The theme for today’s post is modeled after a quote I recall from Einstein: “I know not with what weapons they will fight WWIII with, but I know for certain that WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Machines are the other side of the mystical art of combat. The way that humans incorporate technology into our arsenals says a lot about the society behind it. One-inch punches and hypnotic combat are pretty cool, but in the face of today’s technologies, they just don’t hold up. What good is being able to knock down twenty men when there’s a machine that can clear two city blocks in the blink of an eye? Of course I still root for those that wish to practice hand-to-hand combat as a medium for self-discovery, but I think it is worth showing what mechanics and techy-minded people have come together to accomplish for the good or woe of society. With today’s advances in robotics, there is a new fear that is beginning to emerge about the kinds of warfare that we can expect. Some of these fears are legitimate, but the overall gist is that humans are being taken out of direct combat and leaving robots to do the damage and absorb the hurt. Rather than trying to express a morality driven article about how the machines are going to kill us all, I’ll let you decide if these (sometimes hidden and sometimes unnoticed) technologies pose the kind of threat that people like the one who wrote this article here are beginning to ponder. The first, and very likely the most popular and recognizable, of the technological weapons is today’s unmanned drones.

Here’s two videos that show what these drones are capable of. Rather than imagining these command centers are obscure locations deep beneath the earth, it is kind of remarkable that the command centers themselves can be mobilized to accommodate their needs optimally. What is also pretty striking are the amount of sensors and cameras that these drones have. They describe themselves as a soldier’s “third eye” which is also a metaphor for ESP. It’s kind of interesting. Here’s the video that shows a crew from a Predator Drone.

Here’s a shorter clip that shows more of the devastating capabilities that the Predator’s have:

Here’s a pretty interesting conversation with some military guy about the effectiveness of the MQ-9 Reaper drone. He describes it as a “hunter-killer,” which is kind of scary to me and should be to anyone who ever watched Terminator. The flying heli-jets of death from that movie were also called hunter-killers. Terrifying? Maybe, but it certainly shows that the fine people behind the film Terminator knew their stuff and made a pretty remarkable and true prediction about military combat in the future. Here’s the clip:

But technology is a funny thing. For all this fancy stuff, there are a few problems that have arrived. Iranian and Iraqi forces who oppose the US have used Russian software that was meant to intercept satellite TV signals to hack the feed from the Predator drones. Perhaps the most frustrating part about this is that the software only cost $26. Not $26 million. Just $26 to essentially defeat a $4 million dollar device. Here is the link to the Popsci website. In addition to developing the ability to hack into the drone’s eyes, the drones are still vulnerable to other kinds of attacks. Here’s a sixty minute news story that shows some of the facts about the limitations of the drone.

Clearly these machines are not as indestructible as governments would want us to believe. But the point is that they are out there, and they are being built better and faster every day. Many people believe that these are the harbingers of future warfare, so let’s see what else is out there.

Here’s a really good talk about the “robot revolution” that is “upon us.” P.W. Singer in this talk tries to shred the mythic incredulity of popular opinion on this topic. What he does in this talk (which took place last year) is express the incredible explosion of robotics and their application for war. Another thing that he tries to do is convince the crowd that the “Terminator” situation is not realistic. But that’s a hell of a claim to make. Of course the guy whose profiting from the assembly and proliferation of robot soldiers is going to tell you that they are safe and actually safer than a flesh and bone soldier. Here’s the clip:

Next week I’ll cover some in more detail some of the robots that you just saw in that footage. But consider this: What effect will taking human beings out of the killing position of war do to our society? What does it say about us that we want something else to do the killing and take the losses for us?

Hey kids! It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for a Book Report. I realized, rather belatedly, that I didn’t have an Author Spotlight last month, and so I shall do my best to make up for it now.

Today I want to focus on one of my favorite authors. When asked by Barbara Walters what he would do if he had six months to live, he responded, “Type faster.”

The term “robotics” was coined in 1941. In 1920, the word “robot” was introduced to the public via Czech playwright Karel Čapek in his play Rossum’s Universal Robots. While Čapek’s play presents the basic idea of man-made machines replacing the human laborer, much of what we now consider robotic and robotic behavior stems from the author who coined the term “robotics” (in a science-fiction short story, of all places): Isaac Asimov.

Born in Russia in 1920 (though his family moved to Brooklyn when he was three; he never learned to speak Russian, his parents always spoke to him in English and Yiddish), by the time of his death in 1992 Asimov had become one of the most prolific authors of all time, having some hand in the writing or editing of nearly 500 books and over 9000 letters or postcards (postcards being his favored way to respond to fan mail). His works have appeared in nine of the ten major categories of The Dewey Decimal System, the sole exception being the 100s: philosophy and psychology (which I actually find to be a bit strange, since his work has helped to define, almost entirely, our psychological and philosophical conception of robotics).

Asimov studied—and eventually earned a Ph.D in—biochemistry, and although he was a tenured professor in biochemistry at Boston College, he actually made more money writing than he did teaching. Asimov loved science, and firmly believed that science-fiction would help direct the discoveries of science-fact.
In “My Own View” published in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978) he writes,

“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all…It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be …This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.”

Also, in “How Easy to See the Future” published in Natural History magazine (1975) he writes, “Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.”

Possessing an amazing intelligence (he did get a Ph.D in biochemistry, after all), he was was a reluctant vice-President of Mensa International, calling certain members of the organization “brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs”. Of course, he also stated that the only men he would admit to being less intelligent than were Marvin Minsky and Carl Sagan.

Asimov’s contributions to literature are astounding and expansive. He was the first author to combine science-fiction and mystery, advocating that science-fiction was a merely a flavor that could be added to any genre and not a genre limited to itself. He coined the term “social science-fiction” to describe a new trend in the 1940s of science-fiction authors (following the trail blazed by Asimov and Robert Heinlein) writing less about space opera and gadgets and more about the human condition.
He was friends with Kurt Vonnegut, who once asked him, “How does it feel to know everything?” (To which Asimov replied that he only had the reputation of knowing everything, which made him very uneasy)
He also was a friend to Arthur C. Clarke, and during a cab ride along Park Avenue in New York, they formulated the “Asimov-Clarke Treaty of Park Avenure”, where Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science-fiction writer in the world (reserving second place for himself) and Clarke was required to insist Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second place for himself). In Clarke’s book The Report on Planet Three (1972), the dedication reads, “In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer.“

The Three Laws
One of the most enduring marks Asimov made on the world was his view on robotics (and his invention of the word). In 1950, Gnome Press released I, Robot, a collection of short stories Asimov wrote between 1940 and 1950 that had originally been published in the magazines Super Science Stories and Astounding Science Fiction. The majority of these stories contained an invention of his: The Three Laws of Robotics, which dictate all robotic behavior.
Law 1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Law 2: A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Law 3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Formation of these Laws enabled Asimov to write robot stories that differed from the trend of most authors to conclude their robot story with a Frankenstein ending.

…one of the stock plots of science fiction was… robots were created and destroyed by their creator. Knowledge has its dangers, yes, but is the response to be a retreat from knowledge? Or is knowledge to be used as itself a barrier to the dangers it brings? With all this in mind I began, in 1940, to write robot stories of my own — but robot stories of a new variety. Never, never, was one of my robots to turn stupidly on his creator for no purpose but to demonstrate, for one more weary time, the crime and punishment of Faust. (1964, in his Introduction to The Rest of the Robots)

Much of Asimov’s writing concerning robots from then on dealt with ways it may be possible—or seem possible— to break the Three Laws. Indeed, in some of his final books, there is the implication that some of the most long-lasting harm came from robots following the laws too perfectly.
Today, most scientists working on artificial intelligence view the Three Laws as incredibly idealistic, more suitable for literature than actual applied science. On the other hand, most of those scientists would also admit that without the three laws (and a fourth, the Zeroth Law, added in a later novel: “A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm”), their sense of direction in applied robotic science would not be nearly as clear.

Foundation
The Foundation Series might be for Asimov what The Dark Tower was for Stephen King: A vast storyline that ends up tying together, in one way or another, most of the science fiction he wrote. In 1966, the series won a special, one-time-only Hugo Award for “Best All-Time Series”. Asimov wrote that when he first heard about the award, he assumed it would be going to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
Originally, the books were a collection of short stories, like I, Robot. Asimov wrote the stories as a sort of science-fiction retelling of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Gradually, Asimov began to tie in references to other work, including his Robot novels, as well as his Empire series (which begins with A Pebble in the Sky, the first novel Asimov published that didn’t have an origin in a magazine). By the time of his death, the timeline for the Greater Foundation series spanned 20,000 years and one and a half million words.
Other writers have also contributed to Asimov’s fictional vision of the future. Orson Scott Card, Harry Turtledove, Greg Bear, and David Brin, among others, have all contributed stories in long and short form concerning the Foundation.

Other Work
Among the many hundreds of works that Asimov contributed to, Nightfall is one of the more interesting to me. The short story appeared in Astounding Science Fiction when Asimov was 21. It was his 32nd published story. In 1968, the Science Fiction Writers of America agreed that it was the best science-fiction story ever written up to that point.
The story’s genesis comes from a discussion Asimov had with his editor over a line from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem, Nature.

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God!

From that discussion came the story of a planet, similar to Earth in every way save one: Instead of only one sun, this planet had six, the result being the people on this planet had never been in darkness. Until there comes a day where darkness falls.
Towards the end of his life, Asimov took the short story and expanded it into a full length novel with Robert Silverberg. In addition to the very interesting concept of a planet experiencing darkness for the first time, the story delves into the social, scientific, psychological, and historical ramifications of such an event, providing a very interesting examination of the human psyche in the process.

Two other novels I find incredibly interesting are his Guides.
In 1981, Asimov released his Guide to the Bible (his Guide to the Old Testament was originally published in 1967, and the New Testament was published in 1969; the version released in 1981 just combined them). Beginning in Genesis and going in order, Asimov analyzes the historical, geographical, and political setting of each book, adding biographical information about the main characters. Rather than being an analysis of the spiritual quality of the mythological aspects of the book, Asimov examines the secular aspects of each book with intellectual commentary.
In 1970, Asimov published his Guide to Shakespeare, in two parts. Applying the same rigorous research to the Bard as he did to the Bible, Asimov’s guide examines every play Shakespeare wrote or co-wrote (that hasn’t been lost, anyway) as well as the two epic poems The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis. Asimov divides his guide into sections based on the setting for each play, either Greek, Roman, Italian, or English (with Hamlet getting lumped into the English section so there didn’t have to be a one-play Danish section), and then organizes the plays in each section chronologically, making allowances for plays not based on actual events or people. Then he makes note in each play of how much is real history, how much is anachronistic, and offers short biographies of the original versions of characters, where applicable.
Asimov’s Guides serve to widen the readers comprehension of the material, which allows for a greater appreciation of it. I strongly recommend giving either a read if you are interested in classical or religious literature.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Hello all.  Street Fece is developing a whopper of a story othat’s not quite ready yet, so he’s asked me to jump in and write a little something-something to keep his throng of followers occupied until his return.  Unfortunately for you all, that means you get to read me for a bit.  Equally unfortunate for you, I haven’t got a scientific bone in my body and my interest in all things natural ends when I flush a toilet.  So, today we’re going to “geek” out on something that has been a fear of mine since I first saw Sarah Conner in the eighties:  ROBOTS ARE TAKING OVER THE WORLD!

We’ve all seen at least one of the Terminator movies, 9, The Matrix, and/or the Short Circuit films, so we know that in the end we’re all going to be stripped for parts by our creations in a technological throwback to Frankenstein.  But what many of you may not know, is that it is getting ready to happen now — as in right now.  All robots need to end us is will, mobility and weapons and we’re all f*cked!  So, without further adue, allow me to introduce the methods of our destruction.

WILL

Let’s start with this little gem from 2001 — yes, 8 f*cking years ago!  A group of deathbringers decided they would fuse tchnology with flesh and gave control of a robot to the brain of an eel!  “The robot is controlled by an immature lamprey eel brain that was removed, kept alive in a special solution and attached to the hockey-puck-sized robot by wires so it can receive signals from the device’s electronic eyes and send commands to move the machine’s wheels.”  This means that robots themselves may not need to have any will, but some pissed off sea creature with all the right connections could go all Al Gore on us all and bring about death and destruction from the comfort of their wet home.  Or worse yet, what if a redneck get’s connected?!  Think about it…

But don’t think for one second that they need us…  Robots are learning just fine on their own.  Yesterday, on the 17th of September, 2009, I ran across this fun little story.  According to the article, a bunch of geeks in California have created a beastly borg that actually learns!  It holds out a rock and says, “Hello, whats is this?”  You say, “WHy hello robot, that’s a rock.”  Then it beats you to death with it.  Well, maybe not yet, but what happens when the learning robot LEARNS that it doesn’t NEED us to survive?  What then?  Does nobody in robot research and development watch movies or read comic books!?  You’re killing us all!

So we’ve got the thinking machine, the one that can hack into our nervous systems, but what about on the spot problem solving?  Well, for that piece of fun, we get this:

A bunch of robots that can, like zords, form together to make whatever they need to kill us all.  Sweet.

MOBILITY

They can RUN, they can JUMP, and as of last year, they have four legs:

This scary bitch not only will chase after you with out needing a break, but if you do try to knock it over, it won’t go anywhere except sideways and then back up in your face to eat it!  And it doesn’t manner when or where you run to, because BIGDOG hunt in ALL SEASONS!

Or how about this little guy, designed to crawl through your body without you ever knowing!  We could all be infested with these guys as you read this and you would never know it.  Yeah.  Awesome.  One night you’ll be sleeping when all of the sudden, a thousand little fly-bots come swarming out of your own ass then connect to form an alternate version of you!  They’ll eat you, and go on pretending to be you — and nobody will know the difference…  Sleep well.

And you don’t need mobility as much when you hide well…  Take the following video for example.  A dutch (it’s always the Dutch…) gas station has a robot hiding in their station to fill up your car.  Sounds nice, huh?  WRONG!  Just wait until your child walks by and the mechanical arm extends to pop off little Timmy’s head thinking it’s a gas cap!  Tell me how nice it is then!

WEAPONS

I’ve always thought that the greatest weapons we’re then sneaky ones.  You know, like knives, daggers, rocks and women?  Don’t laugh!  See this pool-playing borg?  Imagine the stick is a katana blade.  Yeah — instant death.

“Well,” you say, “I’d never let the robot get close enough.”  Oh yeah?  They don’t always look like this:

“Wait, you never saw Terminator?”

Sometimes, they look like this:

You’re cute… Is that a knife? Oh sh*t, run! She’s a T-1000!!

You see, in Japan, they’ve created modeling robots that “are the average woman in Japan.”  Great.  Now the enemy has a way to get close to MANGA fans everywhere…  Actually, is that such a bad thing?

And finally, for you’re viewing pleasure, I give you the four most terrifying robot videos I’ve ever seen.

1.  The Death Hand.

2.  The Flesh Eaters

3. The Snow Pooper (Sorry, you gotta click to see that one)

4. The Death Dealer

Run and Hide.

Filling in for SF,

Mr. Wolff