An artificially demon-haunted world
Mar. 7th, 2021 05:42 amCharles Stross says, “As AI applications are increasingly deployed in public spaces we're now beginning to see the exciting possibilities inherent in the leakage of human stupidity into the environment we live in.”
Artificial Intelligence
Dec. 13th, 2019 03:26 pmCharlie Stross tries to figure out the unknown unknowns [Charlie’s Diary]
Is it this bad?
Dec. 12th, 2017 06:00 amNothing works and nobody cares. (And this is a Medium post so it molests your screen before you can even look at it.)
Thanx to Follow Me Here
And do-it-yourself celebrity (or anyone else) porn is almost here.
Thanx to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker
Thanx to Follow Me Here
And do-it-yourself celebrity (or anyone else) porn is almost here.
Thanx to
andrewduckerExtremely Controversial Statement
Jul. 29th, 2016 07:10 amWindows 10 is good. I was stuck with it when my old computer broke, and I’m happy with it.
Thanx to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
andrewducker
Thanx to
andrewduckerRemember when computers were supposed to run at computer speeds? Here’s a big fat article about how everything on the Web is too big and fat. He’s right. Not having to wait while the advertisers (and presumably the NSA et al.) note our presence would help, but that's just crazy talk.
Thanx to Metafilter
Thanx to Metafilter
30 years ago today
Jan. 22nd, 2014 07:15 amFile 770 reminds us that this is the thirtieth anniversary of the commercial that introduced the Macintosh. I don't remember how I felt about it at the time, but now I am tempted to see it as the Fall.
John Clute has written about that terrible stuff he calls First SF, characterized as a view of the material world as a series of problems to be solved. When I read that, I thought, "Oh, so that's why I love it." I don't actually have autism or Asperger's, but I'm on the spectrum: I live in my mind and deal with the world, rather than living in the world like we're supposed to. First SF dreamed of being better at that: We'd be safer from the elements, live longer and better, have machines doing the dull stuff, turn sex from a deadly serious business (Eric Berne called it a giant squid) into shared pleasure, escape the giant prison at the bottom of the gravity well….
And we would have computers. Well, First SF mostly thought we would have A Computer, but for once reality outstripped the Dream: Everybody could have one. And they would be more than "computers": We could use words, as well as numbers, to deal with the material world from a safe distance.
Then came the Commercial. Now there would be a computer for the rest of them. No more all those hard words and numbers; computers would have pictures. Perhaps some day computers will be just like television! Or better; you could push and pull the stuff on the screen instead of having to talk to it. (I love being able to utter a simple incantation like CTRL-C rather than d-r-a-g things.) In retrospect what it reminded me of was 1967 and that godawful song telling people to come to San Francisco with flowers in their hair: It brought a lot of Them into what used to be a place for Us.
I am of course not saying that the influx was all bad. Two of the best and smartest people I have ever known, my beloved cohusbandwomzilla and the late Robert Anton Wilson, love the touchable computer. I have no idea how many of the people I now enjoy interacting with online wouldn't be here if all we had was the old kind of PC, but I'll bet it's a lot. But just as "science fiction" has gone from words and ideas on a page to violence and special effects on a screen, so a "computer" can now be a handheld interactive TV. And it isn't safe any more: Outside forces are running programs on our computers all time, and we must defend ourselves against the bad ones. Still, we have not lost the ability to read science fiction or use words on computers. (I'm doing it right now.)
One thing I learned from File 770: For years no one could show the commercial for fear of lawsuits from the George Orwell estate. Imagine a copyright lawyer stamping on a human face forever.
John Clute has written about that terrible stuff he calls First SF, characterized as a view of the material world as a series of problems to be solved. When I read that, I thought, "Oh, so that's why I love it." I don't actually have autism or Asperger's, but I'm on the spectrum: I live in my mind and deal with the world, rather than living in the world like we're supposed to. First SF dreamed of being better at that: We'd be safer from the elements, live longer and better, have machines doing the dull stuff, turn sex from a deadly serious business (Eric Berne called it a giant squid) into shared pleasure, escape the giant prison at the bottom of the gravity well….
And we would have computers. Well, First SF mostly thought we would have A Computer, but for once reality outstripped the Dream: Everybody could have one. And they would be more than "computers": We could use words, as well as numbers, to deal with the material world from a safe distance.
Then came the Commercial. Now there would be a computer for the rest of them. No more all those hard words and numbers; computers would have pictures. Perhaps some day computers will be just like television! Or better; you could push and pull the stuff on the screen instead of having to talk to it. (I love being able to utter a simple incantation like CTRL-C rather than d-r-a-g things.) In retrospect what it reminded me of was 1967 and that godawful song telling people to come to San Francisco with flowers in their hair: It brought a lot of Them into what used to be a place for Us.
I am of course not saying that the influx was all bad. Two of the best and smartest people I have ever known, my beloved cohusband
womzilla and the late Robert Anton Wilson, love the touchable computer. I have no idea how many of the people I now enjoy interacting with online wouldn't be here if all we had was the old kind of PC, but I'll bet it's a lot. But just as "science fiction" has gone from words and ideas on a page to violence and special effects on a screen, so a "computer" can now be a handheld interactive TV. And it isn't safe any more: Outside forces are running programs on our computers all time, and we must defend ourselves against the bad ones. Still, we have not lost the ability to read science fiction or use words on computers. (I'm doing it right now.)One thing I learned from File 770: For years no one could show the commercial for fear of lawsuits from the George Orwell estate. Imagine a copyright lawyer stamping on a human face forever.
