There’s something very convenient but scary that I can roll over, log into banking with one eye open, transfer money and fall back asleep!

Bedside connectivity .. What’s next?

I saw this from a few sources, but take a look:

Cyborg Exoskeletons @ youtube.

H+ Magazine have more information in their article Cyborg exoskeletons may soon become as common as bicycles.

This may be a bit like the claim that segway’s were going to revolutionise transportation, so I will wait and see what the masses accept. The Segway was going to be the “Next Big Thing” (See image below), the exoskeletons are cooler.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Remember the movie “Aliens”? Ripley had that big shiny yellow lifter exoskeleton to beat it? Check out H+ article above, as it has people doing weights with their exoskeletons, unfortunately not fighting aliens. Originally seen on the Livejournal Cyberpunk Community

One thing to note, as I type on the screen interface, is it,s not that quick. That is the trade off though, speed versus location and opportunity.

Stay tuned … all should be backup and running soon.

Udon and Artificial Machines
Udon and Machines, Part 2
The Age of Spritual Machines : Book Review (Udon and Machines 3)

All three parts, are listed above in the writing order.

The question from the book is the age old what is intelligence? Kurzweil’s spin .. How much computing power and software equals a human brain?

Yes, a Portmanteau word comprising:

Human + animal + ism = A belief that humans are just animals.

A quick search of wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanimalism reveals nothing found. Googling finds very few references to Gaia or gays .. not sure we want this term associated with that.

So why is this interesting or worthy of thought?

After reading Freakonomics, some scary truths seemed to emerge from that.

1) Intelligence seems to be largely genetic.

2) Environmental impacts (where you live, social interactions) are quite large on children and arguably adults.

So, Biology and environment seem to be important.

Certain news reports in Australia seem to indicate that we are fast becoming an obese nation. There’s a level of rationality which seems to lose to hunger, and in times of plenty (i.e. supermarkets) there is no season to regulate our intake of fatty foods, and there is no harsh winter to burn off our stored energy. Other animal behaviors like producing offspring, would seem like an instinct to propagate the species.

This may sound like the nature or nurture debate (Freakonomics may add Environment as well) but I do wonder if people are just a sack of chemicals programmed to survive, and in a post subsistence country this has unintended consequences. Perhaps, humanimalsim is related to hedonism. A definition from Wikipedia:

Hedonism is the philosophy that pleasure is of ultimate importance, the most important pursuit. The name derives from the Greek word for “delight” (ἡδονισμός hÄ“donismos from ἡδονή hÄ“donÄ“ “pleasure”, a cognate of English sweet + suffix ισμός ismos “ism”).

While I don’t have any hard statistics, some of the things I’ve read indicate that lifestyle related health issues (e.g. blood pressure, cholesterol, cancer from smoking, sexually transmitted diseases) are on the increase. So is this Hedonism or Humanimalism?

Anyway .. that’s a thought for today.

This book is a blur of “maybe, could be, might happen future technology”.

It’s hard to describe the book. And as I write this, it’s been quite a few months since i’ve actually read it.

I think some of the ideas in the book were quite interesting. Take for example the idea of Computers playing chess. Years ago, people said that computers would never beat a person playing chess. However, with good enough algorithms and processing power this does not hold true.

I guess the interesting point here, is that if a computer program can do better than 95% of people (or more) then that’s probably good AI.

Secondly, if I remember correctly from the book, that often we might not see patterns that exist. And that possibly, machines may be able to see some of them better than people through basic statistical analysis. This comes down to “are our thought processes really unique? or are they algorithms some people have refined over their life?”

I found the book quite thought provoking. How much of what we do is reacting to our environment? Are some thought processes just heuristics which can be reproduced?

One concept that came out of this book which I find interesting .. if one task / though process can be emulated in software better than x per cent of people is that intelligence? (e.g. software can determine fraud with a 90 % success rate).

Overall I though the book was well worth the read. I actually intend on reading it again.

Rating: 8/10

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-S8nmBRAyw

There are heaps of shots of Melbourne (Australia) in various flying car sequences, including the west gate bridge and the casino with the flaming gas pillars.

I am kinda interested .. looks pretty B grade though.

I will have to suggest this for review over at Cyberpunkreview.com as it’s not on his list.

So, here’s a quick synopsis from Eztakes:

Inspired by The Matrix, Cyber Punk, Manga, Raves and Video Games NARCOSYS, a super-sophisticated film with stunning visual effects, takes you to a horrific place in the not too distant future, 2018 A.D. The all-powerful IT Corporation has enslaved the population by means of mass produced pharmaceuticals and the introduction of a virus in the street drug supply to eliminate competition, unaware and unconcerned with what the effects of the virus are. ITco. forces apprehended criminal, Matrix. to infiltrate a deadly gang of cyber-punks in search of uncontaminated drugs. It s a race against time in a place where violence and psychosis are an everyday occurrence and drugs are the currency of choice. Welcome to ITco. Business as usual, everything must go. No exit for the paranoid.

Some of the other reviews on IMDB and elsewhere from the Eztakes page were not so good, but .. you can buy a copy from Amazon for around $3 USD ! Might be worth a look.

However, I did find a bizarro music video called “SID LA LA MAC”

Youtube link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Tj33MP5AEH4

It’s cyberpunk in the way that some people describe “Second Life” as cyberpunk.

Worth the read.

The original article is called “Learning to lie“.

A couple of interesting excerpts:

It starts very young. Indeed, bright kids—those who do better on other academic indicators—are able to start lying at 2 or 3. “Lying is related to intelligence,”
….
Although we think of truthfulness as a young child’s paramount virtue, it turns out that lying is the more advanced skill. A child who is going to lie must recognize the truth, intellectually conceive of an alternate reality, and be able to convincingly sell that new reality to someone else. Therefore, lying demands both advanced cognitive development and social skills that honesty simply doesn’t require.

I’d never seen this perspective before. Manipulating perception of reality is an act of intelligence and persuasion. That does make sense.

he most disturbing reason children lie is that parents teach them to. According to Talwar, they learn it from us. “We don’t explicitly tell them to lie, but they see us do it.
….
Consider how we expect a child to act when he opens a gift he doesn’t like. We instruct him to swallow all his honest reactions and put on a polite smile.

This one is pretty common, from an early age lie to protect the feelings of adults. Schooled from a very early age to be polite through telling white lies. Also, the concept of lying to adults instead of tattling/telling on your mates seems to be a factor.

So, paradoxically, it seems lying is an integral part of a society which values honest.