Human-Machine Interface

What’s the best way to mine an asteroid? Robots? Any serious distance away and the time delay makes the semblance of control laughable. AI is always buggy and imperfect. People? They need so much support, so much sustenance. What if you could get all the problem solving finesse of a real meat person, without all […]

Voight-Kampf Tests for Fun and Profit

I’m a little obsessed with artificial intelligence. So much of the media I consumed as a kid had some kind of android or AI. Daneel Olivia from Asimov’s Robot novels. The Terminator from, well, Terminator. Star Trek’s Data. System Shock’s SHODAN. Hell, even the Transformers cartoons. I thought they were all amazing.

Retail Therapy for Masochists

It’s that time of year again. The time of year when we are reminded, in Canada, that Americans have Thanksgiving a month later than we do. And a reminder, if you work in retail, that you are about to get a shit-kicking you think you’ll never forget. But then Christmas happens. And then it happens again […]

Collapse

Eventually, everything falls down. Every wall, every chimney and every roof. It takes energy just to maintain the status quo. Entropy eats away at everything, no matter how perfectly constructed or engineered. Even a people with far greater technology than our own would be hard-pressed to create something large and complex that would last hundreds […]