Clone Wars -- "Deal No Deal" (Ep. 7.06)

-- Mistakes are valuable lessons often learned too late.

Ahsoka and her new friends get mixed up in some spice trading. This seems to be a not good thing. I think I would like to talk more about spice but, honestly, I don't really understand "spice" so have no coherent thoughts on it. It's pretty clear that the idea of "spice" started out as a drug reference or something pretty close to that. It's also pretty clear that Lucas "borrowed" the term from Dune. The fact that you mine spice, though, seems to have complicated everything about it as the Star Wars universe evolved. What is clear, though, is that there are two sides to the spice trade: the legit side... and the other one. Ahsoka and friends end up on the other one.

And I'm not going to go into that other than to say that Ahsoka is still trying to hide her Jedi-ness.

Kessel is more interesting and also seems to have suffered from the same issues that spice did during the evolution of the Star Wars universe. The spice mines, according to C-3PO, are a horrible place that no droid wants to be sent to. I have vague memories of the depiction of Kessel in one of the Han Solo novels I read when I was a kid, and my memories are not much like how the spice mines are depicted in Solo. But Clone Wars chooses to give us a broader view of the planet and reveals that the planet isn't all spice mine.

What's my takeaway from all of this? I can't really tell you.
Kessel has become something not quite as foreboding as how I thought of it as a kid. Or as foreboding as that book made it out to be (Where I think there were monsters that lived in the rocks? I don't really remember, but it seems like there was some monster thing that came out of the physical walls of the mine and tried to get Han. Look, it's been 40 years since I read that; I have other things in my brain now). Which is the problem, of course, with going back and giving any mystery an origin. [Like Marvel should never have gone back and given Wolverine a concrete origin. Biggest mistake Marvel ever made.]

Mostly, I'm not really getting into this arc. I appreciate the focus on Ahsoka, but I feel like they should have offered a more meaningful story. Or maybe it will turn out to be more meaningful; there's at least one more episode to go. At the moment, though, I would put this in the "throwaway story" bucket. The arc is giving us some interesting glimpses of things in the wider SWU, but the story itself is a little lacking.

"You got any skills?"

"You ever thought you might be the trouble she needs to stay away from?"

Rebels: "The Forgotten Druid" (Ep. 2.19)

-- Chopper, we're not here to shop.

One thing seeing Solo has done for me is renewed my interest in Rebels, not that my interest had waned, I just haven't had a lot of extra time, lately, for watching anything. But, after the reveal at the end of the movie, I was reminded I needed to get back on this show. And, then, one of the first things my son said to me as we left the theater was, "Dad, we need to start watching Rebels again." Apparently, I couldn't agree more.

Historically, episodes centered around droids have not been my favorites, which is unfortunate since I really love R2 and 3PO. They just never seem to stand up to the spotlight being directly on them. Such was not the case with Chopper. Not this time, anyway. And it seems the writers wanted to give us a bit about Chopper's backstory.

The stuff dealing with droids and their societal condition is pretty interesting, all things considered, and this episode was a good one to go along with the recentness of Solo because of it. Chopper becomes... acquainted... with an Imperial protocol droid, and it's immediately clear that there is a marked difference between the condition of the droids on the rebel side -- or, at least, Chopper (and R2 and 3PO) -- and the droids on the Imperial side:

Free will sounds nice. I admire your fortitude.

It's good to be reminded that the droids are sentient beings and that their restraining bolts serve as nothing more than slave collars.

And, sure, the droids are manufactured beings, but is it okay to enslave a sentient being even if it's a being you built? It's an interesting question and one I'm sure we're soon going to be dealing with on a practical level and not just a hypothetical one.

"The entire rebel fleet is betting on Chopper."

"Yeah, try not to think about it."

Clone Wars -- "Nomad Droids" (Ep. 4.6)

-- Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

I never watched the Droids cartoon from the mid-80s, but I feel like I am now. Which may be the point with this and the previous episode. Maybe these are meant as an homage to that series. At least it's just the two episodes.

Which is not to say that this was a bad episode. For an episode centered on the droids, it was quite good, actually. It's just that with the weak start of season four, it's at the trailing end of a series of episodes that don't live up to the quality of the previous three seasons. If this episode had been used as a one-shot between more serious arcs, it could have been a welcome addition of humor.

Still, this episode did manage to make me LOL a number of times. When I say LOL, I mean that literally. Not only does this episode feel like an homage to Droids but also to The Wizard of Oz. And, maybe, Willow. The tiny fairy-like aliens on the first planet R2 and 3PO end up on reminded me a lot of the two brownies from that movie.

Speaking of which, their introduction is handled pretty well. It's very A New Hope with the jawa introduction. Oh, with some Gulliver's Travels thrown in. You know, this episode seems to be an homage to a lot of things as I think about it, and, as I think abut it, I'm appreciating what they did here. I really do wish this episode had had better placement within the series as a whole.

Anyway... What I was trying to say is that the moment when 3PO accidentally knocks R2 over onto the leader (the Wicked Witch character) of the little fairy people and squashes him like a bug made me laugh. Even though I've seen  the episode before, I had evidently forgotten that happened, because I was not expecting that happen. Then the fairies start singing the wicked witch is dead song except with slightly altered words. It was a good moment.

And that's just in the first 10 minutes or so of the episode.

Okay, I think this one is worth watching on its merit as a singular episode. I actually kind of want to go back and watch it again right now just to see if I missed any of the allusions. I'm not going to because I have other things to do, but I want to.


"Please note, whoever you are, my counterpart here is programmed in 47 schools of self defense."

Clone Wars -- "Mercy Mission" (Ep. 4.5)

-- Understanding is honoring the truth beneath the surface.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

I'm going to start by saying that this is not a bad episode; however, it does feel like a throwaway episode. Nothing significant happens in it, and it's not connected to anything else. And there are some things in it that don't make a lot of sense from an overall plot standpoint. Well, one thing: C-3PO and R2-D2 being off on a Republic cruiser with a bunch of clone troopers.

Commander Wolffe and his men are headed to some battle area when they are sidetracked by this mercy mission to aid the Aleena. C-3PO is needed as a translator, which is fine for this episode, but it doesn't explain why the droids are on the ship to begin with. C-3PO tends to stick to Padme's side as her personal protocol droid, and R2 is generally with Anakin, so it's strange that the droids would end up on this ship with Wolffe and his troops. And there's no explanation provided.

Beyond that, it's pretty standard 3PO/R2 hi-jinks. Everyone wants 3PO to shut up, and R2 goes off on his own and does things. There are also fairies and tree people, so I guess it's not quite standard. Oh, and the Aleena have a very ewok vibe with a lot of the same kind of chanting sounds, though they don't quite bring themselves to worshiping the golden droid.

It's a fine episode, I suppose, and it might have been a nice one off as a break between heavier stories, but as the fifth episode of this season in which nothing significant is happening, it just feels like more nothing. I've gotta say, though, the uniforms of Wolffe's group are pretty cool for clone trooper gear.


"Welcome to our disaster. Glad you could come."

Clone Wars -- "Evil Plans" (Ep. 3.8)

-- A failure in planning is a plan for failure.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

This episode: Padme throws a party!
Which I don't know how I feel about. I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but it seems so sexist to have Padme be throwing a party. A party that just has to be perfect. And she's fretting over it. It seems so cliche.

That's not really what the episode is about, though. It's just an excuse for the droids, R2 and 3PO, to get sent on an errand... so that they can be captured by Cad Bane. Yea! Cad Bane is back! But not really enough in this episode since the action centers around the droids.

The problem here is that Bane is, basically, waiting for the droids so he can capture them, but he had no idea they'd be sent on an errand unaccompanied, so the logic here doesn't work for me.

Nor do I find it believable that R2 just takes off for a droid spa treatment.

[And this is where I got interrupted while writing this and lost my train of thought.]

At any rate, there are a lot of little details like that that don't work if you think about it too hard (or at all), but, still, I liked the episode well enough. I find R2 and 3PO together enjoyable, and there really isn't much of that in Clone Wars. It was a nice diversion that also is setting the groundwork for the next episode.

But that would be telling...

Rebels: "Droids in Distress" (Ep. 1.2)

"Your formal Jedi training starts tomorrow."

"Droids in Distress" actually opens with the distress of Ezra, distress over not being taught to use the Force by his would be mentor Kanan Jarrus, but it quickly moves to the distress of the entire crew of the Ghost as they lament over needing a job or not being able to keep the ship running. [I was strongly reminded of Firefly during this whole exchange.]

The droid part doesn't start until they actually begin their job, which is when we... Well, let's just say I was surprised to run into R2-D2 and C-3PO, basically, right off the bat for the series. They are the droids who are in distress. Okay, C-3PO is the droid who is in distress, but what's new? Of course, C-3PO believes that R2 is also in distress but, as we find out, R2 is really on a secret mission. Also sound familiar?

The episode gives us some the background for Zeb, one of the remaining of the Lasat. We get to find out why. I'll be interested to find out how this particular thread develops. It seems to me to be more along the lines of what Lucas originally had intended for the wookies before Chewbacca happened to them.

There's also what we'll call a cameo appearance by Bail Organa, somewhat like the way he shows up at the end of Revenge of the Sith. Organa was one of the movers behind the Rebellion, so I'm curious as to how often he's going to show up. I think my vote is for "more often," as long as he doesn't become some kind of deus ex machina device.

Clone Wars -- "Bombad Jedi" (Ep. 1.8)

-- Heroes are made by the times.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

This is probably the episode that no one was waiting for, considering the general view of Jar Jar, that is. Which is not to say that the episode doesn't have its moment, because it does. It's just that most of those moments are slapstick.

The actual conflict in the episode revolves around someone close to Padme betraying her in order to hand her over to Nute Gunray, who is still seeking revenge against her because of the fallout of The Phantom Menace. The real question, though, is why was Padme taking Jar Jar with her on a diplomatic mission. Maybe she thought this was a safe one to take him along on considering that she was going to see someone she was close to. And, yes, we know that Jar Jar becomes part of Padme's diplomatic contingent even by the time of Attack of the Clones, but it's unclear what his role was supposed to be during this particular mission.

What his role ends up being is "Jedi rescuer" as the battle droids mistake him for a Jedi after he throws on a cloak to hide himself during his attempt to rescue the captured Padme. Hi-jinks, of course, ensue.

My issue with the episode has nothing to do with the actual hi-jinks. For what it is, the episode is generally amusing. The issue is that it feels thrown in in order to give some screen time to characters who have mostly been left out of the narrative to this point: Padme, C-3PO, and, even, Jar Jar. So, while the episode does have an important plot point, overall, it feels a little strained and as if it's a bit of comic relief in the very serious story arcs that have so far dominated the series.

This is not an episode I would recommend to a first time viewer, but it's enjoyable enough within the context of watching the series.

"The ship has been destroyed."
"Battle droids?"
"No..."
"Jar Jar?"
"Jar Jar."

Do You Know the Code?

Briane Pagel has a new book out. He says it's the best book he's ever written and, seeing that I have quite liked his other books (except for that pineapple thing), at least the ones I've read, I'm really hoping for good things from this one. I've already picked it up but, with the end of the school year and everything going on with my kids, I haven't had a chance to start reading it. I'll let you know what I think as soon as I do, though.

Until then, here's Briane to talk about Codes!

Wherein I Hate Stuff For No Reason (a guest post by Briane Pagel)

I know this is the space Andrew has lately been reserving for his discussion of how to handle, or not handle, a bad (or, as it was, not-really-so-bad) review, and I think that’s important work. Someone has to stand up to bullies, and Andrew has a good platform from which to do so. That’s why I am extra-appreciative of his willingness to lend me his Wednesday slot in order to let me provide some thinly-veiled marketing in the guise of a LISTICLE!

P.S. WHY does everything on the internet have such a stupid name? Years into it, I still cannot bring myself to say that I tweeted something. I tell people “Oh yeah I posted a link to that on Twitter.” “Blog,” “Tweet,” “listicle,” etc. etc. It’s so degrading. I feel stupid whenever I talk about anything I do on the internet. People will say Are you going to try to publicize your book and I have to say Yes, I plan to… *sigh*… blog… about it.

Where was I? Oh, right: Listicle. People love lists! That was one of the things mentioned in an article I read entitled, “These 5 Amazing Things People Love About The Internet Will Change Your Life.” (Other things included cats and lists about cats.) So I’ve been making the rounds, promoting my new book, Codes, and it just made sense. What better way to discuss a near-future book about a corporation trying to perfect the process of human cloning by implanting computer-programmed personalities into them and marketing the result than to create a superficial list designed to generate fake controversy?

Did that sentence make any sense? It’s been a long day and I got lost in some of the clauses there.

Knowing that Andrew usually uses this space to discuss people’s reactions to bad reviews, I decided that the theme for my latest list would at least tangentially relate to that topic, and so I came up with the idea of reviewing shows and books I’ve never even seen, and, of course, panning them.

If you’re like me (and I pray you’re not. TAKE MY WORD FOR IT) then there are LOTS and LOTS of things you HATE, almost-sight-unseen. I am a champion at hating stuff before I know anything about it. I can dislike something practically before I know it exists. It’s a talent. Books, movies, TV shows, songs, certain shades of green… doesn’t matter what it is, I can hate it right up front. And, more than just hate quietly, I can -- based on that completely uninformed opinion review the bejeebers out of that thing I hate. YES! FREE SPEECH! ‘MERICA! Let’s get to it!

1. The Walking Dead: I have never seen this show, or even a preview for it. That has not stopped me from hating it so much that I have started disliking other shows if a commercial for TWD airs during them. Can we NOT have any more allegories about our society told through the zombie format? This thing is all over! I can’t go onto a web page without seeing some picture of a sweaty guy or girl holding a machete and looking fierce next to a headline about how TWD is really going to amazeballs you with the storyline this week. LET ME GUESS: They nearly get overrun by zombies but then hack their way out! Also, where is everyone getting these machetes in the first place? I am 46 years old and I have never seen a machete in real life. Do the zombies bring them? Do they sell them at the True Value ™ Hardware Store? In real life, a zombie apocalypse would feature 100% fewer machetes and 100% more “Dads holding a bed lamp they grabbed off the table.”

2. The New Star Trek Movies: This automatic-dislike probably began when they cast Chris Pine as Captain Kirk in the first “new” Star Trek movie. Looking at Chris Pine gives me the same feeling I get when I grind my teeth, only less pleasant. That was bad enough. But then I heard that in one of these movies they had Kirk driving around in a hot rod on Earth. You know what space operas don’t need? Drag races on planet Earth. But to top it off, they remade “The Wrath Of Khan.” YOU CANNOT REMAKE THE WRATH OF KHAN. That is like remaking a rainbow. Like remaking a glorious, rage-filled, fist-shaking, Enterprise-attacking, earwig-monster-injecting, desert-planet-inhabiting, Fantasy-Island-operating rainbow.

3. The Hunger Games. OH. MY. GOD. From the moment I first heard of this series of books I thought they sounded like the dumbest thing ever. Here is my understanding of the plot: some government starves all its citizens, so that they will send a bunch of kids to shoot each other with arrows in order to get a little bit of extra food. HOW DOES THAT MAKE SENSE? How would that system work? It could never! But then after all the kids shoot each other or whatever, the two (?) winners (?) get elected to the government or something, like Charlie winning the chocolate factory only Jennifer Lawrence didn’t even have to give back the gobstopper? NO DO NOT BOTHER EXPLAINING WHERE I GOT IT WRONG. The plot doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have to, because it’s a book for teenagers, and teenagers love it when things don’t make sense. It lets them be convinced that adults don’t ‘understand’ them. That’s why I loved The Cure when I was seventeen, and why kids nowadays love The Hunger Games and its sequels, New Moon and whatever the third one was with Percy Jackson.

3a.Bonus hatred: I cannot stand Jennifer Lawrence. Not even a little bit. She is somehow the female version of that guy in 8^th grade who thought smelling farts was funny. Associating her with a movie makes me that much less likely to see it. If “J-Law” showed up on my doorstep with a giant pizza and a bootleg director’s cut of the next Star Wars movie, I wouldn’t even answer the door.

Let’s do one more. This is fun! How about:

4. Anything by Isaac Asimov. To be honest, I am not sure where this one comes from because I do not know really anything about Asimov other than I dislike him and everything I imagine he stands for. I know as a scifi-ish writer myself I am supposed to apparently love Isaac Asimov and everyone’s always talking about how he predicted the future and his laws of robotics and etc blah blah blah, but I can’t be bothered. I’m not even sure what Asimov is supposed to have written. Foundation, I think? I’d go look it up but I’d rather my browser not have a history of searching for Asimov stuff. Even I am cooler than that. I think Asimov wrote that story that got made into I, Robot, starring Will Smith, and can we as a society really take an author seriously anymore if Will Smith likes his stuff? I’m also pretty sure that in reality there’d be no way robots could be programmed not to harm humans, which I think was a ‘law’ of robotics Asimov pulled out of thin air and made people believe was a thing. It’s so dumb: suppose I was being held hostage by Chris Pine and Jennifer Lawrence and the only way I’m getting out alive is if C-3PO (do NOT get me started on R2-D2!) snipes them both with a laser rifle from across the road. OH WAIT there’s a LAW that he can’t kill them, only if he DOESN’T, then he’s harming a human by letting me die, right? That is NOT how laws work, Isaac Asimov. You don’t see gravity only holding people down if it’s nonparadoxical.

In closing, you’ll note that the only people I picked on in here are people who are dead, or who don’t matter, or who are Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pine and so deserve it. I don’t have to worry about anyone overreacting or calling me crazy or taking me to task for these entirely unfounded and ill-informed, and yet still 100% correct, opinions. Don’t forget to mention in the comments how much you agree with me!

Something I don’t hate: My book, Codes: Robbie had an ordinary life, until she walked into Gravity Sling. Now he’s seeing coded messages everywhere, being chased by shadowy big-corporation goons, and questioning literally everything about the world as he knows it. Some questions need answers. This Phillip K. Dick style debut science fiction novel raises questions about how people use technology and each other.

Links:

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianePagel

My blog: Thinking The Lions: http://www.thinkingthelions.com

Buy Codes on

Golden Fleece Press’ site: http://goldenfleecepress.com/catalog/fiction/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Codes-Briane-Pagel/dp/1942195109

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/codes-briane-pagel/1121816078?ean=9781942195115

Kids' Clothes Were Never This Cool

Have you seen the clothes they make for kids these days? They're amazing. Kids' clothes were never this cool when I was a kid. It was all like tiny grownup clothes. I mean, they didn't even have Star Wars t-shirts! Well, okay, they did, but it was only every once in a while. And they were made with those big iron decals, basically, so, once you wore it about three times, the image was all cracked and peeling off. Well, not when you wore it; once it was washed a few times, it looked like it really came from a long time ago from a galaxy far, far away. Of course, the answer to that was to never wash it. Right?

One of my friends... Hold on; let me really emphasize that: ONE of my friends had a Star Wars shirt with R2 and C-3PO on it. He was the envy of every boy in our class. I was in my 20s before I had my own Star Wars t-shirt. Unless you count Underoos. Yeah, that was about as cool as it got when I was a kid. You could get underwear with stuff on it but not actual clothes. I had the Boba Fett Underoos

which were cool if you wanted to run around the house pretending to be Boba Fett (a Boba Fett with no pants), but you couldn't really wear the shirt out in public without every other person asking you what was on your shirt. Saying "a chest plate" really didn't help. Yes, I know.
I also had the Yoda Underoos

which were better, because you could wear that shirt out in public. Even if someone didn't know who he was, you could just say, "He's Yoda. He's from Star Wars."

When I was a kid, you couldn't even get band t-shirts (not that I wanted any) unless you actually went to the concert and bought them! It wasn't really until the late 80s and U2 that you could actually go to a store and buy a band t-shirt. Other than Spencer's, I mean. You could get that stuff in there, but I wasn't allowed in that place. Regular department stores and clothing stores had regular clothes, and that was it. Cool was not allowed.

All of that has changed now. Pop culture is everywhere. Any brand of cool you can think of, you can find. And you can find it virtually anywhere.

So, yeah, I've been back-to-school shopping with my kids, and it's always envy-making. Well, clothes shopping in general with my kids is envy-making. Even with my daughter. Not that I want all the pink, sparkly stuff she has, but they have cool Star Wars clothes for her, too! She's got the one shirt with... wait, I'll show you!

I love that shirt! And she even picked it out. I'm not sure what that says about how she thinks about me, but I don't think I really care. And clothes shopping with my daughter always makes my wife depressed. She's always, "I want one of those," or, "I want those colors," but they don't make that kind of stuff for adults.

I just have to say: These days, kids have it good.

And it's not just with clothes; it's with books, too. When I was in middle school, there were no books being written for kids my age. Or, well, there were, but they were all romances aimed at girls. The "YA" section (or whatever they called it then) didn't even get a full-sized bookcase. The entire section was located on one side of a bookcase that was only waist high. And it was all romance like Sweet Valley High, which had just come out. Things like The Chronicles of Narnia were stocked in the sci-fi/fantasy section because Harry Potter was still more than a decade away and the idea that you could actually write mature(ish) books aimed at teens and young teens was still a foreign concept.

I'm not even going to talk about Lego. Because, oh my gosh, THAT is just so unfair.

Anyway...
Kids have it good. And they don't appreciate it.
But, then, what kids ever do?

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Robots and Androids

Finally, we arrive to it: robots. So many of these fiction to reality posts have touched on robots or things robotic that I considered just skipping robots entirely, but, for some, that might be tantamount to ending a book just short of the climax and never finishing it. At any rate, robots have been, in many ways, what's driving this series of posts, so it wouldn't be exactly fair to leave them out, and I don't want any self-aware robots coming and asking me why I'd disrespect them in such a way. This post is also going to expand on my artificial intelligence post, so you might want to go back and read that one before going on with this one if you haven't already read it.

In many ways, the quest to develop or invent an "artificial man" has been as ongoing as the quest for flight throughout human history. These ideas extend back into myth and legend, and, as with flight, even Leonardo da Vinci had a design for a mechanical man. Maybe he even tried to build it. Instead of wading through all of that stuff, though, I'm going to jump ahead to our more modern view of what a robot is... except that we don't have a definitive view of what a robot is.

To facilitate the conversation, I'm going to define a robot as an electro-mechanical machine that has the semblance of intelligent behavior. These electro-mechanical machines can range from autonomous to remote controlled. This definition leaves out clockwork machines (which many people would like to say are the first examples of robots, but, then, that would, technically, make a clock a robot, and I'm not willing to go there).

Having said that, I will, however, go with Tik-Tok from Ozma of Oz as the first example of a modern robot in literature. Even though he was a clockwork, he was self aware and self motivating, making him a clockwork robot, not just a clockwork that looked like a man. It would be 15 years after the introduction of Tik-Tok before the word robot would be coined.

Tik-Tok

Speaking of, the term robot was first introduced in 1920 in a play, Rossum's Universal Robots, by Karel Capek. The word, basically, means drudgery, as that is the kind of work the robots in the play did. It doesn't end well for humanity.

As the 20th century progressed, robots became more and more common in fiction:

And, perhaps, the most famous robots ever (okay, not perhaps; we all know they are):

However, of all the fictional appearances of robots, it is probably Isaac Asimov's robot short stories and novels that have been the most significant, not least of all for his Three Laws of Robotics.

Surprisingly enough (at least to me), the first electronic robots were built in 1948 and 1949, Elmer and Elsie. The first truly modern robot was invented in 1954, the Unimate, by George Devol. He sold it to General Motors in 1960, and its installation began the modern robotics industry.

And this is where things get complicated. Complicated because the quest has always been to build an artificial human, not a mechanical arm, which is what the Unimate was. And for the last 50 years, that's what we've been trying to do. We've been trying to build the specific form of a robot that we call an android, which is what Asimov writes about, even if that's not what he calls them. But it is what we call R2-D2 and C-3PO -- droids. And here  is where we are today:

This is TOPIO 3.0, an android designed to play ping pong. He uses an advanced AI (artificial intelligence) that allows him to learn and improve his skill while playing. Basically, he adapts to the person he's playing against, learns how that person plays and adopts a strategy to beat the opponent. You can learn more about TOPIO here; although, I don't see a record of his wins and losses listed.

This is an Actroid, the most sophisticated android currently "alive." The newest model is named Sara

You can watch her explain how she works.

So... we're not quite to self aware, self motivating robots and androids, but we are stepping in that direction. In fact, robots are one of the biggest driving forces in AI research. Science fiction author Vernor Vinge (A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky) believes we are heading toward a "technological singularity" (a term he coined) in which we will technologically develop a greater-than-human intelligence. Because we cannot comprehend the kinds of changes that will occur after such an intelligence is created, he calls this an "intellectual event horizon." With all the research and development in quantum computing and quantum nodes, I have a hard time thinking he's wrong. [My friend Rusty (who drew this picture of me) has been going on about Vinge for some time, now, and, so far, I haven't read anything by him. Not because I haven't wanted to, but because I'm way behind on my reading and haven't wanted to try to work anything new into the stack until I cut it down some; however, after reading this stuff, I'm going to have to work Vinge in.] It's not that Vinge is the only person to have written about these themes; we see them in science fiction a lot, usually with a very negative spin on it (the Terminator franchise, the Matrix trilogy), but he is the first to state his view so concisely, and this idea permeates much of his work. It will certainly be interesting to see how the future progresses in regards to artificial intelligence and robots!


The Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.