FootprintsintheWind.com

Will algorithms for artificial intelligence learn to tell stories, to manipulate our desires to rebel?

:- Doug.

Whatever the machines do or tell us, we will like our stories better, and we will always be rebels.

:- Doug.

We seem to be the large numbers species: we think in terms of math and doing things in “scale.” The only critters who outnumber us are the insects and the microorganisms, and they still hold some sway over us.

But. Meaning still gives us a challenge.

Of course challenge is what we need. Numbers alone won’t do it. Meaning is bigger than challenge. Bigger, faster, stronger, more are what challenge is normally about. Meaning makes the challenge worth the effort.

Thus the breadcrumbs we leave in our stories ought be about meaning. So I think today.

:- Doug.

What are possible shapes of a story? For starters: novels, bed time stories, plays, science, religion, dreams….

:- Doug.

Humanity is a meaning-making animal. This is the ultimate power. Meaning seems to be the glory, the top, and is not glory the purpose of power?

:- Doug.

How do we—we—change the course, not of history, not of the world, but of humanity? This people, this place, this now, find ourselves in a fast moving stream. We see rapids coming. What path choose?

:- Doug.

What’s illogical in today’s society? Or just plain stupid? What don’t we see till we stand back and observe—say in age?

:- Doug.

Bird feed is for us, not the birds.

:- Doug.

Where is today’s imagination centered? On music and moving pictures? Are these stories? What do they tell us? Our stories can be larger. It is up to you.

:- Doug.

What can you imagine? With it can you infect one or two of us?

:- Doug.

I only know what’s now and only some of that. I am ignorant of most of the past and future. So one step.

:- Doug.

How do I know what’s good or not about what I write? How do I know whether it might be compost for another? I cannot. So let it find air and light.

:- Doug.

It’s not so much what you put into it as what you don’t put into it. Meditation/contemplation, at least.

:- Doug.

What is human?

:- Doug.

If there were a pill you could take that would remove from you all emotions, would you?

:- Doug.

In 300 years will people be more human or less?

:- Doug.

What projects are next for humanity? After those, will we think the same as we do now, value similar things?

:- Doug.

Every day, many ways, I ask myself what do I think?

:- Doug.

Kurzweil is about accelerating intelligence. Is intelligence what we most want? Acceleration? How about heart, spirit, humanity, humaneness, slowness, silence, depth?

:- Doug.

Do you have 2020 vision?

:- Doug.

You’ve got a thinker. Think it.

:- Doug.

As life speeds up, the things we do and make ephemeralize. Reminds me of Bucky. Do we too ephemeralize? Do we become brain and internet connection, and stop going to meet one another? Insights become ephemeral: at least for me they do not last.

:- Doug.

Are future people always deaf to us?

:- Doug.