Poptech 2002
Ernest Svenson's blog reports from the conference in Camden, Maine
Sunday, October 20, 2002

PopTech is about over - Bob Metcalf is summing up what was said by each of the speakers.  After it's over Buzz Bruggeman is going to give me lift to Portland and I am going to pray that I can find a television set that will carry the Saints game.  I had a really great time and lived in constant awe of the many highly intelligent and interesting people who flocked to this conference.  Hopefully, I can come back next year. 
11:03:55 AM    comment []

Stephen Wolfram's explanation of the rules of reality - Wolfram has written a weighty tome in order to argue that all of the complexity that we see in nature is really the result of a few simple rules. In the spirit of trying keep things simple I will distill his whole presentation down to a simple story.  Remember the "big bang" theory?  Well, what's happening is really God running a deific version of WinZip Pro.  And that's it. 


10:04:53 AM    comment []

Beware of "the jaggies" - Vernor Vinge is talking about the far reaches of artificial worlds.  He is a science fiction writer so he is conversant with a bunch of really far out scientific theories.  First, Vinge discussed his interest in the concept of singularity, defined as watershed moment like the event horizon of a black hole.  Vinge explored the idea that human development will soon hit a point where the race will radically evolve.  And for us to understand what is coming next is analogous to an animal like the goldfish trying to understand what human experience is like.  So, if this singularity is coming soon you don't want to be left behind.  But if you are left behind, take comfort.  You won't know.

So even though it's hard to predict what it will be like after the watershed moment we can do some organized imagination stuff and fast forward [fill in radical theories here] to the assumption that really smart humans will like to run simulations as a playful hobby.  Hey, you can't do deep thinking all the time.  Anyway, the point is: what if our current life experiences are really just the computer simulations of higher beings who enjoying a few millenia of leisure time?  Well, this would be big news to us even if we are basically as self-aware as goldfish.  How would we know this is all a computer simulation? 

Vinge examined the podium and said perhaps we should look for "the jaggies."  But that's what a goldfish would do.  We need to look somewhere else.  Maybe the strange stuff that we see in quantum physics is really "the jaggies."  Notice how things change at the quantum level when there is an observer in the picture.  Why is that?  Well, at the moment you add an observer to the simulation that increases the computational load and you get an anomolous shimmer.  That's "the jaggies."  From the standpoint of a goldfish.

Alexander Shulgin took the stage next.  He invented the drug Ecstasy and freely admits he is interested in the development of other psychedelics, and in trying them out.  He was very non-linear in his presentation, but quite entertaining.  He is obviously a pioneer in the quest to uncover "the jaggies."  And the government, and other law enforcement officials, apparently are very concerned about people who use chemicals in this quest.   I didn't see any DEA agents in the audience and I know that they weren't any here because if there were they would have gone into convulsions during Shulgin's talk.


8:29:01 AM    comment []

Tell me a story and play me a song - tonight Jaron Lanier was supposed to discuss "A Musical Experience with Virtual Reality."  The titles of a lot of these programs are often irrelevant to what actually gets discussed, and that was especially true of Jaron's "talk."   He played an acoustic piano, and some weird instruments that came from China and other places.  His music was not mainstream.  Very improvisational, and often somewhat dissonant.  I'm sure a lot of people didn't like listening to it. 

But before he played the music he talked about some of his ideas, including how Alan Turing's homosexuality, which the British government tried to "cure him of," may have affected the development of the Turing test.  Jaron also weaved in a discussion of the amazing computational capabilities of a marine creature known as "the cuddlefish."  Somehow the connection between Turing and the strange fish seemed to be legitimately sensible when Jaron was talking (In the interest of maintaining my journalistic integrity, I admit to having a couple of drinks before the program).  Still, I think everyone would agree that Jaron is a strange and wildly intelligent guy.  What I found endearing about him (even though he seems to enjoy having lots of people pay attention to him) is that he didn't feel like he needed to support his radical ideas with "respectable and accepted sources." 

He basically admitted up front that his views were just "stories."  Of course, as a great philosopher once wrote about the Internet, "The Web...reminds us that the fundamental unit of time isn't a moment, it's a story..."  Jaron Lanier's talk (and his music for that matter) may have contained some dissonance and some unexpected transitions but I found myself more motivated to accept his ideas than some of the other speakers whose presentations were geometrically more coherent.  Why?  Well, usually when academics market their ideas they feel compelled to call them "theories."  I guess I'm a simple guy.  I like stories, even if they're kind of kooky.    Then again, maybe I had too much to drink at dinner.


12:14:21 AM    comment []






© 2003 Ernest Svenson
Last Update: 6/5/2003; 11:20:44 PM

Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website.    Click to see the XML version of this web page.

 











October 2002
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
    1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31    
Sep   Nov

PopTech 2002 Weblog

PopTech Program

Dan Gillmor's Poptech notes

Weinberger

JD Lasica

Paul Boutin

Live Video Feed