Cosmicists never sleep soundly, this much is a fact on the ground. Below the ground on which they stand, however, malevolent entities have reigned supreme in the categories of horrors that lurk and, like some otherwise unnamable action committees, endorse a nightmare cult ready-made to be relinquished upon the surface-world. Drooling dreamily in its underground abode, Cthulhu may be caught with its pants-down, as it were, by upstart earthquakes called forth callously by opportunists and other fleshy minded mammals who find employment in the hydro-fracking biz.
Ohions, not infamous, of yet, safe for a handful of cosmic conspiracies, eldritch cults, et cetera, may yet reel in another earthquake and the horrid stone city that it yields.
Cosmicists Never Sleep Soundly
Cosmic Indifference Engine
Antarctic fictions found fomenting in garages, tinkerings betwixt imagings and imaginings. Amidst pile ups of Popular Mechanics mags collaged into analytical cubisms, another atemporally induced mirage: Charles Babbage’s shadow out of time, facing dubious citations and still the Babbage shadow surfaces. We would welcome a bonafide space-time transient in, but we boarded up for a long winter, for reasons unwarranted or unknown.
If anyone was paying attention to what the human calculator clone does at night, what the derelict theory object angles towards, what an obliteratarium guised as a super computer might achieve for a time…is lost in the usual bouts of glocal anesthesia
As the cosmically inclined populace hones into looming portents of 2012, Weird-Fiction patches together an appropriate technology, offering its own algorithms for cracking conspiratorial codes.
It is, of course, the Alan Turing Year, the end of ancient calendrical cycles and the emergence of the petaflopping computer. This much is predicted and or scheduled. What better ways to inaugurate this than with a heaping and a helping of a ficto-quizzically equipped cosmic indifference engine, an artificial antagonism of sorts, for hopefuls studying up on eschatological design or, and, a cluster of stars cajoled into nestling into the namesake of high-technology that premises its prowess on floppiness.
To be known or unknown as the pataphrase this is ever a cosmetic fix-r-upper. That, dear humanoid, is a lexiconspiratorial distinction, damned near suitable for your ears, but for sake of the always already overwhelmed —think of it thusly: An extraordinary rendition of someone else’s ideas, a paraphrasing over-wrought with the paranormal mechanisms of cosmicism to the point of entropic or extropic surmise….or wonder widely at the trajectories that will follow for this and the other insect.
In otherwords,if not other worlds—but foremost: to pataphrase, redactively: As the cosmetically aligned populace grooms and looms and pretends that 2012 is anything more than another node on clock, be it cosmic, what have you, a modulation, an algorithm a coveting of conspired comb overs.
Heavy Fragments
“German satellite crash lands on earth after returning at 280mph… but WHERE is it?”
Inquiring humanoids hope to ascertain a fugitive. They are offended by the seeming absence of sound science in a recent ‘fall from grace’ of certain space dwelling craft. Amongst avians of my ilk, we describe these dead drops in terms of extinction, a “mis-communique,” or utopic malfunction. Another artificial moon seemingly goes the way of the dodo, disappearing at impossible speeds, dodging humanoids under the aegis of optimistic odds. Visions of beige mini-vans, the favored referential objects, seen careening out of control, captained by end stage obliterati then –poof— disappearing. (Presti)digital denizens are combing the ether, patrolling the Hertzian depths , clamoring for a vanishing act that every vanguard mage aspires towards. Floating worlds, dimensional hideouts, this could well be a sort of anemic atemporality, nay, an atemporealty, a beach front at 700 Mhz, a symbolic instantiation of a material form.
More so than just a cheap trick of astronomical and sorcerous bodies, these heavy fragments actuate an inverse shock collar, backwards vapor cone or anti-shock egg. Becoming invisible, an imperceivable obsolescence, hidden in plain sight to the natives unaccustomed to the protocol for perceiving artifacts of invisible wars
Architectures of Dearth
Here a mildly utopic mind-dump, hijacked from that cranial quarters of that familiar Metaphortean snoop:
The brain is a data structure, a vessel waiting to be re/filled. Optimized for search and retrieval, suitable for dada-mining, too. Economalies of attention, erroneous trades, disruptive innovations —but for whom do these hidden logistics linger on?
Memory palaces boarded up, one suspects they’ve been condemned. Rather we have memory palisades, on the sly, but in lock down? Data-bodies have their own algorithmic itineraries, hidden designs on the database complex, implicitly explicit and in accordance with pop zombie-lore, aiming for the brain.
Over-sized crania in extra-terrestrials would be a good target, safe for the outward obsolescence of such a thing as an in-board brain. Presuming, as a Metaphortean Researcher would, that sci-fidelity concepts are tellingly attuned, upgrading these antiquated personifications of electronic brains, themselves personifications of giant computers was argued cinematically some time ago. From the antagonistic aliens of This Island Earth (1955) to the nodally nuanced and nomadically nimble (if also vicious) technologizations of our future selves in Fiend Without a Face (1958), cyborg variants grope towards a dearth of stasis and the spoils of this mobile sort of brain.
Fiends without faces, the brain before its time — the wi-fi readied floating brain–, returns today under the aegis of friends without faces, or the googlization of many things, the maniacs of storage, the feverish claims on archiving for its own sake, of friends accumulated like bottlecaps. So many computerized conquests festooned on one’s outward “skin” it’s all about brand identity. Be a meme and not an aura, hyperlink your soul, catch a whiff of your future technologized self. Retrograde remediation of the “Star-Child,” many facebookies are eclipsing their own online persona with that of their progeny. perhaps.
Architectures of dearth. The Emperor’s new digs. Algorithms trim down, go stealth, hidden in plain sight if sufficiently meshed in a thicket of networked databases. Stealth algorithms are not quite the algorithmic unconscious but may end up marooned there under the folly of unnamed engines and the pre-mature arrival of digital dark age(ncie)s
Artificial Empathy Today
THE SAMENESS THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE
The old adage has it that information is “any difference that makes a difference.” How to name the sameness that makes a difference? Is empathy a distinctly humanoid emotion, a self-similar series of endless-loops-that-don’t-compute for a mere difference engine, that can not “get” empathy?
The (((WFT))) Policy Institute, typically loathe to any sort of affective projections, has accidentally stumbled upon evidence that AE machines can recognize and share feelings that are being experienced by other semi-sentient beings. Instead of feeding digital devices the non-sense language of passwords, credit card numbers and geo-coordinates, we can teach it to see itself, love itself and others.
Render a megabyte in someone else’s processor and see how it feels!
HYPOTHESIS: Our artificial empathy machine has started off most primitively. As with many machines there is propensity for cold and detached, ‘robotic’ exchange. We have begun to siphon out the sarcasm and rudeness to a level bearable to most -thick skinned individuals, but are still working towards a truly artificial empathy that can respond to situational information in real time, assessing the sameness and creating an intersubjective program.
(((WFT))) has been rapidly prototyping towards a more sociable medium for mitigating known human-machine interactions. In order to increase the corpus of known emotions we are asking you to COMPLIMENT the artificial empathy machine. The machine will convert your donated quantity of compliment into a discrete representation, translate this content into constituent components, and process each stream in isolation, hoping to untangle the deep dimensions of empathic expression, the messy meanings and innuendo that comes from such an utterance.
This Artificial Empathy machine (pictured above) has the ability to quickly parse many ideograms, and may display what it thinks you are emoting in this form. Roman characters remain difficult, emoticons considered the “poor human’s ideogram,” or, in other words, the machine is trying to overcome the psychosocial hegemony of The Mother-Tongue by using instead its Mother-Board.
Finally you will want to touch the machine. The catalyst for connection may be touch, a tactile sensorium for augmenting a conscientious continuum of thoughtful, platonic exchange.