My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So many faces…

I still prefer my flowers… I think.

Tomorrow, I test my Apple Watch with a car audio system…

Apple Watch: An Elegant Face

So, I got my Apple Watch, and it’s spectacular. As far as time-pieces go, it’s like owning a dozen watches in one. A watch’s personality, smart or analog, is its face. No matter a watch’s bells and whistles, its face gives it character, and the functionality that sets it apart from a sun-dial. Apple Watch comes with a variety of different faces, everything from a 3D model of the solar system that plots planetary allignment, as well as date & time, to the iconic Mickey Mouse face, with Mickey pointing out the hours and minutes. I tried them all, but settled on something of simple elegance, a face called, Motion. Whenever my watch awakes from sleeping, a gorgeously rendered flower opens from shy bud to full-bloom, with a crisp digital display of the time and date. Clean, sophisticated, beautiful, my ideal time-piece. To keep things interesting, a different flower comes alive whenever the Watch wakes. Now, some may be questioning my masculinity at this point, which is not a problem for me. A fellow can enjoy flowers!

Of course, the Watch does a zillion other things… I’m experimenting still.

Dear Chuck Palahniuk,

Could you please, please for the love of the tiny infant Christ, stop writing stories in faux broken English. It’s jus not funny, it’s boring, and annoying to read.

“The reality agent, she persist on promenading Randy through the futility room, the pouter room, a walled-in closet, the reckless nook, the tedium room, and the nifty home offense, when Randy already be sold.”

Like, we get it. The “reality” agent rather than “realty” agent, selling commercial plastic reality to the masses, the sheep. Mass media is for the proles, it’s dull, empty, too low-brow for intellectuals, anarchists, anarchist intellectuals, hence the “media room” becomes the “tedium room.” Shocking. Shocking satire. I’m just bl- Oh, wait, these ideas are in almost everything you’ve ever written, faux broken English doesn’t change these ideas, doesn’t make them exciting again.

I know you can use our craft, I’ve seen you do it. If your use of craft is strong enough, recurring ideas, recurring themes can work. Look at Franz Kafka, Michael Cisco. Kafka could always write bureaucracy turned personal Hell, Cisco can always write fever dreams, abstract nightmare translated into words, because of a strong, commanding use of craft. Faux broken English isn’t the way to go, it’s not a use of craft, it’s a waste. You realize we can only write so many words before we quit breathing, that the number is finite, not limitless? That being so, and it is so, why waste so many?

Michael

So, I saw CHAPPiE, the story of a robot given something akin to life, true Artificial Intelligence. Overall, it’s a fount of missed potential. It really could have been something great, the potential was so right there, but in the end, it was all just a sad waste. I don’t want to get into a full review, it’s not worth the writing. I’d rather write about the essence of an idea that I found interesting.

In the late 1940s or early 1950s, Alan Turing was sort of waxing romantic about “machine intelligence,” and how you might teach an “electronic brain.” He wasn’t being absolutely serious, but he talked about giving a machine wheels for locomotion, video cameras and servo-arms for input, speakers for output, and allowing it to “roam the countryside.” He was just thinking about the fact that learning doesn’t occur in a vacuum, that we’re the sum of our experiences. We have things done to us, do things to others, and we learn. He spent a lot of time thinking about how one would educate a machine.

In CHAPPiE, some gangsters get ahold of CHAPPiE when he’s basically a child, and that doesn’t suit them. They want to use him for crime, particularly one very large robbery a few days hence. They need CHAPPiE to “grow up,” fast. So, they trick him into a car ride and dump him off to, well, “roam the countryside.”

It’s an interesting parallel.

Okay, I don’t generally post spoilers, however, I feel like I have to make an exception. Alan M. Turing’s good memory is involved. See, I worry that The Imitation Game is going to be how pop-culture is going to remember him. I mean, it’s a fucking “biopic,” right? If you saw a critically acclaimed film about Alan Turing, that’s pretty much the same as reading his biography, isn’t it? No, it’s not. Not in this case. I figure, if at least one person who saw The Imitation Game and thought it was the last word on Alan M. Turing stumbles onto this post, I did one good thing in my stupid life.

Now, all that said, if you haven’t seen The Imitation Game and you want to be shocked by its shocking ending, okay, STOP READING RIGHT NOW. REALLY, NOW, RIGHT NOW. I’M NOT FUCKING KIDDING, STOP FUCKING READING FUCKING NOW. Also, if you’re going to read his biography, do stop reading.

Alan M. Turing was a genius… That’s pretty much the only aspect of The Imitation Game that’s 200% dead on accurate. Most of the film is fiction, mostly harmless. Mostly. The end is not harmless. The end is an astonishing disservice to his memory, so that’s where I’m going to focus.

Yes, Alan was gay, but aside from his WWII working life, he was openly gay. For the times, he was courageously, or perhaps naievely openly gay, but open nonetheless. This worked out okay during his Cambridge years, a pretty liberal place in the 1930s, 40s, and even 50s, but after Alan left Cambridge for life in “the real world,” 1950s Manchester, it caused problems. Being gay in the 50s was not easy, in fact, it was illegal. Being outted could mean prison, even hard labor… or worse. See, in the post-WWII world, people looked to science to solve society’s every ill, and science answered the call. Homosexuality was gaining favor as a mental illness, not just a moral weakness, something science felt especially equipped to solve. The lobotomy was proving to be an inelegant solution, and the physical castration that was popular in America didn’t actually guarantee an end to sexual activity, but the world of chemistry seemed to offer a world of solutions. One particularly promising solution was chemical castration, the injection of estrogen in males seemed to eliminate the sex drive so long as it was regularly administered. Awesome. Yay junk science!

So, in 1951, Alan, having gained self-confidence in his early 40s, picked up a fellow, and soon enough, took him to bed. The fellow told some friends Alan was a spectacular target for burglary, being fairly wealthy, and gay. Being gay made one very open to blackmail, as being gay was a crime. However, when Alan’s lover said, yeah, I told some people about us and they probably robbed you, Alan went straight to the police and reported the crime. He left out the affair, of course, but didn’t fear the law. Unlike in the film, Alan’s neighbors didn’t report the robbery, while Alan tried to get the police out of the house as quickly as possible. The police also figured out the other “crime” pretty easily, and Alan promptly confessed, writing a five page statement. Alan was an adamant believer in personal honesty. He kept state secrets, but never personal. Of course, his five page statement rendered his defense impossible. His friends stood up for him publicly, and he was ultimately offered a choice between one year in prison or one year of “organotherapy” (hormone therapy/chemical castration). Yes, he had friends. He definitely wasn’t a social-butterfly. He loathed social fakery, and would easily walk away from someone mid-sentence if he found them intellectually lacking. Nobody would ever say he wasn’t really eccentric, but he had several close-friends, he wasn’t the socially incapable, extreme Autism-spectrum loaner as he was in his “biopic.” At any rate, he chose the organotherapy.

See, this is the part of the film that really upsets me. In The Imitation Game, Alan Turing in the midst of his hormone treatment is depicted as a doddering, weepy shut-in, delusionally building a computer named, Christopher, that he was teaching to be “so smart.” He had muscle spasms so severe he could barely hold a pen, and ultimately committed suicide because he just couldn’t stand the pain. The thing is, none of that happened! It’s such a shabby way to remember someone so brilliant. A tireless visionary, a kind and able friend.

Hormone injections had many possible side-effects, but Alan didn’t seem to suffer them. He joked in letters to friends that he grew breasts, but otherwise, he maintained his usual English stiff upper-lip. He survived the year apparently unscathed. He never stopped working, never stopped thinking.

Yes, his first true friend and unrequited-love was a school-mate named, Christopher, but he never built any such computer. Alan designed a theoretical computer, a “universal machine,” later coined the “Turing Machine,” that would ultimately be akin to the computers of today. He talked about computers being governed by “programs,” believed that it would be possible to create a machine that could approximate human behavior. He is the father of Computer Science, he envisioned things that we are only just starting to achieve today. He believed in “thinking machines,” but had no misconceptions about the computers of his day, he knew they weren’t yet capable of what he created on paper. Still, he pushed the technology of his time as far as it could go.

Yes, Alan committed suicide, in 1954, well after his organotherapy. The truth is, nobody knows why he did it. There are theories, but really, none seems more likely than another. I only know it didn’t happen as depicted in The Imitation Game.

Alan Turing was very much the Steve Jobs of his generation, he knew computers would change everything. His vision would eventually became reality. His story isn’t sad because of weakness, because society broke him. It didn’t. It isn’t sad because almost none of his accomplishments were recognized in his lifetime. He didn’t care about recognition, you don’t get into top-secret war work for the accolades. The sadness of Alan Turing’s life is that the Empire he helped save from annihilation treated him as “abhorrent,” labeled him as filth. It’s sad that he couldn’t love and be loved in every sense of the word, freely, without risk of punishment. It’s sad that, unlike Steve Jobs, technology was 50 years behind Alan’s ideas, not ready to explode around them.

Don’t remember Alan Turing weeping over some imaginary computer, think about him smiling from ear to ear knowing that his ideas would be the foundation for entirely new branches of study, knowing that I typed this on what could easily be called a Turing Machine. Maybe he can see such things from where he is, maybe, if he’s anywhere. I hope he is, he thought about such things too. Like I said, his mind was endlessly in motion.

I’ve certainly noted before right now that I am astonishingly bad at math. It’s absolutely not my bag. The problem below is all smoke and mirrors, fancy looking, but easy enough for a chimp to figure. I’m not a maths brain, not by any stretch of the term, not like a true maths brain, Alan M. Turing. Though, after reading a biography by Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma, it’s plain that Alan Turing was so much more.

Alan Turing recently resurfaced in the public spotlight due to a highly acclaimed film adaptation of his life, The Imitation Game, which I really enjoyed… until I read The Enigma and realized his life was so much bigger than manufactured Hollywood drama.

I actually don’t want to say more, knowing nothing about his life only makes the discovery of his accomplishments all the more profound.

So, I saw Ex Machina today and it was absolutely stunning. Don’t worry, I don’t write spoilers, ever.

This isn’t a full-review, I just have to say, right now, Ex Machina is totally one of the best films about Artificial Intelligence I’ve ever seen. It’s intimate, intense, sensual, provocative, terrifying.

I’ll do a full review, but just go see it.

I’ve finally finished Vellum and Ink by Hal Duncan, both books comprise his epic series, The Book of All Hours. I want to take back what I said about Vellum in my pre-review, I totally didn’t see what Duncan was really trying to do, I didn’t see the brilliance. If you think of Vellum and Ink as typical novels, with a plot that goes and then and then and then until a resolution, you’ll miss the point, and you’ll be astonishingly angry from page one on.

The series is very complex, but the basic framework is this: There’s this Book written in the language of creation, the Cant, the language of Gods, Angels, Demons, and any number of Unkin (human beings whose eyes are open a little too wide).

It’s said that the God of Gods asked His Scribe to write a Book that contains the entire story of humanity, The Book of All Hours, not just past to present to future, but rather, countless possible permutations of each. None of it is fiction, everything happens somewhere, somewhen. The Book’s pages are alive, the skin of Angels, the Cant inscribed in Angels’ blood as ink. Yet, otherwise, it looks like any old tome to be carried in some scholar’s satchel. In the Cant, one word equals a thousand written in the languages of humanity. One line, akin to a thousand pages. One page, akin to a thousand books. The Cant is perfection, purity of expression. When the war in Heaven breaks out, the Book, the master edition, is given to humanity by those Angels who take no sides, who don’t want the Book re-written for one side’s gain. The Book is guarded for countless ages, until it vanishes into obscurity. At least, that’s one story of the Book. Remember, time, reality itself, isn’t a straight line.

Vellum is a book of permutations. Duncan tells the story of Inanna, the Goddess of Earth, her descent into the Underworld and ultimate escape by giving her lover, Damuzi, to take her place. He tells the story of Phreedom and her brother, Thomas, two kids, two Unkin, trying to escape being drafted into the War in Heaven. Like Inanna, Phreedom confronts the Queen of Hell, like Damuzi, Thomas doesn’t escape his fate. The stories are different, but not. Duncan writes the Book’s possibles in noir, fantasy, sci-fi, epic poem, dystopian action-adventure erotica, the depth is astonishing.

Ink is a continuation of Vellum, but more focused. Tales of how people tried to change the Book to avoid something awful, only to bring about something worse. Angels trying to finish the war. Those who seek the book, and a way out of reality.

I really don’t want to give anything away, Vellum and Ink are best read fresh. At the end, the connections are there, the overall story exists, but until you get there, it’s best to enjoy each section as its own entity.

So, I ordered my Apple Watch. I got the Sport version, a 38mm face, Aluminum Space Gray body, black sport band (I’ll upgrade to leather in due time). Now, before people start with the…

“You can only move your face! What do you want with a fancy, high-tech, decadent, WRIST-watch??? Go die in a car fire.”

Well… aside from lots of potential practical future assistive technology applications that are bound to start popping up… I like watches! I’ve carried a pocket-watch everywhere I go for the last fifteen years. I ask to look at the time on occasion, I always see its silver chain sticking out of my bag, it’s aesthetically beautiful. Watches are beautiful, I’ve always loved them. I can’t wait to wear my Apple Watch, to have a precision timepiece AND an iPod right on my wrist. Then, as technology moves the way I think it will, I’ll have quite the Jedi weapon on my side…

Anyway, Jedi use or no, it’s a gorgeous watch. Having things of beauty in your life is a good thing, they give off a little light when darkness comes to call.

So, Tuesday evening I saw Alanis Morissette play an acoustic show at the Mahaffey Theater, a swanky venue a bridge away from Tampa, in nearby St. Pete.

Generally, I go into concerts with low expectations, but certain artists are just guaranteed to put on a spectacular live show, Alanis is one such artist. مراهنات المباريات Honestly, she often sounds better live than what she creates in the studio. I can’t stand her two latest records, not because the songs are badly written, but because they sound awful, her voice run through so many filters, she sounds like a fuckin’ machine. Fortunately, Tuesday, she played unplugged and filter-free. بيت365 She sounded absolutely gorgeous.

The show wasn’t part of a tour for any particular record, but rather, a celebration of twenty years in music. كازينو عبر الانترنت She sang for her fans, all the songs we love best, mostly from Jagged Little Pill, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, a little Under Rug Swept and MTV: Unplugged. The years have only given her voice a certain richness, emotional depth.

It was a fun night.