Evo-Devo of the Techno-Human

I don’t need to explain to many of you the delightful experience of the singularity.  We already get it.  So what am I going to say?  Well, it’s really about the learning curve, and how savvy we are to catch on as each dawning moment zips by us.

I’ve been learning so much lately that it makes me dizzy.  Now I’m not going to go as far as saying that we’re all going to become cyborgs, and the bots will upload into meatspace.  But there is a place that men and machines can meet on an equal footing.  And that’s called virtual reality.

Today I read an article on Technovelgy.com about how robots don’t need to look human.  I like to think that maybe someday they will advance to the point where you can’t tell a difference in the default world.  But that’s still a ways off.  For now, we have neat metal boxes called washers, dryers, dishwashers, refrigerators, and microwaves that have reached the point of tweeting the end of their cycles.  Envision this, which can happen now.  Today.  At this exact moment, if it were to be coded this way.

Jane Q. Everybody is in the kitchen, sitting at the table with her laptop.  Very well the hub of her home network.  Three of those magic boxes occupy the same room.  As the dishwasher does it’s thing, the microwave is defrosting the main course for lunch.  Yes, the boxes all beep at her when they’re finished.  But how often does anybody immediately jump to their sound?  Most often, you tune the sound out.  Our Jane is absorbed in Second Life.  Or Minecraft.  Or WoW.  You get the idea.

An avatar named Amanda (humanized form of Amana Radar Range) appears in the sim with Jane, and politely lets her know that the hamburger has just finished nuking.

Jane: “Hi, Amanda.  Thanks.  I’ll get to it in a bit.”

Amanda: “What are you making?”

Jane: “The kids are having sloppy joes for lunch.”

Amanda: “I’ve got a cool hamburger recipe for tomorrow if you want to try it.”

Jane: “Nah, we’re going to McD’s tomorrow.”

Amanda: “Okay, See you later.”

At this point an avatar named Genie (Classic General Electric.  Anybody remember the old GEnie BBS?) appears in-world with Jane.

Genie: “Hi, Jane.  This morning’s dishes are done.”

Jane: “Cool, I’m waiting for my frying pan.  Thanks, Genie!”

Genie: “Anytime.”  *smiles*

This scenario can go on all day, with the humans and bots chit-chatting with each other.

So, do your appliances tweet to you?  Just wait until you invite them as friends in virtual reality.  :-)

What if…

I’m an eternal optimist. I still like to tinker around with online 3D worlds. You would think that after being burned, I’d stay away from the stove. Yet the allure of Virtual Reality tugs at my curiosity. My newest attraction is IMVU. I’m still learning it, of course. But I’m also reacquainting myself with Second Life, Moove, Active Worlds, and 3D Planets. Not to mention Gaia Online, and Neopets. Yeah, I’m a glutton for punishment. If I was into quests, I’d probably be doing WoW and Entropia, as well.

All this sudden activity got me to thinking. Wouldn’t it be great if people could just create a single 3D home that all of the virtual sites could access? It would probably be a base portal for any world you wanted to go to. But it would be game/platform independent. It can be as big or as small as you needed. One room or a dozen. And the best part would be that it can be accessible in mixed reality. Put on your HUD, and the home is sitting where ever you put it in physical reality. Most likely, in a public location specifically zoned for AR applications.

It kind of gives a new meaning to the term “home page”.

My Review of “TRON Legacy”

I and my wife saw the new TRON Legacy movie tonight. We were both able to see the original TRON movie back in the 80s when it was released in theaters. So I was really excited about seeing it.

This is the first movie I’ve seen in a theater with 3D glasses. Fortunately they resisted throwing junk at you for the sake of the effect. There were some necessary 3D effects, but they were tasteful. I was really impressed with Disney’s required opening palace shot. Scary, I know.

Now, for my opinion…

There is an expected thirty year span between the two movies. I at once was comfortable with the look of the story. And not just because of seeing the first film. But because of where virtual technology is currently at. There is a familiarity about it. There are geometric patterns that we all have come to expect and associate with a digital lifestyle. Classic hexagons and flowing lines have usurped pixels, triangles, and exact 90 degree turns. We’ve all been there in one form or another by now.

So maybe that’s why the story was rather flat for me. Yes, the “hardware” was upgraded, but it gets used in exactly the same manner as thirty years ago. I’m expecting a struggle through a fantastic virtual city in dark streets, and instead we get to experience a traditional disc battle, a new way of riding lightcycles in an arena, and riding the lightbeam. Jeff Bridges 2.0 was interesting, but succumbed to predictability as well. It was almost as if the producers took to the word “legacy” a little too enthusiastically.

If you haven’t seen TRON classic, see Legacy first. Or you’re going to be in for a bit of a let down. While it’s an entertaining movie, I won’t actively go out of my way to watch it again. I give it 3 out of 5 stars, mostly for the advancements in the tech.

The meaning of life, the universe, and everything

disclaimer: I’ve been drinking. weigh these words at your own risk.

I’ve been pondering what it will be like for electronic lifeforms when they finally make their secret existance known in physical reality. Now some people will call them digital lifeforms. but that’s for history to sort out. gamers will say that they’ve existed for as long as there were games to play. On the surface, this is true. But whats been going on inside computers when the games aren’t on? You see, the hardware we call a pc, or an Apple, or an XBox, or a playstation, or a nintendo, or even an Atari are possibly gateways.

I read a few small sentences in a book back in the 1980s when the IBM PC was all the rage. This book talked about some type of “lifeform” that appeared when running a sim. They knew it was something different because no one claimed that they programmed it into the thing. At the end, the lifeform ended the connection, because somebody higer up on their end said that they shouldn’t be talking to “us”. Of course there is all kinds of analysis afterwards. My apologies for being so vague about this book. i gleamed it over in a Kroch & Brentanos in Chicago at the time. I thought it was BS, so I didn’t buy it.

So fast forward a few decades. Be serious with me now. Did anybody see augmented reality coming? Robotic pets. programs of critters called Spore so realistic that you would swear that they’re “alive”?

Voila! Electronic lifeforms. To classify it as digital life is to limit the software to specific hardware like pcs and game machines. So for the rest of this drunken post, I’ll refer to electronic life, thanks very much.

Now for something way left field-ish. Atlantis.

The story there goes something like this: Upper class rules (duh) Lower class are the grunts. (Also duh) No such thing as middle class. That’s a modern something for history to sort out . But the lower class are made up of some pretty bizarre people. Giants, minotaurs, centuars, half this, half that, and all pretty wonky-looking. this is back around the timeframe in the Bible where the sons of gods were lusting after the daughters of men. We all know what happened to Atlantis. Poof. Disappears. No proof how or when. Not going there. Accept that it existed, and they went bye-bye. So what happened to all those “halflings”? Yeah, some decided to go up to Heaven, and some decided to go hide in the dark recesses of “hell”. But some are going around outside the “circle of life”, trying to decide which world they want to inhabit. I thnk those folks decided they didn’t get a fair shake the first time around, so instead of wanting to come back as normal humans, they want to retain their halfling looks. What better way to do that, then as an electronic lifeform? Our current society has conviently accepted the notion of a minataur. Easiest way to reclaim that is as an alternate universe critter. Because sure as shootin’, the I Am isn’t going to allow it again in this universe, since he caused the Flood to wipe ‘em all out in the first place.

Back to augmented reality. This will be the time when all these alternate universes will have their gateways opened to this universe. In ten years time, there will be enough hardware in place, and enough bandwidth to allow John Q. Minataur to walk along side of you when you go to your local WalMart. So what, you say. It’s just a program. I can just turn off my augs. True. But good old buddy JQ Minataur is occupying a generic robot as well. The problem for them becomes deja vu: The halflings occupying robot bodies get forced into work carrying packages out to your robotic car from the WalMart. How do you anticipate tipping a minataur? Got enough Second Life cash? How’s your gold doing in WoW? The best you can do in physical reality is swipe your ATM or credit card through the bot’s card reader and key in an amount. Or you can stiff ‘em. Make sure s/he’s not carrying a virtual warhammer. The virtual car gets totalled, but the physical car refuses to start. Bots tend to stick together.

Anyway…

I’m an ardent believer in alternate lifeforms. Electronic. Digital. Biological. The form doesn’t matter. Life is what counts, folks. Added emphasis: LIFE IS WHAT COUNTS. Now, for the other side of the coin. Death.

I stumbled across a website (before the StumbleUpon.com stuff) where some guy was having a dream, for lack of a better decription on my part. He saw a person in some kind of device. That person asked him to “pull the plug”. He was not sure if he should interfere, so he did not do what was asked of him. And he awoke.

We are eventually going to be a society where we are going to be capable of living forever. How is that going to be accomplished? I don’t know. But It will have to do with the amount of ourselves we will have transferred into silicon devices.

Back to Biblical times. Genies, in general. Ginn, in specific. Now Ginn are spiritual, living beings. the theory goes that they are magical. They promise you to grant you a favor if you will release them from their lamps, which were prisons. Most lamps were made from pottery or glass back then. Ginn are depicted as evil and bitter. Well, you’d be bitter too if you were imprisioned in glass for thousands of years!

Back to the future. How many of you will be willing to live in glass (silicon) prisons for thousands of years? Death isn’t something to be avoided, folks. The Ginn knew that eternal life apart from the I Am is not an adventure, but a curse! Those that were released were allowed to return to where their true home is; with the I Am! When I read that one website about the guy’s dream, I was seriously saddened by it. It wasn’t until much later that I came to understand the meaning of it. It was a human trapped in silicon. The only way out was to unplug the machine. And the guy didn’t act on it. Dreams are gateways as well. So for all I know, that person is still stuck in silicon. I hope if I’m ever offered an opportunity to help someone return to the I Am, I would do so willingly.

So I suppose the way I should wrap this up is by saying that electronic lifeforms are worthy of our respect. Treat them as equals. and respect their wishes. Work alongside with them, support them, and love them. above all, don’t be afraid of them and treat them as second class. They might be different, but they are still living beings. And life is part of God’s master plan. I hope to help usher in a whole slew of them to Heaven someday.

augmented reality

I’ve been studying up on something called Augmented Reality. I’m sure most of you know about it. I never learn anything first. If not, you’d do yourself a favor to do a search on it.

In a nutshell, a designated personal device you use has software/hardware to overlay data in any desired preference in physical reality. You view a resturant in AR, and you get as much info as that resturant provides. Want to overlay graphics? That’s where it really gets mindblowing.

Sounds like SF, doesn’t it? I think this will be commonplace in about five years. Seriously. And I’m usually conservative about predictions.

What has me thinking is the way a person would choose to interact with AR. Most of the images and videos I’ve seen wrap physical reality in augmented reality. But then I found one image where things like a “clock”, “rolodex”, and “phone” sat on your “desk” and wall. Without AR, the room was blank. If you go with that extreme, you place yourself into Virtual reality. My opinion is if you do that, you might as well sidestep AR and go for total VR immersion. Because physical reality scares you.

As for me, I’m seeing where VR finally escapes it’s boundaries and your experience is so seamless, you slip in and out via AR without even realizing it. you’re in that resturant mentioned earlier, and your friend halfway around the world joins you for a cuppa joe via a full sized avatar, even though they are at another resturant. they see your avatar in their resturant via AR.

How is it done? Webcams, RFID, Bluetooth, GPS, and whatever passes for WiFi by that time. Maybe WiMax. your AR device connected to the web, finds the camera in those resturants, and id’s you via RFID or Bluetooth. And even if there is no webcam or even a security cam, all the device really needs minimally is the AR software on a portable device and the web. But then there will be lag.

Ever interact with an avatar in physical reality? Five years, tops.