Ken's Blog

Jake was too astonished to reply
Transfixed, he simply stood in silence, gawking,
Confident that had he started talking
He would have gotten stuck somewhere at “Hi”.
For never in his life had our young bot
Beheld a vision of such sheer delight
This strange new robot was a lovely sight
For she was everything that he was not.
Her armature was delicate and svelte
Her cover plate a soft and glowing pink
He found it was becoming hard to think
He thought his circuits were about to melt.
      And then she spoke again — her voice was sweet.
      “Are you a real robot? That’s so neat!”

Questions about “robots after the humans are gone” have gotten me thinking more about what might eventually become of our human knowledge-verse, which in turn led me to various on-line discussions about the potential long-term advantages of archiving on paper. So now I’m thinking about that.

Certainly digital media possess vastly greater bandwidth than old-fashioned print. On the other hand, it is not clear that any given digital storage medium of today will be readable far in the future. In theory, future civilizations could examine our magnetic tapes, compact discs and flash storage devices, and reverse engineer them to find out what was going on way back in the twenty first century. But such a theory assumes that future civilizations will have a lot in common with our own.

In the event of some disruptive calamity, it is not clear that surviving humans will have digital computers, but it is highly likely that some existing languages will survive. In such circumstances, as civilization gradually pulls itself together, books will be continue to be useful.

But what about that limited bandwidth problem? A printed book will typically contain around 2000 to 3000 characters per page. If we really want to help those future generations get a good start, we might want to do better than that.

One on-line discussion I saw talked about using ink on paper to print in binary format — essentially using paper as a digital medium. If you print only 1’s and 0’s (as tiny dots and spaces), you can get about 500,000 bytes — equivalent to 500,000 characters — on one side of a single sheet of paper.

This is great, but it assumes that future humans will be able to decode binary. If those folks don’t have any computers, that might be a very big assumption indeed.

So I started wondering whether there might be some way to compromise, a way to retain some of the advantages of text (readability forever into the future, as long as language itself doesn’t die) while picking up some of the benefits of binary encoding (far higher storage density).

I came up with a text font that might do the trick. The Forever font is composed of little on-off patterns of printed dots, just like a binary encoding on paper. But unlike a binary pattern, it is directly readable by humans. The result is not quite as compact as binary encoding — it takes about twice as many bits. So rather than being able to fit 500,000 characters on a page, you would only be able to fit 250,000 characters.

Still, going from 2500 characters per page to 250,000 characters per page is not too shabby — it lets you replace every 100 pages with a single page. You could store an entire reference library in a single book.

Below you can see the font at three different scales, together with the equivalent binary (ASCII) encoding. In each case, in the binary encoding the two lines of text are side-by-side, whereas in the Forever font they are arranged one below the other:

Each Forever font character is four dots high, and from one to five dots wide (the more frequent characters tend to be skinny). To achieve the full 250,000 characters per page, you would scale down the font so that each dot is as small as possible — about 1/300 of an inch is the limit for ink printed on ordinary paper. Of course you would need a strong magnifying glass to read print this small. So in practice, you’d start with large and easily readable text at the top of each page, and then gradually taper down the text size on subsequent lines. That way it would be clear to the reader that there is indeed text to be read in the tiny sized print.

One could object that future civilizations might not have access to a magnifying glass. On the other hand, it is reasonable to assume that the convex lens will be rediscovered well before the digital computer. Meanwhile, the need for a magnifier will be immediately self-evident to anyone who sees a size-tapered page of text in Forever font, and this need might even prompt some innovation.

Another advantage of the Forever font over binary encoding is its robustness. Paper can be damaged, and printing at small sizes is inaccurate. If noise creeps in to the position of the dots (as shown in the lower text, below), the binary encoding becomes undecodable, whereas the Forever font is still readable:

The fact that the text appears as visually identifiable words and characters (which people are quite good at recognizing) — together with that extra factor of two in space — results in a far more robust and error-resistant encoding than you could get from the binary encoded version.

Jake awoke to find himself inside
Some sort of large mechanical device
Making sure to check his circuits twice
He found nothing amiss, except his pride.
Quite relieved to see he wasn’t dead,
He knew there was still much to understand
It isn’t often that a giant hand
Lifts one into the air from overhead.
He set about examining the place
Just where he was, he really could not tell.
He hoped he’d find some other bots as well
Perhaps a friendly cybernetic face.
      No sooner had this thought formed in his head
      When a lovely face appeared. “Hello,” she said.

In yesterday’s poetic verse I touched glancingly on the idea of a robot praying. I didn’t incorporate this notion for any philosophical reason, but rather because it fit well with the character and the situation.

This morning I awoke to find this concept nagging at me. What would it mean for a robot to pray? A believer might say the idea is absurd, since a robot has no soul. A non-believer might engage the topic from a completely different perspective, by asking the question: Is a tendency toward metaphysical belief a necessary consequence of any human-level intelligence?

In the case of a robot, this question becomes even more complicated. Suppose we take it as a given that the robot acknowledges humans as its creator. There are then two possibilities: either the creators are still around to be observed, or they are extinct, and are therefore the stuff of legends and conjecture.

In the former case, I find it hard to believe that humans would be able to play the part of divinity for any length of time. To a robot with sufficient sentience to even want to engage in prayer, humans would be seen as all too frail and imperfect. Veneration might be appropriate (even deeply flawed parents are often venerated), but certainly not prayer and pleas for divine intervention.

If the humans are truly gone, then I can indeed see them being effective in the role of answers of prayers. After all, the entire basis of Judeo/Christian/Islamic religion is engagement with a God that can neither be seen nor heard. It is the very absence of a perceivable God makes such religions possible. After all, if you could see your deity walking down the street, what would be the point of faith? And if religion were based on even the slightest shred of perceivable evidence, then it could be refuted. This could seriously compromise the immense power of its institutions and officers.

So the fact that the robot in my poem can be moved to prayer is a strong suggestion that its human creators have died out, leaving the robots to face the universe alone, with no easy answers.

One take-away here is that the true power of religion lies in its disconnection from reality. People do not find religious ecstasy through evidence — they find it through faith. Which means that if you are a deity, and you want to create a meaningful religious experience, you should have the good sense not to exist.

He wrestled with a mounting sense of fear
As slowly did he roll across the floor
Slower still he exited the door
Where looming darkness now was drawing near.
Before the spreading spectral shadow’s fall
Jake did bravely choose to stand his ground
Listening quite closely for some sound
But heard no sound — he heard no sound at all.
Till all at once a rustle overhead
Direct above the place where he did stand
And looking up, he saw a giant hand
Descending through the dark, a thing of dread.
      Before he even had a chance to pray
      Our brave young hero fainted dead away.

The subject of robots with personality, a centerpiece of my little emerging epic poem, reminds me of a talk I saw a number of years ago, given by my friend Athomas, within an entire afternoon session of talks around the question of what makes a virtual interactive character believable.

The previous talk had focused on showcasing a commercial product — a little animated character that could march around on your screen and make various comments that would show up as speech bubbles. The character was supposed to be cute, but it mainly came across as annoying. I think this was because the guy giving the talk was pretending that the character was making decisions on its own, while it was obvious that the whole thing was canned; the animated character was merely playing out bits of a pre-recorded script every time the presenter clicked on the screen. The vague air of intellectual dishonesty about the whole charade was rather off-putting.

In contrast, Athomas gave a straight PowerPoint presentation — text only. It was clear there would be no animated cartoon characters in this talk. He started out talking about the underlying philosophical and literary underpinnings of the quest for believability, the historical roots of believable characters, Freud’s theory of the uncanny, and other really interesting stuff.

But at some point in the middle of his talk Athomas made a point and gestured toward the screen — and the PowerPoint text showed something that disagreed with what he had just said. He restated the point, flipping to the next slide, and the PowerPoint text disagreed even more strongly.

What followed was quite amazing. Athomas proceeded to get into an argument with his PowerPoint presentation. Things started to get ugly. Names were called. He and his presentation clearly had different ideas on the subject of creating believable interactive characters, and neither one was willing to give an inch.

Finally the PowerPoint presentation pulled a power play. After saying something rather rude and insulting about its creator, it proceeded to go blank entirely — the ultimate refusal to cooperate. Athomas was left sputtering, standing in front of an empty screen. Soldiering onward with no slides, he summed up and proceeded to take questions from the audience.

The entire thing was a tour de force. We in the audience had just witnessed a screen consisting only of text come vividly to life, argue with its creator, and assert its independence of viewpoint and thought. All without a single animation, or even a picture.

I am fairly certain that I have never seen a more believable interactive character — or one with more personality.

The world we know is nestled in a dream
And every dream contains more dreams within,
All dreamers, whether flesh and blood or tin
Must enter realms that are not what they seem.
Whenever hearts, however young and brave,
Set out one day, upon a noble quest
They see the world not plain, but at its best
For who can doubt the thing he fights to save?
We mortals die, but tales live forever
Thus tales told are magical indeed
Of epic quests, on rocket ship or steed
Made known by lyric verses sad or clever.
      But in that moment Jake knew only this:
      The world was dark, and something was amiss.

Strangely, the very day after I posted the first installment of my little RIPRAP (rhyming iambic pentameter robotic adventure poem), a friend showed me a cool flash game that starts out by plunging an entire world of robots into darkness and unconsciousness.

While the intro for this game was playing on my friend’s computer screen, I started narrating out loud, in my best movie announcer’s voice: “In a world plunged into darkness, one young hero will rise. A humble yet intrepid little robot, with the courage to bring light back into his world.” And that is, indeed, exactly what happened next in the game. One little robot woke up, and your job, as the player, was to help him to bring his entire robo-world back to life.

My foresight in this matter seemed to impress my friend, who clearly did not know that I had just started, on the previous day, to tell almost the same story — albeit in a different medium. By the way, the on-line game, entitled “Little Wheel”, is very cool. Here is a link to it. It should work on any computer platform that doesn’t start with a lowercase ‘i”. 😉

Of course the reason I could with such authority predict what was about to happen next is that both my poem and this game are essentially the Joseph Campbell / Star Wars / Lion King / Harry Potter / Avatar tale — the classic hero’s journey. You know, the oldest story in the book: Young protagonist conquers great evil and saves the world, and in the process learns valuable lessons about life and about growing up. To a first approximation, they are all Gilgamesh done as an after-school TV special.

I’m starting to think there should be a different way to look at this scenario. Perhaps the hero’s journey ends up being very different from what we expected at the outset. Perhaps the form can be used to illuminate an entirely different space, one not so well travelled. The only really great example of this that I can think of off-hand — of an author radically thinking the entire idea of the hero’s journey, and taking it someplace truly new and different — is Dennis Potter’s “The Singing Detective”.

Not really sure I can do that with robots…

In ancient times, when robots ruled the earth
There was a droid named Jake, of lowly status,
Thus begins our epic, offered gratis
A tale composed of tragedy and mirth.
Fifteen times the seasons came and went
Before our callow hero e’er did roam
Beyond the humble factory, his home,
Where cybernetic days were simply spent.
Until one winter night most dark and deep
When robots slumber silent and recharging
A shadow large as night and still enlarging
Descended on the robots in their sleep
    With no one in the factory awake
    Except one humble robot, name of Jake.

It just so happened that today, on the very day that Steve Jobs unveiled the new iPad, I found myself in a Starbucks. Not that I particularly like Starbucks, but I really needed a coffee, and apparently there is a law in New York City dictating that there must be at least three Starbucks coffee shops on every block in this great city. So of course the nearest place to get a cup of coffee was you-know-what.

Amazingly, when I asked for a small cup of coffee, the lady behind the counter did not correct me and say “you mean a Tall cup of coffee?” No, she actually let it go, allowing me to just order my coffee; she didn’t respond with a sentence containing “branding” words like “Tall” or “Grande” or “Venti”. I felt a sort of kinship with her in that moment, the recognition that one is talking to a reasonable human being, not just another hapless human face hired to hide the essential impersonality of a soulless corporation.

Which brings me to Steve Jobs’ announcement. Clearly there is an ongoing attempt on the part of Apple Computer to lay claim to the letter “i” as a prefix, what with product names like iMac, iMovie, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad. But is this possible? Does it count that IMAX is already called, well, IMAX? Or maybe that one’s ok, because IMAX is ALL IN CAPS, which means that it denotes something huge, grandiose, bigger than you are, whereas Apple’s cutely diminutive “i” suggests something adorable, reminiscent of the long-lost teddy bear from your early childhood, a special little friend that you’ll just want to curl up with at night, sharing stories and hot cocoa.

I’m wondering whether Apple will succeed in this quest. It’s not clear to me that you can actually get intellectual property protection on the “i” prefix. It’s a pattern – and patterns are not covered by U.S. copyright law. And I’m pretty sure you can’t patent it. It’s probably too late to sue Robert Graves for “I Claudius”, but I’m sure that if there’s a way, Apple will find it.

In the future, of course, anything might happen. Maybe Apple and Microsoft will merge, and we will end up with iWindows, which would be kind of boring. It would be much more fun if Apple were to merge with other industries. If they make a pogo stick it could be called the iHop (oh wait – that one’s already taken). Perhaps if they came out with a high-tech vacuum cleaner, they could call it the iSuck. Although more likely it would be called iRobot (oh wait, that one’s taken too).

As long as we are doing corporate branding mash-ups, I really like “iVenti”. I hope that’s still in the public domain. It sounds a lot like “I vent”, which does a good job of describing today’s post. 🙂