06 Nov 2006
“Hi, I missed you yesterday,” he said as I sat down.
“Sorry, I spent the whole day at the library. And then I had a peculiar dream last night.”
“Robots?”
“Naturally. But that wasn’t what was strange about it. It started with me walking through the city. Everybody except for me was asleep. And I started picking up bits and pieces of other people’s dreams. But I couldn’t make any sense of them.”
“Neat. Some cultures had the concept of a ‘dream hunter’. In the mythology of the Khazars, a dream hunter was someone who would travel within others’ dreams in search of a quarry. Maybe that’s what you were doing.”
“But I wasn’t inside anybody else’s dream. I just caught glimpses of them. Anyways, what did they hunt? More importantly, what would you suggest I was hunting?”
“It would be different for each dream hunter. As for you..? I don’t know. I would assume it to be your robot. You saw it, yes, but did you catch it?”
“No. I awoke before… Wait. I wasn’t trying to /catch/ it; I was… I was asking it if it dreamed.”
“And wouldn’t an answer to that be akin to ‘catching’ it? Apprehending, as it were?”
I thought about it for a bit, and decided that for my purposes, it was. “I suppose it would,” I said. “But let’s move on. How are things going for you? I’ll be honest, I’m a little concerned about where your research might be taking you. I know you want to understand what your friends have gotten into, but don’t you have that pretty much figured out? What’s your goal?”
“Hmm. You know, to tell the truth I don’t know what my goal is. I started just because I was worried about them. And I wanted to know what happened. I don’t know if I thought I could ‘save’ them, or if some part of me wanted to join them. Be part of the group again, y’know. Now… Now it’s just interesting to chronicle the emergence of a new cult. I guess it is a cult. To follow new developments, and maybe if things get bad at least there will be one person on the outside who knows what’s happening.”
“There’s no worry about getting too deeply involved?”
“No. There might be if I was trying to get information from the inside, going to their meetings and whatnot. But there /are/ no meetings, and all my research is done from the outside.”
“But they’re pretty secretive about what they’re doing, right? What if they find out about your inquiries?”
“I’m, as a rule, pretty careful about covering my tracks. Yeah, if they caught on that someone was studying them, I’d probably be one of the first people on their list, but I don’t think it’s so much that they’re trying to hide anything. They just don’t talk about it. And again, nothing they’re doing yet seems particularly dangerous.”
“Alright. I don’t want to press too hard. You certainly seem to know what you’re doing.”
“No problem. Anyways, how’s the robot coming along?”
“It’s alright. I’m trying to closely model it after human biology, at least as close as makes sense. So right now I’m just studying anatomy, because I never really payed much attention to the subject while I was in school.”
“Have you looked into any of the things I recommended for you yet?”
“Not yet. Still too early to worry about implementation details, but I’m sure they’ll come in handy. Fuzzy logic will probably be useful in a bunch of circumstances, and neural networks have the obvious application. What was the other one, again?”
“Genetic algorithms.”
“Ah, yes. That one I’m not sure about, yet. I might use it to solve some, as yet unforeseen, tricky problems down the road. But that one I really don’t know enough about it yet to say for sure.”
“In theory, you could use it to evolve the entire control program for the robot. But it would take a really long time. I can’t really tell you a whole lot about it because I haven’t used it myself, but it seems very promising.”
“How effective is it, do you know?”
“From what I’ve read, its effectiveness entirely rests on how well you devise the fitness measure.”
“Oh, so it’s all guided evolution? What about unguided?”
“I think some people have done experiments with that, and it seems to work to a certain extent. But if you’re trying to use it to solve a particular problem, it’s only natural to include an explicit fitness function.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. I mean, it only seems natural that I should use genetic algorithms & evolutionary processes to mimic a design that emerged because of evolution. I just don’t know where or how, yet.”
“I know you’re still in the research phase, but do you have any ideas on the overall design yet?”
“I’m not really sure. It’s going to be humanoid, but I do know I’m not going to try to create something that will pass as a human, like your canonical android. And since I’m an amateur, I expect it will be somewhat primitive. Behaviorally, at least. Though mechanically this will be pushing my skills far beyond what I’ve done before.”
“You should keep in mind people’s emotional response to the thing you create. For example, if you make it smaller, people will be prone to treat it as a child. And if you make it look menacing, people will treat it as a threat.”
“Oh, wow. I hadn’t even considered that, yet. I’m building this so I can learn how people work. And now you’re asking me to think about how people are going to respond emotionally to this?”
“Heh. It’s not as hard as it seems. Just think about how you would respond to the design. That’s a good enough start.”
“When did you learn so much about design all of a sudden?”
“Not ‘all of a sudden.’ It’s one of the subjects I study. More industrial and interface design than graphic.”
“Never would have guessed. No offense.”
“None at all. It’s definitely not my strong point. Nor my main interest. But it’s an interesting subject.”
“Well, it’s getting late. I need to get home & make dinner. And I foresee another long day tomorrow at the library. I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah, I should probably get going soon, too. See ya.”
And so the next day, after work, it was back to the library to research the heart of my robot, the nervous system. This system (in vertebrates, including humans) was itself subdivided into several branching subsystems.
The two main systems are the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system. The central nervous system consists of the brain and the spinal cord. And it also can be broken down into constituent parts. I didn’t know how many parts I would need to replicate, but I had a feeling that since the behavior of the brain was by no means understood even today, I might be better off ignoring much of it and instead focusing on replicating behavior itself, rather than the anatomy. Nevertheless, I chose a few of the better books on the subject and took detailed notes.
The peripheral nervous system can be divided into the somatic and autonomic nervous systems. The somatic nervous system is that which is responsible for coordinating movement via the muscles, and for receiving sensory input. It is in charge of all activities under conscious control.
The autonomic nervous system, on the other hand, controls all “reflex” actions. For its part, it is divided into the sympathetic, parasympathetic, and enteric nervous systems. The first is responsible for the body’s responses to danger or stress, including an accelerated heartbeat and the release of adrenaline. Its compliment, the parasympathetic nervous system, controls the subconscious activity one exhibits when relaxed, such as a reduced heartbeat and stimulation of the digestive, reproductive, and urinary systems.
The final system functions almost completely independent of the rest of the nervous system. Though it is closely tied to the other two divisions of the autonomic nervous system, in certain vertebrates, when the connection between the CNS and the enteric nervous system is severed, the latter continues to function on its own. Thus, some even consider it a second brain. Anyways, it’s pretty much in charge of every aspect of the digestive process. Which made a good deal of sense. The subsystem that controls the processing of energy from its raw form into a usable form should be pretty much independent of the other systems, so that it would be able to continue functioning if something happened to one of the other systems.
So that was it. Sure, there was a whole lot more to figure out, but that covered the basics of at least the internals of a human. I decided I would do the design in more or less the order I researched the systems — that is, start with the structure and work my way “up.” For the skeleton, optimally I could use a lightweight titanium alloy like they use in bicycle frames. But I didn’t know how easy titanium would be to work with. Aluminum was another option, or maybe even a titanium/aluminum alloy. I figured metal would be better than the plastic I was initially considering as an alternative because it would be easier to repair in the event of damage.
Structurally, I tried out couple sketches modifying aspects here and there, but I kept going back to a basic copy of a human skeleton. None of my changes felt right. They all threw off the balance of the overall form. I tried various “ages” for the creation, but finally decided on more or less adult. I wasn’t creating a child, I was creating an equal. So I wanted the robot to be viewed as such. Or, at least, that was my hope. Who knew if I could pull it off.
The major muscles would be replicated using pistons. I could use shape memory alloy wires for the smaller muscles & for parts that needed finer control (that is, the nickel-titanium alloys that constrict when supplied with electricity or heated). The SMAs posed a potential problem, though — they function by constricting when heated. So I’d almost certainly need a complex and reliable cooling system, or else the muscles would no longer work (they’d be locked in the active position) if the robot ever overheated. This is mainly achieved by the skin, by sweating in mammals to release heat when the water evaporates, but the circulatory system may also play a part. It seemed doable. The main difficulty would be the sheer number involved — the human body has about 650 or so skeletal muscles, and then there’s cardiac muscles and smooth muscles.
Of course the muscles needed something to provide themselves with electricity, which is where the circulatory system would come into play. Since my robot wouldn’t need nutrients as such, as far as I could foresee, all the “veins” would need to carry would be electricity, so simple wires would work. I planned for some redundancy, such that a “severed vein” wouldn’t completely cut off energy to everything downstream of the lesion.
word count: 1952 / 5808 words
much better today.
still 4190 words to go, but I’m not going straight to bed. I just wanted to post this before midnight.
06 Nov 2006
As I walked, my mind returned to Joseph and his problem. I understood that he was concerned about his friends & wanted to understand what happened to them, but what exactly was he trying to accomplish? Did he think he could save his friends from the mess they’d gotten themselves into? Or was he trying to learn enough to join them on their quest? It didn’t strike me as anything dangerous per se, from what he’d told me, but it also did seem more troubling than just another fad cult. I decided I’d stop by the coffee shop tomorrow. If Joe was there, I’d talk to him about it. If not, I’d just go back to the library.
That night I dreamt of dreaming. I walked through a sleeping city, completely silent except for the hum of electricity that never slept. Each and every door and window I walked by was slightly ajar, as if the residents were completely secure knowing that everybody else was asleep as well. My curiosity drew me to enter one of the houses, but I felt that doing so would be betraying the trust that left them open. Eventually my curiosity, though, overcame me and I could no longer merely walk through the quiet streets. I entered an apartment complex whose door was propped open with a telephone book. Inside, the scene was much the same as outside. Every door was left unlocked, opened invitingly. I perceived no sounds of activity. The lights flickered like out of a horror movie, but I felt completely at ease. Even a monster would be sleeping, here.
As I made my way down the hallway, I noticed something here that I hadn’t on the street. I could sense – not see, nor hear, but sense on some lower level – things as I walked by each home. I couldn’t understand any of what I felt; I knew they were the dreams of the people I was near, but they were streams of symbols meant for another mind than my own and meant nothing to me. It felt very strange to try and parse this information. I would have an idea – not quite an image – of a person that I knew was supposed to be some long-dead relative but it was no one I knew, nor did I know what the relationship was supposed to be. It could be a grandmother, or a wife. Or even a brother. And then I would remember a party attended, and feel that something very important happened then – but I couldn’t tell if it was that I met my life partner there, or maybe it was the first time my entire family had been together in many years – and it would strike me that I was never even there.
I reached the end of the first hallway and took the stairs up. Then I heard the first sound of activity, a couple floors above me. At first I thought I might be picking up more dream-imagery but it felt real. I made my way towards it, anxious to find the source but worried that rushing would spook whoever was above me.
At the next floor I was introduced to another hallway identical to the one I traversed on the first floor. But the sound was certainly coming from one of the apartments here. When I reached the source of the noise, I found before me (in typical dream logic) a room that was a blend of elements from my current apartment and my childhood home. The TV was on in the living room. Was that really all it was? But then the channel changed, and I saw sitting across from it a robot. Watching TV. Though I was nowhere near finished with the design, I knew of course it was my robot. It turned its head to me as I noticed it.
“Don’t you dream?” it asked me in a reedy, but surprisingly non-mechanical voice.
Oddly unsure how to answer, I could only turn the question back at it. “Don’t you?”
The sound of my own voice was enough to jolt me out of sleep. I tried to remain in a semi-conscious state long enough to resume the dream. Of course I wanted to hear how my subconscious was going to answer that question, but I also wanted a chance to examine the robot in more detail, before the image slipped out of my short-term memory. But no luck. I was awake.
And for the best, I suppose, because I somehow managed to sleep through my alarm which left me rushing to get ready for work. Normally I would spend some time before getting out of bed to write down the dream, but I was in a hurry. So as I scrambled, I replayed the events over and over to transfer the events from my short-term to my long-term memory, trying to recall as many details as I could. I made it to work on time, barely, and the day passed by painfully slowly. Once free, I headed over to the coffee shop where I met Joseph.
I really didn’t get very much done yesterday, and I forgot to post what I did.
I have a lot of catching up to do.
this segment: word count:857 words
04 Nov 2006
I had dated each segment 10//06 instead of 11//06. I fixed it.
04 Nov 2006
11/03/06
“Well, you build stuff to figure out how it works, right? So that shouldn’t be too hard. Just think of something that you don’t know how it works. It doesn’t have to be a device. Could be anything.”
That simple advice was all I needed to shake me out of my rut. Of course. “The one thing that’s always escaped me is biology. Biological organisms are built of entirely different stuff than electronics. They’re too… messy. Complex.”
“So you’d have two problems: one, you’d have to reduce the complexity in the design in order to apprehend their function. And two, you’ll have to figure out a way to increase the complexity of what you build in order to properly replicate said function. There’s a lot of research into the latter in software. How much experience do you have programming?”
“Not a whole lot, but I’m comfortable enough with it.”
“So you might want to look into genetic algorithms and fuzzy logic. And of course there’s a whole bunch of study in artificial neural networks that will definitely come in handy for you. I think there’s even been some work in hardware-based nets that’d be right up your alley. I don’t know how well they compare to software-based ones, though.”
“Great. I’ve got something, then. This is definitely on an entirely different level than anything else I’ve worked on before, but that’s really what I wanted, isn’t it? And what’s the worst that can happen if I fail? I’m not doing this for anybody else, so I just start again.”
The rest of the time there we exchanged very few words. I jotted down notes and tried to work out how I would start designing my robot. Or android, I suppose, as it seemed only natural to create something in my own image. Joe, for his part, returned to his own research. I was a bit worried that he might be heading down a parallel path to his friends’, but I didn’t say anything. He seemed to have a good head on his shoulders, and I’m sure he could take care of himself.
The following day I spent at the library. I xeroxed as many anatomical diagrams as I could find, and gathered as many biology books as I could carry. Each and every organ in the body had to be transparent to me. And I knew that even though the brain would probably have the most research associated with it applicable to my own enterprise, it would certainly prove the most troublesome. So I tackled the other organs first.
But on closer examination, I decided I shouldn’t start with organs themselves. I needed a more general overview. The body is divided into 12 systems. The skeletal system, digestive, muscular, lymphatic, endocrine, nervous, cardiovascular, reproductive, urinary, immune, respiratory, and integumentary systems. Other attempts at robots have ignored many or most of those, but I didn’t want to take the easy way out and doing so would be a disservice to me.
The skeletal system would be the easiest. It mainly provides structure and overall form, and I could fashion it out of a lightweight metal or even a sturdy plastic. The digestive system would be quite a bit more troublesome. Did I really want this thing to have to eat? The main function of this system is to provide energy (and nutrients) to the organism. And to dispose of the byproducts. I figured as long as I closely mimicked the systems and remained faithful in principle, I wouldn’t necessarily need to reproduce them exactly. After all, the idea wasn’t to build an actual organic (in the chemical sense) creature. So as it wasn’t going to have the same needs as a human, I would have to make alterations to the design accommodating these differences. Energy’s easy. Naturally, it was going to run on electricity. Any nutrients it might need I’d need to leave to later on in the design process.
The muscular system would be one of the easiest, at least in terms of apprehending its function. Movement. That said, I would have a couple options open to me: the most basic would be simple motors. But motors are very different from the muscles in animals. Pistons or even titanium nickel alloys that constrict when supplied with an electric current would be better. Or maybe some other solution would emerge.
Next up I looked into the endocrine system. This is basically a messaging system, like the nervous system, except chemical. Several glands produce hormones which affect the behavior of cells in certain organs of the body. I imagined I might be able to combine this with my nervous system; it would simply involve a different class of messages.
The lymphatic system seemed mostly useless for my purposes, but I decided to study it with equal vigor. Even if I didn’t end up creating an analogue in my robot, I wanted to understand it thoroughly to know exactly why I didn’t need it. In function, it’s similar to the circulatory system except it deals with other fluids (lymph). It removes excess fluids from bodily tissues, transports fat to the circulatory system, and produces immune cells.
Which brought me to the immune system. I certainly wouldn’t need to worry about pathogens, but I might modify this system to monitor the robot itself and possibly correct any problems that might occur autonomously.
Skipping ahead to another potentially non-included system I looked into the reproductive system. Now, organisms in nature reproduce either asexually or sexually, but as I’m using humans as a template asexual reproduction seemed inappropriate. But as I was certainly not planning on creating a pair, a reproductive system would be pointless. Again, though, I didn’t stop my research simply because it didn’t apply to my problem. Like in art, where it’s important to understand the rules before one can (or should) break them, I had to make sure I fully understood a system before I could safely decide to exclude it.
And then the respiratory and urinary systems. I really didn’t like where this was going, but neither seemed particularly useful for my purposes. The respiratory system is strongly tied to organic biology. Since my robot would almost certainly have no aerobic activity, requiring no oxygen for metabolism, a traditional respiratory system would be useless. However, I hadn’t ruled out gasoline power so there might be need for an exhaust, in which case some sort of respiratory system would be useful. I would also need some sort of air intake / out-take if I wanted to mimic human speech and vocalization. The only use I could think of for a urinary system would be to rid the robot of any sort of soluble deposit that might form on its mechanisms, but at this point in planning it seemed unlikely that it would require one.
With only one organ system to go, and one of the most important — the nervous system — the librarian came by and told me it was time to pack up. I’d have to leave the nervous system for tomorrow, but I had plenty to keep me occupied for the time being and I took out as many books on the systems I had so far.
I’d spent way too much time today poring over anatomical textbooks so after I got home and dropped off the books I’d borrowed from the library, I decided to go for a walk & try to clear my head.
word count: 1284 words
ugh. I didn’t get nearly enough written when I got home from work tonight. Even more catching up to do tomorrow.
03 Nov 2006
11/02/06
I remember when I got my first stereo system for my birthday. It was pretty simple. More of a boom box than a stereo, actually. I would borrow my parents tapes and play them because I didn’t have any tapes of my own. Eventually I would take to making mix tapes of songs I liked. Of course, I was young & I didn’t have any sense of flow or theme and most of the resultant tapes were just jumbles of songs that caught my fancy without anything to tie them together.
But then I found that I could record myself, not just other tapes. So I’d do interesting things with my voice, trying to make myself sound like other people or recording at dubbing speed and sounding like a chipmunk. Sometimes I’d DJ songs for a nonexistent audience.
All of this, though, I did with only a few blank tapes. And I was rarely careful to delineate sections or start recording at the end of my last session. So I come back to them now, and it’s like looking through a broken window into my past. Or a dada radio play version of “this is your life”. Layers of history and thoughts cut off in mid-sentence.
I don’t have that stereo anymore. I was fascinated by it. So I took it apart. Every single screw came out; every connector was disconnected. I was especially taken by the tape head. It was like a little set of alien teeth that would chomp down on the magnetic strip and extract the memories of the tape like a vampire.
But the alien biology of the stereo escaped my understanding. Its organs were all silicon and metal and plastic, and wholly unlike my own. That’s not to say if they were like my own I would be any closer to understanding how it worked & I don’t even think I’d started elementary school when I undertook this project, so my knowledge of human biology was pretty scant. That didn’t stop me from trying, though. I carefully laid out every piece and catalogued it like I imagined a good scientist would. I did my best to recreate the entire device in my head & tried to imagine what each piece’s function was. I’m sure I was wrong for many of them, but my intentions were sincere.
I never tried to put it back together. I’m sure somewhere in my parents’ attic there’s still a box that has the pieces of this strange organism in it. It may even have the careful notes I took. But once I’d taken it apart the device I had in my head was far more precious to me than the physical object itself. It was purer.
Eventually I did come to understand how it worked. The next year for my birthday I received an electronics kit, and I was in love. The pieces were all simple, and logical, and I felt with them that I had an immense power. I knew that if I organized them in the right pattern I could recreate anything in the world. But the things that I made would not be the black boxes that I saw everywhere else & they’d be a part of me, because they were made by my hands and I would know exactly how they worked.
None of the things I built back then I kept. Once I completed something, I was done. And I’d reuse the parts for my next project. It was far more important for me to learn something new than to create something useful. Sometimes I wouldn’t even bother finishing a device once I got close enough to completing it to know that it would work.
I think this affected my interactions with other kids at school. People were far too complicated. And I did eventually take biology classes, and learned all about the parts that we are built from, but something was always missing. I understood how all the organs went together and interacted but it never seemed enough. Most people would say that’s a “soul” but that left me unsatisfied. Needless to say I didn’t make very many friends growing up. Sure, I had a couple, but none that ever shared my interest in electronics or how things work. I felt more kinship with the kids who were destined to go into the priesthood than anybody else, actually. Their interest in the secret nature of things was the closest to what I felt, but the focus of their inquiries was very different from my own and I certainly didn’t agree with their conclusions.
When I look back on things today I don’t think I would have changed anything. Sometimes it feels like I squandered my time because I don’t have anything tangible to show for my efforts, but I learned a lot. I feel stuck in my shitty job but it supports me and the lack of responsibility allows me the freedom to concentrate on things that are important to me.
Lately the notion has struck me that I should create something permanent. Something that’s the culmination of my work that I’d want to keep around once I’m done. But I couldn’t decide what. So I’ve been alternating between libraries and coffee shops in my free time, brainstorming and trying to come up with a great opus. And it was around this time that I met Joseph.
I don’t remember exactly when or how we met, but I’d see him around one of the coffee shops I frequented, always with a well-worn notebook open and a stack of books. Like me, he was never with anyone else. The books were always changing; each day I saw him it would be a different subject. Sometimes philosophy, sometimes computer science, sometimes theology. What caught my attention was sometimes he’d have electronics books. Some even ones I had in my own library.
After a time we’d share a table if we happened to go at the same time, but we never planned to meet. At first he was reluctant to talk about what he was researching, but it was clear that he did want to. Eventually I got it from him that his friends were universally involved in something deep and mysterious that he was wholly excluded from. None of them would talk to him about it & or at all. Naturally he was troubled by this, and so he came out here, to another part of the city in order to avoid those he once called friends, to piece together what was happening.
“I’ve seen you with religious texts, so I assume you believe it’s some sort of cult & that’s nothing new. Cults spring up all the time, and fade in and out of favor. But what’s with the programming and electronics books? How does that fit in to all of this?”
“Well, okay. I live in urbs speculum so you know we’re known for software and hardware and all that, i.e. “information technology’. I think this all started with a group of people from via dormiens &”
“Those guys? So, the cult of Morpheus?”
“The same. Either they visited my part of the city & started talking to people, or some people from my neighborhood went there. In either case, my friends seem to have picked up some stuff from them and merged it into a new… system. Or something.”
“That doesn’t seem too sinister.”
“Well, you have to remember. These aren’t kids, but they’re not adults either. People my age. I don’t think they know what they’re getting themselves in to.”
“Okay, fair enough. So what happened next?”
“The most I can make of things is they’ve started & or are trying & to make devices to augment their perception. Sort of like a drug-induced ecstatic trance without the drugs. If I were a concerned parent, I’d certainly think some of them were on drugs, but I’m not, and I’m pretty sure /they’re/ not.”
At this point I must admit I was pretty intrigued. “They’re augmenting their perception? To what end? Have you seen any of these devices?”
“No, I haven’t. The idea, as far as I can gather, is to filter information from the outside world & sight, sound, etc. & to sort of… trick the mind into thinking it’s dreaming. Or to break down the hard-wired preconceptions of what reality is. You know, your typical mystical mumbo-jumbo. But that’s about all I know. And I may even be wrong on some counts.”
That night I got to thinking. Would this thing Joseph was talking about really work? I wasn’t actually considering building the device he described. What with how it affected the people close to him, it seemed too risky. But the idea of a filter between reality an one’s perception of it… Of pushing the boundaries of what was perceived as real. It’s like stress-testing your own psyche. Which I guess is what mystics have been doing for millennia, but this time it was on my terms.
But that didn’t get me any closer to solving my own problem. Sure, Joseph’s was fascinating and if he asked for help I would be willing to lend a hand, but in the meantime I was preoccupied with not coming up with any viable ideas on something to build. I’d never had this problem before: I’d just start building something because I was interested in it. But now I wanted to build something /important/ and it wasn’t even that I had ideas that fell short; I was completely lost.
The next day I ran into Joseph again. This time we talked about my problem. I told him my story, and how I felt it was time for me to do something with my talents and build something long-lasting.
word count: 1634 words
I’m just shy of the 1666 words for the day. And I’m still a day behind. Hopefully I can catch up tomorrow.