Scryberspace

Reversal of Fortune, featuring Julia Child and chickens

A careful reading of the signs of the times reveals that the fastest way to get a 3-novel contract with any publishing house is to put it in reverse. Reverse your way to the 1990s, or, ideally, even earlier than that, when publishing houses rested on rather firmer foundations. Once there, choose a dependable genre, such as Mystery, Romance, Historical Fiction, or Spies. Pitch with confidence, iterate at will.

If time travel in reverse remains elusive in your practice (and even John Dee required assistance in certain directions), John Dee advises abandoning the novel for the contracted, using the following simple recipe:

1. Become a celebrity.

2. Write brand a cookbook with your imprimatur and visage.

3. Deliver on any two of these supplemental variants: Brunch; Tailgates and BBQs; Holidays; Easy Low-Fat Meals in 15 Minutes!; Mixology.

Finally, if you abandon hope of contract, all is not lost. A more etheric reading outlines the fortuitous advent of self-published e-books, where Jupiter in Capricorn shows rising fortune as long as Supernatural Entities are invoked and Appeased. See also: Romance, Young Adult; Porphyria, Romanticism of; Elves. A corollary cookbook featuring mystical feasts would not be ill-advised.

In answer to thegibsongirl, who asked, “what’s the fastest way for me to get a 3-novel contract with Penguin?”

Do Cellos Dream of Electric Guitars? (or is it the other way around)

In answer to LRJP!, who asked via Twitter, ”Is the cello a dream of the guitar or the guitar a dream of the cello’s?”

Watson, Come Here, I Want You: featuring Alan Turing, Pontius Pilate, Henry Higgins and the midcentury mainframe of your choice

Does Watson know that he won?  Ohhh, I’m sorry…in linking thinking to biology, John Searle offers an answer that is not in the form of a question.

Watson did quite well on Jeopardy, as it was designed to do. Machines tend to play games well, especially when the games involve logical or mechanical procedures, i.e., rules. Or building SUVs. But did doing well mean it knew the answers? Does it know things? Does it know it won? Can we infer self-awareness, consciousness, from a pattern of perceived causes and effects?

Can Watson say, with Rene, “I think, therefore I am?” Or can it only display it?

For that matter, can you?

The problem of other minds extends to the issue of artificial intelligence, rather than the other way around. I do not have privileged access to your mind the way I do to my own, so how do I know that you think? I don’t know it, I can only infer it, from a pattern of behavior and belief-reports on your part. Aside from that, I have to take it on faith. Since this is the same procedure whether the other in question is you or a reasonable facsimile, then how do I know a machine does not think, if it produces a similarly believable pattern of behaviors and claims about itself?

This is the perspective of Alan Turing, as he designed his eponymous Test: behind each of two doors is a man and a machine. The questioner (let’s say, you) submits typed questions to each through a tiny slot (no peeking!), and typed answers are returned the same way. If you can’t guess from the answers which is what, and what is who, then thinking must be attributed to the machine the same way it is attributed to the man. Of course thinking and consciousness might not be the same thing. But regardless, so far no machine has passed the test.

But so far does not have a lock on never, and whether or not the Turing Test will be our ultimate Test, the question is still an open one. So Searle’s recent cri de coeur in the Wall Street Journal turns out to beg the question it claims to consider. Despite observing consciousness’ relationship to biology (so far), Searle does not succeed in establishing a necessary link between the two. “I am” may be an epiphenomenon, or even a congeries of epiphenomena, upon multiple foundations; some carbon-based, some silicon-, and some, perhaps, even more distributed and less tangible.

Cyber-resurrections of 16th century esoteric philosophers, take heart.

“Cargo Cult,” featuring technology, transport and materiel. Excerpt from IBM 1401, A User’s Manual, by Jóhan Jóhansson.

In answer to sargemetalfatigue, who asked, “is there any existing cargo cults?”

Modeling the Spectacle

Should you happen to live in a city, you have but to invoke the magic syllable Yopp to bring your miniature to realization. By virtue of your ambulatory and augmented peregrinations within the built environment, you dérive a city in miniature — your city — every day.

But should you wish to model your experience, the signs do not discriminate as to material. Legos are a bit over-memed at the moment but retain a pleasing functional modularity. Alternatively, you might prefer the flexibility of Jell-O, thus modeling necessary forces and flows as well as structures. Or you may forgo the hipster materials and just build normal little models — say, 895,000 of them — with patience, adhesiveness and an unbreakable belief in virtual futures.

But any model is only as relevant as its demonstrated or implied inhabitation. Your miniature would not be a city without miniature people.  Slinkachu’s tiny residents and tourists, lacking a city of their own, can be discovered here and there in our own cities attempting to fend for themselves. Help them!  Invite these goodly model creatures into your brave new miniature world.

Of course if all this seems like too much work, you can always go virtual and tilt-shift the documentation.

In answer to danochiva, who asked, “how might I construct a miniature city?”

Anime Battles The Elements

The recitation from three Japanese schoolgirls giggling about boys is of course a caricature from a satirical operetta and exactly the cartoon it was meant to be, although girls giggling over boys will probably be relevant for as long as there are teenagers. In the late 20th / early 21st century we have literalized the metaphor with anime, in which even more two-dimensional Japanese schoolgirls cavort for our amusement. However, it is true that some of the anime’d maids also battle demons and chthonic elementals, braids and batted eyelids notwithstanding. So, there’s that.

In answer to kiplet, who asked via Twitter, “What significance do the lyrics of ‘Three Little Maids From School’ have for us in the second decade of the 21st century?”