Pixel Scroll 7/10/16 Captain Pixel Pants

(1) JIM HENLEY POOPS ON SPACE. In comments, Jim deposited this link to a report that long-duration space habitation impairs vision in 80% of astronauts. (Hey, “poops” is his word.)

In 2005, astronaut John Phillips took a break from his work on the International Space Station and looked out the window at Earth. He was about halfway through a mission that had begun in April and would end in October.

When he gazed down at the planet, the Earth was blurry. He couldn’t focus on it clearly. That was strange — his vision had always been 20/20. He wondered: Was his eyesight getting worse?

“I’m not sure if I reported that to the ground,” he said. “I think I didn’t. I thought it would be something that would just go away, and fix itself when I got to Earth.”

It didn’t go away.

During Phillips’ post-flight physical, NASA found that his vision had gone from 20/20 to 20/100 in six months.

Rigorous testing followed. Phillips got MRIs, retinal scans, neurological tests and a spinal tap. The tests showed that not only had his vision changed, but his eyes had changed as well.

The backs of his eyes had gotten flatter, pushing his retinas forward. He had choroidal folds, which are like stretch marks. His optic nerves were inflamed.

Phillips case became the first widely recognized one of a mysterious syndrome that affects 80 percent of astronauts on long-duration missions in space. The syndrome could interfere with plans for future crewed space missions, including any trips to Mars.

(2) THE TAKING-UP-SPACE PROGRAM. You might say The Traveler at Galactic Journey doesn’t see eye-to-eye with editor John W. Campbell, who spent 20 pages criticizing the space program in Analog: “[July 10, 1961] The Last Straw (Campbell’s Wrong-Headed Rant In The August 1961 Analog]“

Campbell’s argument is as follows:

1) America could have had a man in space in 1951, but America is a democracy, and its populace (hence, the government) is too stupid to understand the value of space travel.

2) The government’s efforts to put a man in space are all failures: Project Vanguard didn’t work.  Project Mercury won’t go to orbit.  Liquid-fueled rockets are pointless.

3) Ford motor company produced Project Farside, a series of solid-fueled “rock-oons,” on the cheap, so therefore, the best way to get into space…nay…the only way is to give the reins to private industry.

Campbell isn’t just wrong on every single one of these assertions.  He’s delusional.

(3) WHO DAT? The Mirror stirs up rumors in its news article “Can Matt Smith be the first Doctor Who to regenerate as himself?”

Matt Smith may be about to travel back in time to play Doctor Who again.

Show boss Steven Moffat has hinted Smith could be the first of the 12 Doctors to return to the Tardis after regenerating.

Matt, who stars as Prince Phillip in Netflix’s big-budget royal drama The Crown in November, has made no secret of his desire to return, saying last year: “They will ask me back one day, won’t they?”

Matt’s successor Peter Capaldi has been tipped to bow out after the next series, currently being filmed for release in 2017.

And Moffat, who is leaving after his sixth season next year has said Matt is “quite open about how much he misses it, and how much he wishes he hadn’t left”.

(4) OH SAY DID YOU HEAR? A piece by Carly Carioli in the July 1 Boston Globe called “Did the Star-Spangled Banner land Igor Stravinsky in Jail?” explores the issue of whether or not Stravinsky was arrested for playing a radical arrangement of the national anthem in 1944.  (He wasn’t because he substituted the traditional arrangement at the last minute.)

The sf connection is that Carioli linked to a photo of Stravinsky.  “The novelist Neil Gaiman thought it was a mug shot.  He sent the image to the blog Boing-Boing a few years ago, along with an astounding plot-point:  He claimed that Stravinsky had been arrested in Boston” for his weird arrangement.

Spoiler alert: The photo is not a mug shot, and Stravinsky was never arrested. But the real story of what happened to the composer in Boston is an incredible tale. He did compose a weird arrangement of the national anthem, and the Boston police really did ban him from performing it — sparking a national uproar and a tense showdown that played out live on the radio.

The Boston Globe has a tight paywall of five articles a month, so good luck clicking through.

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • Born July 10, 1923 – Earl Hamner, Jr.
  • Born July 10, 1926 – Fred Gwynne
  • Born July 10, 1929 – George Clayton Johnson
  • Born July 10, 1941  — David G. Hartwell

(6) HUGO NOVELETTES REVIEWED. Rich Horton explains how he is ranking the Hugo-nominated Novelettes on Strange at Ecbatan.

As I wrote in my first post in this series: I am not planning to reflexively rank Rabid Puppy entries below No Award. I am of course disgusted by the Rabid Puppy antics, and I feel that many worthier stories were kept off the ballot by the Rabid choices. And if a story is bad enough, it will certainly be off my ballot, with No Award the last choice. (That’s always been my approach.) But, this year in particular, many of the nominees supported by the Rabid Puppies were either unaware of that, or aware and quite clearly not happy with that. Also, I don’t want to reduce the meaningfulness of the win for those worthy winners – if they finish first and No Award is second, to my mind it to some extent delegitimizes their wins, through no fault of their own. Better to have been chosen the best with every voting on merit than voted best simply because all the other choices were automatically rejected regardless of quality.

(7) STEPHEN KING. Lisa J. Goldstein reviews Stephen King’s Hugo-nominated novelette: “Obits” at inferior4+1.

Sometimes I think that Stephen King is too skilled a writer for his own good.  No, wait, hear me out.  “Obits” is about an obituary writer who discovers that when he writes obituaries about live people, they end up dead.  It’s not an earth-shattering idea, and I’d bet that any number of writers have come up with something similar.  Other writers, though, would try to figure out where the story should go, how it should end, if it would be too predictable — and when they finished with all of that, they’d decide that the idea wouldn’t work, that it’s just not a very good concept for a story.

(8) CHIMERA CREATURES. Mary Lowd has been rescuing stuffed animals and playing mad scientist in order to resurrect them. She displays the results in a photo gallery.

The Subjects:

For this project, subjects were gathered from local dispensaries of unwanted toys.  Most of the specimens were procured from various Goodwills, but a few were found at St. Vinnie’s and Sarah’s Treasures.  Excluding a few exceptional specimens, they all cost between $1 and $2.  Even the exceptional ones cost at most $4.  In order for a specimen to be suitable, it had to be in good condition, contain nice parts, but be — shall we say — uninspiring in its totallity.  Several specimens were rejected for inclusion due to being too lovable in their original, unaltered forms.  All of the specimens selected for final inclusion in the project are pictured below in Fig. 1 – 3.

(9) WHEN LUCY LAUNCHED A THOUSAND STARSHIPS. Many writers have been fascinated to discover Lucille Ball played a role in getting Star Trek on the air. The latest retelling of the tale is “How Lucille Ball Saved Star Trek at Entertainment Weekly.

While many series were being shot at Desilu, the studio was in dire need of original programming of its own following the end of The Untouchables in 1963. Herbert Solow, hired to help locate new projects for the studio, brought two notable proposals to Desilu in 1964. One was Mission: Impossible; the other was Roddenberry’s quirky sci-fi idea. When Lucy’s longtime network CBS said no to Trek, Solow and Roddenberry took it to NBC. Science fiction was alien to the network’s schedule, but it ordered a pilot.

According to Solow in Marc Cushman’s history These Are the Voyages, Lucy initially thought Star Trek was about traveling USO performers. But her support for the show was necessary as it became clear how expensive the pilot would be. Lucy overruled her board of directors to make sure the episode was produced.

(10) STAND BY ME (BUT NOT TOO CLOSE). There is a flurry of weird news stories about Pokémon Go players getting hurt or whatnot. Here is the first of several people have sent me today: “Players in hunt for Pokemon Go monsters feel real-world pain” reports ABC’s Chicago affiliate.

Beware: “Pokemon Go,” a new smartphone game based on cute Nintendo characters like Squirtle and Pikachu, can be harmful to your health. The “augmented reality” game, which layers gameplay onto the physical world, became the top grossing app in the iPhone app store just days after its Wednesday release in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. And players have already reported wiping out in a variety of ways as they wander the real world – eyes glued to their smartphone screens – in search of digital monsters.

Mike Schultz, a 21-year-old communications graduate on Long Island, New York, took a spill on his skateboard as he stared at his phone while cruising for critters early Thursday. He cut his hand on the sidewalk after hitting a big crack, and blames himself for going too slowly. “I just wanted to be able to stop quickly if there were any Pokemons nearby to catch,” he says. “I don’t think the company is really at fault.”

(11) ACHIEVEMENT UNBURIED. One player got more than she bargained for: “Pokémon Go player finds dead body in Wyoming river while searching for a Pokestop”.

The augmented reality game, which was released last week, gets people to catch virtual monsters using the person’s location on their phone.

Nineteen-year-old Shayla Wiggins, from Wyoming, was told to find a Pokemon in a natural water source but instead found a man’s corpse.

“I was walking towards the bridge along the shore when I saw something in the water,” she told County 10 news.

“I had to take a second look and I realised it was a body.”

(12) DARWIN REWARD. Police in Darwin, Australia requested on their Facebook page that players not waltz into their station, which of course is a Pokestop in the game.

For those budding Pokemon Trainers out there using Pokemon Go – whilst the Darwin Police Station may feature as a Pokestop, please be advised that you don’t actually have to step inside in order to gain the pokeballs.

It’s also a good idea to look up, away from your phone and both ways before crossing the street. That Sandshrew isn’t going anywhere fast.

Stay safe and catch ’em all!

(13) ROBBERMON. And then there are the robbers who figured out that setting up a beacon in the game was a surefire way to attract victims.

Police in O’Fallon, Missouri are investigating a series of armed robberies believe that the robbers used the Pokemon Go smartphone app to target victims, according to a post on the department’s Facebook page. Four suspects were arrested early Sunday morning near the intersection of Highway K and Feise Road in O’Fallon after a report of an armed robbery. Police say they are suspected of multiple armed robberies in St. Louis and St. Charles counties in Missouri. A handgun was recovered.

Police believe they used the game to, “add a beacon to a pokestop to lure more players” and then used the app to locate victims.

(14) RISK ASSESSMENT. Fitting in with the week’s tragic news is this take on playing the game: “Warning: Pokemon GO is a Death Sentence if you are a Black Man”.

I spent less than 20 minutes outside. Five of those minutes were spent enjoying the game. One of those minutes I spent trying to look as pleasant and nonthreatening as possible as I walked past a somewhat visibly disturbed white woman on her way to the bus stop. I spent the other 14 minutes being distracted from the game by thoughts of the countless Black Men who have had the police called on them because they looked “suspicious” or wondering what a second amendment exercising individual might do if I walked past their window a 3rd or 4th time in search of a Jigglypuff.

When my brain started combining the complexity of being Black in America with the real world proposal of wandering and exploration that is designed into the gameplay of Pokemon GO, there was only one conclusion. I might die if I keep playing.

(15) TOY QUEST. John King Tarpinian went to a store and personally checked out several of the Hallmark collectible ornaments discussed in a post here at File 770. He says the fidelity of the recordings is “surprisingly good.”

Fidelity COMP

Though about this one he cryptically commented, “No sound but yabba dabba doo.”

Flintstones COMP

(16) MORE TOYS. ScreenRant previews Star Wars toys and figure fans can see at Comic-Con.

Folks heading to San Diego Comic-Con can also get their Star Wars fix from July 21 – 24. If you plan on attending SDCC later this month, make sure to swing by the Hasbro booth (#3213) and have your fill of some new Star Wars figures. Hasbro will also have a panel on Friday, July 22nd at noon to introduce their latest line of exclusives….

As noted above, the Darth Vader, Kanan Jarrus, and Biker Scout figures are 12? models while Rey and Hera Syndulla are just under 4? tall. Kanan and Vader also have “electronic touches” which could mean their light sabers actually glow. These figures will be on display at SDCC, but fans will have to exercise some patience because they won’t be available for purchase until fall 2016 — just in time for Christmas

(17) STAR WARS CON IN LONDON. The same ScreenRant post also links to the 3-day Star Wars Celebration Europe 2016 that takes place in London from July 15 – 17. This event will see several exclusives including the premiere of the third season of Star Wars Rebels and a huge presence from Star Wars video games.

For those of us who can’t make it across the pond, some panels will be streamed, including the Rogue One panel, where we should be in for a new trailer for the spinoff film.

(18) REMEMBERING GEORGE. There will be a George Clayton Johnson Memorial Gathering at Comic-Con International in San Diego on Thursday, July 21 at 9:00 p.m.

Let’s share our memories and adventures of our pal and mentor for over 40 years. George wrote “The Man Trap” the very first Star Trek episode that aired. He also wrote 8 original Twilight Zone episodes, Oceans 11 movie and the “Logan’s Run” novel with William F. Nolan. Panel participants include David Gerrold, Craig Miller, Greg Koudoulian, Gene Henderson, Clayton Moore, Scott Smith, Jimmy Diggs and Anthony Keith

(I don’t know which Clayton Moore this is but it can’t be the one from The Lone Ranger – he passed away in 1999.)

(19) KUBRICK LOST AND FOUND. A 2015 documentary on YouTube, Stanley Kubrick: The Lost Tapes, is based on tapes that a New Yorker writer produced in 1966 for a Kubrick profile. Kubrick discusses the making of Dr. Strangelove at about 20 minutes in to this 25-minute documentary. He discusses his professional relationship with Arthur C. Clarke very briefly beginning at 22:00.

(20) ROD SERLING AND GROUCHO MARX. You Bet Your Life was retooled as Tell It To Groucho and sold to CBS for one short season in early 1962. Here’s half of one of the very few episodes available to view today, featuring Rod Serling.

(21) MORE HARLEY QUINN. The Suicide Squad international trailer dropped.

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Petréa Mitchell, Dawn Incognito, Hampus Eckerman, Cat Rambo, Jim Henley, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]

105 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 7/10/16 Captain Pixel Pants

  1. Scary thought: People are sometimes hurting themselves because they aren’t careful when they walk around outside, looking at their smartphone – even when not playing Pokemon Go.

    As someone who was almost killed while trying to read a book while bicycling, I can sympathize.

  2. Part of the problem with the floating cars/personal helicopter idea is that everybody else would have one too. Even with professional pilots, helicopters sometimes fall out of the sky. When a car runs out of gas, it’s unlikely to kill anyone; a helicopter doing that would have a nontrivial chance of landing on another helicopter, or a person on the ground, so it’s not just the people in the copters who would be at risk.

    Hampus: Some of us don’t even need smartphones (or books) to be dangerously distracted while walking around: there are birds, there are conversations, there is interesting architecture….

  3. Hi Dawn,

    Thanks very much. I have someone that thinks the game should be banned because the dead are stacking up like so much cord wood. I was afraid that my Google-fu was lacking. **chuckle**

    Hi Hampus,

    I try to limit my mobile reading to times when I’m walking. The consequences are, on average, less severe. Then there’s the time in high school when some friends hit me for not talking to them….or more correctly not responding to them after a 10 minute conversation. What can I say. The book was better than anything going on in the classroom at the time. So even stationary reading can be hazardous to one’s health!


    Regards,
    Dann

  4. Used to be, when people saw me reading a book while walking on the street, they would ask what I was reading etc. Now they tell me I should be careful and pay attention. I blame all the non-reading smart phone users for spoiling things for me 🙂

  5. Re: (2) THE TAKING-UP-SPACE PROGRAM.

    Remarkably prescient for figuring that it would take 50 years before commercial efforts could get into space on their own. SpaceX was founded in 2002, just 51 years after the article.

    Campbell, like many others, made the mistake of thinking that space travel was much easier than it really is. 1950s SF was full of stories where people just grab a rocket and fly around the solar system. (E.g. “The Rolling Stones,” by Heinlein.) I often think the discovery that that wasn’t going to be the case was a big part of the loss of interest in SF over the past few decades.

    So if SF authors 50 years ago grossly underestimated the difficulty of building spaceships, what comparable error do modern SF authors make? I think it has to be AI. And unlike 1961 (when there really were working rockets and satellites), no one today has come remotely close to building a human-like AI.

    My prescience is uncanny, sometimes! But sometimes, I get it completely wrong…

    I think you are spot-on regarding Artificial Intelligence. The “Singularity” is further off than people think.

  6. When I was young, I did once try to prop a book open on the handlebars of my Schwinn Stingray as I pedaled home from the library. This rapidly revealed itself as a bad idea.

  7. @Jonathan Edelstein

    I’ll get my vote in early for the Singularity and for uploaded personalities in general.

    Good call. 🙂

    One big problem with the singularity is that it makes assumptions about AI development being exponential, but all known machine-learning systems are logarithmic or even asymptotic. Another is that it assumes we could make an AI that isn’t specialized–something we haven’t even got a clue how to do.

    Uploaded personalities are belief-busting, in part, because we know so little about the brain. Long before we’d be able to transfer a personality, you’d think we’d be able to do much easier things–like record our dreams and post them on youtube. Or download enough data to make confident diagnoses of mental illnesses, Or extract a picture of a crimescene from an eyewitness. The fact that none of that exists (or is even close to existing) ought to clue people into the fact that downloading a human mind is unlikely in the next century or so.

    @Peer Sylvester

    Everything floating wont work for a long time (Floating cars, real Hoverboards…).

    Although Maglev actually does work. Go figure.

  8. @Galactic Journey

    My prescience is uncanny, sometimes! But sometimes, I get it completely wrong…

    As Yogi Berra said, “Predictions are hard–especially about the future.”

  9. @Greg Hullender: Uploaded personalities are belief-busting, in part, because we know so little about the brain. Long before we’d be able to transfer a personality, you’d think we’d be able to do much easier things–like record our dreams and post them on youtube. Or download enough data to make confident diagnoses of mental illnesses, Or extract a picture of a crimescene from an eyewitness. The fact that none of that exists (or is even close to existing) ought to clue people into the fact that downloading a human mind is unlikely in the next century or so.
    That’s because the mind is like baseball: it’s 50% physical and 90% mental.

  10. Apparently Pokémon Go installs with massive privileges to your Google account if you register using that account. It also doesn’t prompt for the user to grant those rights (FWIW: some reports are calling the missing prompt issue intermittent or state the issue only occurs on IOS) :

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/11/pushy_pokemon_go_criticized/

    Recommendation I’m seeing is to register under a Pokémon Trainer Club website account instead of using your Google account.

  11. @Joe H.,

    I got all excited, then read this…

    This offer is only available in the US and Canada. We apologize for the geographic restriction, unfortunately it is required for various legal reasons.

  12. Vicki Rosenzweig:

    “Some of us don’t even need smartphones (or books) to be dangerously distracted while walking around: there are birds, there are conversations, there is interesting architecture….”

    At my workplace, they had to paint bright orange lines on the concrete pillars holding up the roof to stop people from walking into them.

  13. @Joe H.: I finished reading The Aeronaut’s Windlass recently, and while I enjoyed it more than some here, I feel confident in predicting that you won’t find any big upturns or downturns in your enjoyment.

  14. @Greg Hullender:

    Long before we’d be able to transfer a personality, you’d think we’d be able to do much easier things–like record our dreams and post them on youtube.

    I believe Spider Robinson’s Mindkiller made the comment that if you’re building a tape recorder, the erase head is a lot easier to build than the play/record head.

    Why yes, one of the main characters did have some unexplained amnesia, why do you ask…

  15. @PhilRM

    That’s because the mind is like baseball: it’s 50% physical and 90% mental.

    Yes! And I’ve heard most of the brain is half mental! 🙂

  16. @Jenora Feuer

    I believe Spider Robinson’s Mindkiller made the comment that if you’re building a tape recorder, the erase head is a lot easier to build than the play/record head.

    We do see a few stories where people can edit bad memories, adjust aptitudes, terminate obsessions etc. I really loved Edited, by Rich Larson, even though it (arguably) suffers the same problem: it’s really hard to believe anything like that will be developed (and tested for safety) any time in the next century.

  17. Shiny Happy Pixels Scrolling By

    @Jenora Feure

    I really quite liked Mindkiller, I should really try some more of Robinson’s stuff.

  18. @Greg Hullender:
    Well, let’s just say that as I recall (it’s been several years now since I read it), Mindkiller involves some of the testing for safety part. And not necessarily glowingly. One of the main characters is amnesiac for a reason.

    And, true, our work on brain structure over the last few decades, much like our work on AI, has mostly been about climbing out of the Dunning-Kruger pit and realizing just how difficult this is and how far away we are from understanding what the heck we’re doing.

  19. Hampus

    Me too, except I just endangered my future progeny, not my own life.

    Everyone said “That’ll teach you not to read while you ride”.

    Nope.

    It taught me to look up from the book at more frequent intervals.

  20. bookworm1398 on July 11, 2016 at 12:03 pm said:

    Used to be, when people saw me reading a book while walking on the street, they would ask what I was reading etc. Now they tell me I should be careful and pay attention. I blame all the non-reading smart phone users for spoiling things for me ?

    Huh. I still mostly get puzzled looks, like they can’t quite figure out what I’m doing or how. Reading books on my phone while out walking gets me way more glares than reading books on paper, for whatever reason.

    steve davidson on July 11, 2016 at 3:06 pm said:

    It taught me to look up from the book at more frequent intervals.

    That’s the trick I learned at a very young age, from having parents who wandered around with a book in hand. Wandering around with your nose in a book gets even more challenging when you’re in a house full of people doing the same!

    Of course, the real challenge is cooking while reading. There was definitely somewhat of an inverse correlation in my parents’ house between the quality of the cooking and the engagingness of the books being read. 🙂

  21. @Xtifr @bookworm1398

    I’m now imagining how the opening scene from Beauty and the Beast might have played out if everyone in Belle’s town had smartphones. I’m guessing a lot less choreography…
    —-
    My friends and I got excited when the Pokemon Go Asia server briefly came online yesterday, but it’s since gone again. Given that I currently live in a city with an ongoing monsoon and a very relaxed attitude to pavement quality and drain coverage, this is probably for the best. Also, during the five minutes I could actually play it turned out the nearest gym to my office is located at a religious monument which doesn’t seem like it could be problematic at all???

  22. I’m now imagining how the opening scene from Beauty and the Beast might have played out if everyone in Belle’s town had smartphones. I’m guessing a lot less choreography…

    I misread that as “if everyone in Belle’s town had Sousaphones”. Honest. Now THAT would be choreography.

  23. Soon Lee: I got all excited, then read this… “This offer is only available in the US and Canada. We apologize for the geographic restriction, unfortunately it is required for various legal reasons”.

    A friend tells me that the page will take the registrant’s word as to their country, and does not check IP address.

  24. Doctor Science: People on tumblr are trying to identify the Star Trek fans in this photo of D.C. Fontana and a roomful of women fans from way back when. I bet some of you can help.

    Has someone pointed David Gerrold at it on Facebook? IIRC, he is good friends with Dorothy. He might very well know who some of them are.

  25. Someone reported on the SMOFs list the people in the photo have been identified. Andre Lieven, quoting someone who identified herself being in the photo: “Margaret and Laura Basta are on the left, and she, Carol Lynn, is the tallest one in the middle.”

    Well, if true, then it makes sense that one of them (the one identified as Laura Basta) looked vaguely familiar, since she was a Hugo nominee decades ago and I probably saw her at a con. Didn’t know her, though.

  26. JJ on July 11, 2016 at 9:10 pm said:
    A friend tells me that the page will take the registrant’s word as to their country, and does not check IP address.

    Oh great. Now I have an ethical quandary.

  27. Soon Lee: Oh great. Now I have an ethical quandary.

    I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing. I leave the decision on that wholly to you and your Antipodes. 😉

  28. @JJ

    …IIRC, he is good friends with Dorothy….

    Oh there’s a place in hell for me….

  29. snowcrash: Oh there’s a place in hell for me…

    Oh, gods, I can’t believe I posted that without realizing what I was saying… <facepalm>

  30. Useful things sousaphones, especially for mocking people such as the ever so popular Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

    https://youtu.be/lExnBadkFZg

    This ended up a recurring segment on show which they called Tubular Bellend

  31. When the game comes to Canada I’m going to have to have a very serious talk with my Pokémon-obsessed nephew about awareness and safety.

    Just tell him “Pika pika pika-pika, pika PIKA PIKAAA.” He’ll know what you mean.

  32. Very early on, when videogames started gaining ascendancy, I looked at how addictive Tetris and Pipe Dream were for me and said, “This is not a road I want to go down”.

    I can’t imagine how many hours I spent playing Tetris on the Gameboy and NES back in my late teens. I suppose my mother and grandmother would have told me to spend less time playing video games–if they didn’t have their own Gameboys for playing Tetris and Doctor Mario.

    Luckily (time-wise) I stopped playing video games in my early 20s. No moral or cultural judgement against the games or gamers, I just, for whatever reason, lost interest in them. I might hear about some hot new game (for the very low level of buzz that existed in the pre-web early 90s) and give it a try, but within 5 minutes decide that there must be any number of more interesting things I could do. (It didn’t help that even at the Doom-Descent-Wolfenstein generation of games, the resolution was already high enough to give me motion sickness within minutes. I haven’t touched a game more recent than Super Mario Brothers 64, but I assume I’d need to eat a box of Dramimine before touching a modern game.)

  33. One big problem with the singularity is that it makes assumptions about AI development being exponential, but all known machine-learning systems are logarithmic or even asymptotic.

    Also assumptions that there is much room for speed increases left in microprocessors. From my first Wintel machine to my current one, I went through around a 1000x increase in (peak theoretical) processing power. Over the rest of my life, I might see another 10x increase, but I definitely don’t expect another 100x one.

    This is an excellent (if somewhat technical) series of articles on why we are pretty damn near the end of exponential growth in processor speeds. (Links to parts 1 and 2 are in the article.)

  34. @Darren Garrison

    Well, maybe. We’ve been near the plateau several times which is why Moore’s Law keeps getting it’s definition adjusted.

    When we hit the wall on processor speeds, for instance, parallelism took off. Now that parallelism is limiting out, the big advances are happening in storage density and speed as we move past spinning rust. And in the wings are new materials (graphene for instance) and new systems are in the research labs (quantum computing, optical computing, ternary computing, analog digital hybrids, etc).

    So the plateau may happen. Then again it may not.

    It looks like an interesting article in any case. I’ll have to look again when I can do more than skim the first couple pages.

  35. @Stoic Cynic

    Well, maybe. We’ve been near the plateau several times which is why Moore’s Law keeps getting it’s definition adjusted.

    Remember, though, that Moore’s Law is about density of transistors–it has nothing to do with speed. We hit the wall on speed about 15 years ago, although, as the article suggests, superscalar techniques allowed us to get performance improvements through instruction-level parallelism for a while. Most recent improvements in throughput have come through distributed computing, not classical parallelism.

  36. @Greg Hullender

    Even related to just transistors though Moore’s Law has gone through a couple re-definitions over the decades. (On the current definition I believe Moore is predicting a plateau by 2025).

    There was a movement in the 90’s to redefine it in terms of generalized computing power though and that’s the definition a lot of people look at (accurately or inaccurately).

    If you go to generalized computing power we’re still on the upswing. As certain technologies plateau others are filling the gap and keeping the needle pointed sharply upwards. For instance storage IOPS are going through the roof as we transition off electromechanical storage to electronic storage. That’s always been a huge limitation and we’re moving past it.

  37. @Galactic Journey:

    I just saw Yogi Berra on “What’s My Line?” the other day. I wonder if he writes half the aphorisms ascribed to him.

    About half, which is the better ninety percent of them.

  38. @Stoic Cynic

    There was a movement in the 90’s to redefine it in terms of generalized computing power though and that’s the definition a lot of people look at (accurately or inaccurately).

    If so, I think they failed. 🙂 At least among academics.

    If you go to generalized computing power we’re still on the upswing.

    Maybe, but that’s an awfully hard thing to measure. Even IOPS is a very controversial measurement, and generalized computing power would need to include improvements in everything from network bandwidth to better datacenter software.

  39. I predict that AI is going to have at least one world-changing breakthrough in next few decades. Once that breakthrough arrives, though, we’ll give it its own name and won’t consider it “AI” any more.

  40. @Lowell Gilbert

    I predict that AI is going to have at least one world-changing breakthrough in next few decades. Once that breakthrough arrives, though, we’ll give it its own name and won’t consider it “AI” any more.

    And I think that breakthrough will be in “Practical Dialogue Systems,” which is software that lets you hold a conversation with a computer. It will be convenient to chat with the computer to get certain tasks done, but it will also be so evident that the computer isn’t “intelligent” that people won’t want to call it AI.

  41. @Stoic Cynic:

    When we hit the wall on processor speeds, for instance, parallelism took off. Now that parallelism is limiting out, the big advances are happening in storage density and speed as we move past spinning rust. And in the wings are new materials (graphene for instance) and new systems are in the research labs (quantum computing, optical computing, ternary computing, analog digital hybrids, etc).

    So the plateau may happen. Then again it may not.

    I don’t believe in the Singularity or even Strong AI, but if it turns out we’re able to reach either one because of switching to positrons it will be so hilarious I won’t mind being wrong.

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