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. Continue reading “Survival Research Laboratories: Post-Apocalypse Now”
John Eikenberry: Free Agent
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. Continue reading “John Eikenberry: Free Agent”
Rudy Rucker [Part One]: Keeping It Transreal
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 American after a run through the mince cycle on a blender. I recently had the chance to catch up with Rucker and discuss two of his most recent books, Seek! (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999) and Saucer Wisdom (Forge Books, 1999). Continue reading “Rudy Rucker [Part One]: Keeping It Transreal”
Kevin Warwick: The Man in the Mind of the Machine
Described a short time ago as Britain’s leading prophet of the robot age, Professor Kevin Warwick is head of the Cybernetic Department at The University of Reading. He has designed countless machines that learn amazingly complex behaviors on their own. He is currently involved in a computer/human interface experiment that finds him with an active microchip implanted in his arm. The chip sets off sensors, causing them to activate various processes as he walks by. Continue reading “Kevin Warwick: The Man in the Mind of the Machine”
Hans Moravec: Robots Rising
Hans Moravec has been building robots since 1963: his first at age ten. His 1988 book, Mindchildren began a public access to the ideas of his speculative science. His current volume, Robot continues these conjectures of a future robot-run world with fervor. Moravec holds that a robot-reign is inevitable and that it won’t be so bad.
Hans Moravec is currently a Principal Research Scientist in the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. Continue reading “Hans Moravec: Robots Rising”