Weblogging from the Pop!Tech Conference

“Great web philosopher” David Weinberger weblogged several talks at PopTech 2002, which had the theme of Artificial Worlds. From his posts, it sounded like a lot of thought-provoking fun. But what’s in it for me you ask? (Me meaning me, of course, not you.) Some speakers addressed stuff that matters to the Animated Musical (which now has a future-based flashback-to-the-present structure, as noodled over here):

  • Ray Kurzweil spoke about the future (of computing), where human brain power and computing power intersect in 2029 (he didn’t give a date, so keep your calendars open).

    Bonus Weinberger question: “I said last summer I stood in a wheatfield that 100M stalks of wheat. If we take left-leaning is on and right-leaning as off, for 5 minutes, that wheatfield completely represented Casear’s brain state when he was stabbed. So, I asked, it seems to me that hw-sw is entirely the wrong paradigm for the brain, intelligence, consciousness. (Unfortunately, I chose not to draw the explicit connection, in order to save time, and thus sounded like a lunatic.) “

  • Alvy Ray Smith, co-foundar of Pixar, presented the case against digital actors. Acting is founded in consciousness, and would be impossible to model/program without conscious computers. [And even if computers achieved consciousness, how many do you have to make to get one Emily Watson? -ed.] Oh, and Pixar’s still at least two orders of magnitude away from modelling real humans satisfactorily.
    Bonus outside reading assignment: Dr. Antonio Damasio’s The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness

  • Warren Spector, game god, said games are “part of the real world.” Games as a story-telling medium, or a story-facilitating medium, really, with the explosion of continuous multiplayer games.
    Bonus video game-as-research:The Sims, duh, and Grand Theft Auto 3 (“reprehensible” but “revolutionary”).