Ken's Blog

When I was about twelve years old I got it into my head that I should memorize things. So I memorized the things I loved — the first fifteen digits of pi, Jabberwocky, The Owl and The Pussycat, The Walrus and The Carpenter and Jenny Kissed Me.

Now, all of these years later, I can still easily recite all of those things from memory, as well as the lyrics to all of the songs I loved at that age.

Over the years I have repeatedly tried learning more digits of pi, but they never quite stick — those added digits always fade after a week or two. But those first 15 digits are burned into my brain as clearly as the day I first learned them.

What is it about our minds when we are young that allows us to memorize things so easily? And isn’t it sad that as we get older we lose that astonishing superpower?

It has become a meme recently to think about two A.I.s striking up a conversation with each other. There is indeed something spooky about this scenario — two soulless entities enacting a hollow imitation of human connection.

I first encountered this scenario when I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, the first parts of which were published in 1942. At one point he includes such a scenario as a kind of world-building aside.

Somewhere in the vast storage rooms of Trantor, the capital planet of the crumbling Galactic Empire, two A.I. entities are placed in storage. One is a holographic A.I. portrait of someone’s deceased wife, created many years earlier to converse with her grieving husband in imitation of her own style and personality.

The other is a similar holographic A.I. of someone’s deceased husband, created for a similar purpose. Each is programmed to respond when talked to, continuing the conversation.

In Asimov’s telling, the two framed portraits happened to be placed face to face on a shelf, where they proceed to spend several centuries, long after their creators are dead, in conversation with one another, until their futuristic batteries run down. Neither is actually alive or sentient, and the entire interaction is perfectly meaningless, yet there they are.

Whenever I think of A.I. engaging in conversation, I think back to this scene. There is something incredibly sad about it, and it has continued to haunt me to this day.

It has been clear for a while that the current inhabitant of the White House is not merely trying to destroy our country. And he isn’t also just trying to cause maximum suffering around the world in the process.

No, he is more ambitious than that. His goal seems to be to do these cruel and awful things in the cringiest, most embarrassing way possible.

Case in point: He has now set his sights on that great and powerful archenemy — Sesame Street. Yes, the guy is actually targeting for destruction the beloved children’s show with Muppets.

Let us pause for just a second here, and ask “Who doesn’t like Sesame Street?” Apparently, out of the 8 billion people in the world, exactly one of them does not like Sesame Street, and he happens to be living in the White House.

The most popular theory, which certainly fits the man’s psychological profile, is that Sesame Street has made fun of him in several episodes through the years. To someone with such a delicate and fragile ego, that is a capital offense.

But I think the real reason is deeper. In its various spoofs and send-ups, Sesame Street has often portrayed him, literally, as a ridiculous puppet in an orange wig.

And that’s the real offense, isn’t it? Revealing that the current inhabitant of the White House is actually just a ridiculous puppet in an orange wig.

Of course the question remains — who exactly is pulling the strings of this ridiculous puppet?

The current U.S. president has threatened to strip Rosie O’Donnell of her U.S. citizenship, apparently just because he doesn’t like her. I wish I were making that up, but these days it seems that truth is stranger than fiction.

On the other hand, it has been argued that it should go the other way: Rosie O’Donnell should strip the current American president of his U.S. citizenship. She certainly has cause, and it would make life easier for a lot of Americans.

You might think such an event would be unlikely. There are some who make the technical point that a private citizen does not actually have the power to strip a sitting president of U.S. citizenship.

However, considering the following fact: Rosie O’Donnell has exactly as much right to strip the president of his U.S. citizenship as he has to strip her of her U.S. citizenship.

So I guess it’s a stand-off.

There may come a time when everything people make is created with the help of artificial intelligence. Children will learn, from the time they are little, how to use A.I. in everything they do, and the ability to do that will be what we mean by “skill”.

Songs and novels will be created with the aid of A.I., as will the speeches of politicians, the opinions of doctors and lawyers, and the works of leading filmmakers. When that day comes, anybody doing things without the aid of A.I. will be considered eccentric, a throwback to the days when people made their own soap, or fashioned their own shoes.

I wonder whether such an arcane ability, assuming that it even still exists, will be respected, or just considered weird.

Generally, Wikipedia’s “Births” section on any given day of the year focuses exclusively on our own species. But today Wikipedia is branching out.

In particular, Wikipedia today celebrated the first birthday of Moo Deng. Moo Deng is a pygmy hippopotamus who was born on July 10, 2024.

I wonder whether this is the beginning of a new era of non-species-specific birthday celebrations on Wikipedia. Or maybe Moo Deng is just special.

My recent high school reunion got me thinking about how certain things change over time. In particular, I realized that I and all of my classmates shared a superpower that is no longer available to teenagers of today.

We were free to spend our days unburdened. We would hang out with one another, have long conversations based on our mutual interests, or share books and favorite songs.

There were no influencers. There was no social media and no algorithm. When we wanted to learn about something, we would go to the library and check out a book.

When we were in class, the teacher had our full attention. Class discussions were all in and completely participatory. Nobody was sitting in the back of the classroom staring at their phone.

I don’t think those days are coming back. So that may well have been the last time in history when American kids had a chance to simply take the time to figure out who they want to be, without somebody trying to answer that question for them.

For me today has been a house cleaning day. No computers, no algorithms, just good hard physical work and putting things in order.

At the end of the day, it works really well as a metaphor. But also, at the end of the day, you end up with a clean house.

Life happens. And not always the way you want it to.

There is a much cruder way of saying that. But today I am in a polite mood.

Pretty much our entire collective cultural experience of the digital world exists within rectangles. We spend much of our day looking into the little rectangular screens of smart phones or at the somewhat larger rectangular screens of the computers on our desks and in our laps.

When the XR singularity occurs, millions of people will be able to start experiencing the digital world all around them. Those rectangles will no longer be necessary.

Will we continue to carry over the conventions of the early digital age, with all of the digital information in the space around us getting crammed into rectangles because that’s what people are used to? Or will we be able to break free?

I am reminded of early automobiles. Early cars were steered by controls very much like those on a horse and buggy.

Eventually that convention fell away, and the modern steering wheel evolved to take its place. In the coming age of wearables, I wonder what will eventually take the place of the rectangle.