Bioinformatics, meet AI; AI, may I introduce Bioinformatics?

This was a convergence made in heaven. DNA, cellular function, biological pathways ~ this material is by its nature (no pun intended) chock full of information. Too much information, in fact, for our tiny minds to juggle meaningfully. We will inevitably have to depend on computational assistance, and ultimately perhaps even intelligences other than our wetware to make sense of this stuff.

Even if Stephen Wolfram is right, and the program for the entire universe can be expressed in four lines of relatively simple code, we still are temporal creatures living our experiences within a computational process way too vast and too swift for us to simulate out in front of it. (I think this is actually one of those aleph order of infinity / recursion problems. Or do I mean fractals? Anyway.) So what anti-entropic sense we can bring to local problems may well have to be done using our entire toolbox ~ abstract mathematics, brute force computation, process simulation, neural network categorization, and maybe even the Cyc model of expert AI.

For more on Wolfram: 1,197 pages I'm going to have to read..., Life, the Universe, and Everything.

11:57:27 PM    please comment []

Why does so much hypertext art just plain suck? It's boring, it's ugly, it's impoverished.

I was so hoping that the HyperMacbeth would be different. I read about it in a Wired article, where the artist said that he hoped to provide a performance-like experience, in that the same text in the theatre is different each night, each production.

Not such a bad ambition. As a person who's taken her own liberties with the Bard, I have no objections in principle. If ever there was material meaningfully in the public domain, Shakespeare is it.

I didn't spend much time with this effort. I found it boring, and I have to say that I think when you mess with masterful material you'd better have something pretty interesting to say, something strikingly beautiful to offer. Otherwise you're just coasting on cultural gems, and your misuse of it is bound to look pathetic. Sadly, in this case, the result is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.

If you disagree with my assessment, I'd be delighted to hear why. Please comment below.

11:39:27 PM    please comment []