tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78452351104843439592011-07-30T20:52:57.977-04:00A somewhat cynical account of science fiction, technology, futurism, and philosophy.proto Posthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13119553386507068982noreply@blogger.comBlogger91100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7845235110484343959.post-92226662089677203612009-11-04T12:40:00.005-05:002009-11-04T18:59:11.172-05:00

It recently occurred to me that, for a blog professing to discuss science fiction (among other things), there's been very little in the way of the speculative genre here so far. Sure, I've made references to movies and books here and there, but only in so far as they emphasize my central point. Well, I've decided to remedy that. I'm going to muse about Blade Runner, which I've seen a number of

proto Posthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13119553386507068982noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7845235110484343959.post-82897119744768790942009-10-29T20:52:00.004-04:002009-10-29T21:19:18.478-04:00

First lesson: Look, but don't touch. If studying the past to inform the future can tell us anything about human technological progress, it's that we are very good at creating new technologies but not very good at creating specific new technologies. And even when we do manage to build exactly what we are trying to build, we almost always also build every variety of that new invention. But these

proto Posthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13119553386507068982noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7845235110484343959.post-32507822709282123332009-10-27T20:58:00.001-04:002009-10-27T21:01:25.617-04:00

Being as how I don't want to scare off any potential viewers with too much dense phenomenology, I'm going to tone down my ranting in this post and just do some idle speculation on current technological trends. Specifically, I want to look at a potential future for media as we begin to merge with our technology. One of the questions often asked of technologists and futurists is what we're going

proto Posthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13119553386507068982noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7845235110484343959.post-35204582459608984462009-10-19T17:29:00.008-04:002009-10-20T13:11:08.251-04:00

I must apologize in advance for getting all philosophical on you guys today. As we get closer and closer to developing artificial general intelligence, I feel it is necessary to highlight an important limitation of our anthropocentric perspective. While we sometimes have the capacity to treat other species of life in humane ways, we often stumble when it comes to categorizing non-human

proto Posthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13119553386507068982noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7845235110484343959.post-69023725786898371542009-10-14T09:44:00.007-04:002009-10-14T11:17:04.891-04:00

Sorry for the lack of creativity, but I'm sure Larry Johnson can make up for it. Cryonics is once again in the news the only way it knows how to be - through scandal. The field even managed to acquire a painfully unfunny Letterman bit. (I'd like to note that I think this bit is unfunny because Letterman is not funny, not because it's bad press for an idea I support.) I'm not going to spend much

proto Posthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13119553386507068982noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7845235110484343959.post-87590590778394562852009-10-09T14:30:00.004-04:002009-10-10T12:19:06.968-04:00

The recently held Singularity Summit - with 832 geeks in attendance - received a surprisingly substantial amount of mainstream media coverage this week. But, as can be expected of a conference populated by those who want to live forever and those devising a plan not to be annihilated by hypothetical future robots, the reports did lean slightly toward the absurd. A lot of the articles pondered the

proto Posthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13119553386507068982noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7845235110484343959.post-55773131822024341732009-10-06T20:43:00.004-04:002009-10-06T22:04:02.203-04:00

As much as I used to love The Simpsons, Sunday's episode - in which they gave social media a send up several years too late - may have been the clearest signal yet that they are woefully behind the times (and no longer funny). Nevertheless, they briefly touched upon the very topic I planned to discuss this time around. When the technophile teacher that replaced Edna ridicules Martin's rote

proto Posthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13119553386507068982noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7845235110484343959.post-15408078673102492792009-10-02T19:42:00.003-04:002009-10-02T19:50:33.381-04:00

With some predicting Matrix or Terminator inspired doomsday events and others rolling their eyes with incredulity, discussion of a hypothetical technological singularity has picked up in recent years. Whether the increased publicity is due to the web's easy access media, writers and speakers such as Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, and Cory Doctorow, or the inescapable fact that it may happen soon,

proto Posthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13119553386507068982noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7845235110484343959.post-3642003595743358882009-10-01T15:10:00.004-04:002009-10-01T20:41:33.289-04:00

My genre of choice, science fiction, has given a lot to the world. It is the red-headed stepchild of literature, but it is responsible for important cautionary tales, cultural and political allegories, and discussions of the human condition. Aside from these social services, science fiction has also contributed a long list of now ubiquitous words to our technological lexicon. From Karel Čapek’s

proto Posthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13119553386507068982noreply@blogger.com0