Join Tom's newsletter for news on upcoming books and stories.

Archive for February, 2013

I Think, Therefore I Am…I Think

The next time you see someone standing on a street corner with a sign, proclaiming that the world is going to end tomorrow, just remember that they might not be as crazy as you think.

Physicists have been conducting all sorts of esoteric experiments for decades, teasing out answers only they can understand, to questions only they could think to ask. But when one considers  the recent results of some particle experiments, the ramifications are somewhat disturbing. To say the least.

These experiments have been searching for the Boson Higgs or so-called “God particle” and the results were applied to current theories. What the theorists found was that at some point, the universe we know and love so well is going to develop a rupture in it’s very structure. Somewhen, somewhere, the bubble of a new universe will spring into existence (not too different from the premise for my TerraMythos series) and spread at the speed of light throughout our universe. Needless to say, this revolutionary new universe will erase the one we know. And us with it.

The good news is that according to the values of the initial measurements, this will not happen for many billions of years. The bad news? Well, here is a quote from one of the researchers.

‘The calculation requires knowing the mass of the Higgs to within one percent, as well as the precise mass of other related subatomic particles. “You change any of these parameters to the Standard Model (of particle physics) by a tiny bit and you get a different end of the universe,” Lyyken said.’

What this means is that if the measurements are just a tiny bit wrong, in just the wrong direction, then for all we know the bubble may have already burst. The tsunami wave of a new universe could be sweeping toward us this very moment, and because it’s coming at the speed of light, we won’t know that it’s happening until it happens.

Here’s the comforting part…if it does, it’ll happen so fast the neurons in your brain won’t even have time to snap to the fact. If you are reading this, then it hasn’t happened yet. But it gives a new twist to the statement, “I think, therefore I am.”

I’m still thinking, therefore I still am.

Computerized Writers

I recently read a Wired magazine article that discussed how the reporting of local sports is starting to change.  Accounts of school sports, little league games, etc. are being outsourced, not to India or anywhere you can find on a map.  These stories are increasingly being written by computers.

All the virtual journalist requires are box scores, and using preset phrases and verbage, it can extrapolate an account of the game.  Those baseball stat lovers may not have been so far off base after all.  You can’t pass up how well a program like this runs, when it turns football games into a touchdown.  And get set to love what a good match this program is for tennis scores.

The point of all these bad puns is that computers are really good at running routine tasks.  But they can’t creatively express abstract concepts such as irony.  Though I suspect IBM’s Watson (the machine that beat Jeopardy champions) could make a good run at it.  What they can do is take routine facts and turn them into routine articles, something that humans probably found little joy in doing themselves.

We increasingly see ways that computers continue to take over more and more of what were once human chores.  Mindless chores, often thankless chores.  The problem is that often they were also paid chores.

In theory (and I’m sure it’s been done) a computer program could take an assortment of inputs (a 30 year old woman, a despondent police officer, a lost dog) and using an established formula, turn out a passable romance or mystery story.  Many genre after all have very well-defined patterns that are ideally suited for this sort of purpose.  And from what I’ve seen, humans will buy it up.

Where does that leave me, as a writer?  It doesn’t change a thing, because I’m still seeking to find what differentiates me from the average writer, be it human or cybernetic.  What special quality can I bring to the creative process that is unique?  It means I can’t simply churn out mindless drivel that any computer program can.

But that has always been my goal as an artist.  To be the best I can be.