Category Archives: Science & Technology

William Gibson’s drones

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Yesterday’s drone flight has me in a drone state of mind. My first (of 25) blog post mentioning drones was in 2005, but some of those are references to military drones so not sure when I became aware of consumer drones. Last night I started reading (for the 10th time?) William Gibson’s 1988 novel, Mona Lisa Overdrive and found this passage:

“She was accompanied, on these walks, by an armed remote, a tiny Dornier helicopter that rose from its unseen rooftop nest when she stepped down from the deck. It could hover almost silently, and was programmed to avoid her line of sight. There was something wistful about The way it followed her, as though it were an expensive but unappreciated Christmas gift.”

The man has been incorporating drones into his stories for 30+ years. And this might not be the first instance.

Memories

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To some extent we are the sum of our memories. Or it feels that way. But neuroscience tells us that every time a memory is recalled, it is recreated by the brain, slightly different each time it’s retrieved. So, a memory of a memory. Of a memory. Imagine each memory as a photo in a shoebox. Everytime you pull one out, it’s just a little bit different. We’re not bothered by this because we are unaware of the change. We have no memory of the previous version. Neuroscience also tells us we are able to recall only a fraction of our experiences.

My conclusion: We are not our memories.

So who/what am I? Perhaps the most important question one can ask, and that few ever do. Are we our thoughts and feelings? If so, what are we in those rare moments when we are not thinking or feeling? I like Sam Harris’ description of such mental objects as “temporary patterns of energy.”

Plum Island

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From Plum Island, a 1997 thriller by Nelson DeMille:

“Can you describe to the duties of the Gordons?”

“Yes… They were involved mostly with… genetic research. Genetic alteration of viruses to make them unable to cause disease, but able to stimulate the body’s immune system.”

“A vaccine?” Beth asked.

“Yes, a new type of vaccine. Much safer than using a weakened virus.”

So what next?

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“The first step is to tone down the prophecies of doom and switch from panic mode to bewilderment. Panic is a form of hubris. It comes from the smug feeling that one knows exactly where the world is heading: down. Bewilderment is more humble and therefore more clear-sighted. Do you feel like running down the street crying “The apocalypse is upon us”? Try telling yourself, “No, it’s not that.Truth is, I just don’t understand what’s going on in the world.”

— 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)

“Next target is cancer”

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(AP) “The scientist who won the race to deliver the first widely used coronavirus vaccine says people can rest assured the shots are safe, and the technology behind it will soon be used to fight another global scourge — cancer.

The vaccines made by BioNTech-Pfizer and U.S. rival Moderna uses messenger RNA, or mRNA, to carry instructions into the human body for making proteins that prime it to attack a specific virus. The same principle can be applied to get the immune system to take on tumors.

“We have several different cancer vaccines based on mRNA,” said Tureci, who is BioNTech’s chief medical officer.

Asked when such a therapy might be available, Tureci said “that’s very difficult to predict in innovative development. But we expect that within only a couple of years, we will also have our vaccines (against) cancer at a place where we can offer them to people.”

Before you say, impossible, consider that the best scientific minds in the world were certain it was impossible to create a COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year.

The Coming Technology Boom

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“Politics is grim but science is working”

I’ve long believed technology would be our salvation. We’re not going to become better, more enlightened people. But our tech will get better and better, despite the efforts to “make America great again.” This NYT op-ed reinforced that (and made me feel good). Like all human progress, this will come with difficulties:

“What happens to people who work on ranches if labs take a significant share of the market? The political difficulties will be complicated by the fact that the people who will profit from these high-tech industries tend to live in the highly educated blue parts of the country, while the old industry workers who would be displaced tend to live in the less educated red parts.”

Like your mom told you: Study hard and stay in school.

“I prefer the term, Synthetic Person”

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It’s impossible for me watch this and not believe we’ll see a day when it will be nearly impossible to distinguish between the best robots and humans. Oh sure, you be able Turing Test them and know which is which. But they don’t need to be human like to be very useful to humans.

Could one of these clean the hospital room of a COVID patient? Disarm that camper bomb in Nashville? Will one of these guys take me upstairs to my office when I’m no longer able to climb the stairs.

You an go all RoboCop and Terminator on this but I choose to believe we’ll find more good uses than bad. And perhaps the Boston Dynamics guys can build in some failsafes for when they’re misused.

PS: This video has been viewed almost 9 million times in the last 24 hours.

Waiting on my AI buddy

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I’d like to live long enough to have a chat with an AI that:

  • Has “read” my 5,700 blog posts
  • Has read my 4,000 Mastodon posts
  • Has watched/analyzed my 525 videos on YouTube
  • Has “read” the 858 books in my LibraryThing

Because there is no one who has or will get to know me that well. What would it be like to interact with an intelligence that “shares” those experiences? I cannot imagine.