Brooders

I found some recent interview with Marvin Minsky from this year (2007).

The three part series of “Where is Hal?” (Doctor Dobbs Journal):
Where is Hal? Part 1/3
Where is Hal? Part 2/3
Where is Hal? Part 3/3

A while back I was pondering that it might be time to look at his works, I have bought Society of Mind and started to trawl through the ideas (not necessarily in a linear fashion).

While listening to his talks, I always feel that “Artificial Intelligence” gets more complicated and tricky. I like what he says, but it makes any programming more difficult to deal with uncertainties !

Some ideas that stood out to me are:

• Statistical Analysis is not so good for linguistics or other representational tasks – Not easy to change (although not sure whether he thinks cased based reasoning falls into this bucket)
• Representation of ideas, thoughts or problems can be tricky, new models can come along but no necessarily solve the problem or provide useful application
• People have automatic systems – e.g. Adrenalin, body’s response to heat or cold – Therefore, we are not fully in control of our “hardware”, maybe intelligence doesn’t require total control
• The brain has redundant capabilities – he mentions in one of the articles an epileptic boy who no longer has his right lobe, but is still able to walk, talk and draw (although impeded)

This sort of information requires a lot of digestion, and re-listening .. I need to go over this again. He does have an interesting manner in “telling the AI story”, which at least makes you think about the how and why things work.

I Finally got around to watching THX-1138 today.

For pictures and another review you can check out the THX-1138 Review @ Cyberpunkreview.com.

Overview:

Society is controlled through surveillance and emotion supressing drugs. Our protagonists start changing their dosages and start feeling and experiencing “grotesque sexual behaviour and feelings” and aren’t performing to efficiency. While exploring these new feelings they are discovered and are treated, because they can be dealt with to budget. Society is run to budgets and efficiency is paramount to the proper functioning of society.

Interesting bits:

• Sounds effect are very much like star wars, the car and motorbike noises are the precursor to speederbikes and x-wings. Also the radio voices is the same effect heard later in Star Wars and “Empire Strikes Back”
• Robot Police Guards also look like the inspiration for Storm Troopers.
• Society must supress emtions with Drugs (Looks like Equilibrium borrows this idea THX-1138).

So, for 1971 this would have been an “out there” film. Cyberpunk review mentions it’s a great low budget film, and I would have to agree. Now, the ending is not really an ending. I am trying to think whether this is a 70s thing, or just a anticlimatic, welcome to “here we are” .. and the future needs to unfold in the mind of the audience.

The mentioned similarities to Equilibrium are basically

• Drug controlled society, where people must take their medicine to supress unwanted human emotions or be in violation of the law
• Sparse, uninteresting living quarters and work spaces .. in the interest of efficiency

But the two diverge on the enforcement and escape from the system. Equilibrium is a very action oriented, active resistance with destructive overthrow, whereas THX-1138 seems to explore the nature of humanity, the anomalies which occur and lanslide into disobediance from the state.

My recollections of why protagonists feelings change differ from Cyberpunk review. To me, it seemed that the woman LUH, starting feeling different and reduced or changed hger medication (although at the begining, both were seen in front of their medicine cabinets in violation). This in sense, is the biblical Genesis story of Eve (LUH) starting tempting with the metaphorical apple (by reducing THX-1138 medicine) to make him feel.

While the movie is slow, and no real sountrack and ambience .. it conveys the controlled society, standardised approach to everything, and that anomalies occur .. and in more than one place to destabilise the system. Interesting (and innovative for 1971) use of effects, coupled with societal paranoia make a good story. It strikes me of a precursor to the cyberpunk genre, a little like Metropolis, but worth watching.

Rating: 7/10

Cyberpunk Review has posted about “Programming Atoms Not Bits: Personal Fabrication”

It’s well worth watching – via YouTube of course.

I took some notes during the course of the show (about 15 minutes) ..

• Digitise Fabrication – Computers that don’t control tools, but computers that are tools
• This technology helps create “Products for a market on one person”
• A kid might need to measure and modify the world – not just get information from a screen. (direct quote)
• Three theses at MIT based on the work of 8 year old children. talk about the power of imagination.
• But … Machines that make machines, need business that make businesses.

I must admit, I’m still not sure what these Fab Labs are he described .. other than the idea of a high tech design lab, to construct from the micro to the big.

The story he tells of a girl from Africa constructing something with the Fab Lab and a soldering iron .. is just amazing. It’s not the Lego I played with as a kid.

I guess this plays on the post scarcity or bare survival world we (mostly) live in .. you get the time to create new things … just because you can !