There is that old story I'm reminded of sometimes about the world being full of three types of people. The people who make things happen, the people who watch things happen, and the people who have no idea of what is going on. I thought you might want to at least be in the second catagory so I wanted to share something I found interesting with you.
I have two short poems and a short story for you to read below, and if you care to read these you might find something quite remarkable about them.
LONG YEARS HAVE PASSEDAnd now the story....Long years have passed.
I think of goodbye.
Locked tight in the night
I think of passion;
Drawn to for blue, the night
During the page
My shattered pieces of life
Watching the joy
Shattered pieces of love
My shattered pieces of love
Gone stale.I THINK I’LL CRASH
I think I’ll crash.
Just for myself with God
Peace on a curious sound
for myself in my heart?
And life is weeping
From a bleeding heart
Of boughs bending
Such paths of them,
Of boughs bending
Such paths of breeze
Knows we’ve been there.
A Story of BetrayalI apologize with great relish and sincerity for not giving you more warning about what you are reading here but it would have spoiled the fun.Dave Striver loved the university. He loved its ivy-covered clock towers, its ancient and sturdy brick, and its sun-splashed verdant greens and eager youth. He also loved the fact that the university is free of the stark unforgiving trials of the business world—only this isn’t a fact. Academia has its own tests, and some are as merciless as any in the marketplace. A prime example is the dissertation defense. To earn the Ph.D., to become a doctor, one must pass an oral examination on one’s dissertation. This was a test Professor Edward Hart enjoyed giving.
Dave wanted desperately to be a doctor. But he needed the signatures of those people on the first page of his dissertation, the priceless inscriptions which, together, would certify that he had passed his defense. One of the signatures had to come from Professor Hart, and Hart had often said—to other and to himself—that he was honored to help Dave secure his well-earned dream.
Well before the defense, Striver gave hart a penultimate copy of his thesis. Hart read it and told Dave that it was absolutely first rate, and that he would gladly sign it at the defense. They even shook hands in Hart’s book-lined office. Dave noticed that hart’s eyes were bright and trustful, and his bearing paternal.
At the defense, Dave thought that he eloquently summarized chapter 3 of his dissertation. There were two questions, one from Professor Rogers and one from Dr. Meteer; Dave answered both, apparently to everyone’s satisfaction. There were no further objections.
Professor Rogers signed. He slid the tome to Meteer; she too signed, and then slid it in front of Hart. Hart didn’t move.
“Ed?” Rogers said.
Hart still sat motionless. Dave felt slightly dizzy.
“Edward, are you going to sign/”
Later, Hart sat alone in his office, in his big leather chair, saddened by Dave’s failure. He tried to think of ways he could help Dave achieve his dream.
You see humans did not write the poems and story, instead computers using a new process called evolutionary algorithms created them. Essentially, these two different computer programs (RKCP for the poems and BRUTUS 1 for the story) taught themselves how to read, understand the context, and write about what they learned. Other versions of evolutionary algorithms are driving cars by themselves down the highways, drawing pictures and doing artwork on the web, composing music, doing financial planning and many other applications.
The biggest problem facing these computers is the amount of computational power they have. The human brain has about 100 billion neurons. With an estimated average of one thousand connections between each neuron and its neighbors, it gives us about 100 trillion connections. Each of these connections is capable of doing a simultaneous calculation. Right now as we speak, IBM is building a supercomputer that is capable of 10 trillion calculations per second (only 2,000 times slower than the human brain.) In Japan, the Nippon Electric Company is designing a computer that will be finished in 2004 that will do 320 trillion calculations per second. By the end of this decade, computers will be equal if not superior to the processing power of the human brain.
These computers will teach themselves how to read, write, and explore the world. More and more people will be relying upon artificial intelligence for the answers to the world’s problems. About ten years later (as per Moore’s law and the Law of Accelerating Returns predict) there will be cheap affordable computers that will equal the complexity and computational abilities of our own brains. Thus, by 2020, we will have personal companions that can read an entire encyclopedia in a few seconds, that will never forget anything, and that will surely remind us of when our perceptions of reality (i.e. belief systems) don’t match the consensual world. In short, it will tell us (if we ask) that the Borg is full of it and it will offer proof for why this is the case. These computers will seldom make mistakes.
Lies have a difficult time surviving in the light and I see little chance of the Borg hiding its misdeeds in darkness in this coming age.
Skipper