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Tag Archive for cyberpunk

Multiplicity and the Drone

January 29, 2015 future, Writing Comments Off on Multiplicity and the Drone

 

The idea of AI’s interacting in a swarm or a pack is not a new one.  There have been researchers working with bug-type swarms in mini, evolutionary AI setups for decades.  In “The Extractionist” universe (near-future sci-fi I’m trying to place) this type of pack behavior governs many of the collective systems in the world, from the way cars interact on the highway to the way that the boxing ‘bots in warehouses gather customer orders for shipping.

It’s an answer to the classic Hollywood schtick where the hero has two self-guided missiles or drones or robots target each other, rather than the hero, thereby eliminating the threat and saving the day.  If you gather your AI’s together into a system, whereby they talk to each other and share data and location and speed, etc, they can work together towards a bigger goal (in DARPA’s case, a more accurate combat system) that can be used to build great things without the massive individual complexity required to have a “humanform” AI.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Throttle Forward

January 25, 2015 future, Writing Comments Off on Throttle Forward

 

So WHY haven’t all these bits and bobs gelled yet?  Will they ever?  The thing about fictional futures is, they are often driven by a single mind, and single individual.  That means they are fueled by the experiences and information gleaned by one mind.  Someone (usually the author) has done their research, talked (or not talked) to experts in the field that they have access to (who may or may not be the same experts that everyone else is talking to).

Like a bathtub full of gin, all of those experiences and information points get mellowed together, they sit and steep and come together over time until you have a final, consumable product (much like bathtub gin, the quality may vary).

So a vision of the future is a *curated* experience.  You are looking at it through a single lens, through the eyes of the writer/artist who put it all together.

Which is why the “real” future won’t match.  Ever.  The people who *create* the future do their own curation.  Sometimes they are informed by futurists, by authors and artists, and the pieces they create reflect that.  As often as not, they are chasing a rabbit and have to see where it goes, so where they end up may not at all be where they planned to go.

So, while we may have all the *pieces* of a dystopic future at our fingertips, they are not going to gel.  It takes an individual to do that, to create a suite or a collection or an experience by bringing all of those bits and bobs together.

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