Tag: technology

Google Translate AI reminds me of GigaText, a blast from Saskatchewan’s past

This story, “Google Translate AI invents its own language to translate with” caught my eye for an odd reason. Long-time Saskatchewan residents will recognize the word “GigaText.” As I’ve noted elsewhere, I’m working on a book about the Progressive Conservative government of Grant Devine, which held power in Saskatchewan from 1982 to 1991. One of …

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My future city: I dabble in public prognostication

Later this morning I’m expecting a phone call from a reporter at the Regina Leader Post, who wants my science-fiction-writer take on the future of the city, ca. 2035. Of course the city has its own rather boring (well, from an SF writer’s perspective) plan for the futuristic city of Regina, which is full of …

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The SpeechJammer

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/04/The-SpeechJammer.mp3[/podcast] As a writer, freedom of speech is near and dear to my heart. It’s one of the basic principles of the democratic form of government. And yet it seems to be constantly under attack, for one simple reason: it’s easy to say you believe in free speech when people are saying what you agree …

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Segmented sleep

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/02/Segmented-Sleep.mp3[/podcast] It’s happened to all of us at one time or another: we wake up in the middle of the night, have trouble going back to sleep, start worrying about the fact we’re having trouble going back to sleep, start worrying about the fact we’re worrying about the fact we’re having trouble going back to …

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Vehicle-to-vehicle communication

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/01/Communicating-Cars.mp3[/podcast] Do you talk to your car? I know I do (perhaps not as much as I, um, “talk” to other drivers, but some). I think I inherited the trait from my mother: all of the cars of my childhood, I knew from her, were named “Suzy.” These days, your car may even listen to …

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Out with the old, in with the new: digital TV

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2011/08/Analog-and-Digital-TV.mp3[/podcast] Technology changes, new ways of doing things driving out the old. Take digital television. In fact, you’ll have to: by August 31, over-the-air television stations in most major Canadian cities are being required to stop broadcasting in analog and start broadcasting in digital. Merriam-Webster defines analog as “of, relating to, or being a mechanism …

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D-Dalus: Dawn of the flying car?

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2011/06/Dawn-of-the-Flying-Cars.mp3[/podcast] “Hey, dude, where’s my flying car?” is a cry every science fiction writer has heard—and every science fiction reader has uttered—since the future supposedly arrived on January 1, 2001, and we found ourselves still stuck to the ground, rolling along on rubber tires. The problem has been that we really only have a few …

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Measurement

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/11/Measurement.mp3[/podcast] “Inch-worm, inch-worm, measuring the marigolds…” Despite that line from a popular song, the fact is, inch-worms don’t measure anything. Neither to cockroaches, bulldogs, llamas or horned toads…because measurement is the process of counting how much of a sensory signal exists, and so far as we know, no other animals can count. Simply counting things …

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The thrill of the chase

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/09/The-Thrill-of-the-Chase.mp3[/podcast] I had a hard time getting started on this column. See, as I was calling up the items I’d starred in Google Reader as possible topics, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to do a quick search for new reviews of my latest novel. And then I thought, well, as long as I’m online, maybe …

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The first (OK, actually the first TWO) sentence(s) I wrote today…

“He will be able to answer questions,” the Healer said. “Whether he will answer them is beyond my control.” Words today: 1,440 Total thus far: 16,272 A bit of an annoyance today: I’ve been writing with my Freedom Universal Keyboard 2 (a fold-up Bluetooth keyboard) on my new Blackberry Storm. All well and good, but …

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Is this the ancestor of my Marseguro killerbot?

This proposed underwater robot with a sense of touch looks scarily like what I imagined the Selkie-tracking “killerbots” of Marseguro to be. Mine had tentacles rather than articulated arms, but still: Oh, and for comparison’s sake, here’s how cover artist Steve Stone pictured the killerbot:

Reverse-engineering the brain

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/05/blue-brain.mp3[/podcast] Ah, the human brain. Seat of consciousness, miracle of creation or evolution (discuss amongst yourselves), able to jump to tall conclusions in a single bound, so incredibly complex that we’ll never be able to understand how it works. Um, not so fast. A year and a half ago, scientists at the Blue Brain Project …

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