ever since I've been living on my own, I've got into the habit of listening to the radio. its one of the first things I fix in the mornings. and its the surest companion to all my cooking, cleaning, and acne-scar-treatment regimens. and of course, NPR it is. rather a member station of NPR for this region - KERA. (I probably should pay/contribute toward the public good, but will think of that when I also stop stealing information from nytimes through incognito windows). so apart from the really slow, dragged, and feeble (old) voice of Diane Rehm, which fills me with one of those unnamed anxieties of stagnation and lack of life; and the Prairie Home Companion, which I don't know why I'll never follow, understand or enjoy, radio is a pretty cool thing. and I don't know if this is weird but it feels kinda anachronistic to hear about 3D-printing and artificial intelligence on of-all-things, radio. radio, which even as a child, I thought to belong to a decaying age, a companion for older people who lacked stuff to do, who probably couldn't read/watch due to some medical conditions of the eyes.

and now without a TV (not that I want one. I always felt the TV robbed one of the freedom of choice to watch it cos it sets in such inertia once its on and you're in front of it), and a keener genuine curiosity for what's happening in the world (that I till some years ago, thought I was genuinely incapable of), radio has become my refuge. it gives my apartment a sensation of ongoing conversation even when I'm alone, and lets me free to be busy with something else at the same time. and it tells me these stories about the world. both important and entertaining, and shocking, and funny.

so in the last few weeks I've heard something surprising (other than the fact that 3D design prototypes would be available for free download and you could pretty much make anything you wanted yourself). the progress on artificial intelligence. I hadn't ever given artificial intelligence a serious thought, relegating such ideas to the realm of science fiction and never realized how commonplace its becoming with the advent of something like self-driving cars. and its funny I was just making small talk with my dad-in-law (about the constraints to possibility) the other day but I realized that everything scary that science fiction predicted has more or less been successfully avoided in reality. that science and technology have so far not created any great demons for humanity, other than maybe Facebook(!!) and then listening to some stolen/free ridden news on nytimes and KERA I heard about what's happening on the topic of artificial intelligence. now that's a topic that I'm weary of. that sounds scary with the possibilities it has. there's one short story on it here

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/26/155792609/a-massive-google-network-learns-to-identify

the key word here is 'recognition'. and there was a more interesting story (that I cannot find anymore) where computers were being told/fed synopses of Shakespeare's stories and were taught to recognize and identify patterns of human behavior in these dramas. for example, the identification of the phenomenon of revenge. of opinions and therefore different perspectives. the second key word common to both stories being 'identification'. now that, on a really simplistic level is pretty cool. if a machine can, from information alone, manage to identify, recognize and isolate patterns out; it surely implies some self-learning and thinking. and the possibilities of more progress are both frightening and exhilarating. is there a machine out there than can express itself (and what is a 'self' if not its experiences and learning) in say a blogpost of this kind, or maybe is waiting to but has not as yet received the command to do so, and 'will' someday not wait anymore.