Robot Dreaming

When I was younger I had all these crazy ideas about what I wanted to do with my life. I used to think about building robots all the time. I would draw them, I would make up the words to the jingle that was going to be in my commercial advertising my robots (you have got to hear that one) and I would just sit around like a nerd thinking about robots. If you approached me when I was 6 or 7 years old and asked me what I was thinking about, there is a good chance the answer would have been "robots." The thing that really got me about robots was the mechanical emulation of the human condition, and especially of human learning. How could you build something that acts like a person? What makes a person a person? All of this stuff makes for a lifetime of wonder. We are not anywhere near getting at what makes people as clever as they are. Everyone is incredibly clever, everyone out-thinks the machines effortlessly. What each of us have is a miracle. Biology is a wickedly clever thing, and regardless of where it came from and how it came about, I can't help but think that there is a grand harmony to all of the spirit in the universe. When you look at how abstract and complex the act of something as simple as picking a shirt up of the floor really is, and then consider how much effort it would take to make a machine that would do the same thing, it will pretty much blow your human mind.

I still like to think about what makes the human mind tick. It's not a problem so much as a quest that has many rewards along the way.

I was born hopelessly spacey, and it is a lot of fun sometimes.

Also, I am stuck in Puerto Rico until Tuesday. Flight cancellations and whatnot. It's rough, I know.

I can't wait to see everyone soon. I am a new man! More Latin!