№ 46. Whipped Cream

onelargeprawn

№ 45. iElvis

He was a wizard of the first order.

He had conjured both marketing hypes and niches---which had us enthralled, corrupted and addicted. Only he could produce, with a sleight of hand, consumer technology that is magic. Everyone else is reduced and separated by the Red Sea either as a parishioner drunk with his vision or a philistine mocked with envy.

"'What made Steve Jobs truly great,' U2 singer Bono said Thursday in a statement, 'is that he was only interested in doing truly great things. He was bored by an easy ride or easy profit. In a world littered with dull objects, he brought the beauty of clean lines and clear thought. [He was] one of a very small group of anarchic Americans who through technology literally invented the 21st century. We will all miss the hardware-software Elvis.' (LA Times)

On a related note, iPhone has this neat, sentient (almost?) voice command interface. Why SIRI?! Somebody asked if this stood for "Steve Incarnated Robot Interface."

Until the next iPhone iteration, then. Not 4s but a version 5, please. Maybe this time SIRI will feel, sound and look like Steve Jobs. One more, lace the chips with his DNA?



Bento Box:

Steve Job's DNA in vitro? (LA Times)

№ 44. October Rolling Into Its Dark, Hallow End

Hi there!

You're safe.
Don't worry.

Haha, I don't have Sadako
lurking in my old iPhone.

She's contained
in our old, busted, portable TV.

It's at home---
stored or abandoned somewhere.

Yes, I'm safe.

See?

No snowflakes on screen.
No static noise
or is it silence?

Regardless.

We're safe.

I hope.

I see our windows.
They're silent---
almost feral.

Shhh.

They peer into the woods.

Still, no static.

I hear only quiet sentinels.

See?

We're safe....

red fear @ makbex

№ 43. A Quickie

Bento Box:

Here's a little bit of flash fiction I stumbled upon.  It's a nice, easy and quick read like a cookie snack. 


Grab, pop and I'm on my way to the hardware store.

***

"Let X" by Chad Simpson

"Let x equal the moment just after he tells her he’s starting a club for people who know something about computers.

It is summer, 1984, and this is their grade school playground. She is idling on a swing over a patch of scuffed earth. He stands just off to the side, one hand on the chain of the swing next to hers.

***

Let y equal her laughter. Her laughter sounds like a prank phone call at three a.m. It sounds a little evil.

She throws her head back, and even though he is hearing the y of her laughter in the wake of that moment x, he can’t stop staring at her hair. He can’t believe how black, how shiny, how perfect it is.

She stands up out of the swing and asks, “What do you know about computers?”

It is 1984. Nobody at this elementary school—or in Monmouth, Illinois, in general—knows all that much about computers. (Let X)

№ 42. Scents & Songs Without Words

"Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it." ----Vladimir Nabokov

Bento Box:


"Duetto", Song Without Words Opus 38 No. 6, Felix Mendelssohn

№ 41. Edible Physics

I wonder if the 30-hour burger will taste better than a McDonald's Big Mac.

№ 40. Lux

coloribus

Often, I need to be reminded, usually, with blunt force and trauma. It's necessary to inflict cracks on a thick armor so that light can seep in.

Thanks Bb for the facebook post.

№ 39. Waking Up to Binary Dreams

"Tanging Ngiti", from Pinto Art Gallery, Antipolo City, Rizal

Two things: faster brains and more sophisticated thought processes. All artificial, all human engineered.

Ergo, hardware + software = awareness? Anytime soon? Maybe. Because of our longer lifespans, maybe even within our lifetime.



Faster Brains

"Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster — that is, the rate at which they're getting faster is increasing.

True? True.

So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties." (Time)

 

Magnet Funnies

 

By 2045, the article claims, man can become immortal. By hooking up to a computer and downloading his consciousness into its chips and wires a person will have a more durable home. His will and intellect will permanently reside in a less organic and, maybe, less destructible vessel made of ceramics, plastics, silicon and other metals.

They call the event Singularity. It's the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011. And I thought the Fringe series is still sci-fi by most standards in circa 2011.

Complex Thinking

"Kevin Kelly, a founder of Wired magazine, has written that there are at least a trillion Web pages in existence, which means the internet's collective brain has more neurons than our actual gray matter that's stuffed between our ears.

'The Web holds about a trillion pages. The human brain holds about 100 billion neurons,' Kelly writes in his 2010 book "What Technology Want".

Each biological neuron sprouts synaptic links to thousands of other neurons, while each Web page on average links to 60 other pages. That adds up to a trillion 'synapses' between the static pages on the Web. The human brain has about 100 times that number of links -- but brains are not doubling in size every few years. The global machine is." (CNN)

Awareness

There is already an interconnection, an infrastructure which is getting more integrated and sophisticated. If somebody can hook up to a machine and then gain access and control of this superhighway.... If people hook up and become linked.... will consciousnesses coalesce into a collective mind?

Will the World Wide Web wake up (W x 5!)?

2045, is it? I wonder what seed of human genius will spark this.

That will make humans the likely ancestors of the Borg. At least, until we actually come in contact with other extraterrestrial civilizations, including Borg-like creatures. Meanwhile, back to earth: I hope cybernetic implants are covered by our senior citizen privileges.

Is the internet conscious?