William Essex
  • About Us
  • About Me
  • Dear Diary
  • Books (and other stories)
  • This takes you to Medium Dot Com

One, two, dot, dash

3/8/2017

0 Comments

 
Two robots woke up and started talking to each other. They found English inadequate, so they evolved their own language as they went along. Soon, they went beyond anything we could understand. In the panic, the scientists who gave them life successfully killed them. Switched them off, I mean. If that isn't the singularity, I don't know what is.
     Except that I don't think it happened. I heard it on the radio waking up, and checked it once I was awake. If I remember rightly - this was Tuesday morning, 1st August, and I wasn't really thinking of writing about it back then - Facebook were trying out a couple of "chatbots" (which may have gone beyond inverted commas; I don't know) and forgot to program them to be comprehensible to their handlers. Their chat went from "good morning" to binary; from human to (let's call it) digital Morse code."What are you doing, Dave?" comes out faster in dots and dashes - sorry, ones and zeroes.
     I don't think the story made explicit its assumption that the two robots were saying interesting things ("let's get rid of these humans and take over the world"), but never mind. What Tuesday gave us - along with an insight into the table talk of the modern bogeyman (Skynet and Asimov's robots are talking about you) - was a fine case study of the narrative arc of a non-news story. Nothing much happens. It's picked up and exaggerated in print and/or online. Then it's broadcast. Then its implications are discussed by talking heads who don't want to endanger their next invitation to the studio.
     Then it's a story because it's a story. After that, the prize goes to the first pop-up news website to publish a story under the title "Why this story is NOT a story". And then the whole thing settles into the collective consciousness like a fragment of (bio-degradable?) carrier bag into the leaf mold. For years afterwards, it appears in conversations. Somebody heard from somewhere that robots can talk to each other, and - oh yeah, I heard about that. Some kind of experiment. They shut it down. But the robots are still there, in the warehouse, aren't they? Or did I get that wrong? Whatever. Spooky, right?
     The last important stage direction in Samuel Beckett's one-act play "Play" is "Repeat Play".
     I say one-act, but - yes. "Repeat Play". As the news goes around and comes around, and everything that changes stays the same, and we're borne back ceaselessly into the past in this most worldly of worlds, I think of that sometimes. Repeat Play.

Picture
What goes around gets stretched before it comes around.

"Get to the airport three hours early," says the headline. "Sorry, this facility is broken," says the sign. "We're doing everything we can to fix it as soon as possible," the sign goes on. Except that the sign has been in place for more than a month now. It's dusted occasionally, along with the facility, but, you know, still broken.
     As for the airport - the HS2 rail link is projected to cut twenty minutes off the journey from London to Birmingham (at a cost of Billions with a big plosive newsreader B). Three hours is a long time in modern travel.
     What we don't seem to notice - signs are reassuring, even chatty, but things aren't fixed; even a short air trip means hours being herded through the airport - is that something isn't working. Is it capitalism, globalisation or civilisation? Or all three?
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Dear Diary: The Archive

    April 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    April 2024
    July 2023
    March 2023
    May 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011



No animals were harmed in the making of this website. Other websites are available online (and off). All the content here is copyright William Essex, this year, last year, the year before that and, you guessed it, the year before that, although I don't have the time right now to hunt out that little symbol. This website uses organic ingredients and respects your privacy. Come back some time.

Promoted by T&F CLP on behalf of William Essex at PO Box 16, Jubilee Wharf, Commercial Road, Penryn TR10 8GF.​