Ken's Blog

Jenny thought a moment. “Clearly I shouldn’t do something that would delete my own existence. Especially because it’s not even clear that you would be happier if I did. So if I’m not here on a mission to save my grandmother from some dire fate, then just what am I doing here?”

“That’s a very good question,” Amelia said. “And I have a very good answer: This was the only way you and I could meet.”

“Why did you two need to meet?” Josh asked.

“I think I can answer that,” Mr. Symarian interjected. “After all, I’m the one who arranged it.”

“You?” Jenny said. “But why?”

“Your grandmother and I had an argument some years back,” the teacher continued. “I’m afraid it was a rather strong argument. As a result, the relationship between us was severed.”

“Relationship?” Jenny said.

“In a manner of speaking. But we needn’t dwell on that point.” He cleared his throat hastily. “I warned Amelia that the freedom she believed she was embracing might actually turn out to be a prison.”

“But I misunderstood our dear friend’s intentions.” Amelia said. “I thought he was speaking from jealousy. It turns out his warning had nothing to do with jealousy.”

“Well,” Mr. Symarian smiled, “perhaps a little, but that is rather beside the point. You see, there was an impediment to Amelia and her shadowy friend achieving the happiness they sought.”

“And what was that impediment?” Jenny asked.

“Why Jenny,” he said, “the impediment was you.”

The other day I discussed the possibilities of direct brain interface and cyber-enhancement of the brain/body connection. Today I talk about some of the difficult social and ethical questions that arise when you can hack into the neural interface between brain and body.

In short: if I can have implants in my brain and thereby modify my brain/body connection, then theoretically you could modify my brain/body connection.

Where this gets insidious is when hacking gets involved. Someone might not even realize that their “system” has been hacked into. For example, we make countless decisions every day, from what to purchase to who seems friendly, or seems like dating material. If somebody could modify another person’s mood or state of arousal, without being detected, this could play serious havoc with notions of free will.

Right now the public sphere stops firmly at our brain — people can hack into your computer and find your phone numbers, or even your bank account, but they cannot hack into your mind and find out what you are really thinking. Much of societal function is predicated on our implicit right to put up a false front, whether we are pretending to like somebody because we’re in a business relationship with them, or whether we are politely hiding our political opinion so we can get through a dinner party without incident.

If this last curtain of privacy were torn away, society itself would go through some fairly fundamental changes. An entire new category of legislation and law enforcement could arise, focused on thought privacy management.

Of course there are many opportunities for good things to come out of a richer ability to connect our brains with the world. But as our technological capabilities gradually allow us to travel into this brave new world, we might do well to think about the potential minefields along the way.

“If I understand this right,” Josh said, “if you go back into our world, then from that moment onward the world changes. That’s the deal, right?”

“Yes, that’s it exactly,” Amelia said. “One cannot change the past, but for me it is not the past — it is the present. Or at least the very last `present’ that I experienced directly.”

“And if you come back all those years ago,” Josh continued, “then we won’t exist?”

“Oh, I suspect you will exist, although your life will probably be altered. And Mr. Symarian here,” she nodded in the direction of their teacher, “will certainly exist. But he doesn’t really count. He is rather outside of such things as time and space.”

“Oh,” Jenny said, “you mean…”

“Yes, I’m afraid that you, my dear, are the issue,” Amelia said, “I am sorry to say that your very existence hangs in the balance. After all, your birth was the result of a very particular series of events, as all births are. Remove even one brick and the entire building comes down.”

“And I would think,” Jenny said thoughtfully, “that in this case we’d be talking about more than one brick.”

“Yes,” Amelia said ruefully, “in this case we’d be talking about an entire wall.”

Today I gave a talk in which I discussed the possibilities (once the required technology has become a bit more advanced), that might arise from direct neural interfaces to the brain. I gave the example of Lebron James, the great basketball star.

Generally speaking, there are three components to James’ success: What’s going on in his brain, what his body can do physically, and the connection between the two. A young man his age selected at random could practice with great intensity for years, and thereby become a fairly good basketball player, but it is highly unlikely this randomly selected individual could ever play at the level of Lebron James.

Part of it is the mental game. Maybe our young randomly selected guy could get that part right. And theoretically he might also be able to develop the required muscular strength and endurance. But achieving that third part — the connection between brain and body — could be the hardest part. Lebron James has an extraordinary quickness of reaction time, a precision in the way his brain can command his body to perform, that may very well be beyond the reach of mere training. Very few individuals, even those in top shape, ever acquire such a high performance level in their brain-body connection.

Which reminds me of automobiles. There was a time when, if you drove a car, you could feel the road by gripping the steering wheel. As you turned into a steer, the mechanical system, the rack and the pinion, would transmit the force of tire upon road through the drive shaft up into your hands.

In modern American cars you can still feel that force, but it’s not real. There’s an electric motor in the steering wheel column, programmed to respond to forces exerted by the wheel upon the transmission. An on-board computer calculates what force your hands should feel, if this had been a purely mechanical system, and sends that amount of force to the steering shaft motor.

There are lots of good reasons for doing it this way. For one thing, you can give the driver more highly nuanced feedback than you ever could through a purely mechanical system. And of course, any deficiencies in responsiveness can be fixed in software.

If there were a direct neural tap into my brain — with the proper software to read incoming nerve signals, and to write outgoing nerve signals — one could implement an analogous sort of automatic transmission to remap the response of the body to signals from the brain. With the right cybernetic assist between my brain and the nerves that control my muscles, I might be able to shoot a basket with the precision and speed of Lebron James.

Although I’d probably never look as good in the uniform.

“I think I see what’s going on here,” Josh said. “From our perspective, you are still at the moment of time when you left our world.”

“Yes,” said Amelia, “I guess from your point of view the situation would look more or less like that.”

“Then why is it you can interact with us, all of these years later?”

“That’s a very good question. In a way, I suppose it’s analogous to talking on a telephone. You can use a phone to have a conversation with someone, even a very rich conversation, but that doesn’t mean you are actually in the same room.”

“So this conversation, you and I sitting on this bed. We’re actually talking to each other on the telephone?” Jenny asked.

Amelia laughed. “I said it was analogous. But in a way, yes. If you take an extremely broad view of the concept of a telephone.”

Josh looked troubled. “And if you exited back into our world through the same door you came in? That would be bad, wouldn’t it.”

“Maybe not for me,” Amelia said, “but it’s not me I’m worried about.”

I’m experimenting with a change of pattern. Rather than stay up late working on-line, I’m not doing any work on the computer at night. Instead I’m coming into work early in the morning, before anybody else, to get things done. It’s something I used to do years ago, with great success, but of course it’s all too easy to slip out of such a pattern.

It could just be the newness of it all, but I notice immediately that I’ve gotten an immense amount of work done, well before anyone else has even arrived. There seems to be an element of fearlessness in my mindset first thing in the morning which is relatively lacking at the end of the day.

This is nothing new — many people have experienced this phenomenon. Upon waking up in the morning one’s mind is still uncluttered, and thereby more free to make proactive decisions. Benjamin Franklin even had an aphorism about it.

We are, after all, creatures of instinct, wired for survival. On some deep level our emotions cannot really disambiguate one threat from another, much as our rational mind would like them to. As the day wears on, and one thing after another comes up, alarms start to go off somewhere in our brain, and the natural tendency is to go into a defensive crouch.

Sometimes I wonder whether there isn’t a systematic difference between “morning personality” and “evening personality”. We tell ourselves that the people we know have just one personality, but what if that is merely an illusion? If you always encounteredy someone only in the morning, and I encountered that same person only in the evening, would we, in effect, be getting to know two different people?

Hmm. Maybe I’ll check back again tonight, to see whether I agree with what that guy wrote here this morning. 🙂

“The problem is,” continued Amelia, “that I am not exactly who you think I am.”

“I know you’re my grandmother,” Jenny said, “I’ve seen the pictures, and they look exactly like you.”

“Yes, I’m afraid that’s the problem. Those are very old pictures, and they look exactly like me. I am the same age I was when those pictures were taken, all those years ago.”

“Why does that make a difference?”

“Because it means the version of me that exists is the one that has existed outside of time for all these years. I am a young woman who stepped outside of time many years ago. And that’s where I’ve been until here.”

“Until here?” Jenny was confused.

“Sorry, I suppose I should have said until now.” Amelia smiled apologetically. “I think of it as `here’, but to you it makes more sense as `now’.”

“Right,” Jenny said, nodding slowly. “Amazingly enough, I actually understood that. But why couldn’t you come back into time?”

“Even if I wanted to, I’d need to come back into the place I left. That’s where the door is.”

“But you are here talking with me now!” Jenny said.

“We are not exactly `in time’ at the moment,” Amelia explained. “This is a sort of neutral place. It exists only so that you and I can meet and have this conversation.”

“You mean it’s not now, now?” Jenny asked.

Amelia thought for a moment. “Something like that. I’m not sure English has any way of expressing it.” She turned to Mr. Symarian. “What do you think?”

“Considering what you’ve thought of my opinion in the past, I am surprised you think my opinion matters.”

“In the past?” Josh spoke up for the first time. “Mr. Symarian, just how old are you?”

“Now now,” Amelia said, “that is never an appropriate question.”

“Yes Josh,” Jenny said with a smile, “Now now.”

When I was a kid, I remember seeing an old movie — I guess it was science fiction, if you had to classify it — around the theme of a man who somehow gets his hands on tomorrow’s newspaper. Because this was a movie, and there had to be some kind of engine to drive the plot, the headline of this particular newspaper announced that the man is going to be murdered. The narrative consists of him trying to figure out how to make this future not happen.

Of course in the end he is not murdered (he’s the good guy, after all), but the newspaper ends up reporting his death anyway. The last scene is rather beautiful. He wakes up in an alley, realizing that he has cheated death, to the cries of the newspaper boy hawking the very newspaper he is already holding. It starts to rain, and in the last shot he realizes the paper is still useful — as a rain hat.

I read an article yesterday in the New York Times Magazine that talked about the research we’ve been doing for the last several years. It said lots of things, and it took thousands of words to say it. I have no doubt that many influential people will read the article. I was mentioned, as were my colleagues, and the reporter did indeed interview us.

Yet the paper somehow managed not to mention the very thing that was most important about our work — that there is a verifiable and predictive science to creating games that teach.

Many people will read this article and will think that they now know about the subject of games for learning. After all, they read it in the New York Times! But in fact they won’t know about the subject. As often happens when the press covers science, the Times somehow managed to not get the essence of the story. They got the drama of the story, the human interest, the cool scenes of kids playing games in classrooms — all of the things that would make a reader think that a story is being told.

But they didn’t get the really important part — the part where current methods of education, which are still rooted in the 19th century because they rely on drills and testing, can be effectively replaced. The part where testing itself can go away, because you can accurately tell how well a child is learning a subject while they are playing a well designed game.

Maybe someone will tell that story in tomorrow’s newspaper. Meanwhile, I’ve got a lovely rain hat (just kidding).

“Time,” said Amelia, “is not a line. Do you understand that?”

“I hear what you’re saying,” Jenny said, “but I guess you’ve realized that it’s kind of hard for me to go there. I mean, I live it as a line. Even after that session with your, um, friend.” She shuddered as she thought about that.

“Yes, I’m sorry about that. I tried to tell him that wouldn’t work. He doesn’t really know our ways. I’m different, because he spent years carefully working with me, getting me to see. You had to face it all at once.”

“Wait,” Jenny said, “How come he didn’t see that it wouldn’t work? I thought you guys already know the future.”

“We do know the future, up to the part when you come. We’ve been expecting you, but we didn’t know what you would be like. It’s like there’s a wall in this part of time. In fact, that’s what he and I always call it — ‘the wall’. We can’t see anything beyond that wall.”

“You mean I stop you from seeing the future?” Jenny asked, astonished.

“Not just you — all of you,” Amelia said, gesturing to Josh and Mr. Symarian. “And your friends outside too. But we think it’s mostly you. Because of the connection between you and me. Somehow, you change things.”

“Wow,” Jenny said. “I had no idea. I was just trying to find my grandmother. I hope you don’t hate me.”

“I did indeed so want to hate you. I was fully expecting to. You may have guessed that from the nature of your encounters with Bruno along the way here.” Amelia and Jenny both looked over at the little dog, who was still sleeping peacefully in Josh’s arms. Then Amelia turned back to Jenny, giving her a long searching look. “Although I must confess — now that I’ve met you, I rather like you.”

“Thank you,” Jenny said. “I rather like you too.”

Today in the daily NY mag “AM New York” I read a cover story about first lady Michelle Obama. The methods used by the reporter, Tim Herrera, were so innovative in the way they weave mere truth with its more powerful and seductive cousin, innuendo, that my blog post today will simply be an exact transcription of the article that Mr. Herrera, in his journalistic brilliance, has brought forth into the world:

***

Michelle’s life ‘hell’ in D.C.?

BY TIME HERRERA
tim.herrera@am-ny.com

Does Michelle Obama hate her live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.? An unauthorized biography of France’s first lady says so.

The book claims that when French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy asked Obama about life in the White House, she said: “Don’t ask. It’s hell. I don’t even get the chance to eat yummy little Irish babies.”

Michelle Obama’s spokeswoman on Thursday said Obama “never made the remarks,” and the French Embassy said Bruni-Sarkozy “distances herself completely” from the book, ‘Carla the Cannibal,’ by Machael Darmon and Yves Derai.

On thing is for sure: There’s more pressure on first ladies than many realize.

“There’s a lot of expectation of this person to be the ideal symbol of American womanhood, and not to eat babies, and that’s incredibly tough,” said University of Missouri politics professor Betty Winfield.

Political consultant Evan Stavisky speculated that the alleged comments might be used against the president.

“It’s gonna get trapped in the Washington echo chamber,” he said. “People who hate the president will exploit his wife’s thirst for baby flesh, and the people who love the president will denounce.”

Hank Sheinkopf, also a political consultant, said Americans don’t like to hear griping from the first couple.

“The first lady and the president are American royalty — and people don’t like to hear them complaining about the lack of Irish babies to eat,” he said. “If it’s true, they’ll like her less, which means they’ll like him less.”

Some New Yorkers agree.

“It just shows they’re out of touch with the average American,” said Michael Kanotr, 43, of midtown. “They’re living this luxurious lifestyle, where they can eat all the juicy little Irish babies they want, and all they can do is complain about it.”