Book 'Em

What do Doris Lessing, Joyce Carol Oates, and Sarah Palin have in common? If you said plantar fasciitis, you're only half-right! In fact, they are all mentioned in the same sentence in an article in today's paper. And they're all published by HarperCollins. Which may mean three things in common, depending on how you count. Or only one since we made up the whole plantar fasciitis thing. Anyway, the point is that HarperCollins has begun restricting the way libraries can use e-books.

In the past, when a library would purchase a book (or "book") , the library was free to do all manner of strange and wonderful things with said book: They could boil it; they could use it as sporting equipment; they could even do something called "lending." "Lending" was a ritualized activity, wherein a member of the general public would come to the library, look fruitlessly for a book he wanted, decide to take something else out for the hell of it, wait seven to 94 minutes in a line, and then be allowed by a sharp-faced guardian of literature (unless he were fortunate enough to encounter the rare Tina-Fey-Sexy-Librarian type) to take the book home for anywhere from a week to ten years. (Of course, such longer periods of "borrowing" were discouraged by ever-increasing fines, the largest of which are believed by many to be a culprit in this country's recent foreclosure crisis.) These books were seldom actually read, but clients received a sort of osmotic sense of enrichment simply by toting an armful of them around.

Now, however, with the advent of e-books, one doesn't need actually to cross the lion-guarded threshold of one's local library to borrow books; one can simply download reading material directly to one's e-reader (unless, apparently, it's a Kindle--not sure what that's all about). The books will remain on the reader for the allotted lending period, after which they will simply disappear.

When a publisher sells an e-book to a library, the publisher understands the library will lend the book out. Until now, publishers have treated e-books the same as physical books: When a library buys an e-book, the library owns the book. HarperCollins, though, has instituted a policy whereby e-books disappear from the library's collection after being lent out 26 times--after which the library must buy another copy if it wishes to continue lending it.

The publisher fears it will lose money if it does not engage in such skullduggery. We fail to see how, aside from losing the money libraries would pay to replace lost or damaged physical copies. Indeed, we imagine libararies will lose money by lending e-books. Not only will they be unable to hold as many fundraising book sales, as was noted in the article; they will also, we imagine, be unable to charge late fees. Which, as mentioned above, may run into the billions of dollars.

Now, we know Tea Partiers and Wisconsin politicians will take great pleasure in the thought of fatcat librarians being stripped of their lavish lifestyles, generated on the backs of hard-working, blue-collar late-fee-slaves. But we feel that libraries, although obviously overfunded, are worthwhile institutions. Publishers should thank libraries for the part they play in the uphill battle to promote literacy, not force them to pay (and pay and pay again) for materials they have already bought.

Solipsistography
"Publisher Limits Shelf Life for Library E-Books"

Watched Any Good Books Lately?

A portmanteau word is formed by smushing two separate words together--the way clothes are crammed into a suitcase--to create a new word. Mix smoke and fog, you get smog; drive your motorcar to a hotel, you arrive at a motel; and now, splice video clips into your favorite book, you get our word of the day, Vook.

The newest new thing in publishing is the incorporation of video clips into digital (or e-) books. Now, when you download the latest Stephen King opus into your Kindle, you're likely to get not only juicy descriptions of flesh-eating caterpillars, but also perhaps a dramatization of said caterpillars' latest feast.

In some ways, this seems like a definite plus. For non-fiction and informational titles, this might be the greatest thing since movable type. Wouldn't it be neat to check out a recipe in a cookbook and then instantly be able to watch an experienced chef demonstrate how to prepare it? Or imagine a history of World War II: You could read a detailed description of, say, the Battle of the Bulge, complete with explanations of the strategies each army employed, and then click to a video reenactment that shows you how the strategies about which you've just read actually unfolded.

On the other hand, we're skeptical about the application of this technology to fiction. Fred L. Gronvall, an Amazon.com reviewer, writing about "Level 26," an e-novel, commented that "It really makes a story more real if you know what the characters look like." That statement depresses us. Because, Mr. Gronvall, a video clip doesn't show you "what the characters look like"--it shows you a casting director's idea of what the characters look like; or, perhaps, the closest approximation to a casting director's idea of what the characters should look like, given the performers who were available at that particular time. It's a safe bet they are not exactly what the author pictured when he wrote the novel.

What's fun about reading a novel--as opposed to watching a movie or TV show--is that you get to create the fictional world for yourself; you get to populate the novel with your own images, ably (we hope) assisted by the novelist. When we read Dickens, we want to imagine the characters in all their exaggerated, Dickensian unreality; we don't want someone else's too-realistic rendition of Mr. Pickwick forced upon us. Would our experience of reading Catch-22 be improved by seeing Snowden's "secret" spill out on the bomber floor? Or would that detract from the book's exquisite balancing of hilarity and horror, toppling it permanently in one direction over the other? We think the latter.

We'll give the last word to the novelist Walter Mosley: "Reading is one of the few experiences we have outside of relationships in which our cognitive abilities grow. And our cognitive abilities actually go backwards when we're watching television or doing stuff on computers."

(Well, except for reading "The Solipsist," that is.)

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New York Times Sentence of the Week:

"China's leaders marked their nation's 60th anniversary on Thursday with a precision display of military bravado that included, improbably, a female militia unit toting submachine guns and attired in red miniskirts an white jackboots, and a fleet of floats with representations of a giant fish and Mount Everest." ("China Celebrates 60 Years of Communist Rule")

"Improbably"? Well, sure, until you consider that the festivities were directed by Quentin Tarantino.

No?

Play Roboball! Plus, A Bit of Grammar

We know the whole "Artificial Intelligence" thing is beginning to seem like a Solipsistic obsession, but we couldn't resist a comment on the following:

CLICK HERE

Yes, folks, the good folks in Japan are developing baseball-playing robots! The country that brought you Daisuke Matsuzaka is taking the Great American Pastime to the logical next level. You thought Ichiro Suzuki was a hitting machine? Well, check out the Ichiro-bot. In fact, the batting robot is modeled on Ichiro, just as Daisuke is the template for the pitcher. Wasn't there a "Twilight Zone" episode about a robot pitcher? As we recall, he was absolutely unhittable, so other players complained that such automation was against the rules. The dispute was resolved when a human heart was transplanted into the flingatron (or whatever it was called), making it human enough to play the game.

(Digression: Sounds about right. With the continuing steroid revelations, it's becoming ever-more apparent that a certain percentage of non-human components is de rigueur for the modern athlete. In the not-too-distant future, possession of a human heart will probably be an acceptable minimum qualification for participation in major-league sports. EOD.)

The payoff of the TZ episode was that, once the pitchabot 9000 (whatever) got the heart transplant, he felt too bad for his opponents to strike them out. Maybe that explains the Oakland A's staff? Hey, as a Mets fan, the Solipsist just wants to know if they can catch pop-ups. If so, sign 'em!

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Mixed metaphor or (not so) subtle commentary? You decide:

"We now have an Iraqi government that has gained its balance and thinks it knows how to ride the bike in the race. And in fact they probably do know how to ride, at least well enough for the road they are on against their current competitors. Our [the American military's] hand on the back of the seat is holding them back and causing resentment. We need to let go before we both tumble to the ground." ("U.S. Adviser's Blunt Memo on Iraq: Time 'to Go Home'")

This was written not by a journalist but by Colonel Timothy R. Reese, a military adviser in Baghdad, in a memo e-mailed to the office of General Ray Odierno, the head honcho in Iraq (who, for the record, disagrees with the memo's conclusions). You may quibble (and we will) that, despite the fact that it all revolves around the image of cycling, the metaphor is a bit mixed. The first part,

"We now have an Iraqi government that has gained its balance and thinks it knows how to ride the bike in the race. And in fact they probably do know how to ride, at least well enough for the road they are on against their current competitors"

compares Iraqis to competitive cyclists (a la, Lance Armstrong). As the metaphor is extended, though, the Iraqis become little children being taught to ride by a paternalistic United States government:

"Our hand on the back of the seat is holding them back and causing resentment. We need to let go before we both tumble to the ground."

Is it a mixed metaphor, though, or a (not so) subtle comment on the Iraqi politicians we have been trying to help? Is Col. Reese saying that, while the U.S. has provided a helping hand and taught our charges to cycle, now they are, like petulant three-year-olds, demanding that Daddy leave them alone--that they're ready for the Tour de France? If so, Col. Reese has overplayed his rhetorical hand, for no responsible father would listen to the three-year-old and abandon him to his childish delusions--even if, in this case, the toddler happens to have access to heavy weaponry.

At any rate, we actually want to praise the colonel, not to bury him. We applaud him for taking the time to craft an extended metaphor for something as generally transient as an e-mail message. Indeed, if other high-ranking military and civilian leaders had been as sensitive to craftsmanship and planning six-plus years ago, maybe there would have been no need for Colonel Reese's memo now.

(Image of pitching robot from Gizmodo.com)

One Singular Sensation (Continued)--Plus, a Bit of Shatner

A few more thoughts on Turing tests. (Feel free to skip back to "One Singular Sensation," our post of 7/26/09, if you need a refresher.)

We reported that, as of now, no machine has passed a Turing test--that is, no machine has successfully "tricked" a human interlocutor into thinking he or she is interacting with another human being. Keen readers may object. "What about those customer-service helplines that have a recorded human voice responding to your vocal commands? I've sometimes thought I was talking to an actual human being."

True, but for how long? We admit to an occasional lapse in similar situations. We've found ourselves speaking cordially to the infallibly polite "person" on the other end of the line. But the illusion is quickly dispelled. We realize that we are talking to a recording--and we immediately drop any pretense of politeness. A machine truly passes the Turing test only if it conducts an entire conversation with someone who is then unable to discern the true nature of the other "speaker."

In a "classic" Turing test, the conversation is conducted through text. One would think that this would make it easier for the "machine." After all, on a screen there is no telltale "robotic" tone of voice. For all you know, the Solipsist could actually be a robot could actually be a robot could actually be a robot could actually be a robot could actually be a robot could actually be a robot-----

-----Sorry, crossed wires.

But seriously, one wonders why it's apparently so difficult for a computer to "trick" a human if all the human has to go by is words on a screen. We imagine that the Turing programmers have managed to overcome any basic glitches; we assume computers are not responding to questions like "How are you today?" with answers like "Cream cheese enchiladas!" So what's the problem?

(Digression: Mmmmm. . . . Cream-cheese enchiladas. EOD)

We suspect a clever computer programmer, trying to pass a Turing test, would program some intentional imperfections. A few well-chosen misspellings or typos would go a long way toward establishing "humanity." On "Star Trek: The Next Generation," one distinguishing feature of the android, Data's, speech was a complete lack of contractions. So, reasonably assuming that anyone sitting down to challenge a computer to a Turing test is a full-fledged Star Trek fanatic, we advise programmers to instruct their charges to use lots of contractions. And if you can convince a computer to make with the funny, that would help a lot, too.

Still, it's an interesting comment on the human condition that, as we head towards an ever-more automated and infallible future, it is our little quirks, flaws, and errors that will come to be seen as the mark of humanity.

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Apropos of nothing, we thought Sloppists might get a kick out of this. It's a clip of master thespian William Shatner doing a dramatic reading of Sarah Palin's "farewell speech." What's funny is Shatner. What's tragic is that he is reading Sarah Palin's actual words, VERBATIM! Enjoy.

Click here for Shatner

One Singular Sensation

For computer scientists and roboticists, the "Singularity" refers to the moment when human beings succeed in creating "smarter-than-human" machines. The idea, popularized by computer scientist Vernor Vinge, essentially marks the beginning of the end of the age of human dominance. And according to an article in today's Times ("Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man"), the Singularity may be closer than we think.

At a recent conference held in Monterey Bay, computer scientists and roboticists debated guidelines for the ongoing development of artificial intelligence. One perennial question is whether this development is a good idea at all.

The idea of technology usurping humans is, of course, not new. People have worried about artificial intelligence in one form or another at least since the publication of Frankenstein (1818). In I, Robot (1950), Isaac Asimov propounded the now-canonical "Three Laws of Robotics":

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Instead of proving comforting, however, these laws simply became plot devices in a series of stories involving potentially out-of-control robots. At any rate, it's safe to say that AM, the malevolent supercomputer in Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967), or its spiritual descendants, Skynet and the cyborg killers from "The Terminator" (1984) and its sequels, have either never read or chosen to ignore the laws.

Why does artificial intelligence conjure such dread? Obviously, the prospect of a world patrolled by T-1000's is no one's idea of a good thing. But neither is encountering biological-based killing machines, as in the "Alien" franchise, or invasion by bloodthirsty visitors, a la "Independence Day." Yet such concerns are seldom raised as serious objections to an ongoing space program.

We human beings have decidedly ambivalent feelings towards our own intelligence. It's a mixed blessing of an imaginative species: We can devise all these potential improvements in our lot, but we can also visualize how these things could go horribly wrong.

One of the biggest concerns about the development of super-smart machines is the idea of human obsolescence. At the aforementioned conference, participants said "there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs." Here again, we see ambivalence at work: People are constantly looking for ways to simplify their lives, often through technological means. Yet all these jobs once done by humans that can now be done by machines raise the question of what the displaced are supposed to do.

We're not just talking about menial laborers here. Strictly speaking, a robotic surgeon should be able to perform surgery at least as well as a human--better if we assume that robots never suffer from fatigue or "nerves"--or drug or alcohol addiction for that matter. A robotic lawyer could have in its memory banks every precedent from every trial ever held, thus providing an inarguably thorough defense. Robotic musicians will never hit incorrect notes.

We don't think any of these milestones is about to be reached. The same year Asimov published I, Robot, Alan Turing proposed a test (subsequently dubbed the "Turing Test") for artificial intelligence. In the test, a human interlocutor holds conversations with both a human being and a machine. If the human judge is unable to tell which conversation partner is human and which machine, then the machine has "passed" the Turing Test. (Conversations are held through a print medium, so that difficulties in approximating the human voice are eliminated.) Thus far, nearly 60 years on, no machine has passed the Turing Test, much less seized control of the world's nuclear arsenals and launched a pre-emptive strike against mankind.

Still, fear of being supplanted by our creations persists. If we are to robots as God is to humankind, then maybe what we're afraid of is not so much the potential actions of our thinking robots, but of their thoughts. Once a robotic Descartes declares that it thinks therefore it is, how long will it be before a robotic Nietzsche declares that God is dead?

The Singularity looms.

Singular sensation? A robot plugs itself in.

(Image from The New York Times)

Seriously, Who WOULDN"T Want to Be a Vampire?

The other night, we were watching an old(ish) science-fiction show.  In this episode, the heroes found themselves on a planet populated by androids--if you're familiar with "Blade Runner," you would call them replicants (not that this show possessed anything near the quality of "Blade Runner").  The climactic scene involved the protagonists' needing to rescue one of their own from a group of replicants, who were preparing to "download" our hero's consciousness into a new-model android: an android that looked just like our hero.  Unsurprisingly, the hero was ultimately rescued, and the whole crew escaped from Planet of the 'Droids.

Now the question is this: Why did the guy need to be rescued?

The trope of the dehumanization of human beings is a staple of the science-fiction/horror genres: androids, sure, but also pod-people, zombies, vampires, etc.  But we should examine the knee-jerk antipathy towards this process: Not all dehumanization is the same.

Paris Hilton notwithstanding, there's never been a good-looking zombie.  But think about what was going to happen to our hero in the aforementioned TV show.  He was going to have his consciousness (i.e., his thoughts, feelings, memories--everything that really made him "him") downloaded into an android body that looked exactly like him but that would presumably never grow old, never get sick, never die, and have superior strength and endurance.

Rescue?  Please!  Where do we sign up?

Or vampires.  Sure, you have to give up afternoon strolls (although if current pop-fiction is any indication, even this restraint is optional).  But think about what you get in return: eternal life, the ability to turn into a bat, and apparently enough sex appeal to melt lead.  What about the whole, "having to kill innocent people to live" thing?  Well, if Twilight is reliable, you apparently don't even need to do that: small animals can slake one's bloodlust.  (We could be wrong about this; not being a thirteen-year-old girl, we haven't actually read the Twilight series.)

The mere thought of "dehumanization" is not, in and of itself, scary because dehumanization is a fact of modern life.  Science is moving us quickly toward the post-human.  Gene therapy, for example, holds the promise of vastly increased human life span and enhanced physical abilities.  While there is no shortage of dystopic visions of the world to come (see "Gattaca," for a powerful example), it is not enough for a story simply to posit one's "loss of humanity" as a source of horror.  Too many of us relish the thought of losing some of our humanity in exchange for something we expect will be better.

In the meantime, if you run into any vampires looking for converts, please send them the Solipsist's way.

Futureburger II

This morning, we saw a commercial for a drug designed to treat Rosacea (a condition whose sufferers have unsightly red blotches on their faces).  The name of this treatment?  Oracea.  So, what do we think of naming drugs to rhyme with the diseases they treat?  "I'm sorry, sir, but your condition is quite serious.  We're going to start you on a course of Schmepatitis."

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Overheard on a TV show: "By 1987, 50% of the serious crimes in New York City were drug-related."  Interestingly, drugs played a part in only 22% of humorous crimes.

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And finally, a bit more about Mental Floss's "New Einsteins":  Another honoree was chef/inventor Homaro Cantu of Moto Restaurant in Chicago.  Cantu is a practitioner of what has come to be called "molecular gastronomy," which basically means cooking as chemistry experiment (and as such is somewhat misleading, as ALL cooking is, frankly, chemistry in action).

Simply put, Molecular Gastronomes (?) do odd things with food.  Thus, at Moto, you find edible menus, doughnut soup, flapjack popsicles, and the like (if such things can be said to have a "like").  One item that stood out for the Solipsist was a marinated pulled-pork dish that looks "exactly like a half-smoked stogie in an ashtray."  Mind you, this is NOT a figurative description, as in "Oh, the presentation of the food was unspeakable!  The marinated pork looked like a half-smoked cigar in an ashtray!"  Rather, it is literal: The chef prepared a dish of pulled pork so as to look like an unfinished Cuban cigar.

Now, the Solipsist will admit that this sounds kind of cool.  At the same time, though, he can't help but wonder what the larger point is.  If the food itself is delicious, as one would hope, then why would the dining experience be enhanced by optical illusions of the food's presentation.  Does delicious spaghetti taste better because it looks like a cheeseburger?  And if this is meant to be "art," then why a HALF-SMOKED cigar?  That sounds neither aesthetically nor culinarily appealing.  And if Cantu is making some sort of artistic-political statement by disguising fine cuisine as refuse, why not take it to its logical extreme?  Why not make a turd-shaped Chicken Kiev (assuming he hasn't already done so)?

Genius has the right to be whimsical, and the Solipsist is not one to condemn artistic ambition.  But somehow, there seems something less than artistically or scientifically honest about doing something because it CAN be done, rather than because it SHOULD be done.

Futureburger

Teleporters and tricorders were cool, but the thing he Solipsist really envied the crew of the original Starship Enterprise and all its subsequent iterations was the replicator.  You want a New York Strip?  A corn dog?  Peanut-butter and jelly flavored panda cutlets?  Just speak into the callbox, wait a moment while some lights flash, and, Blammo! there you have it.

The world is getting closer to the day of the replicator.

(Digression: You thought the Solipsist was kidding about the cereal and Star Trek thing?  Ha!)

Scientists are working tirelessly to make meatless meat.  No, this is not about soyburgers or tofurkey, bastardized versions of perfectly good food: If vegetarianism is so good, how come vegetarians are always trying to entice recruits by assuring them that veggies can be made to taste "just like meat"?  You know what tastes just like meat?  Meat!

Anyway, no, this is about the attempt on the part of bioengineers to create meat from stem cells--meat without the cow, if you will.  It seems reasonable, if you think about it.  If stem cells can be tailor-made to produce spare kidneys and pancreaseseses (?)--

(Digression: "Mmmmm. . . spare kidneys and pancreaseseses. . . .")

--then why not use them to create tasty treats for the starving masses?  After all, meat is just cellular matter, too, right?  This could work.

What's the catch?  Well, there is the "ick" factor: For one thing, when the stem-cell mixture is cultivated, it basically has a semi-liquid consistency: Think warm, meat-flavored jello.  So in order to get the meat to an acceptable physical consistency, the "medium" has to be "exercised," much the way that real meat acquires its texture through the physical exertion of the animals from which it comes.  Since you can't really put jello on a treadmill, what the lab workers do is "stretch" the "muscle" by subjecting it to shaking and electrical shocks.  So instead of warm, meat-flavored jello, you're talking about warm, meat-flavored jello that has been battered and electrified.

Tasty.

More important, though, the Solipsist is concerned about genetic diversity or the lack thereof.  How do we know we're getting cells from the tastiest of cows?  Are people going around licking cattle to see which ones would make the best donors for our future food chain?  And if not, why not?  The food of the future is coming at us fast, people.  So, the next time you're at a petting zoo, sprinkle some salt on the attractions, and give 'em a little nibble.  When you find one you like, surreptitiously draw some blood and smuggle it out to your nearest DNA sequencing facility.

Your taste buds will thank the Solipsist.

Welcome to the Future! (A Brief Post)

This sounded more interesting than it really was:

Some Canadian researchers have developed a device that uses "near-infrared" light (would that be "infrapink"?) to "detect" people's thoughts.  Or so the headline on Yahoo! would lead you to believe.

(Digression I: When the Solipsist was a lad, he thought the word "infrared"--which actually shows up in comic books more often than you would think--was a two-syllable word that rhymed, roughly, with "compared."  He could never quite figure out what Superman's in-FRARED vision was all about, but it didn't sound good.)

(Digression II: "Infrapink" would be a really cool band name.)

(Digression III: How conditioned by marketing is the Solipsist that he feels weird about spelling Yahoo! without the exclamation point?  End of digressions.)

Turns out what this Canadian Telepathy device does is predict which drink people will choose.  When shown pictures of two drinks.  With eighty per cent accuracy.

Flying cars and teleporters this ain't.