Alchemical Musings

Over Memorial Day weekend I attended Fleet week, and made a few new friends. They happen to be robots, of the autonomous flying variety.

These little gadges come in a wide range of sizes, from wasp not much bigger than two hands all the way up to the predator, which is now armed with hellfire missiles.

For the time being, these robots are unarmed, but are all equipped with survaillance cameras. This explosion in optical feeds helps explain the urgency behind programs like Carnegie Mellon’s Informedia project (Is Anyone Watching Grandma?).

These craft already realize Ender’s Game scenarios, with hs dropouts controling live ammunition in the Iraqi theater of combat from the safety of a bunker in New Mexico.

But even without carrying missiles themselves, these robots have become part of the weapons system. A soldier explained to me how the targeting systems for the large guns on the decks of US ships are now wired to the data feeds coming from the remote drones. With the click of a lightpen, what the plane sees is targeted from the ship’s guns, damage assesed and trajectories corrected.

Killer robots are a topic I have been thinking about for a while, but it was truly amazing to see these devices in person. In many respects this hardware is identical to the remote control airplanes from the ’50s. The only major new advancement is the software controling them.

Here is the model that Bush is planning on deploying to patrol the Mexican border. How long before local law enforcement gets a few of these to play with? How many do they need before the start assigning them to track individual suspects?

Filed by jonah at 12:13 am under earth, epistemology
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A recent visit to the new 5th avenue Apple store made me realize that the war for the living room console is effectivlely moot. For years manufacturers have been vying to create the hybrid computer/tv, destined for the position formely occupied by the VCR.

What I realized was that this compititiion is a bit like the telcom companies fighting over landlines, while everyone else went out and got themselves a cell phone. Portable media players, combined with docking stations mean that I can have my music, movies, games, pictures, etc on my person, at all times. Inconvinient to carry your xbox, ps3, or mac mini in your car, to your office, or to your friends house.

It’s all too easy to forget to factor in Moore and his law.

Filed by jonah at 12:12 am under aesthetics, earth
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I am bummed at the failure of politicians and the media to connect the issue of Net Neutrality to the issue of China’s internet censorship. The issue of internet censorship in China led to congressional hearings where:

“The House International Relations subcommittee’s top Democrat, Tom Lantos, told representatives of the companies that they had accumulated great wealth and power, “but apparently very little social responsibility”.

“Your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace. I simply don’t understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night,” the Associated Press quoted him as saying.” (bbc news)

Meanwhile, on the home front, we fail to recognize censorship under the guise of its free market counterpart –

“In today’s sausage factory of knowledge production, that is exactly the situation that we face. Dominant groups explain the world through their control of knowledge production. Subordinate groups are excluded, and as a result, subordinate knowledeges are excluded as well. In liberal societies, these knowledge disqualifications are not achieved primarily through the legal authority of censorship. But as Foucault reminds us, these disqualifications are made by the ‘ensemble of the rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific effects of power are attached to the true.’” (The Birth of Postpsychiatry, p. 139)

Free and open discourse is under attack, in the homeland. Just ask a ninja: YouTube - Ask A Ninja Special Delivery 4 “Net Neutrality”

and here is something you can do:Save the Net

Filed by jonah at 11:22 pm under earth, ethics
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