East New York Worries

It wasn’t starting out so good on Tuesday morning.  There’s a letter from folks I don’t particularly care to talk to and since I don’t know what’s in it yet I imagine the worst.  Walking through the school, en-route to the Fitness Center I turn to Spotify, which I pay for dutifully every month but haven’t used in good while.  Checking I’m glad to see that both the JunglePussy albums I’m looking for are there for the listening. 

A voice from East New York.  Exotic and familiar perhaps a bit like a Beijing brogue.  “Satisfaction Guaranteed” is just what I need this morning: a rough, contemporary hip hop shake up.  I make the time to savour some East New York worries rather than my own.  More than once I laugh aloud at a line I can discern for the first time, charting out a bit more of her logic. 

Now.  Much later in the day.  In a car.  Where else?  Someone is driving it.  How long before it is just normal that the car drives itself?  Will they really have driverless vehicles as a policy mandate soon, soon as in three years out, not thirteen years out, over there in Finland.  This is what I’ve heard.  Mandate the inevitable early and facilitate a leap frog?  As long as you’ve a reasonably wealthy population who don’t mind surrendering agency.  The Finns are like the Americans in their love for guns.  But they would appear to be different in their attitudes on driving.  Soon though, the only Americans as well, who will still be driving will be those people people who take cars out to ‘driving tracks” for that real combustible engine excitement.

Yesterday I was with people who’s work it is to do Artificial Intelligence.  I expected that they all knew about the Ray Kurzweil book “The Singularity is Near” which I recently finished.  Chatting in the elevator I sheepishly asked if either of these gents had read it, expecting the sort of answer one would have had thirty years ago if one were to ask: “hey are you familiar with the Rolling Stones?  It was left to me to “explain” the concept to these artificial intelligence engineers.  I’m not sure I’m cut out for the high priest role in this movement.  

Tuesday, 09/19/17