I was wondering what I'd write here this morning, but extolling the virtues of Skepticism's Farmakon wasn't really in order. The article below, however, is of considerable interest.
The Trouble with the Turing Test
Briefly mentioned in the article is AI/VR cheerleader/developer Jaron Lanier, who pissed me off back in college. I wish I hadn't failed to save the hundreds of journal pages I wrote back then, 'cause I'd sure like to see what I had to say about his response to Wild Palms- which I've never had the pleasure of seeing, alas, but was just familiar enough with back in '99 or whenever to rant about Lanier's comments thereupon. I bet I sounded like the paranoid twit I was, and still kinda am.
Which brings me to another subject entirely, albeit one I'm not in the mood to get into right now: the weird techno-utopian dreams of the 1990s. God, how I wish some of those visionaries had been right, but looking back... shit, I don't know. Like I said, it's not something I want to get into, 'cause if I took the time and did some reading, I could write on the subject extensively (at least from the standpoint of a kid growing up back then, only to become a young adult watching all those ideas and dreams either turn to dust or calcify in corporate offices).
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