[FairfieldLife] Forget Her. Your life is already controlled by 'bots
I found this a fascinating article to stumble upon right after seeing the film Her. There will be some who will deny that we as a culture will never become so dependent on computers and AIs as to allow them to shape and control our lives as much as Theodore does in Her. Well, let me present a theoretical case to you. You're a fan of science fiction, and of scifi writing, TV, and movies. As such, you'd love to go to the most prestigious ceremony for such things, the annual Hugo Awards. But the awards are being held at Worldcon, a big gathering of scifi folk in another city, and you can't afford to go there, so you tune in via the streamed video feed of the event. And everything's going great. You're enjoying the speeches and the clips from the TV shows and movies and all of a sudden the feed is cut, and replaced with a blank screen containing the words: Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement. This actually happened, and it was done by 'bots. There was not a human in the loop when the copyright police 'bots used by Upstream (the streaming video provider for Worldcon) shut down its broadcast. These censor-bots just decided that something was being seen that they didn't think *should* be seen, according to what they had been told by their programmers, and so they just shut the whole feed down. When Upstream found out what happened and tried to restart the feed (according to them), they couldn't. The censor-bots' word turned out to be final. Go figure. http://io9.com/5940036/how-copyright-enforcement-robots-killed-the-hugo-\ awards http://io9.com/5940036/how-copyright-enforcement-robots-killed-the-hugo\ -awards
Re: [FairfieldLife] Forget Her. Your life is already controlled by 'bots
turq, I'd say that the world, on one level, is controlled by imperfect programming and still-learning programmers. bots are only as useful as their programming and programmers make them. Right?! On Friday, January 10, 2014 4:19 AM, TurquoiseB turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: I found this a fascinating article to stumble upon right after seeing the film Her. There will be some who will deny that we as a culture will never become so dependent on computers and AIs as to allow them to shape and control our lives as much as Theodore does in Her. Well, let me present a theoretical case to you. You're a fan of science fiction, and of scifi writing, TV, and movies. As such, you'd love to go to the most prestigious ceremony for such things, the annual Hugo Awards. But the awards are being held at Worldcon, a big gathering of scifi folk in another city, and you can't afford to go there, so you tune in via the streamed video feed of the event. And everything's going great. You're enjoying the speeches and the clips from the TV shows and movies and all of a sudden the feed is cut, and replaced with a blank screen containing the words: Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement. This actually happened, and it was done by 'bots. There was not a human in the loop when the copyright police 'bots used by Upstream (the streaming video provider for Worldcon) shut down its broadcast. These censor-bots just decided that something was being seen that they didn't think *should* be seen, according to what they had been told by their programmers, and so they just shut the whole feed down. When Upstream found out what happened and tried to restart the feed (according to them), they couldn't. The censor-bots' word turned out to be final. Go figure. http://io9.com/5940036/how-copyright-enforcement-robots-killed-the-hugo-awards
Re: [FairfieldLife] Forget Her. Your life is already controlled by 'bots
On 1/10/2014 10:09 AM, Share Long wrote: bots are only as useful as their programming and programmers make them. Right?! Speaking of bots, somebody is monitoring my messages - probably bots at the NSA, FBI, and the CIA. Go figure. So, I wonder who here spends the most time in front of their computers? It used to be me, when my job was a system analyst working fifty hours a week. But, now I'm thinking Barry is using his laptop to watch streaming video of the Hugo Awards at ComicCon; Judy is obviously in front o her desktop at least ten hours every day, judging from her response times; I wouldn't be surprised if the other Barry is on 24 x 7, multi-tasking and watching TV. There's probably at least one respondent on this list that uses an iPhone for reading newsgroups.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Forget Her. Your life is already controlled by 'bots
Contrary to popular belief I do not watch TV 24/7. Sounds like you watch more TV than I. Of course I spend part of my day in front of a computer as I try to make a living from software development. So looking at a big screen in the evening 8 feet away is very relaxing on the eyes. I also look at FFL sometimes using Chrome on Android. You only worked 50 hours a week? That's not enough to get an orange robe from the tech monastery. :-D On 01/10/2014 08:26 AM, Richard J. Williams wrote: On 1/10/2014 10:09 AM, Share Long wrote: bots are only as useful as their programming and programmers make them. Right?! Speaking of bots, somebody is monitoring my messages - probably bots at the NSA, FBI, and the CIA. Go figure. So, I wonder who here spends the most time in front of their computers? It used to be me, when my job was a system analyst working fifty hours a week. But, now I'm thinking Barry is using his laptop to watch streaming video of the Hugo Awards at ComicCon; Judy is obviously in front o her desktop at least ten hours every day, judging from her response times; I wouldn't be surprised if the other Barry is on 24 x 7, multi-tasking and watching TV. There's probably at least one respondent on this list that uses an iPhone for reading newsgroups.
