Friday, August 27, 2010

Don't Eat the Silverware

Don't Eat the Silverware, you put it in your mouth and remove the utensil, after you have removed the cake to swallow.  Basic stuff, you would think...
Oh wait, this is earth, right. right....You never could distinguish the map and the terrain. Your earthling habit of assuming words, not what the words denote, are the relevant aspects, keep you confused and fighting so life's broader purposes can continue at the proper rhythm.
Just forget I said anything, I was the confused one, -- obviously--I forgot I was visiting earth.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Canny Valleys

The concept of the "uncanny valley" has come to my attention.  The phrase was invented by a Japanese robotics scientist, Masahiro Mori.  The definition we find in wikipedia, that bastion of belief that anonymous contributors are reliable, and personal knowledge irrelevant, is : 


This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely human" and "fully human" entity is called the uncanny valley.


The phenomenon is meant to explain the revulsion felt by people when contronted by a robot which is very human, but not fully human, looking.  Well, you can read the article as well as I can. What interested me was that perhaps we should call this a "canny valley," or perhaps, "uncanny peak." Because this revulsion may derive from the reminder,  a robot presents, a reminder that makes a person  forcibly glance at, this: his own mechanical, robotic, MIND.