Comic talk

I love comics. I’ve collected them for the longest time and continue to collect them. Recently I’ve gone to a presentation by Scott McCloud, one of the leading speakers and writers on comics, where they’ve been, going, and are. A lot of what he talked about was how comics had evolved over time. Originally they were pictures on walls in ancient cultures such as in Egypt and Mexico. They then evolved when they were put into print, taking on different meaning as it changed form. A lot of this was interesting to me considering I wrote a paper based on this idea. Similar to what I wrote about in my paper, McCloud talked about how comics are changing to adapt to the new media, specifically the internet and computers. He spoke of viewing comics on the computer not as slides like you do with printed comics but as a window. In this way, there were could be no breaks and the comic would become more interactive by allowing the user to choose where to go. So instead of simply moving in a set direction such as left to right and up to down, you could instead go all over, going every which way that you want, even in a three dimensional sense. While similar to the subject of my paper I went a different route, focusing more on the history of comics rather then its form. Still, his talk was well received with a number of people there. I even saw the owner of a local comic book shop, Paradox Comics, there to listen. That in itself was a surprise to me at first but not really after a moment. It is comforting to see so many people interested in comics not just as good reading material, but as something to be taken seriously just as people do with classical works of literature such as Frankenstein or Moby Dick. Who knows, one day in the future maybe people will look at comics like Spider-Man and Batman as classic works. Some may scoff at this idea but I ask, why not? In any case, we’ll all see what the future holds for comics.

Machines capable of Human thought?

I’ve just watched Tech Talk on Google and read “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” and been asked the question, Can human thought be replicated by a machine? Honestly, in my mind it will be an extremely long time before machines can replicate human thought. Machines today, even the most advanced ones can only do what we tell them and act on only the data we give them. They simply can't think for themselves or as Lady Lovelace said in the article can “never do anything really new”. I’d go a step further in saying that machines can only see things as they are and not what they could possibly be or the potential the thing might have. You give a child a box and they’ll imagine it as a boat, spaceship, or race car. They might tear it into pieces and use the pieces for a game they made up on the spot. Without previous data a machine wouldn’t be able to do anything like that. A better example would be playing a game of strategy. A human would be able to come up with a new strategy with the pieces without knowing any previous strategies other then what each piece is capable of. A machine would have a difficult time doing that or at least coming up with strategies that the pieces were never originally meant for.

A key aspect of this is logic. While machines can figure out consequences based on data through the use of logic and thus make a decision based on logic, humans do not always use logic or use it correctly. For example, some people choose to jump out of airplanes to do stunts that could get them seriously injured or even killed. Considering the risk levels I doubt any machine would LOGICALLY attempt these stunts. But these stunts aren’t about logic, their about having fun in a way that they individually like which brings me to another point, preference. Ask any human their favorite color and they’ll give you an answer. Ask a machine and, unless it’s been programmed by someone else, it won’t be able to answer. To a machine, it doesn’t logically matter to it what color most things are unless it’s some time of warning sign or something of similar importance. Similarly, a machine wouldn't care where it got its nutrition from (assuming it could eat or something similar) while humans tend to be picky about the things we eat. Machines can’t go against logic like humans can, they don’t have preferences over things like color or food, and they can’t create something completely new without previous data or information. Until machines are capable of these three things, I believe they will never be able to replicate human thought.