Author: Brian

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Systems Engineer, Papa, and eccentric individual.

I am constantly conflicted with building my LinkedIn and online persona, and my desire for privacy and anonymity.

Wally Engineers Something – Dilbert Comic Strip on 2015-10-09 | Dilbert by Scott Adams

Dilbert: Did you design our robot’s 3-D pill printer? Wally: Yup. Dilbert: The design is brilliant, except for the part where the pill drops out of the robot’s butt. Why are you suddenly brilliant? Wally: Never had a reason before.

Source: Wally Engineers Something – Dilbert Comic Strip on 2015-10-09 | Dilbert by Scott Adams

 

Was it the pill that made Dilbert realize that Wally was brilliant, or did he have an epiphany regarding how brilliant the joke is.

 

The series over the last few days referenced IBM’s Watson prescribing a new set of medications for a human, and a comment was made about robots programming humans.

Mr. Smith was right when he said when machines started thinking for us it really became their civilization.

I’m a big fan of the Future Of Life‘s interest in preventing unforeseen negative consequences of the rush for Artificial Intelligence.

Read: Faster – The Acceleration of Just About Everything

Faster
James Gleick; Random House Audio 1999

 

I have to recommend this book for the purpose of it’s current ability to cause reflection on the 15 years since it was written. The exact causes cited in the book are woefully outdated and don’t capture the revolutions that have happened since the year 2000.

What is relevant about the content is recognition about how correct the assumptions were as laid out in the book. Everything really is getting faster. My first favorite portion of this book is the enchanting description of Time in the very beginning. I have never felt such a deep understanding of Time before.

My second favorite portion of the book consists of the journey through what does 24 hours really look like and where does the time really go. Outdated as the book is, I found it very easy to examine the statistics the author uses to describe the hours of the day, and easily adjust for all the modern wonders and how much faster our lives are today.

I couldn’t imagine taking the time to read this book as the only thing I do, perhaps it was only appropriate that I listened to this while drinking my coffee on my way to work over the course of a few weeks.