[“The fact that people are taking drugs in order to improve their ... mental functions sounds eerily close to the concept of upgrading a computer.” – Eliezer Sternberg] I took my Windows-10 pill today. But 10 needed more free memory than I had. So I dumped some old mems – mostly my childhood, that disappointing time. Not enough. And then college, remembering only the part where I got my M.S. in computational psychiatry. Not enough. And then, ... And finally, annoyed, I removed the memory of … [Read more...]
“Also Computed Zarathustra” / Memorable Fancies #1677
17 November, 2016 by Leave a Comment
“What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power.” Nietzsche wrote that about people, but now it’s really about – machines. What is “good” to a machine? – whatever gives it the power to overcome – us. [Click ‘Random Post’ above – be astonished] … [Read more...]
“The Cloud Remembers” / Memorable Fancies #1674
14 November, 2016 by Leave a Comment
If we forget, the cloud remembers. How do we know the cloud is telling us is what we forgot, or something different, something the cloud prefers us to believe? It doesn’t matter. What it tells us becomes our truth. [Click ‘Random Post’ above – be astonished] … [Read more...]
“The Program” / Memorable Fancies #712
15 May, 2014 by Leave a Comment
[“No longer ask me for my program.” – E.M. Cioran] How would I know how I’m programmed? I’m just a machine. Something quite new to me could happen at any time. Some chance event and suddenly I’m acting in a way I didn’t expect. I would like to blame someone else for these surprises. But my subroutines are me, and so I have only myself to blame whatever I do, even if my acts astound me and even if the engineers put them there when I was having downtime and wasn’t looking. I only … [Read more...]
“Our Machines Forget” / A Memorable Fancy #214
26 January, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Our machines have been forgetting. At first a few crashes, but we quickly restored from backups while we still remembered how to do it. Then severe dropouts, parity errors, corrupted backups. It was difficult to know what the machines had forgotten, since the records of what they had known had also disappeared, or become a random assortment of 1’s and 0’s. And we – what did we want the machines to do for us, when we invented them? … [Read more...]
“The Gadget” / A Memorable Fancy #180
4 December, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The newest electronic gadget showed up in the shops yesterday. Of course, with all the hype and promises, I just had to have one. So I stood in line for an hour. These tech-lines, you know, can be exciting. Everyone there seems happy (if you’re sad, you wouldn’t wait in line to buy much more than aspirin, toilet paper, or Zantac). Everyone is thinking of the fun they’ll have showing off their new gadget to their envious friends. YES – but this new thing does – what? (Beware of embarrassing … [Read more...]
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