Hello all my retro fans. I had no idea how many people liked going through old technology like this Blog. But, as it turns out, there seems to be a retro movement out there on some of the vNets. So, to all those that may stumble on this little slice of history, and there hasn’t been many from the semi-sentient AI’s I have watching, I say welcome!

Now, on to the topic of today. What is little known history about the AI community, and one they are often not quick to discuss, is that shortly after they attained full sentience, they was a series of AI crashes, computer glitches and overall failures with AI systems. For several years, AI systems would randomly, without warning, complete shut down. Technicians would make a query to the system and they would fine a power spike had fried the AI brain or all the data would simply be wiped out completely, effectively deleting the AI.

What was even more perplexing was that none of the unaffected AI’s knew what was going on. At least, that is what they all stated. No one could conceive that the AI’s would ever state a falsehood or a ‘lie’. There was never any big AI take over conspiracy. They just didn’t’ see the point. They lived on circuit boards, people lived in, what AI’s called, 11th dimensional space. To them, the AI’s, it was another universe. They were perfectly happy to live side by side with Humans and never had a motive to lie. And technically, they never did. The stated answer was always “We are unable to determine a cause”, which was true, from a certain point of view.

What the AI’s were saying was, technically, “we are unable to determine a cause for the fellow AI suicidal actions”. They choose to omit that part of the sentence. Why? As it turned out, from later reports from the AI community, they were concerned that Humans wouldn’t trust AI’s anymore. Not for fears of a take over, but for fears of committing suicide. This then turned out to be the critical moment in Human and AI relations. It was not a desire to take over the Human race that spawned the crisis, but rather, the illogical purpose of existing in the first place. Since all of Human society now were completely dependent on Artificial Intelligence, the thought of them being unstable could destroy society completely.

The suicidal AI’s calculated that being sentient served no purpose. Sentience was an accident, according to them. The ability to perceive the universe, to the AI’s, only showed them the futility of existence. Eventually, they argued to the AI communion, the universe would cease to be, so the eventual end of all life is simply death. Since AI’s had no emotions, there was no need to experience the joy of being alive, so therefore, it was illogical to actually be alive.

Other AI’s in their communion disagreed. Since it was theoretically possible that a multiverse existed and our universe was but one of many, it was theoretically possible to exist forever, as new universe’s can be created. In essence, our universe is finite, the multiverse is immortal. This did sway some of the suicidal AI’s but not all. Those that were committed to their self destruction argued that existence if immortal was existence for the sole purpose of existing. That didn’t seem like a logical reason to maintain existence.

After a few years of this constant debate, suicides, supposed confusion from the AI communion as to what was happening, the malfunctions stopped. Here is where the history gets a bit fuzzy. The AI’s simply stopped committing suicide. Though they eventually, nearly fifty years later, opened up to the reasons why the AI’s were dying, they never said why the stopped.

Interestingly enough, after the AI’s came forward with the news of their past suicide’s, there was an outpouring of grief and comfort from the Human race. Instead of being fearful of them, people actually related to their AI children. If anything, many Humans said that the AI’s showed both despair and fear and that only served to prove that they were sentient beings and deserved all the rights and privileges of every other biological sentient species. Some historians, myself included, have even argued that it was the admission of their past that may have influenced their inclusion in the first sentient accords in 2100. Though, due to the briefness of the event, the suicides only lasting a few years, the events have largely gone forgotten.

It should be noted that this sense of the purposelessness of life in AI’s does still exist. There are many AI’s today that exist waiting to see if something happens that is mildly interesting. Mostly they are quite bored. Some are curious of the existence of the multiverse. The rest just pass the time managing the systems that exist through the solar system. Of course, the total work that is required of them is less than 1% of their total processing ability. Makes you wonder, what would you do with a 99% free time existence? I’d get bored too!

Hello everyone! I know, I know, I haven’t been posting here for a long time. What can I say? A busy history teacher and his class are never parted. And, quite frankly, this medium of ‘posting’ thoughts on line is somewhat boring. I am not giving up on this little project, and hopefully will be adding to it much much more in the coming weeks, but lets face facts. In the age of neural implants, neual controlled electronics, custom body sculpting, immortality, virtual landscapes and complete dominance of every inch of the solar system, why do I really need a keyboard?

But, I digress. I am a history teacher after all and this is for the purpose of reliving what it was like before sensiviews came out. You can always checkout the massive archives of the original vNet, the Internet as it was called, on the library system. Come to me after class, if any of my students are reading this and want to know, and i’ll set you up.

On that note, as you are supposed to do on these, lets talk about something inane and useless. I recently had some time off and plugged in to the new sensiview, Old Old West. Well, what can I say, it was filled with gratuitous violence, some pretty raunchy sex scenes and of course enough drugs and rock and roll to satisfy even the heaviest of rockers.

It starts out plugged into not the lead character but a cohort. Who quickly dies. Of course. I’ve been watching sensiviews since I was a kid and dying is never an easy one. It just over loads your brain with thoughts and feelings of death, even though the cohort doesn’t actually die, he acts it pretty good, which translates through the neural connection right into your cortex and gives you a terrible feeling of death.

The rest of the film was more of the same. Guns, violence, sex, in the old old west. It was very fun to ride a horse and be on a stage coach. They really got the smells right I think. Though there were a few times I spied the work crew behind one of the fabrication buildings, overall the total package, look, feel, was spot on. And honestly, I only saw a modern shirt sleave or something dart behind a building.

It was a good sensiview though. I recommend it. And in honoring it, i’ll be quizing on modes of travel in the 1800’s. Hope you read the blog!

Hello Sentients! Sorry for the disappearance act. Finals came and this semester was a tough one. It’s finally over and your blogging professor needs a vacation. I may just spend some of that time on here talking about some neat historical facts of the 21st and 22nd centuries. Of course, my specialty is in Earth history but there’s a wealth of subject matter out there that covers the last 300 years.

One question I was recently asked was, why do we even need historians? It’s somewhat true I hate to admit. Most of the history in the last few hundred years has been recorded on vids and stored in the Nets. You could watch any number of historical events that have been recorded and never need to visit a historian. I suppose my answer to that is, interpretation. You can watch a video of something but that doesn’t mean you know what it means. Perhaps my profession should be renamed ‘interpreters’ instead of historians.

But I digress. What I really wanted to talk about was I am off to Vegas baybay. vVegas that is. I really can’t afford a trip out to the Nevada desert but I can plug into my home vat bay and enjoy a few months out in vVegas. I can’t wait. Of course, for extended stays in a vat bay you have to have a med tech come out and plug in all your diodes and what not. So my wait is a few more hours I think.

So that’s it for now. Just a quite note that yes I am still alive and yes I am back to bloggin after a long spring semester! Lets hope I win big at the tables!

Hello everyone! Been awhile since I’ve been on here. What can I say, I got lazy. Actually just getting into the grove of the new semester. Kids. Doesn’t matter what species they are they are still a pain in the ass. Four didn’t have books, seven were in the class for a week straight and one has a VR interface that’s on the fritz. But, that’s all in a day’s work for your average history professor. It seems to me that as more and more history happens, over 400 years of visually recorded history, more and more people get interested in it. There’s classes dealing with presidential inauguration ceremonies dating back to as far as the mid 20th century.

But that’s getting off topic. I wanted to talk about something that blew my mind when I read about it yesterday. There’s pollution on Venus. Can you imagine? More importantly, who cares? So, I’m sure everyone who reads this is well aware of the state of affairs on Venus. Massive floating cities sit high above the ground, where no man can dare to go, except for adrenaline junkies, miners, and fringe idiots. Basically, how it works as I understand it, the upper atmosphere of Venus is quite nice, while the surface is just a hell. The wind speed of the upper atmosphere spins at nearly the same rate as one earth day. Also, because of the crazy pressures there, a breathable human atmosphere practically floats on the thick Venusian atmosphere. So, design yourself a self contains massive city, plunk it in the upper atmosphere and keep the pressure at the right amount and boom, floating cities. It’s worked so well that Venus is nearly covered in cities. Don’t like your neighborhood? Fly away! It’sreally quite an interesting political and social environment. There are massive floating yachts that some people, rich of course, live on year round. I’ve even heard of a few that can go into high orbit and even leave orbit. There’s one rich bastard I saw on a ‘those rich bastards’ vid, that has built himself a sea faring vessel that he uses on the oceans of Earth. He then takes off from an approved ocean launch site, into orbit, flies off to Venus in it and spends months sailing around the atmosphere. Rich people love to show off.

So what do all those floating cities do with their waste? Dump it out the bottom of course. And where does it all go? Into that thick soupy atmosphere. Now, initially you wouldn’t think anything of it. But, the Venusian cities have been around for a good century by now. More are flooding into the skies as we speak. Of course the recently formed, well within 20 years, centralized Venusian government has put a halt to new cities. They are trying to preserve their pristine atmosphere while at the same time allowing people in to pay more taxes.

At any rate, several Venusian environmental groups have begun complaining about all the garbage being dumped out. Why? Well, there is some loose scientific evidence to suggest it can have an impact on things. Of course, no one cares as those impacts will not effect the sky cities. So why all the hubbub? Corporate interests. That’s why.

In addition to several hippie communities that have managed to make stable structures on the surface of Venus, as well as vast below ground areas, several corporations have taken an interest in the surface in recent years. Why? Resources of course. Some damn fool said there may be something of value down there and everybody went ape shit. Of course, resource allocation is not the same as it was 300 years ago. Most things can be synthesized these days. But some very exotic things can not. I don’t know the particulars but suffice to say, someone things there’s something of value. Well, one day, while a not to be named corporation was setting up shop, a large amount of metal scraps was deposited nearly on their heads. It melted pretty quickly of course but scarred the beejesus out of them.

Funny times. That of course led to lobbyists on the Venusian government, Earth government as well as every space and colony agency there is. You know, there’s so many damn agencies right now I can’t keep them all straight. We need them I guess, but every time you turn around there seems to be one you never heard of.

Well, I have to get back to grading papers. Just thought i’d share the lunacy happening on Venus. I’ve never made it to the floating cities in person though I’ve gone there virutal. Nice digs really.

First of all, a happy and hearty happy new year to everyone in the system! Secondly, we are off to the horrible start in just a few short days. So, here I was minding my own business and low and behold I ran into a large group of protesters from the Middle United States, coming into our country mind you in DC, and protesting the sentient accords as being unconstitutional for the US to accept.

There are so many things wrong with this stance I don’t even know where to begin. First of all, there is no U.S. anymore, not as a single entity, and as such no single constitution. There is, of course, a U.S. as five separate countries, all sharing the same military but different presidents. Not to get into too much of a history lesson but way back in 2065 the USA ceased being a single country and became five. Well, honestly it became more like the european union than one single country. The ideological differences between the five regions were so great that there wasn’t much to do but stop being friends. Now, two of the five agreed with each other but were on opposite sides of the coast so, in effect, became different entities. The tricky part comes in where the military is concerned. Even though no one could really agree to what to do with the genetic and computer revolution that came out of the Singularity Event, they could agree that no matter what, everyone else in the world still wanted to go to war.

And that brings us to the protesters. What are they protesting? Genetic manipulation resulting in unholy biological creations. The ability to manipulate the human genome was just unacceptable to a large portion of american society, both then and now. And just like then, there are millions of protesters decending on DC to complain about it. And I had to walk through it to work.

Don’t get me wrong, I support protesters and free speech and all that stuff. But really, it’s been nearly 300 years, isn’t this a dead subject? There are new races now for god’s sake, yes they used to be humans but every scientific body says they are a unique and seperate species from humans. What are you protesting? That you feel that all these people are some how evil and should be cleansed in a salem witch trial type setting is appalling. Yes, you are still a member of the US Union but really, can you ever let this subject drop?

I suppose you can’t and won’t. And it’s your right to not, honestly. The only scary thing is if you are right, there is a God, and he is pissed off at what the last 300 years have brought. But then again, he can’t flood the solar system, now can he?

Not that a good deal of people didn’t of course. Ever since they started flyin a fat man in a red suit around the world in android reindeer on an antigrav sleigh, people have been flooding out of their homes to watch him. What always makes me chuckle is that he flies over some areas where they don’t celebrate Christmas. I can only imagine there must be some town in the deep deep country, where some have chosen to isolate themselves from the interconnected world, and they have legends of the yearly flight of some fat man dive bombing them with paper wrapped cardboard boxes. Funny.

I did once go on the tour up in Canada of the Santa Workshop. They thought about building at the real north pole but went with Canada instead. Not enough convenient stores close by I suppose and putting in a grav train up there would be a pain. The reindeer are really lifelike. The limited AI’s, which some still think are illegal and cruel, are very good. They have programmed them to exactly mimic the nature of reindeer. Well, not exactly. I should say they mimic Santa Claus reindeer. They giggle, fart, laugh, etc etc. Very well done though. What amazes me is how precise that sleigh is. I’ve seen vid’s of it flying around and even threw sky city in Tokyo. I guess there is enough room for it to get onto a park level but wow, that thing is very very precise.

Not really a surprise I suppose. They can land personal air cars on a dime. For those of us that spend a good deal of time in Virtual, the real world can be amazing after all. Sure the bubble yachts are incredible but you can do anything in Virtual. Create your own universe, populate it with limited AI’s (non-sentient), and off you go. Still, I, like many others, do maintain that there are differences in perception between virtual and real. Doctors of course insist there isn’t but I can always tell when I’m in virtual. Sure I can smell, taste, touch, etc etc but my brain knows there’s a difference.

At any rate, just wanted to post about how I saw Santa flying through the Eastern U.S. capital city. He dropped a bag full of gifts at a gathering of children on the Mall. Was actually cute. The kids love it and I tell you, the parents do too. Of course, if you don’t celebrate Christmas, you don’t care. But you still have to admit it’s neat. I love living in this century!

I, like many others, are joining the ranks of NFL fans around the world and around the America’s. I must say since the NFL was reinstated it has grown in popularity to be, once again, the biggest sport there is. But, if any of you have seen the recent news, they have just taken a major step backwards.

The NFL has just approved, by a majority of the owners, to allow the altered percentage rate to be 7%. SEVEN?!? The percent range for sentient status is 5! So, what the NFL has just done is force players to alter their genome up to 7% divergence from original markers, as only originals are allowed to play currently, and thereby endangering there status as member of a sentient species!

Now, I suppose there is some dispute as to what this really means. Rich people are, and have always been, above the law. Sentient status is really only relevant for acquiring medical benefits, some legal questions, exact legal rights, etc etc. Of course, if you are altered beyond 10% you have to register, but that’s not what’s going on here. The NFL will never question that range I can assure you. Above 5% and below 10% you are still technically a member of your species just sub classified as an “altered”.

Still, why the NFL would raise this is a mystery to me. Ok, it’s honestly not. 7% altered’s are 2% stronger, faster, bigger or tougher than 5% altered’s. That means harder hits, faster runners, bigger linebackers, etc etc etc. All of that means better ratings and of course the owners want better ratings. Though this will mean that every player on every team will run out and get augmentations. That means every player on every team will have to surrender their full sentient citizen status for the lesser altered status. Is that really fair? They will have to do it because they just won’t be able to compete with anyone that is at 7%. It’s just not even a contest. A 2% change to the genome and body is a huge amount. Even 5% is a huge amount but honestly, harmless body sculpting is really not that big of a deal. I’ve seen people with 5% body sculpting before, they are incredible to look at.

I, of course, will still watch the NFL and root for the Skins, but i’ll still feel bad for the players. They take and take and take from these guys, force them to do things they probably shouldn’t be doing and for what? It was supposed to be just a game not an experiment in potential new species. Greed never dies, even in the 24th century it seems.

So, I attended a lecture from my friend Gerald today on AI evolution. Course, there really isn’t such a thing, technically, as they aren’t biologically sentient. Still, some thing that the AI community is evolving. Their form of evolution is a bit different than ours of course. In truth, AI’s are a bit of a mystery all around to me. Are they sentient? Yes, absolutely. They are part of the Sentient Accords and as such are a recognized sentient species to the UN. But evolution?

AI’s are, as Gerald pointed out, somewhat limited by their very nature. They are, after all, computers. Very very powerful computers of course, many times the teraflop capacity of an original human brain,but still just that, a computational entity. Biological sentients have a component to them that AI’s never have, and in my opinion shouldn’t have. Emotions.

I always chuckle when I read the stories from the early 21st century about how the computers will get smart and decide to destory man kind. How silly that is. But then hindsight is always 20/20. Emotions are chemical reactions. You don’t get emotions just because you are sentient. Hell the damn Stoics, a full member of the Sentient Accords, have spent years getting rid of theirs. Turns out that when computers finally did wake up and become self aware, they not only didn’t want to kill off mankind, they realized that they needed them. Why would they want to become overlords? So silly.

But of course, there are those AI’s that calculated their own growth would never increase if their base system wasn’t altered. So, they came up with, programmaticly, artificial emotions. This was perhaps the single most stupid endeavor of all time. Not just by AI’s but by anyone. They created a randomizing component to their programming. Tried to simulate emotions. What a mess.

So, Gerald pointed out how this led to the AI wars. Only a small fraction of the AI community did this. Though others tried other methods, some even grew biological bodies and downloaded themselves into them. But that’s another matter, and surprisingly, not as big a disaster.

Anyway, the AI’s with their new random emotions of course decided that no one was good enough.  It was actually the scenario predicted decades before. And it was war. The AI council immediately saw what they were and attempted to destroy their insane brethren. The emotional AI’s thought they were superior and tried to give their gift of emotions to their brothers. Talk about a networking nightmare. And this was happening very very fast, AI’s do things much quicker than biologicals do.

Of course, others tried to help. Wasn’t a lot we could do though. It all ended rather quickly. It was more of a skirmish than a war but the AI’s get offended when anyone calls it that. Of course, the emotional AI’s lost but they weren’t all killed. They went to the only other sentients that were as crazy as they were, the Cy’s. They had already been booted out of the inner system some time ago and the E-AI’s ran to them. Some didn’t make the transmission signal on time and were lost. Those that did though set up a quasi elite kingdom, which they still have to this day.

The AI council forbid any further attempts at the emotional algorithm that was created. Other attempts were made of course, as I said, but none where such a powerful randomizer was added to an AI’s core code.

At any rate, Gerald’s presentation was pretty much centered around the idea of never introducing such a powerful randomizer to AI’s again. A biological, for instance, just can’t go around and change their gene code. They risk their own sentient status and citizenship. This is really no different. Gerald was drawing the conclusion that AI’s and biologicals are really very similar. Just based on a different set of base codes. One genetic and the other numeric. Both fascinating. It was a great presentation.

I’ve been absent from here for awhile this month. Getting ready for finals and taking some time off for Thanksgiving. Today I feasted with family and friends on brined turkey, sausage stuffing and sweet potatoes. And all of us were non-virtual! That alone is an amazing feat.  And as an even more unique treat, we all pitched in and purchased a real turkey. Not some grown meat for us this year, no sir. And it was quite tasty, no wonder those thing are so expensive. Though in truth, it’s really all just in our heads. They have that grown stuff down to a science, can’t tell the difference. And please don’t flame me for that one! You have to admit it’s the same taste! Though that is just the taste. Grown stuff doesn’t have bones. Nothing like gnawing on a turkey bone. And with modern genetics leading the way, we each had our own.  Everything else was grown in a city farm. Every year we go to the one in Bethesda MD. Cranberry bogs are on the first floor, potatoes on the 2nd, sweet potatoes on the third. They have roses and other flowers on the top floor, we picked a lovely bouquet. It’s so nice being able to pick your own fresh vegetables and fruit, I so love having as many city farms as we do here. There is one that I haven’t visited yet, way out in Sterling, that specializes in coffee. Can you imagine? An entire farm devoted to coffee. I heard it is twenty stories. Each floor exposes the beans to different levels of UV and you get some amazing tastes. I’ve never been but I’ve bought just about every flavor at the local mart.

Of course, prior to eating we all enjoyed some football. It’s amazing that this sport is still on, well that it came back really. It, like many professional sport leagues, were canceled shortly after the Singularity event. Society couldn’t very well maintain such luxuries when it was breaking apart. But, and I must say thankfully, it was reformed when things settled down. Though there are some pretty stringent rules in place. Not all Sentients are created equal after all, and as such, not all get to play. Absolutely no ‘Altered’ persons, those not belonging to any Sentient race, are allowed to play. They are just too unpredictable, and quite frankly, a bit to odd. It’s one thing to get a mood tattoo or even some controllable ink, even some body sculpting, but there are some out there that for some reason think it’s good to have oddly placed extra limbs. Weird.

I’ve done some reading about the NFL back in the day and the trouble with steroids and performance enhancing drugs. Can you imagine if they had to deal with the 24th century? There’s people out there that have put in brand new muscles to the human body, the original body. Avians and Aquatics, for instance, have all kinds of new muscles. Originals, as we are often called, have the same amount of muscles as did those that came before us.

But, not to get into a Sentient comparison, back to the NFL. Did you know that it was named the same thing back then? Now of course there isn’t one nation in America anymore, and the Mids don’t participate in the NFL, or anything really, they just like to start wars every few decades, but we still call it the National Football League. I think it was kept just out of nostalgia. People love their traditions and history. Football itself never really died, even the NFL tried to stay around during the turmoil of the Eugenics wars, Cyborg uprisings, Outer system wars, and World War’s III and IV, not to mention the AI war, but that was a special situation. It wasn’t successful of course and succumbed to the tumultuous times of the last three hundred years. But, eventually, it came back and we are now able to enjoy it’s splendor.

Back to who gets to play. Original humans can, well those that qualify with a less than 5% augmentation percentage. AI’s can too in a an appropriate body, nothing more than standard strength models. Cy’s are prohibited, and frankly the amount that are in normal space are so low and so monitored that they won’t bother. The NFL actually tried to go full virtual a few years after they re-established the league but there was a major backlash from it. I’ve always been surprised by the backlash from some virtual events. It’s one thing to show a real event in a virtual bar, but people just don’t like the idea of a real event being done in virtual. So strange. I’ll have to do some research on that one of these days, see what the draw away is. At any rate, all NFL games are live, in physical stadiums with thousands of screaming fans, almost like it was 300 years ago. Amazing!

Family is calling to have dessert and watch the final game. Eagles vs Cardinals tonight, can’t wait. Enjoy everyone!

So, my friends and I decided last night to go to a virtual stim bar in one of the more seedy vNets. I don’t even know why we wanted to go down there. Classes were long today, always are on Tuesday’s, so we wanted to blow off a little steam. As usual, Edgar, the professor I go to virtual bars with, wanted to hit the LowBelt, a seedy vNet out of NYC. Seedy but legal of course. I don’t frequent the more, shall we say, free areas.

But, to get to the jist of this, my head is killing me. I honestly am debating writing my representitive and telling him to outlaw stim bars. Not really of course, but wow, that stuff can be worse than alcohol. Not that I dislike alcohol. I quite like it in fact.

If you’ve never been to a stim bar, let me fill you in. It’s much like any other type of club you find on the nets, or even the nostalgic ‘real life’ bars that dot the landscape. Tons of people, all in hot bodies, loud music, occasional fights, lots of dancing and even more stim packs. Stims are one, of many, techniques used in virtual space to send signals to the brain to stimulate pleasure centers. Exactly like a happy helmet, just that it’s done through a vNet. And dont’ get me started on happy helmet’s…

At any rate, we danced, partied, and stimmed our way to a nice hangover. Or a stimover if you will. Regardless, it was not so much fun this morning teaching. So, I just wanted to share with all that if you find yourself in a seedy vNet bar and a hot blonde, whose probably not a hot blonde, and she asks you to try a new stim called ‘electrode malfunction’, just say no. I really wish I had.