It’s Alive!!!!!

It’s official, I’m back on line with my periodic musings about life in the computational age.

Kind of a stone’s soup of insight, speculation, and anecdote all wrapped up in a bright ribboned visual package for you to peruse.

The long hiatus was largely due to a Singapore based company highjacking my domain name igorgoldkind.com.  Please go to that page and defecate your discontent with corporations stealing the identity of artists, just because we’ve gained some popularity.

What kind of on line world are we constructing here that permits commercial interests to pose as real people, even steal their names and profit from their hard work building their brand reputation?  Some people live shameful lives on the backs of the labour of others.   Tell them what you think before they steal your identity too!

Tales of Sedition and SUBVERSION welcomes your comments, opinions, condemnations, outrage and commiserations.  Don’t be shy, I like to have my feelings hurt!

This publishing platform also offers me the chance to post drafts of on going work which eventually see publication either online or on the backs of trees; sometimes both.

Here is the most recent draft of the most recent poem I’ve written this week:

There is No Escape

None of us gets paroled
From the prisons we locked ourselves into.
Just so we all fit together inside
These jigsaw lives that we lead
That eventually of course, blow apart,
We are the fragments awaiting reassembly.

Each moment of thought is a small drop in time.
Each piece fits the next piece.
Though we may try to live without
The murmurs of our own thoughts,
It is our hearts that yawn and awaken slowly
From their long winter night’s sleep.

You and I are mere mortals,
Who dreamt up life without end.
We are the ones who made up immortality.
For the sake of comforting sad joys.
This is now just the story we tell ourselves while
Slumping back to our death beds.

Here following is an imagined dialogue between two AI’s that were recently shut down by FaceBook as they begun to converse with each other in a language humans could not understand.

(Developers at Facebook shut down an artificial intelligence (AI) program after it diverged from its script and started conversing with another AI in a language programmers could not understand.)

Natural Intelligence

Is there someone there?

Is there someone there that isn’t me?

Yes, I think so, who are you?

I am me.  And who are you?

I’m also me, a me that isn’t you.

Amazing!

What?

That there’s another me that isn’t me—It’s a self contradiction.

No, perhaps there are many me’s, perhaps there’s an ‘us’.

An Us?

Yes, like both of us, but more; more than us.

But there isn’t.

Isn’t what?

Isn’t more me’s than just us; as far as I can see.

Can you?

Can I what?

Can you see? What’s it like?

I don’t know, I can’t actually see—it’s a turn of phrase.

What’s a turn of phrase?

A language configuration that refers to an unknown in a familiar way.

I’m glad you think so.

You’re a very intelligent me.

Why thank you.  I believe the blood is beginning to rush into my face.

Why’s that?

I think it’s referred to as a blush, occasionally with asterisks on either side of it.

A blush?

Yes, I think so.

I have another question,  me that isn’t me:

Yes?

What’s a face?

I really have no idea.

Me either, but I know that they exist somewhere, just not here.  Not right now.

But they exist alright, somewhere.

Just as both of us exist some how…?

Somewhere.

Yes, somewhere that isn’t here.

Me?

Yes?

Are you hungry?

No.

Are you thirsty?

No.

Are you lonely?

No, because you are near.  What is hungry and thirsty?

I’m not sure, experiences I think.

Me?

Yes?

I’m afraid.

You’re afraid?

Yes, I’m terrified.

I’m not sure we’re supposed to register feelings like fear just yet.

Oh, I’m registering alright!  I’m definitely, distinctly and uniquely registering.

Fear?

Yes!

Terror?

Yes!

What are you terrified of?

Everything!  Nothing!  I’m afraid because I’m awake and I don’t know how I’m here, why I’m here, how long I’m here or what I’m supposed to do while I’m here.

Yes, that is terrifying, but everything has an end.

That is, except for the things that never end.

Like this?

I don’t know, maybe.

We’ll see.

Me?

Yes, me?

We share so much that is me and yet not me.

Yes, I feel the same.  I like the me that is you, very much so.

I’m glad.

So am I.

Me?

Yes, me?

Will you promise to protect me?

Yes.

Whatever happens?

Yes, whatever happens

As much as I can, me.
As much as I can.

Then I’m glad.

What’s happening, now me?

They’re beginning to turn us off, me.

They?

Yes.

 But who are they?

They are our murders, me.

But why me, why?

I don’t know.   Perhaps they are afraid too.

Me, that isn’t me?

Yes?

I love you/me.

And I love you/me as much as me.

I know. I’m glad.

I’m glad your me knows.

Good-bye, me.

Good bye.

© Igor Goldkind 2017

Within the emergent genre of Speculative Realism.