Here’s a conundrum for you: you’re all alone. you manage somehow to build a friend who cleverly mimics you. it’s silicon-based. you build another that is flesh-and-blood. does this affect your loneliness?
I think yes—but not because one is silicon and the other is flesh. The crucial question is whether there is someone there.
Suppose you’re utterly alone and you build two companions. Continue reading
We are introducing the KGOD and Norton Street music as a powerful means to spark or trigger a waking state moment, but how will someone know for sure that this momentary flash of waking state has indeed been triggered?
How can you tell if you’re awake?
Ah. That’s the key question. If we’re going to say the music can trigger a moment of waking, the listener needs some way to distinguish that from “I liked that bit,” “I got emotional,” “I spaced out,” or “that was weird.” Continue reading
The practical payoff of waking up could almost be reduced to:
Wake up soon enough to make less of a mess of your life. Continue reading
A Practical Laboratory in Self-Awareness
Every device runs scripts.
A biological device runs habits, emotional reactions, social conditioning, memories, appetites, fears, inherited tendencies, and learned routines. Continue reading
For some time now I’ve been wondering whether the Norton Street musical projects might be more than simply albums.
What if they were places? Continue reading
Every human being develops skills during a lifetime. A carpenter learns woodworking. A physician learns medicine. A musician masters an instrument. We generally accept that expertise grows through years of study, practice, failure, and experience.
But occasionally we encounter an individual whose range of abilities seems to ignore those normal boundaries. Continue reading
“From somewhere between the campfire and the transmitter…” Continue reading
Devoted the entire evening to restoration of long-forgotten photos. I’ll show them today at our zoom meeting. Continue reading
A common bumpersticker from the early sci-fi and fantasy cons was: “fantasy writers eat their dead”.
Thinking about that certainly brings back a smile. “Fantasy Writers Eat Their Dead” was widely recognized as an inside joke of science fiction/fantasy convention fandom, especially on bumper stickers and badges in the early 1960s through the 1980s. I don’t know the definitive origin story or a first appearance in print, but you might find it in Zap Comics. Mr. Natural may have said it first. Continue reading
“Where the impossible is performed with impeccable manners.”
There are certain evenings when one wanders into the theater expecting respectable entertainment, only to discover that reality itself has misplaced its libretto. Continue reading