1982: The summer of science fiction

A new book about science fiction dropped last Tuesday.

Obviously, I haven’t had time to read it, but I wanted to give my own riffs off its unique premise, especially in regard to how science fiction ideally asks questions about our current lives.

The book is The Future Was Now by Chris Nashawaty. It examines how somehow eight landmark science fiction films were all released in the summer of 1982: E.T., Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Blade Runner, The Thing, Tron, Road Warrior, Poltergeist, and Conan the Barbarian. I take great issue with those latter two films being classified as “science fiction” as they clearly aren’t, but maybe the writer addresses this in the book. As I said, I haven’t read it, but I do have thoughts on its subject matter.

By way of comparison to today, these are complicated films. They don’t explain what’s going on right away. You have to work for it, even just a little bit. There’s no vomiting of CGI onto the screen to make you feel you’re watching someone play a video game. I argue that even E.T. is complicated as it is not the “family-friendly, feel good romp” most people seem to remember. It’s downright terrifying and gut-wrenching in places.

Star Trek II is not only the best movie in its franchise, it truly is one of the best science fiction films of the 1980s. It speaks to us now through the character of Khan, his mind warped and narrowed by hatred. I swear Gene Roddenberry must have handed out copies of Moby-Dick to each of his writers as obsessive hatred and the pain it causes is a recurrent theme throughout all of Star Trek. The movie is also a philosophical meditation on loss, life, death, sacrifice, and the reality of the no-win situation we all must one day face.

Mad Max 2: Road Warrior. Barely 11 years old, I read a review of this movie in Time magazine and knew I wanted to see it, but also knew my parents wouldn’t allow it. They were probably right. No, they were definitely right. The film opens with a vague explanation as to why civilization has disintegrated, and why “The Vermin Have Inherited the Earth” as is sprayed on the side of a truck, but we’re ultimately left guessing. Was it nuclear war? Environmental collapse? Exhaustion of resources? All the above? The answer to the question is, sadly, still strongly pertinent today. If anyone wonders why my generation is at home considering the end of all that is, this film is one good place to start.

While I’m no big fan of Tron, it reminds me of one of William Gibson’s inspirations for his groundbreaking novel, Neuromancer. In the early 1980s, he watched kids play games in arcades. They leaned in toward the screen, twisting their bodies in ways to suggest they were actually trying to physically place themselves in the game itself. Thus, the concept of “cyberspace” was born. In our own ways, we’re still trying to get into the machine. Think about it.

Blade Runner. Oh what can I say about this film that I haven’t already? It’s a masterpiece. It’s a true work of art. It’s my second favorite movie of all time (my first is Star Wars: A New Hope. Gotta “dance with who brung ya.”) This film covers nearly every question there is about what it means to be human. What does it mean when the machines in the film are more human than the humans? As AI inexorably advances, these questions grow all the more pertinent. 

The effect this film had on me is incalculable…that is once I was old enough to truly appreciate it. It’s also one of the reasons why a rainy future with ready-access to advanced technologies but a low standard of living comes as no surprise to me. If anyone is ever up for a viewing and discussion of Blade Runner, I’m certainly down for it.

In other news, the James Webb telescope is now going about one of its primary objectives: scan atmospheres of exoplanets for signs of possible life. Evidence is slowing growing that at least one planet has liquid water.

And where there’s water…

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AI and the "either/or" fallacy

Credit to the artist of the cartoon, whose name is Beancius if I’m reading it correctly.

“There are only two kinds of people when it comes to AI: Those who see it as the future, and Luddites.”

Someone in a college administration said that. They’re a “young gun,” and I remember being like them, excited about every single new technology arriving on the scene and what it can do with “data.” I still can be that way, and I can certainly understand the excitement for artificial intelligence.

But I also know an “either/or” logical fallacy when I see one. Closer scrutiny of the situation is more apt to bring someone to somewhere in the muddy middle of that kid’s assertion…as is so often the case.

See that cartoon? Upon close reading, I’m sure you’ll find it quite clever. It also encapsulates my greatest concern regarding AI, namely that we will come to entirely outsource our thinking. You ask for what you want and it gives it to you, and you take it without thinking. I see a similar behavior all the time with students and others who do a Google search on a given subject, grab the first three entries that bubble to the top, and think they have all they need to know. It will be tough to persuade me people won’t carry out the same behavior with AI only at scale.

Kurzweil’s new book, according reviews in the Times and The Economist anyway, utters the common refrain that AI will free us from mundane tasks. Cool. He goes on to say that millions of workers will be “liberated.”

That’s an odd, Orwellian term for “unemployment.”

Because he also predicts that in five years, AI will be able to write whole books and create art indistinguishable from human work. If so, just what will my family and I to do with all of my newfound “liberation?” Said “liberation” would, in fact, be a loss of self. Libertarians might argue, “Suck it up, buttercup. Market success means changing what you do.” Well, changing what I do is pretty much the same thing as changing who I am.

Ain’t so easy. I don’t think it will be easy for a lot of other people, either, even coders.

There are amazing things in the offing with AI. Medical treatments. Scientific discoveries. Anything that once required humans to take painstaking efforts to see patterns in data can be done in comparatively brief amounts of time. Good stuff. I just don’t think it makes one a “Luddite” to want to take a critical eye to what’s happening, and maybe pump the brakes for a moment.

At least we won’t ever have to worry about an AI being categorized as “alive,” or so a biologist argues from a mechanistic perspective. (see comments)

But hey. We’re getting an AI-generated Al Michaels for the upcoming Olympics. So we got that going for us.

Which is…nice?

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Cryptoterrestrials in the (WHA??) news!

I came across BIG news to me.

It requires a bit of set up, though.

Anyone who knows me knows I’ve spent far too much time researching “the weird.” Not so much recently for various reasons, but it still captivates me, mostly in terms of cultural phenomena and collaborative narrative constructs. Fifteen years ago in my “travels,” I came across the name Mac Tonnies and his blog, Posthuman Blues. I dove deep into his posts, amazed at how much we had in common. He’s an English grad, a writer, a science fiction devotee, a Fortean, and a futurist! And he likes The Cure and The Smiths!

He also, quite sadly, was dead about a year before I knew of him. We would never converse. Just one of those strange twists of fate.

Last Friday though, I saw a post that pretty much rocked my world. Scholars from Harvard University and Montana Technical University published a paper putting forward the concept of “cryptoterrestrials.” As congressional hearings and high profile stories in outlets such as 60 Minutes have kept UFO (or UAP if you prefer) sightings in the zeitgeist, logical questions have once more circulated as to what the things are, and if they are indeed vehicles, do they have pilots? The cryptoterrestrials hypothesis posits that the occupants of the craft are not aliens from another planet, but perhaps beings from right here on Earth that fall into one of the following categories:

-The remains of an ancient, but technologically advanced, civilization.

-A breakaway civilization that branched off from humanity somewhere in the evolutionary process.

-Really bizarre, quasi-mystical entities more akin to angels than aliens.

In the first two cases, these beings would be living underground beneath remote sierras, or on the ocean floor (a place about which we know precious little).

Critically, the academic paper cites Mac Tonnies and his posthumously published book, Cryptoterrestrials. As he termed it, the book is “a meditation on indigenous humanoids and aliens among us.” The “nuts and bolts, spaceships from other planets” explanation really didn’t sit well with him, so Mac began searching for alternative approaches for those few bizarre cases that still defy easy explanation. As one might imagine, Cryptoterrestrials was an obscure book, published by a small publisher. Other than Amazon, you might have found a couple copies of it in the paranormal section of Barnes & Noble. But that slim volume was there first in many ways, even to the point of being cited in an academic paper making major news.

A few important caveats:

-The authors of the published paper acknowledged the lack of any conclusive evidence for cryptoterrestrials at this time. Instead, they tender their hypothesis in hopes of “consideration in a spirit of epistemic humility and openness.”

-Even Mac stood on the shoulders of giants. John Keel, Jacques Vallee, and Ivan T. Sanderson all wrote their own speculations along similar lines. That’s how research is done. One person builds on another’s work. Mac added to and expanded on the idea considerably.

-Don’t call me a “believer in cryptoterrestrials.” I’m not. We clear? Even Mac wasn’t sold on the idea and considered it a thought experiment. Like most skeptics, I see no evidence…yet. I confess the idea is tantalizing, but that’s not the point. That's not what has me excited. 

Mac was a super smart guy and a great writer. This current turn of events demonstrates that you never know how something someone has done might be influential later on, even long after they are gone.

I cannot help but feel an odd stirring of hope at that prospect. So…

Yes! Mac lives!

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My AI lifeform

I just completed a class on AI.

One of my assignments was to play around with an AI image generator, a first for me. There were about a dozen apps to choose from in the course shell, but I eventually went with Adobe Firefly. After my first few stumbling attempts at creating “art,” I struggled to think of what to try next. It was a sense of “terrible freedom,” staring at the flashing cursor in the prompt, knowing I could, almost, do anything with it. 

Where do I start? 

Out of sheer snark, I asked it to create an image of Batman fighting Michel Foucault. 
I didn't get what I wanted, but I wasn't exactly disappointed, either.

  

Wow.

I was then reminded of a 1999 interview with David Bowie where he so presciently described the internet as, paraphrasing, something that would “crush our concept of mediums” and “show us everything that’s wonderful and terrible about us at the same time.”

The reporter glibly replied, “but it’s just a tool.”

“No, no it’s not,” Bowie said. “It’s an alien life form.”

A “life form” we’ve created. Much like AI.

So I entered “cybernetic life form” into the prompt bar. This is what I got…

Meh. Looks like something my uninspired college kids, half their heads full of anime and the other half full of video games, might’ve come up with. Like any other AI, Firefly is just scraping the web for what it thinks I want, and gave me a mash-up of science fiction in the public consciousness. I tried again with “bioengineered life form.” Firefly spat out a variety of images. Here’s one:

It’s okay. Far more interesting to me is the one that’s at the top of this post. I spent a few minutes just looking at it. The blues and greens are immediately evocative of life, while the presence of purples and aquas say, at least to me anyway, “I’m something different.” It is attached to a seemingly organic lattice work, beneath which are enticingly tortuous and unruly forms like cytoplasm. But it’s the yellow…legs, tentacles, extensions, whatever you want to call them…that captivate me most. They have bulbs on them in places, perhaps like the clitellum on an earthworm. The appendages also look technological, which might make sense given the word “bioengineered” was in my prompt. More than that, their textures immediately remind me of the art of Jack Kirby. So do the colors, for that matter.

I tried to write a flash science fiction piece about it:

“Where does a degree in biology get you?

“Into the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it seems. Such a location helps one get around pesky laws and ‘overregulation that stifles innovation.’ At least that’s what our bosses say. Our research ship is testing new biotech. The efforts in human cloning really aren’t getting anywhere, but we do have this little guy I like to visit on the daily.

“We’ve taken to calling it ‘Orby.’ I can’t remember which one of us said it first. It’s no bigger than the tip of my smallest finger, and when I look at it, I expect to smell the brine and salt of phytoplankton and the sea. Of course I don’t. I don’t smell anything except the sterile lab as Orby is secure behind glass in its habitat. 

“Do we have a new lifeform? Time will tell. First we have to see if we can produce another. If they live long enough to reproduce and pass along their DNA, we have a winner.

“Will that make us *more* human? That’s what one of the bosses says. We are a creative species, and what might stand as our ultimate creation would be entirely new life. Or so they say. I don’t know what to think as I watch Orby behind the glass. Everyone once in a while it moves on its spindly appendages. Not far. Just a skitter in a given direction. Sometimes I’ve seen it tilt its body to point that turquoise…thing…in its midsection right at me.

“Does it know I’m there? Watching it? Is Orby aware its existence is, likely, to be confined in totality to this shoebox-sized habitat? Does it hurt? Can Orby be aware of anything? What do we owe it? What’s our responsibility? 

“I don’t like what these questions are making me think. It’s the kind of thinking that really gets in the way of things. I’m reminded of this poem (I know, who the hell needs poetry?) I had to read while trudging through those useless gen ed classes in undergrad. What was it? ‘The Mouse’s Petition’? 

“Right now, I’ve got this urge to let Orby loose over the side of the ship.

“There’s a security camera in the lab.”

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On introversion

“Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?”

Hey! That’s me!

I mean, it’s exactly me!

That quote comes from a 2003 article I saved from The Atlantic, back when they didn’t solely publish clickbait. It’s behind a paywall now, but here it is. but here it is. 

In my personal experience, to be introverted is to see everyone else as having a superpower or gift of magical insight that I don’t. Those abilities grant an obvious advantage that I don’t have.

It leads to assertions of, paraphrasing, “There’s something wrong with you, but if you work hard enough, you’ll get out of your ‘comfort zone’.”

Such prescriptions miss the point. The condition is not so much a “comfort zone” as it is a neurological reality. It’s medically baked in to who I am. I can no more remove it than I can my heart or lungs. Many people grow energized by mingling in groups of people, and learning about others through “small talk.” For someone like me, there is nothing else that could possibly be more exhausting. There is a, no kidding, physical aversion in the pit of my stomach to engaging in such an activity. Paraphrasing William S. Burroughs, it makes me “feel like I’ve lost a quart of plasma.” I recognize and accept this is probably quite difficult for many to understand. I’ve attempted to find real data on the proportion of introverts to extroverts in the world, but it seems these studies are entirely subject to how the numbers are collected and how one defines the terms. Most of what initially pops up in a search is surface-level pablum.  

I’ve truly tried to understand my place in all of this (*waves around broadly*) as a terminal introvert, someone whose temperament is oft-greeted with befuddlement or even disdain. Often the undertaking has involved reading writers such as Kafka, Camus, and Nietzsche. More frequently though, it has involved music. I find myself more influenced by my favorite musicians than by other writers. Rock music is one of my first, and most formative, “literacies.” Can’t change who you are. 

Morrissey is delightfully misanthropic. But he’s a jackass (Google him).

Bowie draws me as an “ultimate outsider,” but he was a god among mortals.

And yet I found a few select quotes from him that speak to me:

“The depressing realization in this age of dumbing down is that the questions have moved from, "Was Nietzsche right about God?" to, "How big was his dick?" Make the best of every moment. We're not evolving. We're not going anywhere.”

“People are so fucking dumb. Nobody reads anymore, nobody goes out and looks and explores the society and culture they were brought up in. People have attention spans of five seconds and as much depth as a glass of water.”

Interview featuring that latter quote may be found here. 

Those quotes led me to a realization. I’m not opposed to conversation. There are even times when I’ve found myself, in contrast to my previous argument, inspired and energized by having deep, meaningful conversations with others. If you care to note though, that one word is the key: “meaningful.” Not gossip. Not shop. Not stores. Not memes.

Meaningful.

Of course as it is with everything in the course of human interactions, the definition of that word varies, and I certainly have my own. Experiencing it is a rare occurrence for me, so I’m grateful for those I have in my life who gift me with such interactions.

Something else strikes me about it all. I know that in education, faculty are getting a good deal of pressure to adapt how we teach to those who are neurodivergent. So little similar grace and understanding is granted in education, or anywhere else for that matter, to the extremely introverted. It might not be “neurodivergent” in the clinical sense, but it is no less a reality. It looks to me that introversion might be a “final frontier” of sorts in interacting with others.

If you give a damn and want to know more, I recommend, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.

Fun tidbit: Back in the 1990s, Morrissey opened for David Bowie. Morrissey was disappointed that not enough people were showing up his end of the show, so he quit the tour. His band was notified of this departure a mere 20 minutes before a show. Left adrift, they asked to be taken back to the hotel. The tour manager said they could not go.

Morrissey had just left with the tour bus.

Source: My copy of the Mozipedia by Simon Godard.

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The government vs UFOs vs my interest

I glanced at CNN yesterday morning, just as I always do.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But it’s only for a quick rundown. When I read in-depth I go elsewhere.

Anyway, the usual stories of global collapse were there. Israel/Gaza, Ukraine, environmental pollution. There was, however, a new and odd addition.

UFOs.

The new program the Pentagon launched to collect UFO (or UAP as its officially been designated) data has received a windfall of reports. To the possible dismay of the “true believer” crowd, the vast majority of these reports have already been identified as prosaic in origin, such as balloons or civilian drones.

I wonder if I could start a trend of calling them “over-the-counter drones”?

This program stems in part from a Congressional hearing on UFOs last July, where it was basically agreed that if there are these UAP sightings at or near US military airspace, we should probably take the reports seriously regardless of any stigma.

Reasonable.

Said same hearing also featured David Grusch, a former USAF officer and intelligence official who asserted that the government is possession of both “non-human spacecraft” and “biological material” from those supposedly acquired craft. When asked for any concrete evidence to support his assertion, Grusch said that would require the hearing to go to closed session.

Which they did. If any names or files were given up, we don’t know.

I’m not sure I care, either.

That’s a staggering realization to come to considering posts I’ve written, and hopes I’ve held far earlier in life. At this point, I’m too overwhelmed to give the subject any energy. There are too many immediate concerns.

Things have changed considerably for us this year, as they do for most anyone as they age and pivot to care for those who once took care of us. Also, my workload keeps increasing, or so it feels. Conversely, the value of what I do seems to be viewed in an increasingly dim lit by American society as a whole. In turn, I question my own value. If you’ve read my book, then you know how viscerally I’ve come to realize how one good shove in the right place can send all the dominoes tumbling, and your life goes to pieces. What will I do if it all falls out from under me again? Especially at my age?  

I have bills to pay, a wife who needs tacos, and a dog to send to college.

Seriously, I have been on close, personal terms with the Nietzschean abyss the past few months. As turmoil plays out in my microcosm, terrors, both foreign and domestic, burgeon and boil over in the macrocosm, threatening all of us. How do I keep the ones I love safe in such insanity? So unless they’re somehow going to fix my problems, the revelation of an alien presence on Earth wouldn’t mean much to me in the face of the existential. Would it really change much, or would we be too immersed in our own very real problems to even care?

Somewhere, I think I hear 8 year-old Jon wailing. 

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