Marvin Minsky in Wired

Wired has been coming through with some pretty good articles lately. Articles that it takes some balls to print and happen to be things that hold a great amount of my interest. Rarely does one read about these topics elsewhere in the ink on dead tree world. Last months cover was devoted entirely to Atheism, with interviews with people like Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins. This month was a much smaller article in the Play Print section about Marvin Minsky's new book, "The Emotion Machine," his much anticipated follow up to The Society of Mind.

Wired writer David Pescovitz is interviewing Dennett and Minsky when he asks, "What would a machine that worked this way (like a human basically) look like?" Dennett answers by interpreting Minsky's initial response as, "It's too early to build the big model." Minsky replies, "Actually, I could quarrel with that. I think the architecture described in The Emotion Machine is programmable. If I could afford to get three or four first-rate systems programmers, we could do it"

He goes on to say that it's unfair something like the DARPA Grand Challenge gets millions to be worked on when something like this project receives, presumably, little to no money from outside sources. At the lest the Grand Challenge is related to AI. I would take that a step or two further and say that it makes you wonder why we pay actors millions of dollars to make 1.5 hour films about crap and pay sports stars million of dollars to run into each other 200 times in the course of an hour, but we can't muster up enough money to pay a couple programmers to code for, I don't know, a year or three. It's the difference between a few hours of entertainment versus reaching humankind's destiny within our lifetimes and very few people even know or care about it.

November, Best Month Ever

In the world of rampant consumerism, November is shaping up to be a stellar month. I will even go so far as to say it is going to be the best month ever. I'm a young, single yuppie, and I love me some electronics (and some other things). This post will serve as a list (in no particular order, not even chronological like you might think) of all the awesome things that are due out soon:

1. Playstation 3 - November 17th: I won't even be trying to get a first run PS3. I'll let the bleeding edgers flush out the bugs and spend a night or two sleeping outside on a line.

2. Nintendo Wii - November 19th: I'm on the fence with this one. It's cheap, it could be fun, and my TV has 9t9 trillion inputs and I want to have something plugged into every one.

3. Apple iPod Shuffle - Listed ship date of October: I don't know if these babies are shipping already but other products that are get listed as ships within 24 hours. These things are so small and cheap, I'm going to get two and clip one to each of my nipples whilst at the gym.

4. Socom: Combined Assault (PS2) - November 7th: Let's face it Socom 3 sucks, a mere shadow of its predecessor. Being that CA will be playable online with S3, well, I'm reserving excitement.

5. Tony Hawk's Project 8 (PS3) - November ??: I've heard rumors that this is coming out in November but a quick intrasnets search is telling me probably not. The Tony Hawk series is one of my favs. American Wasteland was a bust though. Will the new platform offer unparalleled game play or merely pretty graphics?

6. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan - November 1st: This is my first deviation from electronics, but this movie looks too funny to not include. My name ehhhhh Borrrrat, your name please?

7. The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind - November 7th: In his much anticipated follow up to The Society of Mind, Marvin Minsky gives us his updated thoughts on AI. The future of the world is at stake here, for reals.

8. The Jennifer Morgue - November 1: Charles Stross is the man. Accelerando was the best sci-fi book of 2006, "IMHO." I haven't got around to reading Glasshouse yet as I've been taking a brief stint into neurology and philosophy lately. Once that's over, it's Stross time.

Well that is all I can think of for now. I'll update the list as I remember things or new word gets released down the Internet Tubes. Get excited.