Author Archives: tim

31 May

The Orderly Take One

An experiment in tone and scenario-establishing. A few more of these will be coming. The credit for the premise goes to my bro.

I don’t know much about the patients. My contact with them isn’t all that intimate. There’s Mr. Gillespie in 321; I know he got crushed under a pick-up truck. And the old lady in 340 has lung cancer. Jackie, the pretty girl in 329, has AIDS. But most of them, I have no idea what they’re suffering from. I just change their bed sheets, clean their bathrooms, give them fresh towels. Once I get some more seniority, I’ll be asked to do other stuff — stuff like grooming, changing dressings, feeding. Then I’m sure I’ll get to know more names.

Until then, I only know the ones whose death is so inevitable I can smell it. I mean that quite literally. Ever heard those stories of cats in old folks homes who consistently choose to lie next to patients who then die two days later? Whatever those cats have, I have too.

In fact, I want to do exactly what they do — go in and lie next to the poor souls, curl up against their frail bodies, and purr. I want to lull them into dreams of better times, transport them to a cherished memory — a seaside vacation, a backyard barbecue, or a cozy winter evening by a fireplace.

I also want to bite them in the neck. I guess the cats don’t do that.

24 May

Monsters

I was recently listening to a song by Psapp called “The Monster Song,” which got me thinking about monsters. They’re a fascinating concept. They inhabit dark alleys, the cold forest, and claustrophobia-inducing caves — all the unknown places, the places we don’t want to go. But we need them, don’t we?

As the song was playing, I began pondering what the monsters represent. Some of them, I think, are about loneliness/isolation. We humans are herd animals, and it’s terrifying to imagine the predator pouncing from behind the trees and singling us out from the group, tearing us from our family and friends.

Some are about basic survival needs. We value our shelter; the monsters, on the other hand, thrive in the cold, damp darkness. That’s why it’s so easy to imagine them lurking outside our windows at night or hiding beneath the stairs in the basement. Surely, there’s some instinct at work there. Bacteria also thrive in damp, dark places. Perhaps our impulse to avoid such places really is smarter than we know.

Other monsters represent those parts of ourselves we fear. I’m not prone to depressed states, but even I have had moments in my life when some part of me despaired without reason. It’s truly frightening to know that our own minds and emotions can turn against us, that we can be seized by such moments of inexplicable sorrow.

But I’m an optimist. So even though I can relate to depression (which is what I think “The Monster Song” is really about), I’m also struck by the fact that it’s so easy to turn monsters into cute, comic characters as well.

Perhaps we should have some sympathy for the poor beasts, who give us reason to enjoy those times spent with family and friends gathered round the campfire.

Maybe Martin the Snot Monster is only trying to make us appreciate our health.

And maybe Ack-Ack the Rabbit of Loneliness — he’s immortal and can’t reproduce so all his friends and family have long since passed away — maybe he just wants us to call our mothers more often.

Surely Eric the Glum Cyclops exists at least in part to illuminate our blessings for us. Namely, that we have two eyes.

And what about Beaumont the Basement Lurker? He’s the one who used to laugh at us when as children we turned out the lights in the basement and then got the willies and ran up the stairs as fast as we could. But that was funny. So can we really blame him?

It could be worse. And in order to know that it could be worse, we must see the worst. Not that any of these thoughts are all that ground-breaking. But I could see a story emerging some day from the deep dark depths.

Until then, here’s the Psapp song and lyrics:

[audio: http://www.wiscostorm.net/home/audio/05%20The%20Monster%20Song.mp3]

Look out the door
That’s what it’s for
And tell me what do you see?
I do believe
That through the trees
There’s something hiding from me

The window’s wide
It climbs inside
But I don’t hear it creeping
I know its plan
Because it can
It gets me while I’m sleeping

Oh, and it’s happening again
It is laughing in the rain
When it gets me I will
Never be the same

Come out the dark
And join the march
And we’ll taste victory, I know
And through the crowds
And bustling sounds
There’s something waiting for me

It wears disguise
A faint surprise
Though I can see its yellow eyes

Oh, I can hear it as it comes
And it wants to taste my blood
We’re already lost, my love
We’ll never be the same

An open gate will close at eight
I’ll bolt the door and pace the floor
I still believe
Behind the leaves
There’s something waiting for me

A rising fear
Tells me it’s near
And I’m about to be consumed
The monster looms
And soon I know I will be
Dead and gone

Oh, and it’s happening again
And I do not like this pain
Now it’s got me,
I will never be the same

You know I like to go
For familiar feelings
And when they show
They only grow
I can’t hide their meanings

You know I like to go
For familiar feelings
And when they show
They only grow
I can’t hide their meanings

P.S. I created none of the artwork for the above monsters; I just gave them different personalities. They’re all “mojis.” But since that website isn’t all that fun to navigate, I linked most of the pictures to Mohd Ishak (aka eshark)’s page. He created all but the rabbit.

27 Apr

Well, this meme is long past.

But I’ll do it anyway.

A couple months ago, I got tagged by a friend on Facebook with the following message: “Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.”

In the weeks that followed, everyone was posting their lists. I didn’t. Partly because I shy away from anything remotely like a chain letter. But I also admit to having a brief gut reaction that it was too trendy and that I would thus not participate. After reading just two or three of the lists, however, I realized it was a great idea. Especially for those of us over 30, who have Facebook friends we haven’t seen in 5, 10, or 15 years. And to avoid that which is trendy because it is trendy is kinda stupid.

So I got to work on my list. I bet there’s a lot of stuff here you didn’t know about me.

1. I double majored in Ornithology and Cartography.
2. I once got caught illegally smuggling a Komodo dragon into the country.
3. I rescued a little girl from drowning in a river in a small town in the Czech Republic. They named a street after me.
4. I collect My Little Ponies.
5. Given nothing but my hands and a blade of grass, I can summon at least twelve forest creatures.
6. I once ate a discarded sandwich right after running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.
7. If I ever have a baby boy, I’m going to name him Ed Zachary and explain to people that it’s because he looks ed zachary like me.
8. I met my wife backstage at a Motley Crue concert. She was totally flirting with the drummer.
9. I was going to propose to my wife via a skywriter, but when I saw they’d misspelled her name, I directed her attention elsewhere.
10. I had a brief stint as a columnist for a magazine about apples.
11. I dressed up as a devil while in France for Le Tour and got on international TV as a result.
12. When I cut off my ponytail ten years ago, I donated it to Locks of Love.
13. I have four piercings – none of them visible.
14. People often mistake me for Eddie Vedder.
15. I once used a urinal next to Bill Gates.
16. Whenever I shop at REI, I speak with an Australian accent and call the salespeople wankers.
17. I once went to a Star Wars convention dressed up as Spock.
18. I have a habit of counting people’s verbal pauses and reporting the number back to them at the end of the conversation.
19. I like to tease my wife about her lisp.
20. I paid my way through college by doing ventriloquist acts at children’s birthday parties.
21. I drive a moped which I’ve named Sparky.
22. I can imitate the Jolly Green Giant’s laugh perfectly.
23. I just got a new alarm clock that will allow you to wake up to any sound you record. I recorded my old alarm clock.
24. I once dated Miss Mississippi. She dumped me because I kept spelling Miss Mississippi out loud.
25. I’m a vampire.

08 Apr

Flutter

On why this is funny and why it isn’t.

First watch the video:

So, since my readership is so huge and diverse (and therefore may not understand all that’s being mocked in the clip), let me begin by explaining some of the humor.

  • Flutter’s fictional founders are Stanford dropouts. It’s typical of web 2.0 shit that the founders were college kids at prestigious universities, who had (sometimes only) one good idea. Google’s founders were Stanford students. Facebook’s founders were at Harvard. And Twitter’s founders were from Cornell.
  • “A lot of people don’t have time to twitter.” Yeah. The whole concept of microblogging is absurd. Even more absurd than blogging. But it certainly doesn’t require time.
  • Nor does it require thought, really. “You hardly have to think about what you’re posting.” The majority of tweets are — like the majority of things people say — not witty, insightful, or really all that enlightening anyway.
  • “Flaps.” And later in the video, some guy calls tweets “twits.” Perhaps not quite as amusing as how Stephen Colbert conjugates the verb, but funny nonetheless. It’s funny (ha ha) and funny (strange) that a new verb can enter our language so quickly.
  • “FlutterEyes” mocks the kind of people who spend all their time texting other people, which is a direct slap in the face to those they’re interacting with in the real world.
  • “MySpace, I guess.” Ha. MySpace is really uncool, and so it seems genuine that a hip web 2.0 company would be reluctant to develop easy access to it.
  • Other hip web 2.0 applications have sold out and become more commercial. So the “$Pepsi” thing parodies those.
  • “Shutter without the vowels.” I’ll let you figure that out. It’s also worth noting that twitter.com originally was twttr. No joke.

Okay, now that I’ve killed the humor by analyzing it, let me explain what’s actually somewhat scary about this Flutter concept. In my Science Fiction class this year, I’ve been examining predictions of future technology. Not just the crackpot predictions, mind you. But the well-grounded predictions made by respected academics. And there are a few things hinted at in the Flutter mockumentary that aren’t that far off.

First off, what will really happen to our intelligence? As writer Nicholas Carr points out in his famous article about Google making us stupider, “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.” This flattening to the artificial might happen sooner than we think.

It’s fairly inevitable, for instance, that our human memories will soon become unnecessary. Have you ever forgotten someone’s name? Ever had an argument about who took out the garbage last? According to Jim Gray of Microsoft Research, “It will soon be possible – in terms of cost and size – to store a complete digital video record of your life.” So you can settle that argument about who last took out the garbage. Eric Horvitz, also of Microsoft Research, takes this stuff a step further: “As more of our lives go digital, we may use a program to sort our data. And it could hook up to software that understands the things people forget.” Facial recognition software + video = never forgetting another name. This supersession of memory is almost a definite. If we, as a race, survive for the next three decades, we’ll see such things happening.

One of the costs, though, will be privacy. The Flutter video jokes about absolute transparency when it describes the iPhone app that will know where you are and “flap automatically.” This sort of thing is also a definite. In the near future, more and more items will be hooked up to the internet. People like Ray Kurzweil and Kevin Kelly have predicted that the internet, which we now access through our desktop and laptop computers, will be all around us. By placing RFID chips in food packaging and in clothing, we’ll literally be living in the web. And it will allow some pretty cool things. We could get customized recipe suggestions from the food items in our cupboard, which would “communicate” with each other. We could find a lost sweater simply by searching for it on Google.

We’re only a year or two away from having our mobile devices capable of updating every half hour with our GPS coordinates. Actually, many of them could do that right now with the right software. But as more places and objects get hooked into the net with these RFID chips and whatnot, our phones will be able to give more information than our GPS coordinates. They’ll be able to essentially track us throughout the day with identifiers like “Starbucks bathroom.” But the price will be privacy. “If you want total personalization,” Kevin Kelly notes, “you’ll need total transparency.”

If you’re willing to give up some privacy, though, you’ll probably find yourself integrating with technology more and more. That’s not to say you’ll allow a chip to be implanted under your skin, but perhaps you’ll get yourself a pair of FlutterEyes. Or maybe a pair of “active contact lenses,” which would “project words and images into the eye.” And if you do so, that might be the “gateway drug” of sorts to more technological augmentation. We already have some pretty useful augmentation in the form of cochlear implants and visual cortex implants. And there are currently paraplegics whose brains are hooked up to electrodes which allow them to move a cursor on a computer screen. (This was done four years ago to Matthew Nagle, by Dr. John Donoghue, the end goal being to allow those with spinal cord injuries to bypass the damaged neurons altogether.)

Bran Ferren of Walt Disney Imagineering — admittedly not as impressive an employer as others — claims that “the technology needed for an early Internet-connection implant is no more than 25 years off.” But Ray Kurzweil has made some equally bold assertions. Nanotechnology is currently taking off, and since technology develops at exponential rates, we will someday soon have respirocytes, nanotech red blood cell substitutes which are much more efficient than actual red blood cells. A human whose blood was made up of 10% nanotech respirocytes would be able to hold his breath for four hours. “Nanobots capable of entering the bloodstream to ‘feed’ cells and extract waste will exist (though not necessarily be in wide use) by the end of the 2020s. They will make the normal mode of human food consumption obsolete.”

Given, we’re now delving into some pretty far-fetched stuff that’s not going to happen really soon, but as long as we’re going there, let’s examine the ideas of James Hughes, author of Citizen Cyborg, who speculates, “if we get to the point where we can back up our memories and our feelings, we may be able to then share them with other people.” When you get married, you might “negotiate how much of your personal memory space you’re going to merge. . . . So the boundaries between us will begin to blur.” He also posits (as does Aubrey de Grey) that our life spans will get to be very long — perhaps in the 1000s of years. My first reaction to such assertions is to be scared. But Hughes gets philosophical: “I don’t want to be immortal. What I want is to live long enough so that I understand how profoundly illusory the self is and I’ve shared enough of my experiences and thoughts and I’ve stored them up and given them to other people enough that I no longer feel like this particular body — existence — needs to go on. . . . That’s the post-human equivalent of the Buddhist enlightenment.”

Is that where we’re headed? Enlightenment or stupidity? Man or machine?

Google’s founders (Stanford grads Larry Page and Sergey Brin) have claimed that they’re really “trying to build artificial intelligence and do it on a large scale.” Brin has stated, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information attached directly to your brain . . . you’d be better off.”

But Nicholas Carr counters with the following eloquent rebuttal: “their easy assumption that we’d all ‘be better off’ if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.”

Who knows? Maybe some day, humanity will look back on this Age of Human Fallibility fondly and long for a sort of imperfection and lack of understanding no longer possible. Until that day, I still desperately want an iPhone.

For further reading:
Kevin Kelly’s TED Talk
U of Washington Tech Predictions
2057 Video (Includes paraplegic cursor movement)
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
James Hughes’ Citizen Cyborg
Results of Pew Poll of 700 tech experts on potential trends for 2020
Ray Kurzweil’s TED Talk
Ray Kurzweil’s main points from The Singularity is Near
Summary of WIRED UK’s top predictions
To the Best of Our Knowledge “Future Perfect: Our Computers”
Chip Implants for Paraplegics