I recently overheard a conversation about someone teaching their cat to talk using AIC – Augmented Interspecies Communication – and the concept caught my attention. As both the owner of a very intelligent shepherd and someone who’s worked with machine learning in the past it tickles many of my interests (and then there are treatments of the idea in fiction, such as in David Brin’s excellent Uplift series). So if like me you hadn’t encountered AIC before, here’s an entertaining introduction to the topic:

I like this video just as much for its final comments:

I think a lot of it feels like ego, to be perfectly honest. We want to hear our dogs say things that we know they’re feeling, or that we assume they’re feeling, but we want to hear it in our language. I would love for the greatest takeaway to be not that our dogs can talk, but that they’ve already been saying it all along and we just haven’t been listening.

Alexis Devine

My dog gets bored, worried, boisterous, hungry, thirsty, sick and tired, and he communicates these all the time (or I assume he does!). Having lived with humans all his life, he’s become adept at getting our attention, and we’ve become equally competent at meeting him half way to address his needs – just as with our children when they were infants. It’s not a huge stretch then to imagine we might teach a dog a slightly different (but equally accessible) communications method to use with its people.

Occasionally, I’ll find conversations steer toward much wider claims of interspecies sentience or rational thought using such communication as its lever. It’s perhaps an understandable leap, especially when we seem to be so good at anthropomorphising while interpreting animal responses. Way back when Koko’s signing was doing the rounds, it really felt like Penny was just interpreting what the audience wanted to hear. This example from when Koko was being interviewed by an AOL group might seem extreme, but maybe that’s the point:

AOL: Question: Do you like to chat with other people?
PENNY: Koko, do you like to talk to people?
KOKO: Fine nipple.
PENNY: Yes, that was her answer. ‘Nipple’ rhymes with ‘people,’ OK? She doesn’t sign people per se, so she may be trying to do a ‘sounds like…’ but she indicated it was ‘fine.’

https://web.archive.org/web/20070206214118/http://www.koko.org/world/talk_aol.html

We’re human, and I suggest a tendency to be influenced by some combination of confirmation bias and the Barnum effect puts us in an awkward position when evaluating conversation. How much of our perception of a conversation is just us wanting to be talked with?

We see another compelling example of this when conversing with a contemporary machine-learning driven chatbot.

Modern general purpose chatbots (like Google’s LaMDA) are typically driven by probability engines that are themselves trained (programmed) using vast multi-disciplinary datasets available online. Given such a scenario, how do we rationally evaluate a conversation with a chatbot if it is the output of a complex pattern matching algorithm working from millions of conversations on a library of topics? We enter our questions, our input finds its way into the pattern matching algorithm (along with the rest of the conversation we’ve had thus far) and the engine forms a matching response to match the pattern. The patterns follow natural language patterns, so the responses look like natural language.

Is that a conversation?

From a purely objective point of view, perhaps so: It looks like a conversation, talks like a conversation, and smells like a conversation, ergo it is a conversation.

But I don’t know if I’m going to use the same logic to decide my conversation partner has a soul, just because the chatbot’s topic of conversation touches on matters of religion or philosophy, regardless of how compelling the conversation it may seem.

To be fair, I tend to stay away from those topics with my dog, too.

Apple had its ‘Far Out’ event this last week, in which they announced the latest in several product line-ups including AirPods, Apple Watch, and the iPhone. I’m not normally one to notice these things, having resisted the iAllure. That is, until this year.

A few things converged in 2022: My old budget phone found itself on life support while we travelled, I was looking for a way to more portably synchronise my writing work between my MacBook Air and phone or tablet, and I found myself reconsidering the Apple ecosystem as I listened to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Apple’s charismatic cofounder, Steve Jobs. After some debate, and while on a three-week road trip with intermittent network access and an increasingly dead phone camera and map service, I popped into an Apple store for the first time in my life and purchased my very first iDevice.

This all came after some serious head scratching: These are not inexpensive, after all. And quite aside from pricing a phone, is the current generation the right choice? I don’t have the money to buy every upgrade, so should I wait for the next release? Is this remotely good value? Am I locking myself onto a path I’m going to regret down the track?

I think we’re all familiar with analysis paralysis, and I had been going back and forth on this topic for a while before it came to a head during our trip. After jumping into the iDevice ecosystem I came across it again when deciding whether to adopt a new approach to managing my project information: If I’m going to change the way I keep notes, and move away from my old monolithic application and its poor sync towards something I can readily use on the go (because, frankly, a paper notebook is just more cruft) then which direction do I head? There are so, so many: Evernote, Obsidian, Notion, Todoist, Things 3, Agenda, Goodnotes, Google Keep, OneNote, Apple Notes, and many more.

On its face, Apple Notes seems like a no-brainer: It is pre-installed and does first-class sync between my Mac and iDevices. But it certainly lacks advanced features present in the others. Do I need them? How can I know? And once I start investing serious content into one system, what’s the cost of switching, both in transferring data and mentally jumping to a new process?

And so re-enters analysis paralysis. And maybe a more insidious problem: Switching. It’s a killer problem, and inherent in all these apps. After all, app developers want to market their product to new users, and that requires them to switch. Switching in turn means giving something up from the old system, even if it’s just comfortable familiarity, so there’s always at least some inherent dissatisfaction with the new product. Cue switching addiction, and off we go looking for the next shiny thing.

A recent Apple Notes related meme cropped up which illustrated this beautifully:

Sure, we can try and build some ultimate note-taking time-management guru workflow using a variety of apps, constantly tweaking it with the goal of achieving a productivity nirvana. Or, we could just use a simple notes app and actually do our job.

When all is said and done, these are just tools to get some other job done. In my case, replacing a physical notebook, and a hierarchy of reference material and notes. If I’m not a slave to the tool, I don’t have to adopt every bright idea from the latest app developer – I can use the tool most appropriate for today, and go all in.

So yes, I’m an Apple Notes user, wherever I may sit on the IQ spectrum. And the same decision-making process is how I answered the buy-it-now-or-wait-until-later iPhone question. If any other business needs a tool to get the work done today, are they going to say No, we’ll hold a committee to agonise about whether to wait until the latest version comes out in three months, or are they going to just purchase the tool and get the job done? Is there any reason our work is less deserving of similar consideration?

So yeah, there may be a new iPhone out, and later this year we may see M2 iPads, and whatever and so forth thereafter. The march of technology and product releases will move ever forwards, as it always does.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but it reminds me of something Kar says to the Monk With No Name in Paul Hunter’s Bulletproof Monk,

So, I figured it out. Why hot dogs come in packages of ten and hot dog buns come in packages of eight. See, the thing is, life doesn’t always work out according to plan. So be happy with what you’ve got, because you can always get a hot dog.

Seann William Scott’s Kar to Chow Yun-fat’s Monk With No Name

So yeah, Apple’s event has some new shiny gadgets, and it’s fun to see technology progress (and great to see no more touchbars or butterfly keyboards). But the work will get done with the tools at hand for some years to come.

Here’s to the tools of the day.

Nine months before I was born, NASA launched its last Apollo mission. Eugene Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, and Dr Harrison H. Schmitt set down in the Taurus-Littrow valley aboard Apollo 17. In their three days there, Schmitt would become the world’s first lunar field geologist, and they’d collect over 110kg of samples, all the while fully aware that this was the end of the line for the Apollo programme.

I may not have been around when astronauts walked on the moon, but like people the world over, humanity’s ongoing achievements in space exploration continue to inspire. Yes, we may turn to fictional alternatives like For All Mankind or The Martian to imagine human feet on extra-terrestrial soil, but there’s so much amazing real science underway I can never seem to keep up. Upcoming terrestrial and space based telescopes such as the SKA, LSST, and JWST look set to further change the way we see the universe and our place in it (here’s looking forward to more cool events like Hubble’s light echo observations), and a new generation of players like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing and others are changing what we consider possible for space flight altogether.

So it was with great interest that I sat watching NASA TV on August 29, waiting to see Artemis I get underway. With the SLS sitting on the launchpad like some homage to the space shuttle era, rearing to go, I could just imagine the engineering teams debating the import of their stuck valve and whether to launch: “Who wants to take responsibility for deciding whether we’re ready to launch our first moon mission in 50 years while that big red warning light is on. Really? Nobody?” Yeah, I wouldn’t either.

Having missed out the first time around, I’m going to be a complete sucker for this project as it goes through its flight tests. Come Saturday I’ll be connecting to the NASA stream again when Artemis hits its next launch window, and I hope you join me!

As Gene Cernan, the Apollo program’s last commander, stepped off the Lunar surface for the last time he remarked:

Bob, this is Gene, and I’m on the surface; and, as I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time to come – but we believe not too long into the future – I’d like to just (say) what I believe history will record. That America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus- Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. “Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.”

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a17/a17.clsout3.html

Ever passionate about human space exploration, from his last step on the moon in 1972 to his passing in 2017, Gene continually urged others to see to it that his weren’t the last footprints on the moon. It looks like that wish is set to come true finally, and this time I might just be around to see it.

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to devote time and mental energy to my writing or other art interests. But while some responsibilities have placed themselves centre-stage, I can still find time for a little art appreciation, which seems at least as important. Some of that art has come from boardgames and other pursuits I’d not have even considered only a few years ago.

In a year which saw the relaunch of the Star Wars film franchise through The Force Awakens, the Star Wars milieu seemed ripe for a revisit: Disney upended the Expanded Universe, relabelling it ‘Legends’ and giving themselves room to move in the the timeline of a galaxy far, far away. My kids are now at an age where they appear to appreciate the light-vs-dark struggle of the Force mythos, are inspired by starships and lightsabers, and seem more than happy to play Star Wars at home with whatever comes to hand. Then there’s other Star Wars goodies such as Rebels, which blew us all away with Spark of Rebellion.

It seemed only appropriate to get in on the action and, while there, rather belatedly introduce myself to the collaborative storytelling of tabletop roleplaying games. Specifically, through Fantasy Flight Games‘ Force and Destiny, one of three arms of their Star Wars RPG (focusing on the Force, while their other games delve into the rebellion and the fringes of the Empire).

Turns out that visiting A Galaxy Far, Far Away was only a tabletop away.

Mechanically, I was intrigued by the character and story-building possibilities in these games; in Force & Destiny, characters have specific moral strengths & weaknesses, producing conflict which grows (or decays) their character and in turn affects the story around them. The other branches of the game can enrich this further, introducing the concept of Duty and Obligation for similar effects, creating a dynamic story that’s fun for the group, as well as the storyteller. I’ve started with the one, but can see myself expanding our stories to encompass each of these as time and the wallet allows – the experience has been truly eye-opening.

As the storyteller, the game promotes thinking on your feet, keeping the story engaging and progressing for your audience. There is – as Chuck Wendig so astutely observes – absolutely no allowance for the self absorption or crippling hesitation that is Writer’s Block:

You can’t get writer’s block at the game table. Not as a game master, not as a player. You can’t be all like, “Yeah, I’m just not feeling my character’s actions today, let’s try again tomorrow.”

Roleplaying isn’t writing, per se. It’s collaborative, and certainly not as lonely. But it does exercise many of those same creative muscles, and it’s fantastic to connect that creativity directly with an audience in real time. The magic really comes alive when you describe a scene resulting from a player’s choices and see them stare off into the middle distance, a glint in their eyes reflecting the frame of their freighter’s canopy, beyond which recedes that snowy mountaintop where they learned so much about themselves and their friends.

There may be plenty of reasons why I never got into tabletop roleplaying games earlier in life, most of them questionable, but I’m glad I eventually took the plunge. The social setting also lets me do something else that I occasionally find difficult when writing – dare to be bad. Making the story move is more important than making it perfect. A bit more practice at this and I might just learn that well enough to apply it to words on the page. In the meantime, we’ve enough material to keep practicing that mantra for a long time to come, with gently modified pre-made adventures requiring very little time investment on the part of an overcommitted GM.

After a lengthy drought, we recently picked up a number of new table top games. Among these were two deck-building card games: Dominion and Rune Age. Having only ever played card games involving the standard English 52-card deck (with the notable exception of Uno), I didn’t even know what a deck building game was, so the learning experience that followed was entertaining in itself.

I’m sure there are better introductions to the topic of deck building games, and getting my head around the strategy took some time. Gameplay aside though, so many of these games were simply beautiful to behold. If you find yourself playing one and are stuck waiting for other players to complete their turns, the illustrations and atmosphere they engender can be their own enjoyment.

Both games seemed deceptively similar at first, which no doubt can lead to some confusion for someone learning one and then the other. In both cases, the player starts with a small, weak deck of cards, and wants to build to a stronger one. Getting there, however, differs completely between the games.

In Dominion it’s likely you want to end the game with a big fat deck of high value Victory cards, giving you more points than your competitor. You can easily spend the first half of your game increasing your buying power (adding more currency to your deck) and the second half spending it (trading or playing those cards for Victory cards). But while it sounds like a generic strategy, it’s not the only one, and there’s a lot of variety in how you go about this: The game (and its expansions) offers a huge number of randomly chosen scenarios, and there’s a depth of strategy to be discovered in interactions between that scenario’s action cards.

In most respects, Dominion plays like a familiar card game – players take turns, build points, and tally points at the end of the game. I was pleased to see how easily everyone picked it up – my six and nine year olds could understand the basics, as could their grandmother, who understands the strategy a little better. I can play it with a variety of people and while the game doesn’t seem random, the outcome (so far) is far from assured.

Rune Age is also a deck building game, and it’s there that the similarity ends. It plays more like a fantasy card-game implementation of Risk (or Civilization, or some variation therein). With Rune Age you play one of several pre-crafted scenarios, which provide objectives, rewards and obstacles for the game. You attempt to turn your small starting deck of weak cards into a small endgame deck of strong cards suitable for your objective – which may be to have wealth, eliminate other players, or defeat territories or monsters. The game is complex, and while it’s possible to have a fast half-hour game with others, the first game always seems to take hours (especially with players who haven’t played deck building games before). The notion that whittling your deck down by eliminating weak cards isn’t going to be obvious to everyone on the first round; my nine-year-old son still thinks the objective of the game is to have the fattest deck of cards at the end.

For depth of play and a far more ‘epic’ atmosphere, I love playing Rune Age. But for playing with family and casual gaming friends, its complexity is its undoing – it’s very difficult to find people with the patience to actually learn the game. It is perhaps the only new card game I have which specifically offers solitaire as an option, a bonus for learning the game, but also not a feature that I don’t expect to be taking advantage of years later.

It’s been a revelation though, having been brought up on board games such as Monopoly, Scrabble and card games like Pinochle and Spades. So many new possibilities opening up – now to find more people to play with.

How long has it been since you visited a newsagent and bought a magazine? For me, it must have been well over ten years. Since 2005, probably the only print periodicals I’d bought had been subscriptions ordered over the internet, and even then, I quickly let my subscriptions to Analog and Australian Road Rider lapse.

I’m a big fan of print: While I have devices on which I could read electronic books, I still buy a paperback to read on the train. Perhaps I enjoy bucking trends – I don’t think you can break new ground by following the crowd – and I remain skeptical of predictions of print’s demise and surrender to our new e-reader overlords. Sure, there are plenty of people reading electronically on the train too, but readership is declining – there are many more playing Candy Crush Saga or trading rants on Facebook.

So why stop subscribing? In the case of Analog, the issues had arrived 3 to 6 months after their issue date, and with both periodicals, I felt the content didn’t represent good value compared to what I could find online, for free. And in the subjects that interested me, whether it be writing, motorcycling or whatever, I knew where to find decent information online. There just wasn’t any way they could compete.

Recently though, I wanted to try something new. I’d been playing with some digital art using Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro, and I felt that seeing how others use the application would be beneficial. I knew of some great examples online, but nevertheless, the field is new to me. What am I missing? Who can I turn to to provide an authoritative guide for a newbie exploring the field?

Autodesk’s tutorials made mention of a magazine – ImagineFX – which seemed intriguing. Interviews, a heap of art, tutorials, and comparisons between styles, techniques and workflows. My interest piqued, I popped in at my local newsagent to see if I could find the magazine.

Yes, it had been a while. One newsagent had closed. Another had a tiny aisle populated with only motoring and lifestyle magazines, and a lone copy of National Geographic. My local bookstore now includes a newsstand (a disturbing development brought on by declining book sales, a decision to hold less book stock, and to survive through diversification), and while they had a few more magazines to choose from, apart from photography there was nothing catering to the visual arts.

Eventually I found a large newsagent in the city that had the magazine I was after, but the experience had left me with a nagging question: If this is the new model, does it even work?

There are (perhaps) less publications in print, and less subscribers, so sure, retailers can’t afford to stock everything. I could have also spent that time searching for a print magazine instead finding free content online. Or I could have bought the issue digitally online, for (far) less than the retail print copy, and began reading immediately.

Call me old fashioned, or an art snob, but there are two things that don’t sit well with me in this brave new world.

First, there no longer remains an obvious place to find the curator. In times gone by the traditional publishing and editorial process standing behind your bookstore book purchase, or your magazine or computer software, provided some minimum guarantee that what you were purchasing was at least literate, and likely merchantable and fit for purpose. After all, the retailer carried a risk that you’d come back and ask for your money back if it wasn’t. In an emerging era of self published books, self promoting art channels, or ‘early access‘ unfinished computer software, those values have been thrown out, replaced with what at times appear to be the digital equivalent of temporary street sellers hawking their wares and accepting only cash.

Second, I worry the potentially low culture tastes of a mass society mean Google will never be a fitting replacement for the filter that traditional publishing models provide. If the majority are content with a self published first draft they can buy for $0.99 or less, or a website that’s accessible for free, then that’s what you’ll find at the top of your search results. And sure – that’s what Google’s great for. But does it also mean that if you research a field you don’t know, you’ll wade through a lot garbage before you find what you’re looking for?

Who knows what lies ahead. Content delivery via the internet continues to evolve, and so does the audience. I also realise it makes little sense to pine for the past, and nobody can deny there are huge opportunities for people willing to self promote and self publish their work. But what future is this lying ahead of us, recommended by a search engine or hit statistic?

Following the horrific events in Paris this last week, someone brought the following tweet (which predated these events) to my attention and asked if this is becoming the norm now: Should we expect the police to be reviewing our every tweet, facebook post, or instagram? Is this a violation of freedom of speech?

Please be aware that we will continue to monitor comments on social media & any offensive comments will be investigated.

— Police Scotland (@policescotland) December 30, 2014

It’s tempting to cast this as an infringement on free speech; but in doing so are we employing selective memory and forgetting that freedom of speech is not a universal right in any culture? How often do we overlook slander, trade secrets, non disclosure agreements, pornography laws and other limitations on what we can say, write or display?

And how often are we the ones restricting freedom of speech, as a market? Consider the reaction to European media organisations displaying graphic footage of the Paris killings, whilst also having never broadcast any of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. In a Sydney Morning Herald article on this reaction, Paul Colford states, regarding AP imagery:

“None of the images distributed by AP showed cartoons of the prophet Muhammad,” he said.

“It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images.”

Yet how is self censorship, presumably to avoid insensitivity or offence towards some portion of the market, any different from state imposed censorship?

Not that free speech is ipso facto a warranty to the worthiness of an opinion; as Randall Munroe states in his comic XKCD:

“I can’t remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you’re saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it’s not literally illegal to express.”

Freedom of Speech issues aside, perhaps the most concerning factor to the Scotland Police tweet, for social media users, is the notion that personal posts are reviewed by Big Brother.

It’s interesting to theorise the reaction had the tweet been worded thus:

Please be aware that we will continue to monitor by TV and radio broadcasters, and offensive comments will be investigated.

Would anyone have even considered it out of the ordinary?

And the definition of ‘offensive’ aside, do we consider our responsibility when using social media? As Greg Barton stated recently to the ABC:

“It’s natural we have that curiosity to figure that out, but somebody sending a tweet saying ‘I’ve just seen a man in SWOT gear climb a ladder’, the gunman could be hearing that in real time and making a response,”

Is the real problem that by staring at facebook or twitter on our phone, we’ve forgotten the reach of the internet? Should we expect ourselves to have any less responsibility than traditional broadcast media when technology landed us the ability to broadcast information worldwide whilst sitting on a train, playing with our phone?

All hail the Solstice.

It’s the season of the summer solstice down under, and while friends and relatives in the Northern Hemisphere turn up the radiator and pray for Just a little sunlight, please God, before I go insane, over here temperatures in some towns will be up around 120F. The locals are unlikely to be gathering around any lit fireplaces.

Which of course means that the Northern Hemisphere themed Christmas marketing juggernaut makes for an awkward clash between culture and reality: Jolly old men in red suits risk heat stroke while balancing sweaty kids on their knees; liberal dashes of fake snow adorn storefronts, despite the fact that many (most?) shoppers have never seen the real thing away from the TV; families gather to sing Christmas carols with electric candles for fear of starting unstoppable fires in tinder-dry conditions.

Differences aside, it does remain for many of us a chance to catch up with extended family, take a break from work and routine and step back and look at the year past. Small wonder that a few days later many will be making New Year’s Resolutions.

So whatever your climate, or tradition – here’s best wishes to you and yours.