SapientX Auto: A New Demo!

I haven't written a blog in a long time. That's because I've been busy on three important fronts. First, I've been editing the screenplay adaption for eHuman Dawn and I'm happy to say that my agent says it's getting closer with each edit!

Second, I've been editing my latest novel, Song of the King's Heart. Nope, it's not the last eHuman novel, I'm sorry. I had to go back in time, to 200 BC, in Egypt during the Great Egyptian Revolt against the Greeks to document the rise and fall of the last native Egyptian kings before I Jump forward to write eHuman Deliverance, the final installment of my scifi trilogy.

But the third thing I've been busy with is my new job as CTO for SapientX, a startup looking to create truly conversational AIs that will bring the human-machine interaction to the next level. Here's a demo to show what that might look like. I can't wait until my car can talk to me, can you? I'm combining my love of technology with my skills in creative writing to create an AI that will dialogue with you in a whole new way. In the absence of true consciousness, back story and authoring will take the stage alongside clever engineering. If you're interested, check out the SapientX website.

Here's to being busy creating new and interesting stories, whether for your machines or your movie screen!

Thank You For A Great First Year!

It’s Thanksgiving Day here in the US of A, and I’m celebrating by spending the day with my family and giving thanks for my wonderful life. One of the greatest blessings of the past year has been to publish my first novel, eHuman Dawn, with Story Merchant books. Looking back, I can’t believe it’s been one year since I began my official journey as a published author.

Yes, it's true, on November 26, 2013, eHuman Dawn was first published as an eBook on Amazon.

TIME TO CELEBRATE!!! For the next week, in gratitude for all that’s happened and to honor this creative project, eHuman Dawn is FREE on the Kindle. That means if you haven’t read it yet, now is the time. Download and read it. Share it with others. And if you feel so inclined, write a review on Amazon. All of these things keeps the dream alive.

In the year since eHuman Dawn was first published, I’ve launched a blog, a Twitter and Facebook account, written the sequel, presented at Bay Area transhumanist conferences sponsored by the Brighter Brains Institute, joined the advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation, made several new friends and completed a third novel that has absolutely nothing to do with eHumanity.

I’m not a best selling author yet, but the numbers are climbing. I’d say it’s been a very, very good start, and I want to thank everyone who’s supported me, whether as a reader, a reviewer, online in discussion or at the conferences. All endeavors in life take a village, and a writing career is certainly better when shared with others.

What’s on the agenda for the next year? Well, expect to see more blogging and speaking. I’ve joined the Brighter Brains speaker hub and am available to speak at technical conferences of a variety of topics. Check out my page on their site and share with those who might be interested.

I’ll also be publishing a short story in an upcoming anthology to be published by the Lifeboat Foundation and yes, it will take place in the eHuman world.

Most excitingly, the sequel to eHuman Dawn will hopefully be ready for publication in the late winter/early spring!! I’m also going to begin work on the screenplay for both novels, in hopes of bringing the true dream to life…The eHuman Trilogy on the big screen. Yes, I said trilogy, which means I’ll also begin writing the third and final installment.

And if there’s any time left, perhaps I can get my agent interested in that mysterious novel that has nothing to do with eHumanity one bit. Anything is possible.

So thanks again for all your support. This has been a great start and I owe it all to you. Did I mention eHuman Dawn is FREE on the Kindle until 12/01??? Just want to be sure you saw that.

Here’s to another great year.

I'm a Believer

I haven’t blogged in a while, mostly because I’ve been busy writing the sequel to eHuman Dawn. It seems I can’t write two things at once, or at least, I don’t believe I can. The sequel has been exciting to create and while I’m pleased to announce the first draft is finished, the final product is far from complete. Now comes the time for editing and rewriting, for pulling out scenes, adding new ones and reshaping worlds, as well as words.
   
While writing the second eHuman novel, a new thought began to circulate through my head:

“How do our beliefs shape the world as we know it?” 

At the end of eHuman Dawn, the female lead, Dawn, announces that she’s about to take on a quest to search the world for humans--those who remained in the flesh after the rest of the population Jumped into eHuman bodies. (Sorry readers, if you haven’t read the book, this might not make sense. You can remedy that unfortunate situation by purchasing it at Amazon, using regular currency, or from me using Bitcoin! Just click the appropriate button above.)

Dawn believes that someone must have avoided the Great Shift, and she’s willing to give up the role of World Leader to pursue her goal of finding what’s left of carbon based humanity. Like the whisper of a grand conspiracy theory, Dawn’s belief sets the course for the rest of her life, taking her from the victorious, immortal eHuman world into the unknown, and because he believes in her, her beloved Adam follows.

Belief is defined as, “Trust, faith or confidence in someone or something” and in my opinion, is the driving force of human life as we know it. Once, we believed that the world was flat, until someone began to believe it might be round, and set out to prove the rest of us wrong.

Once we believed that illness was literally a curse, or the devil inside of us, and healthcare was practiced accordingly. With time, curious minds began to wonder, thus believe, that perhaps something else was causing the illness. Eventually a new way of curing disease was created, but it would take decades for enough people to believe in them before antibiotics were accepted as normal.

Belief guides the scientist to invest his time into finding a new solution. Belief guides the investor to give his money to a new technology. Belief guides the population to purchase and use the innovations at hand. Any marketer knows that the adoption of a product requires teaching the consumers why the product is important before they’ll buy into it.

Belief has driven men to war against others, and encouraged humans to destroy or continue practices that are harmful. Belief is the driver of all evolution and devolution. We believe in the “survival of the fittest” and therefore have created entire economic systems based on such a belief--money that rewards the “strong” and destroys the “weak.”

My eHuman novels deal with the intersection between belief, immortality, and technology. When people ask me, “Will AI destroy us?” I answer, “Only if we believe it necessary to destroy one another.” As long as we believe some of us are good, and others aren’t even human, then there’s a good chance our AI will behave the same way.

Other readers ask me, “Could we really live forever?” I answer, “Do you believe we can?” My dear Transhumanists, here is the crux of the issue--as long as we accept that an average lifespan of seventy-six is an achievement, we’ll never live forever. Hell, we won’t make it past one hundred. Before the government will invest in life extension technologies, we the people must believe it possible. We must believe the human being has only just begun it’s ascent, and that we’re at the point where we can indeed inherit our true potential as peoples of the Earth.

Of course, immortality isn’t appealing to everyone. That’s fine. I’d reckon though that most of you reading this would like to live as long as possible, and in health and wellness. If this is true, then the place to start is your belief. Seventy-six really isn’t that long. Why not expect to live to be one hundred? Why not believe that fifty is just the half way point, instead of the end of your life? Why not live as though you’ll be on this planet forever, even if no one you know personally has done it? How many decisions would be different if you believed you’d be here for a lot longer? What would you do now to live a more meaningful life? Would we, as a race, continue to destroy the environment if we believed we’d be around for a long, long time?

Whatever we believe in, we become. Whatever we believe in, we invest in. Whether it’s a government or an individual, the choices we make are based on our beliefs about ourselves, our world, and one another. 

If we begin to believe that every human being is worthy, then our AI will do the same. Perhaps then our technology will serve us and help create a cleaner, greener, more prosperous world.

If we begin to believe that one hundred is the new seventy, perhaps it would be so. What if we age merely because we expect to age, whether consciously or not?

Well, that would be something, wouldn’t it?

Which Side Are You On?

    

It’s a common thing to have to choose “sides.” In a world dead set on being binary, either/or, and exclusive, we all have to make decisions. Are you for the NSA spying on our personal internet experiences, or are you against? Is Edward Snowden a hero, or a monster traitor turned against his government? Do you think technology is good for us, or will it ruin our society, leaving nothing left in its trace?

Binary may be the language of the computer world, but human life isn’t binary. This is what differs our intelligence from artificial intelligence--we do not think or act in either/or. We romanticize that we are like machines, choosing logically in all conditions, but life isn’t black and white. We have colors such as gray, yellow, green, and brown, to name just a few. There are some behaviors that we can agree are entirely wrong, but most interactions in human life are complicated.

The internet may be a world of 1’s and 0’s, but human decision making is more quantum--one never knows where we’ll go or what we’ll do, given the circumstances at hand.

This week we learned from Snowden once more that the NSA is spying on us--this time within our gaming communities. World of Warcraft and Second Life have been infiltrated by the government. Phone records, banking statements and emails are personal, but what we reveal about ourselves when we play in these virtual realities is even more intimate. We form relationships online in these games. I once drove a thirteen year old boy home to his house who needed to arrive “on time” so he could gather with his friends from all over the world and fight a battle from the comfort of his bedroom. This is real to him, a place where he can be himself with others. Spying on gamers is a breech that borders breaking and entering.

As a result of these revelations, players from two major spheres of life came out this week to declare this state surveillance as unacceptable. First, Microsoft and Google formed a consortium with six other major tech firms to declare that laws be put in place to curb NSA actions. Then, the cultural community spoke out, with over 500 of the world’s leading authors doing the same.

Why is this important?

Of course each sphere has its own motivations. The tech giants fear orders on their services and products declining. Business wants the right to know everything we do so that they can make money off of us, but they don’t want the NSA surveillance to hurt their bottom line. As Falguni A. Sheth wrote in Salon.com this week, business and the government have, “...the quintessential neoliberal environment: Corporations and the government converge to strip the focus away from rights so as to have better control over individuals. But at the moment that corporate profit is threatened, corporations no longer act in complete concert with the state, but rather “institutions” (the government and corporations) battle each other for control over consumers/citizens.”

This is obviously not a black or white relationship.

Enter in the third player--those who’ve been most successful in the cultural sphere of life are joining in the discussion. The fight for data privacy isn’t about business vs. government. It’s about our stories, music, arts and cultural life remaining in our control. We already know that after the age of massive corporate mergers, only a few companies now control entertainment in our nation. The Internet is the only remaining free channel for information to flow between people, without being spun. Yes, you have to mine the chaff from the wheat, but these authors are correct when they claim that state surveillance takes away from the freedom of creation. It’s a trespassing on the cultural commons of our humanity.

How this plays out will determine the future. In my novel, eHuman Dawn, big business leads the Great Shift, convincing the world to Jump into the eHuman form, in order to make a ton of money. Government goes along for the ride because a networked population is easily controlled. A win-win for both entities. In eHuman Dawn, the cultural sphere is destroyed, manipulated and controlled--completely in the hands of those who own the technology. This would be a terrible loss to our humanity.

Therefore I find it a good omen that the most successful authors and business leaders are taking a stand against the government. If this alliance remains, we might be able to create solid protection laws that make moving towards a singularity society safer for humanity.

  

Celebrating the Holidays...Forever

What an amazing month November turned out to be! As a contestant in the annual NaNoWriMo challenge, I found myself writing an entire, brand new novel, in only thirty days! Actually, it was less than thirty days because I needed to be done by the time my parents arrived on November 25th, for Thanksgiving. If there's one thing I can't do when others are around, it's write anything at all.

Even better, my novel eHuman Dawn, is now available to purchase on Amazon! It was published on November 27th, the same day I finished my NaNoWriMo novel. I've so many things to be thankful for, only one day of celebrating is simply not enough. Thank goodness the Holiday Season is upon us and I have until New Year's Day to party.

As I sat around the table with my family on Thanksgiving day, I wondered, as I often do--in an immortal world, where all humans lived forever at a global scale, what sort of holidays would be celebrated? If we could live forever, would we come back, year after year, to the same family? Would we hold on to parents, siblings, lovers and children in the same way? What would constitute a holiday? Most importantly, who would decide what our holidays would be?

In eHuman Dawn, I introduce the eHuman, a stunning technological feat of metal, plastics, circuits, fiber optics, energy transference and computing, as a new vehicle for human consciousness. Since the eHuman body does not age, and can be easily upgraded, living forever in such a body is considered the gift of health for all on Earth--whether you want it or not. In order to create their world, I had to consider the social habits of such a race. Would they still desire family connection? What would they be grateful for? Would there be a holiday season?

Celebrating holidays is as old as the human race. Even the American holiday season contains several holidays that have a long life to them. Colonists began celebrating Thanksgiving as early as 1565. Christmas is listed as an official holiday in Roman documentation dated 354 CE. Hanukkah is much older than that, celebrating a victory in 2 BCE. Winter Solstice festivals predate Stonehenge and honoring the New Year is as old as written texts, every civilization has their own way to enter into new contracts, obligations and opportunities at the end of their calendar year. Therefore celebration has a long, immortal history of its own.

And yet, these particular celebrations often center on the theme of life and death. We're grateful for this one life we live. The Christmas story, as well as all winter festivals of light, is one about light being born unto the darkness. The four seasons guided the ancients in their planting, mating and birthing rituals. Today we still honor them, as we can't escape the natural world around us. Each year, over and over, we witness the natural world around us birth, come to maturity, enter old age and then die with the seasons; just like our own humanity. The holidays we celebrate remind us of our destiny of birth and death. Which is why we celebrate them with those closest to us--the people who walk with us on this journey of life.

But what if we never died?
What meaning would the holidays take?
Whom would we wish to keep closest to us, when forever really is forever?   

While I can speak for eHumanity, and you'll have to read eHuman Dawn to enter their world, I can't speak for humanity as whole. I don't know what traditions would continue to exist. But my guess is an immortal humanity would have something else to celebrate than the wheel of life. Just what that is remains to be seen...







    

Google Takes On Death

    I'm always drawn to the magazines at the check out line. Even though I'm supposed to be paying attention and unloading my cart, I find myself drifting from the effort needed to be a good customer and into the cover stories. From the trite Hollywood and political rag mags, to the few "news" periodicals and the occasional self help issue thrown in for good measure, I'm helpless to the call of the headlines.  So imagine how hard it was for me, a post-singularity sci-fi writer, to continue with my checkout line duties when Time Magazine asked, "Can Google Solve Death?" I almost answered out loud, "Really now. Is death something to be solved?" At that point the cashier asked me to please unload the rest of my cart. Before I complied with his request, I quickly pulled the September 30, 2013 edition from the rack and threw it in with the rest of my groceries.

    Devouring the well written and insightful article, I learned that Larry Page, CEO and co-founder of Google, is interested in solving the death element of the human story. He sees death as something that we ought to fix and figure out, and he's willing to shell out a ton of money investing in research that will bring us a new humanity – one where death's been forgotten and we’re free to live forever and ever, as ourselves. Which led me to ask first, "What might that self look like?"

    In a culture obsessed with the body, one can only imagine. No one wants to live forever in an old body, thus any aging solution that Google's new company, Calico, comes up with will need to be attractive. I mean, after all, if they're going to solve death, perhaps they can solve the whole getting old and gray thing first. And ridding humanity of the obesity epidemic might be nice as well. Living forever in a broken down body doesn't seem like much of a party to me. Thus Calico will have to focus much of their efforts in preserving and maintaining the perfect body, so that it lives in a state of health, without aging. That's the immortality of dreams and fantasies. (Note: The eHumans in my novel are only one of many potential paths that could be taken here.)

    But my next question was, "Why Google?" Why would the search engine giant pursue this particular effort? What do they have that will make their quest to solve death successful? And how will Google and their investors ever make any money from such a venture? Calico won't be the first company to pursue the fountain of youth; Much time, money and effort has already gone into this subject. Humanity has been obsessed with living forever since the dawn of time. But I have a few guesses as to why this company in particular might be interested in being the one to finally solve this elusive issue.

    Studies have recently suggested that aging is caused by a gene in our DNA. Perhaps research at Calico will take a look at this, and begin to compile the work that's already been done in this area. The Genome project revealed that human DNA is a huge, elegant data sequence, one in which only three percent has been decoded. The rest, called "junk,"  is essentially a data puzzle of enormous proportions. Could the de-activation of the aging gene possibly be uncovered in this jumble of "junk" DNA? Parsing such a vast amount of data requires an innovative search algorithm. Which is just the thing Google is known for, and is why it makes sense for the company to be the one to solve death. They alone have the ability to parse the data already documented on the subject. They've already designed the data algorithms necessary to sift, search and refine questions and queries.

    Google is also the leader in data acquisition, both their Gmail and Google Cloud businesses have millions of users. In addition, in 2003, they launched Google Books. This business eventually folded, due to litigation by publishers and authors, but the effort did manage to allow Google to collect a ton of older and out of print texts, where early research and opinions on death and dying may reside. To discover what the ancients believed, and where modern science intersects, just might bring us closer to discovering how to disable the aging gene within our very DNA.

    That would be one very exciting Google Search. A true gift of health to humanity.

    Yet there's another thing to consider in this discussion. What if the gene can't be disabled organically? What if the solution resides in a machine answer? Like an implant, something that prolongs life by secreting chemicals, or nanobots, into the bloodstream, at a rate specific for each human being. It could use personal health data and vital statistics stored on the implant to determine basic patient information such as blood pressure, DNA sequencing, and white blood cell count, to monitor the situation and make changes in the dosages as needed. This isn't out of Google's scope. The company has been interested in personal medical data for a while, launching Google Health in 2008. Interestingly, the effort failed, mostly because consumers didn't trust it.

    Hmm…I wonder, why didn't consumers trust their health records to be stored online?

    Let's consider the immortality implant again. What else could be stored in this life-enhancing device? What else could the device be used for? Such an implant would be very desirable to many, many people. So desirable that Google could find themselves with billions of users and thus become the owners of more data about humanity than ever before. The day we become devices on the network is the day that the network has humanity in the palm of its hand.

    The race then isn't about who will solve death first. The race is who will own the network, and the application that drives everyone to become a device on the network, first.

    Google as a company has been very clear that parsing their Gmail customer's emails is not a privacy violation. Their customers are data sets and agree to this when they sign on. If Calico discovers the perfect implant that overrides our very DNA in order to prolong our lives, who would turn that down? My guess is not too many. Most humans don't wish to die. That's a lot of potential customers, and a lot of data for Google to parse, use, and sell. It's this data that could make Google's investment in Calico worth pursuing.

    The question we must begin to consider is this – Is immortality worth becoming a data set?

    Forever?

    And if it isn't, if being nothing more than a data set is unsettling, then severing the ties with Google, or any company for that matter, after receiving an immortality implant won't be as easy as switching from Gmail to Hushmail, or using a different search engine on the web. Severing the ties in this way will mean removing the very implant that keeps you young and healthy, even at one hundred years old.

    Choosing to die is never an easy thing.

    And Big Business knows this. Which is why investing in technological singularity solutions looks very profitable indeed.

Somebody's Watching Me

I find it laughable and ironic that people who cheer on Edward Snowden, who freak out that 'someone is watching' them with every online purchase they make, even those Gmail users suing Google, are also engaging socially on the internet in very intimate ways. They post pictures of kids' first and Grammy's 100th birthday on Facebook and Instagram, but damn anyone who sees them without being invited! Our paranoia, as well as our full disclosure, seem to go hand in hand.

Thanks to Snowden, WikiLeaks, and the recent trial between Google and Gmail users, people are beginning to realize that when using the internet, ‘somebody’ is indeed watching them. For some, this news is met with terror. The idea that someone is watching every communication is humanity’s worst nightmare. It has Big Brother and 1984 written all over it. And yet this fear doesn’t stop many users from continuing to use the web as a confessional for their daily adventures. Which ironically leaves us in a strange social dilemma as human beings.

If we crave attention so badly we’re willing to post our anniversary pictures as well as our crimes on the internet so they can be seen, then why does it also bother us so much that Google, Yahoo, the NSA, and even NFL football players are watching, and noting, our actions?

The internet is private, but not in the way that most want their secrets to be private. No, it's private in the sense of being owned and operated by big businesses. Many different players have come together to bring the world this ‘free’ product. Their investment into the technological efforts of creating this wonderful thing called the internet wasn’t free. Billions were spent creating it. And every internet financier has an interest in how their product is used.

Thus, every keystroke is watched. It has to be, so that those who own the technology can cash in on their investment. Just because applications like Facebook, Snap Chat and Kik are free to use, doesn’t mean they're without cost. There’s an actual financial cost to building and maintaining the internet. And here’s the kicker, there’s also a cost to society for accepting this ‘free’ gift. Gmail may be free, but the cost is that the users are not considered customers; rather, they’re considered data sets. It’s the user’s electronic footprint that big business is endlessly parsing, analyzing and sharing with others.

What is it then about our electronic footprint that makes us so nervous when business giants and government officials desire to see it? Are we more real out there than we are in our hearts and minds? Are we ashamed of it? Are we invested in it? Why do we cringe when our data is used by others for profit?

Perhaps this gut reaction is more of an omen about the future than anything else. In reality, we know that anything we post online is public, at least to those who own the technology. We know that when we use the internet and all of its wonderful offerings, we're putting a part of ourselves out there, and by taking part in the game, forum, blog or post, we're exposing ourselves. But at this moment in time, we can choose what part of our selves we expose. Our online personality is ours to create, it doesn't even have to match who we are in reality. There is a buffer between the real me and the one Google knows.

For now…

But with the movement towards machine-based singularity solutions for humanity marching ever closer to reality, perhaps the real reason we cringe when Snowden releases more and more data about how we're being watched is because we know what's coming – that there's only a small step between what I chose to put online to reflect my personality, and becoming an online device myself, where all my thoughts, desires and needs will be known to those who know how to mine the data.

On their website, the creators of Kik have this to say about smartphones and the future, "We believe we’re at the beginning of the smartphone era – one of the most transformative changes of our generation, comparative to the rise of the first personal computer or the creation of the Internet. For the first time in history, we have a device that isn’t just a tool. Your smartphone is actually part of you: always on, always connected, and always with you. We see it as an implant. It just hasn’t been implanted yet."

Always on, always connected, and always with you. This is one of our potential futures, and we all know it's coming. In my novel, eHuman Dawn, I've attempted to create that world, and I’ve spent the past three years writing that story.

Trust me, there are a lot of great aspects to being an eHuman.

But there are also consequences when we allow those who own the technology to be a part of our minds – to be the ones who hold the keys to life or death.

Do our business leaders have our best interests in mind? Or will they have an even easier time marketing to us, perhaps being able to actually create a desire for their products within our minds with simple suggestions, like auto-correct works now? In such a world, how could we ever know whether what we thought or did on the network was truly ours?

Perhaps this is what's behind our paranoia and anger when we find out Google sells information mined from our email. Because we know what's coming, and we know deep down that perhaps our business leaders can't be fully trusted with our thoughts, desires and dreams – in essence our very being.

It all comes down to this: Will those who own the technology to use it for good? Forever? Because that's what machine-based immortality truly means.