Tales from the Singularity

Google Buys Segway Motors

2005-03-07T11:26:00.000-08:00

In a surprise move, Google acquired the privately held Segway Motors Corporation. "We want to search everywhere, and the Segway family of scooters, bicycles, motorcycles, and cars can take us there." Now that they're built in with cameras, microphones, GPS, and Internet connections, we have really thorough mappings of the urban landscape. And lots of garages."

2028: Ginger Surprise

2005-02-23T21:53:00.000-08:00

Bill Gates is still with us despite his untimely demise. Somewhere in the 900 million lines of code that make up Microsoft Windows was the buried "Happy Birthday, Ginger" greeting card. Presumably left for his grandaughter, Ginger, it popped up a greeting on every copy of Windows this year on April 28th.

Tsunami wipes out the Oscars

2004-12-26T17:38:00.000-08:00

Last week's tsunami took out everything within two miles of the coast from Long Beach to Vancouver. There's nothing like a 10.5 Richter to send that Godzilla sized wave crashing through the homes of 5 million Left Coasters. We all thought an earthquake would push California into the sea, but instead the Pacific rose to cover us. Some of the aftermath:

950,000 dead. The missing persons count is more than a million. Body bag stock rises.
Ports of Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Seattle not able to berth ships. Container traffic at a standstill and ships are queuing up for miles, despite oil spills.
Pollution, sewage, and other systems are broken. And leaking. Public health officials report diseases spreading, partly from rotting corpses.
Phone and Internet networks disrupted. All three of the major Internet hubs from North America to the Pacific remain at .1% of capacity.
Brownouts. More to come as oil and coal don't make it to refineries and as distribution networks are rebuilt.
New York is the new Hollywood. Variety reports 400 telepics, movie deals, and book projects started.
Prime time television is in reruns; most shows cancelled by the Wave. Weather Channel stock rises.
The flooding of San Francisco Bay killed two thirds of Oracle, including all of its management and database development organization. Microsoft and MySQL stock rises.
Pat Robertson calls the victims of the Wave "sinners who faced God's retribution" for their homosexuality, pornography, Hollywood values, indecent morals, and un-American politics. He raises $200 million.
Deaths in coastal Democratic counties repaint California as a Red State.
The Governor is running for President. From the ruins of Santa Monica he says "We'll be back," his campaign slogan.

Dinosaur hangover?

2004-10-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

Drunken brontosauri are a spectacle to behold. Cecil and Daphne at the San Diego Zoo got into some fermented grain last night. Disoriented but seemed to have fun after a while. Nobody hurt.

2020 Presidential Debate Rules

2004-10-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

Can you believe the new presidential debate rules? How can they expect anyone to argue for 30 minutes without using their Google implants? Without access to the Presidential Wiki on Elections? Arm wrestling or a paintball duel would be more informative.

Not your father's Digital Hollywood

2004-09-28T09:01:00.000-07:00

Moving my atoms up the 405 to Santa Monica to the Fractal Hollywood conference. There's something about putting my favorite virtual actors together in a buddy movie that reminds me of online gaming when I was a kid. My team vs. your team. Real time. Over distance. Yelling into headsets. It's a team thing.

The talent behind the vactors is the new discipline, the choreographers making sure the vactor stands on her marks (or kisses or punches). The psychometricians who layer the performance, translating director notes into psychological models, their naunce and art in tweaking the parameters and creating the proper cognitive frames from the character's back story.

Personally, I like the skin/muscle specialists. They reveal thoughts, instincts, visceral reactions, and emotions through the tensions and flexions and blood pulses and subtle shifts. It's the linking of this stuff to the psychometrics. I was so proud for them when their systems brewed Lymonade's sweat in Global Suite's climax. You could smell the fear and passion as she decided to fall out of love. And the relaxation and coldness and relief as the pills took. I gotta bid on that for Ralph Lauren, great stuff.

My exit. Bye for now.

The GOP Pill puts me in a Red State

2004-09-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

Thank you, peer pressure. I took Bayer Xamplax™ for the first time last night. The "Republican Pill." I woke up with a slight headache, cured by coffee. I don't feel much different but I can listen to Rush on the radio without the urgent need to change the channel or gag. I don't understand all the code words, yet. I seem to be making many small changes in my media consumption, my shopping, conversations with my neighbors. I'm looking at my friends and co-workers differently. And my wardrobe just has to go. I wonder what happens if I stop taking the pill...

My liver's weblog

2004-09-14T18:25:00.000-07:00

It's astonishing to me the traffic going to my liver's weblog. Post-op, I left the NanoMed™ sensors turned on. I routed the feed through my Blogger account, so my blog is automatically updated every ten minutes. Now this is sorta useful to my doctor and my KaiserWebMD™ monitor. But the blog is drawing all sorts of attention. 20 thousand visitors last month. And comments. And betting.

I am a little freaked at people tuning in to my liver. They're guessing about what I'm eating and drinking. They're analyzing my data. They're speculating on my love life and intelligence and the potential for shifts in my body chemistry. I don't mind the Google advertising revenue, but the t-shirts and greeting cards are a little much.

Microsoft Full Body 4, Service Pack 3

2004-09-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

I downloaded the latest service pack from Microsoft. Automatically. First day. I shoulda known better.

I'm supposed to have better immunity from Capistrano Wren Flu, but I came down with a cold and I'm sore all over. No fever, though.

My moods are running hot and cold, although when I'm calm I'm rock solid.

After this download I'm running spell checkers constantly. Why? Because I'm now mildly dyslexic. And I stutter a little (funny to run into everyone stuttering at the call center). But my chess game seems to be improving quickly. As are my billiards and tennis games. The arthritis in my knee isn't bothering me, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.

When I docked for my morning checkup (sitting on the toilet) I learned my blood pressure is fine. Don't ask me how it checked my glaucoma, but my intraoccular pressure is fine too.

I'm now seeing better than 20/20. But I see double when I wake up. Small price to pay since I can get UltraHighDef TV under my eyelids, and you've never seen pro football like that before.

It would have been nice if they'd told me my pacemaker and liver pill are incompatible with this release. I may have to upgrade.

I just wish they'd test this stuff better. And lower the monthly subscription fees. At least the justice department isn't giving Microsoft a hard time anymore. Open Source is looking pretty good.

But I do like the convenience of having all the MS FullBody components in one subscription and one management interface. Structure, Senses, Mind, Immunity, Metab, Sex, and Glamour.

I don't use all of it, but when I do it all works together.

And tech support is getting better too.

Music, music, music.

2004-09-07T23:45:00.000-07:00

I wanted to be musical. I saw all these other people who could rock at the drop of a hat. Or play a blues riff in a baroque style. It was like they could think in this language I couldn't follow or see in colors I couldn't see.

First, a little gene therapy to amp my music cognitive capacity. Bonus: I'm now better in math and spacial visualization. I follow up with the Juilliard Open Source Curriculum, slamming my way through theory and practicum.

I jack in at night to build muscle memory while I sleep. My arms, hands and shoulders are tired when I get up, but I just think about an arpeggio and I'm doing it.

I added the new Apple iPod, the cochlear implant one. 500,000 tracks from around the planet. Once in a while it sticks and I can't get a song out of my head - literally. When talking to it doesn't work, I just gently bang my head against a door.

So I'm playing music now, making friends.

I'd like to dance...

Burning Books

2004-08-30T04:13:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting by the fireplace drinking a little Ten Buck Chuck, tossing another book on the flames. Alton Brown's Gear For Your Kitchen. I've been putting it off but, between the heating bills and and my Google implant, I just don't need them any more. UNIX in a Nutshell. That and it frees up space for the living wallpaper from Home Depot. Adam Roberts' Salt. I did the usual, hiring a scrawny geezer to scan the isbns off my 1500 or so novels, text books, manuals, etc. and to package up the oddballs to FedEx for image/text scanning. Kanji Pict-O-Graphix. I can't complain about the upload times; Amazon did a great job, they were available the next day. Bullfinch's Mythology. Now I just "blink and think" and there it is. Value Migration. I have to be careful about new books, though. Studs Terkel's Working. I'm not used to paying by the read. Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy. The fire's warm and crackling, I'm feeling comfortable, and all I need is a little cheese for a perfect evening.

2012 Olympics: Augmented Athletes in Exhibition Sports

2004-08-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

Did you see weight lifter do three tons? The 60 meter long jump? I still love the "natural" categories but the tweaked atheletes are pretty amazing. The new Nike implants are clearly an edge in basketball, and the Amlin reaction time boosters have changed fencing and the other martial arts.

New flute on eBay

2004-08-23T04:11:00.000-07:00

Woh, built for 12 fingers (4 thumbs). Downloaded the upgrade yesterday and they're coming in nicely, just mild itchiness. Time for some glove shopping.

Another Internet found, connected.

2004-08-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

A spokesman said "On Tuesday we discovered a whole other Internet with 298 million users. It's been running for 18 years. It works the same as far as users are concerned. But the specs for everything from IP addresses to the ways browsers work to domain name systems evolved independently from the main Internet." It apparently originated in Cuba to support biotech researchers, and spread worldwide, hugely popular in Latin America and rural India. Mostly wireless.

I took the Handsome pill today.

2004-08-17T04:59:00.000-07:00

"Aargh! What did you do? Now you have a face only a mother could love."

I'm fine with that.

My last date.

2004-08-17T04:48:00.000-07:00

"Why won't you open up to me? I need to know how you feel. About me. About us."

So I showed her my source code.

"I can't believe you're so shallow and so in need of refactoring at the same time. Look, get back to me when you've cleaned up all this stuff from previous relationships. And haven't you ever heard of an abstraction? Let me give you the private IM of a CMM7 developer in Cairo."

Somehow I haven't been the same since the rewrite.

Self Improvement, Open Source Style

2004-08-17T04:39:00.000-07:00

When I upload my mind, what's my licence?

Am I covered under a Creative Commons license? Versions of myself may wind up enslaved, part of someone's machine. Others may be changed so much as to be unrecognizable. The scariest part is being exposed to ongoing tweaks to my senses, my awareness, my cognition, my dreams. By strangers. Without notice.

After all, one man's flair is another's flaw. Is all my charm just a quirk of a low level design defect? What happens when someone decides to infect me with the virus that repairs all levels of Oedipal Complex? Of emotional resistance to authority?

Has anyone seen my backup?

2004-08-17T04:32:00.000-07:00

There must be a fresher version of me floating around somewhere. I can't be the latest release of Phil; too many bugs, design defects, and scope drift for any one person.

Searching for my name shows lots of my exhaust. Posts, cites, sites. Also breadcrumbs to a dozen other people named Phil Wolff. None of them me.