I used to solve the Rubik’s Cube — competitively. I never thought much of it until I, for some unknown reason, was recently compelled to tell a girl that story. I now know how nerdy it sounds. The girl and I no longer speak.
Some of the things I grew up doing, I knew were nerdy (e.g., Dungeons & Dragons, LEGOs, computers, etc.). Others were just normal. Looking back on them or still being into them, one sees just how nerdy things can be. In a recent column on his SYFFAL site, my …

I’ve been holding off on writing about WALL-E as I felt it needed to marinate for a while. There are so many things to comment on, I scarcely know where to start. I’ve seen the movie twice now, and it could definitely stand several more viewings. The accolade is often used recklessly, but WALL-E is the very definition of an “instant classic.”
Though I don’t care for Disney otherwise (or particularly any other animation outfit), I’m a dedicated Pixar fan. After last year’s absolutely abortive and formulaic Ratatouille, WALL-E is a …

Scientists have used metaphors to conceptualize and understand phenomena since early Greek philosophy. Aristotle used many anthropomorphic ideas to describe natural occurrences, but the technology of the time, needing constant human intervention, offered little in the way of metaphors for the mind. Since then, theorists have compared the human mind to the clock, the steam engine, the radio, the radar, and the computer, all of increasing complexity.

My friend and colleague Tom Georgoulias let me run this interview in my book, Follow for Now.
When I last spoke with Rudy Rucker, his nonfiction collection Seek! and science-fiction novel Saucer Wisdom were just finding their way into bookstores. Since that time, Rucker has been hacking on a video game programming toolkit called the Pop Framework and keeping a low profile on the science-fiction scene. After bouncing a few emails with him, it was obvious that we needed to do another interview and shed some light on his latest projects.

The deconstruction of organized sound put forth by multi-instrumentalist composer and improviser Weasel Walter is fiercely aimed at destroying the complacency of music and musicians. This is nowhere more evident than in his rotating cast of characters known as the Flying Luttenbachers. He describes the working plan of the Luttenbachers thusly, “The nature of operations has been to utilize the most appropriate people available — pushing the resulting chemistry as far as possible — and finally to abandon the formation when creative stasis has been reached.” Though he renounces all …

John Patrick is Vice President of Internet Technology at IBM and has championed many Linux-related projects there. In spite of the hokey title of his new book, Net Attitude, Patrick’s ideas about the Next Generation Internet (NGi) and Linux defy its decidedly unsavvy niche and its seemingly bad timing.

Eric Paulos is a man riding the experimental edge between humans and machines. His research in this area, both in his graduate studies in computer science and robotics at the University of California at Berkeley, and with renegade robot troops such as Survival Research Laboratories, is far more adventurous than most researchers in similar space dare to be. “Lethal, anonymous tele-obliteration,” the “I-Bomb,” and several types of tele-embodiment are just a few of his past projects. Danger is definitely not outside the scope of his work.

Remember the evil toys from the movie Toy Story, the ones with all the mis-matched parts from other toys, all rearranged into new strategies of purpose? Imagine those same toys built to life-like scale: in car-lengths instead of Lego-lengths, built with military surplus parts and armed with military surplus weapons. Now picture no-holds-barred warfare between these bastardized giants of the scrap heap. A skirmish between screaming, fire-breathing, chewing, burning monsters bent on hate for one another and devoid of concern for their human overseers.

After graduating from the University of Georgia with a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, John Eikenberry turned to the web to continue his career. His thesis focused on “using semantic networks for keyword analysis and document classification,” which was achieved mainly by developing independent agents. His current work is centered around a bot/agent development environment.

My friend and colleague Tom Georgoulias let me run this interview in my book, Follow for Now.
Rudy Rucker has a lot of things on his mind. Although his day job has him teaching computer science and mathematics at San Jose State University, Rucker is a writer. He has written twenty nonfiction and science-fiction books covering such topics as higher dimensions, artificial life, and biotechnology. Called the original cyberpunk author by many, his self-described “transreal” writing style is akin to Kerouac’s On the Road (Viking, 1959) and an issue of Scientific …