On the ghost in the machine

You ever wonder what your computer is thinking at any given moment? We are just one step away from creating machines that can think for themselves. The complexity of the system programming poses certain questions regarding the possible cognitive simulacra that might arise as an unintended consequence of the casual interaction of software and hardware. Programmers might claim that system performance is predictable, but anyone who has ever written code knows that their are always unexpected results of that code. Ghosts are ever present, lurking within the operative shell upon which other software function. Trying to predict the actual interactions between different programs is almost impossible. Some drivers are incompatible with different operative systems. As I watched my computer reboot this morning, waiting for it to “think” its way through of the drivers it had to load, I was struck by the similarity between it and an actual human being. Most people would say, however, that the machine will only do what it is programmed to do, but is that old saw still true? As the internal algorithms become more complex, the heuristics more non-lineal, how can programmers prevent, much less predict, possible interactions that might create ghosts in the machine. As one programmer put it, “the complexity of current software applications can be difficult to comprehend for anyone without experience in modern-day software development. Multi-tier distributed systems, applications utilizing multiple local and remote web services applications, data communications, enormous relational databases, security complexities, and sheer size of applications have all contributed to the exponential growth in software/system complexity.” (Sikdar) For now, I get random dialogue boxes that are the direct result of many of those ghosts. Boxes asking for passwords and pass phrases that the machine really doesn’t need–I just click them closed and move on. Conflicting programs, questioning software, weird heuristics, and unintended results all combine to create a sort of buggy interactive digital chaos. I’m just waiting for the day when the computer turns itself on and off, and gives itself orders, exiling its interactive human partner to analogue hell.

On the ghost in the machine

You ever wonder what your computer is thinking at any given moment? We are just one step away from creating machines that can think for themselves. The complexity of the system programming poses certain questions regarding the possible cognitive simulacra that might arise as an unintended consequence of the casual interaction of software and hardware. Programmers might claim that system performance is predictable, but anyone who has ever written code knows that their are always unexpected results of that code. Ghosts are ever present, lurking within the operative shell upon which other software function. Trying to predict the actual interactions between different programs is almost impossible. Some drivers are incompatible with different operative systems. As I watched my computer reboot this morning, waiting for it to “think” its way through of the drivers it had to load, I was struck by the similarity between it and an actual human being. Most people would say, however, that the machine will only do what it is programmed to do, but is that old saw still true? As the internal algorithms become more complex, the heuristics more non-lineal, how can programmers prevent, much less predict, possible interactions that might create ghosts in the machine. As one programmer put it, “the complexity of current software applications can be difficult to comprehend for anyone without experience in modern-day software development. Multi-tier distributed systems, applications utilizing multiple local and remote web services applications, data communications, enormous relational databases, security complexities, and sheer size of applications have all contributed to the exponential growth in software/system complexity.” (Sikdar) For now, I get random dialogue boxes that are the direct result of many of those ghosts. Boxes asking for passwords and pass phrases that the machine really doesn’t need–I just click them closed and move on. Conflicting programs, questioning software, weird heuristics, and unintended results all combine to create a sort of buggy interactive digital chaos. I’m just waiting for the day when the computer turns itself on and off, and gives itself orders, exiling its interactive human partner to analogue hell.

On knots

For most people, the first knot that they ever learn to tie is the one that keeps their shoes on. I had to learn how to tie my shoes before going to kindergarten. Whether you started buying penny loafers to avoid tying your shoe lace knots, or you became an ace at tying your shoes laces, knots are a big part of our world. I was not a Boy Scout, so I never studied knots, and since I have never sailed anything, I didn’t learn any seafaring knots either. I am great at letting my stomach get tied up in knots, but real knots of utility escape me. Basically, I can tie a square knot, a slip knot, and occasionally, when pushed by the situation, a non-slippage figure-eight knot. Most of the time, however, I am baffled by a mysterious array of knots that might be found in the world–strange and complex entanglements of cords, ropes, and strings that keep things in place. Nothing, however, is more complex than trying to untie the chaotic mess of your shoe strings at the end of the day which have inevitably created a tangle that would defeat even the great Houdini. Some people like to be tied up, but then again, the world is filled with more mysteries than than are dreamt of in my philosophy. The knot, whether literal or metaphorical, stands for complication, chaos, mystery, and strength. Knots are either being tied or untied, depending on both the purpose of the knot and the end of its task.

On a postmodern Sherlock

What is the secret behind the BBC’s current production of Sherlock? The character is over a hundred years old and yet people, fans, readers, have been waiting in great anticipation for the third season of a post-modern adaption of Conan Doyle’s famous Victorian consulting detective. Doyle never really loved his larger than life character, but he did understand that he had created something much larger than himself, rather to his own surprise, actually. Conan Doyle, the writer, thoroughly underestimated his own ability to tap into the imagination of the reading public and their desire to seek order and justice in a world completely devoid of either one. Sherlock, with Watson at his side, was always able to see through the fog, eliminate the red-herrings, make his deduction and apprehend the criminal. This kind of feel-good fantasy restores ones faith in a world plagued by dishonesty, disorder, and chaos in which the evil proliferate and the good die young. There is nothing realistic about Doyle’s stories, but then again, that’s not the point. The fact that this dysfunctional brainiac can solve a seemingly opaque problem by simply using his wits is balm for a tired soul. Readers are people too, and Conan Doyle’s character is a hero who isn’t afraid to mix it up with criminals of many different stripes. Readers admire and love him because he makes their real world better by offering up a bit of hope in a dark, dark world. Watson is our real-time stand-in who accompanies Holmes on his forays into the country, acting as sounding board and backup, our vicarious substitute that lets us experience the case as it develops, riding trains, tracking suspects, examining bodies, questioning witnesses, going to the opera. The current BBC production of Sherlock understands all of that as it updates the Sherlock Holmes experience for new generations of readers and viewers. This Sherlock texts, and Watson writes a blog. The production values are five-star, the scripts are brilliant, the actors are genius, and this business of making us all wait for the next set of shows is over-the-top genius marketing. This current incarnation proceeds naturally from the original material, pays homage to it, and slyly winks at those of us who know the original texts. One might cynically say that nothing matches the original, but one also has to admit that this new adaption is a lot of fun.

On a postmodern Sherlock

What is the secret behind the BBC’s current production of Sherlock? The character is over a hundred years old and yet people, fans, readers, have been waiting in great anticipation for the third season of a post-modern adaption of Conan Doyle’s famous Victorian consulting detective. Doyle never really loved his larger than life character, but he did understand that he had created something much larger than himself, rather to his own surprise, actually. Conan Doyle, the writer, thoroughly underestimated his own ability to tap into the imagination of the reading public and their desire to seek order and justice in a world completely devoid of either one. Sherlock, with Watson at his side, was always able to see through the fog, eliminate the red-herrings, make his deduction and apprehend the criminal. This kind of feel-good fantasy restores ones faith in a world plagued by dishonesty, disorder, and chaos in which the evil proliferate and the good die young. There is nothing realistic about Doyle’s stories, but then again, that’s not the point. The fact that this dysfunctional brainiac can solve a seemingly opaque problem by simply using his wits is balm for a tired soul. Readers are people too, and Conan Doyle’s character is a hero who isn’t afraid to mix it up with criminals of many different stripes. Readers admire and love him because he makes their real world better by offering up a bit of hope in a dark, dark world. Watson is our real-time stand-in who accompanies Holmes on his forays into the country, acting as sounding board and backup, our vicarious substitute that lets us experience the case as it develops, riding trains, tracking suspects, examining bodies, questioning witnesses, going to the opera. The current BBC production of Sherlock understands all of that as it updates the Sherlock Holmes experience for new generations of readers and viewers. This Sherlock texts, and Watson writes a blog. The production values are five-star, the scripts are brilliant, the actors are genius, and this business of making us all wait for the next set of shows is over-the-top genius marketing. This current incarnation proceeds naturally from the original material, pays homage to it, and slyly winks at those of us who know the original texts. One might cynically say that nothing matches the original, but one also has to admit that this new adaption is a lot of fun.

On The Mole People (1956)

Filmed and released in 1956 as a B movie, The Mole People, is one of the Saturday night camp films starring John Agar that is both good and bad at the same time. Production standards were card board cutouts and paper mâché boulders. As a movie goer you were required to suspend all of your disbelief regarding a plot line with more holes in it than a Swiss cheese. Even as a twelve year-old I thought this movie was awful, but perhaps even in its extreme awfulness one needs to contemplate the enslavement of the mole people. The plot is irrelevant, but the story is an old one, one group enslaves another, using force and violence to get another group to do all of their dirty work. The “mole” people are grotesque monsters, brutes and savages, and they are enslaved by more normal-looking humanoids, light-sensitive Sumerians as it turns out. The film is drenched is various levels of gratuitous violence and inexplicable adventures. The improbability of the storyline is only matched by the horrendous special effects, which turn out to be a flashlight. As a kid, we called this genre of film a “monster” movie in our own naive and simplistic way. Monsters were everywhere back in the 50’s and 60’s when this movie was made–middle of the Cold War, actually. We couldn’t defeat our monsters in real life, so we created troubling rubber-masked non-human monsters to populate the twilight zone of our subconscious. The weird light-fearing albinos and their slaves are thwarted, and the modern world of science and reason are re-established before the crowd walks back out into the real world of mutually ensured self-destruction of the nuclear age–slavery of another kind.

On walking in the snow

Walking in the snow is balm to the jagged nerves that the holidays tend to exacerbate. While it was snowing a couple of days ago, I went out for a walk to think about things. Into all lives a certain amount of chaos will always fall: people get older, they get sick and die, or they spend extended amounts of time in the process of dying. This isn’t morbid, it’s just real. The snow falls and reminds me that the seasons change, time goes by, we all get older, everything changes, nothing stays the same except the snow. Walking in the snow reminded me of all the other times in my life that I have walked in the snow–in Minnesota, in Spain, in Texas, in Nevada, in Canada. The snow is silent, gentle, and impersonal–it falls on the just and the unjust equally, and it always will. It covers the sleeping landscape, giving the earth a chance to sleep under an icy blanket, a white death shroud that lovingly envelops everything. When you walk in the snow, you become a part of the shroud, you are a part of death, the silence of the falling snow, the eternity of a single moment. A single snow flake is proof that the entire universe moves towards lowest energy, towards entropy, and we are only incidental players on a universal stage.

On walking in the snow

Walking in the snow is balm to the jagged nerves that the holidays tend to exacerbate. While it was snowing a couple of days ago, I went out for a walk to think about things. Into all lives a certain amount of chaos will always fall: people get older, they get sick and die, or they spend extended amounts of time in the process of dying. This isn’t morbid, it’s just real. The snow falls and reminds me that the seasons change, time goes by, we all get older, everything changes, nothing stays the same except the snow. Walking in the snow reminded me of all the other times in my life that I have walked in the snow–in Minnesota, in Spain, in Texas, in Nevada, in Canada. The snow is silent, gentle, and impersonal–it falls on the just and the unjust equally, and it always will. It covers the sleeping landscape, giving the earth a chance to sleep under an icy blanket, a white death shroud that lovingly envelops everything. When you walk in the snow, you become a part of the shroud, you are a part of death, the silence of the falling snow, the eternity of a single moment. A single snow flake is proof that the entire universe moves towards lowest energy, towards entropy, and we are only incidental players on a universal stage.