TODAY'S NEWS IN PREPOP-LAND

Alexa woke me from deep sleep at 7 AM to tell me that Elon Musk is trying to take over TWITTER, but "frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!" 

I love our automated assistant - most of the time. It's like having a sycophantic personal assistant at your beck and call.  Just like those rich folks, or those folks who pretend to be rich.

How does Alexa function?  Well, it takes some marvelous computer programming.

That reminds me of a time in the "dark ages" when I was a young computer programmer.  I wrote an interactive program on my own, in an attempt to mimic what happens in an interview with a "shrink."

You tell the program entity the things that are bothering you and the program responds with questions or with "canned" statements.

For instance:

Human:  "I feel sad."

Program: "Why do you feel sad?"

Human:  "Because my girlfriend 'dumped" me.

Program:  "Why do you think your girlfriend "dumped" you?

Human:  "Because she doesn't love me anymore."

Program: "That's sad."

Do you get the picture? There are clever tricks designed to fool "humans."

I did not go very far with this because it required filling my personal computer's small amount of space with lots of "canned" statements.  But it was a fun programming exercise.

Now we have Alexa and Siri whose programmers have expertly created computer code, combining voice and visual effects to cause people to think of these automated creations as real persons who actually think like us humans.

This is fantastic!  What will be the next step?  Holograms of these creations as humanoids sitting right next to us?

Goodbye Seymor

Last night I saw Seymor Spider happily sitting in his web.  However, next to him was his girlfriend, Shirley.  Seeing both of them, I knew I had to take action. 

I was reminded of when I was bitten by a Brown Recluse Spider.  The extremely painful wound took over a year to heal after many visits to hospitals, including Baltimore's famous Johns Hopkins facility.

If Seymor and Shirley produced an army of little biters, they might decide that I was a good target for their fangs.

So, I hurriedly scooped my little friends into a container and dumped them into our yard.  That way, they had a chance for more life - if the birds don't eat them.

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