-nobbing with the Queen
• No one ever seems happy with the current version...yet there they are in the lead

OSX = The Liberal Party of Canada (a.k.a. the "Grits")

• Slick image  (Seriously, Justin Trudeau is a cutie-pie.)
• Relies on charismatic leaders to create reality distortion field
• Is becoming more business-oriented (again)
• Has a history of pandering to the hip kids...and the trying-to-be-hip kids

 Linux = The New Democratic Party (a.k.a. "Yoo-hoo! What about us?")

• Is a relative newcomer
• Is more ubiquitous than anyone ever appreciates (currently the Official Opposition, but you'd never know it from the press)
• Has distinctly populist leanings
• The job at hand determines whether or not it plays well with others

OS/400 = The Bloc Quebecois (a.k.a. "The Bloc")

• Originally created with legacy in mind
• Uses a different language than other systems
• Anyone who doesn't have to understand it generally doesn't try

GNU = The Green Party of Canada

• Established in 1983
• Okay, that's reaching. Fact is,  I got nothin' other than the Greens are basically the hippies of Canadian politics.  If you're left-leaning, you're rooting for them, but you know they'll never take over the world.

Frivolous Friday, 02.04.2011: Aeron-chair psychology

Originally, I was planning to riff on a suggestion Dennis--bless his inventive (and somewhat twisted) brain--made. But then the proverbial "little birdie" (a.k.a. Twitter) told me that today is George Romero's birthday.

Now, in the name of honesty, I have to disclose the following anecdote. My co-worker, who is also the office's Movie Buff in Residence--let's call him "J"--lent me his copy of Shaun of the Dead. And while Simon Pegg is always fun to watch, not to mention at his absolute funniest in deadpan mode--no quasi-pun intended--the comedy just wasn't my cup of brains.

J. seemed disappointed at my disappointment, and tried to contextualize the movie as "a tribute to George Romero." "What's a 'George Romero'?" I asked. J. literally stopped in his tracks, visibly deflated, and said plaintively, "Okay. You know when you make those historical references and I don't get them? That's what this feels like." (As it turns out, the George Romero of which J. was speaking is the "godfather of zombie movies." Whoops.)

Poor J. I felt bad. Really I did. And I realized that I'd also lost a not-insignificant amount of Geek Cred. At least I can partially redeem myself for the first trespass here and now. But the memory of the incident set me wondering why zombie movies tend to be cult movies and, moreover, why they also tend to appeal to a geekier demographic.

The first thought that sprang to mind was that any apocalypse (zombie, nuclear, etc.) qualifies as an escapist fantasy. Sure, reliable 4G/wi-fi access may be hard to find, but in the meantime, office politics-as-usual are a luxury your plucky little band of survivors can't afford. Also, sheer brawn is next to useless. Mainly because if you go mano-a-mano with a zombie, you're already dead. Outwitting them enough to stay just inside shotgun range is the game, friends and bretheren.

And speaking of shotguns, my complimentary armchair theory to the above was: A zombie apocalypse would be--let's face it--the ultimate first-person shooter video game. No need to worry about gratuitous head shots because, well, it's their brains or yours. Plus, zombies are already dead, so it's technically not murder. And you can be almost certain that their former selves would actually be cheering you on. Long story short: No ethical ambiguities need apply.

In light of those two considerations, zombie movies should, by all rights, be catnip for the average geek. Alas, I've never fallen under that particular "average." True, George Carlin warned against underestimating the power of stupid people in large groups. But. The shambling pace of any zombie horde never seemed to me to qualify it as a credible threat. Nope: Too much suspension of disbelief for me, I'm afraid. Sorry 'bout that.

Then, too, the flavor of horror movies on which I was raised was decidedly more genteel and reasonable--stuff involving Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Cheney Jr. and the like. You know: Scientists "renovating" ancient castles with no visible means of support. Police coronors not batting an eyelash at corpses entirely drained of blood. Silver bullets standing up to the rigors of modern ballistics. The fact that the ancient Egyptian embalming process involved not only removing internal organs, but also extracting the brain (with a hook through the nose) before discarding it. (That lovely mental image you just had there? You're welcome--no need to thank me.)

Yeah, much less suspension of disbelief involved. [eyeroll]

Frivolous Friday, 08.27.2010: The geek that would not die

Well, maybe not entirely frivolous, because this actually brasses me off more than a little. See, most of my childhood was spent in Minnesota, from whence hail a sizeable fraction of my Mom's side of the family.

Now, I'll grant you, the state doesn't sport quite all the amenties of civilization, most notably the ability to buy a bottle of wine at the grocery store--particularly on a Sunday. That's a definite knock right there. But, in the main, they share any number of our Wisconsinite values--and much the same weather. In other words, Minnesota is like the little piece of Canada that moved south, donchaknow.

Up until today, however, the worst Minnesota-themed nightmare my twisted imagination could have devised revolved around a Vikings Superbowl victory led by...[spits]...The Traitor of Titletown.

Oh, how very, very wrong I was.

Nay, my friends, the perfidy of our neighbor to the west extends not only to harboring...[spits]...He Who Shall Not Be Named, but even to--dare I write it?--arresting zombies.

Yes, yes, yes: I understand that we live in a world where people think they're making a point about liberty & freedom by showing up at rallies dressed as George Washington, who called 316 human beings "legal property" at the time of his death. (2006--like 2010-was an election year: Nuances will be lost. As will a whole lotta sensitivity to raw irony.)

But classifying amplified "creepy music" as "simulated weapons of mass destruction" and using that as the rationale for holding people w/o charges for two days?

Seriously?!?!

True, I suppose that the detained protesters might count their blessings that the Folks in Blue merely broke out the handcuffs and not shotguns and flame-throwers. (Although--and I hang my head as I confess this--if it had come to flinging 80s LPs like Frizbees as Simon Pegg and Nick Frost did in Shaun of the Dead, I totally would have paid money to watch that. Laughing my butt off the whole while.)

But.

Personally, I think that whoever negotiated the $165,000 settlement was straight daft. Not only because you know as darned well as I do whose pockets that will line. But also because, really, such a piffling amount--heck, a government the size of Minneapolis can fund that by lifting the seat-cushions on its municipal buses--is tantamount to encouraging stupidity. Not, mind you, unlike the way an ineffective antibiotic will grow a super-virus.

And we all know what that means. Next thing you know, there'll be rampant

• Arguing with drunks
  
• Violating the Prime Directive
  
• Dividing by zero
  
• Tugging on Superman's cape
  
• Spitting into the wind
  
• Pulling the mask off the old Lone Ranger
  
• Making Jim Croce roll in his grave

That's just how it works, friends and bretheren. And all because some souls never got the memo that stuffing geeks into lockers isn't cool in the Sixth Grade, much less in adult life.

But here's the thing: Geeks evolve too. And if the next protest...perchance...involves steampunk zombie velociraptors? Well, now, whose fault is that, I ask you?

Meeting mischief

Ironically, part of today's news-cruise involved catching up on the Rands in Repose blog, which dealt with the fine art of meetings. This art includes knowing when to stick to the agenda and when to let it extemporize. Which merely demonstrates that knowing what's right and doing what's right can sometimes be two different things.

Anyhoo, the dev. team was collectively trading notes on our evaluation of the next-generation of our bug-tracking system. Surprisingly, this didn't turn into a free-for-all of scope-bloating wish lists. Maybe because we're mostly developers and have been poked--yea and verily even perforated--by the sharp end of that.

That was until someone--who doesn't like the system anyway--quibbled with a modest request that I had for making the issue history somewhat more scannable. So the little red-garbed, horned, trident-brandishing version of me then encamped on one shoulder said, "Can we have a 'Like' button for comments, then? I think they should have a 'Like' button." Then QA pointed out that a "Dislike" button would be equally applicable, to which others of our party concurred. Then someone else went so far as to suggest reworking the user interface along the lines of "Farmville." Aaaaand the cork basically popped out of the genie-bottle.

Alpha-geek quickly jammed said cork back in place with, "Alright, does anyone else have any valid suggestions?"

Hrmmph. Buzzkill.

It's probably a good thing that the next month or so promises to be insanely busy, or rising to the challenge and spicing up our scenario-planning UI to flirt with being sued by the makers of "Tetris." Or perhaps hijacking the iPad interface to replace the single-tap placement of a person in a workstation with something more reminiscent of the cheap plastic BB-based games I grew up with. Or, if I'm feeling lazy, Facebook's "Kidnap" game could be suitably adapted to our purposes--and you could make the argument that if you can't be bothered to look up information about your new workplace, you really aren't interested in working there anyway. (We're just helping our clients weed out the unenthusiastic clock-watchers...yeah! That's our story and we're sticking to it!)

I mean, aren't you supposed to come out of meetings with different perspectives on things, after all? But, alas, keeping my primary client happy trumps all. Not to mention that I think there's actually something in my contract about not slipping Easter Eggs into code--mine or otherwise.

Silly capital-R reality, getting in the way of a perfectly harmless UI revamp. Sigh.

Learn or stay home

Apologies in advance, but this will likely be a rant in disguise.

Here's my idea for a working museum or observatory or any other amenity of a civilization that honors its past and plans for its future. The entrance of such a structure will be wheel-chair accessible and very, very long. Patrons will be admitted as the atomic social units (couples, families, what-have-you) that they are. During their journey from the outer entrance to the inner registration desk they will--unbeknownst to them--be secretly triaged based on their conversations and interactions as well as their ability to follow signage.

Upon reaching the registration desk, each party will be pointed to one of two entrances:

• The first entrance leads to the actual exhibits, staffed by exhaustively knowledgeable guides/interpreters hired for their passion and ability to communicate.
• The second entrance leads to a bunch of bogus--but flashy--displays, staffed by personable slackers who are allowed, perhaps even encouraged, to make up stuff.

On the surface, there seems to be quite a bit of redundancy in terms of both facilities and staffing. Yet I would argue that this setup merely outsources the morons who show up merely to be entertained--or, far more obnoxiously, to have their children entertained--to a lower-cost service, thereby maximizing the value of the experts. Southwest Airlines is famous for segmenting its customer base, why can't other institutions?

Language issues

This isn't about computer languages, actually--it's probably more an exercise in channeling the shade of George Carlin (minus the trademark Seven Words). Although, as an aside, for as much delight as the late Mr. Carlin took in playing with the English language, the nerd in me can't help but what he'd done in the idiom of boolean logic, object-orientation, recursion, P-vs-NP and the like.

But that's enough digression. For this blog post, anyhoo.

So. I was at the counter of an establishment which shall remain unnamed, signing up for service. Not quite the slam-bam-why-are-you-still-here kind of transaction, this, tho' transitory enough that being urged to sign up for a membership of sorts seemed odd. Not exactly being exactly famous for my poker face, I must've showed some of the "Are you, like, being paid commission on this or something?" that was going through my head. That's when the lady at the counter said, "It's free, and there's no charge."

Now, granted, I've perchance been spending too much time on telling computers what to do, talking shop with my sibling geeks, perchance even reading too many LOLcaptions. All that, mind you, on top of stalking an age when one's weltanshauung begins to ossify.

But. In my little corner of the Universe, "There's no charge" is merely a three word way of saying "It's free."

But, wait! It gets better.

On the way out of said establishment, I noticed a notice that had been taped over their ATM. It read, "Temporarily Out of Service." Now, I suppose that there exists the very slightest of chances that the individual who posted this notice might have been raised in the former Soviet Union, where the distinction between "Temporarily Out of Service" and "Permanently Borked" would have indeed been useful. But I posit that here in The Free World (TM)* we overwhelmingly tend to rule out the latter option; entirely squandering the nuance.

Yet, on second thought, perhaps both individuals had their respective points.

The definition of "free" (in the financial sense of that word) has been severely warped, for which I entirely blame the private sector. (Remember Columbia House records--a gazillion albums for a penny or some such? The "Juicer" shipped--at no extra cost--with your set of Ginsu knives? The "free prize" inside your box of Sugar-coated Simple Carbohydrates? Yeeeeah. That's what I'm talking about.) In other words, I consider what the lady at the counter said the symptom of a much, much larger disease.

And in terms of service, doesn't it seem to you that our expectations are eternally being massaged. As in, "You have to hold your iPhone this way if you actually want to use it." Or "This website best viewed with ..." Or heavily- (but vaguely-) caveated "unlimited" wireless web access. Again, symptom vs. disease.

Now, I humor myself by imagining that I'm not such an old fogey as to forget that any language mutates, the English language perhaps more than most because it's such a mongrel--and not a paper-trained one at that--to begin with. One reading of Beowulf should nail down that point.

Yet that's not to suggest--much less come right out & say--that it has to be this way, that the perversion of terms antithetical to the interests of the There Will Be Blood-style capitalists is so many omelette-destined eggs. I firmly believe that the rudder of the language should be held in two sets of hands, namely 1.) proles like us, and 2.) people who have been particularly trained in the safe handling of grammar and vocabulary. This expressly disenfranchises The Suits and the Pols. I mean it, too: Join either class, and your linguistic drivers license will be summarily revoked. That's just how it works. Or will work, at any rate. Right after I take over the world via the blogosphere.

- - - - - - - -

* Restrictions apply. Void where prohibited by the chickenhawk politicians who authorized the (cough!)Patriot(cough!) Act, not to mention the bunraku that is the NSA and the DHS.