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The ABQ
Correspondent Previous Two Issues April 2025 DISQUIETING A couple of recent reports involving biology
fascinate and provoke unease. One is the story of the
successful project to create “woolly mice” along
the way to recreating the rather larger woolly mammoth. This was
accomplished by selecting genes from Indian elephants (apparently the
closest surviving relative of the woolly mammoth) that seemed likely to
contribute both to wooliness and insulating fat, then gene-splicing them into
a likely strain of mice. (Recall that while the term gene-splicing sounds
like a matter of snipping a tidy strand of DNA, and surgically inserting a
new section…it’s not a neat process. Like most everything
biological, it’s messy and problematic, with only
probabilistic results.) The other is a report that a company called Cortical
Labs in Melbourne, Australia is offering for sale
devices that combine living neural nets (“…pluripotent stem cells from
consenting donors…” the stuff brains are made of) with electronic digital
hardware that allows input and output of commands and data that are processed
by the neural nets. It's “a computer.” A couple of years ago, the Correspo reported on this company’s work in
developing a living/electronic system of this sort that could play Pong and in
no time flat, we’ve come to commercial application of the technology, which
they are calling Synthetic Biological Intelligence (SBI). What would
you do with one of these computers if you had it? They speak of disease
modeling and drug testing “…perhaps being leveraged for real-time autonomous
tasks in robotics….” I don’t understand more than just the gist the basic
technology (which is treated at length in a series of technical papers on the
company’s website), or of the applications, but it’s easy to believe that this
is big stuff looming in our near future. And here’s a kicker: if
you aren’t running a lab equipped and staffed to handle the messy biology, but are, for example, computer people running software to
explore complicated ideas, you don’t have to install your own SBI system
from Cortical. They offer internet access to one or an array of the
units they operate in their own labs. You can experiment with and apply SBI
at whatever scale you choose. Some of us recall when using a Teletype
machine to log into a remote computer by telephone was a sort of scary new
idea. Back in the ‘60s our California lab installed a Teletype with suitable
phone service in the apartment of a couple who were working for us while
going to the University of Texas. That caused a lengthy struggle with the
City of Austin, whose zoning people felt that it was improper to operate
“business machinery “in a home. One supposes the zoning people in
Melbourne are resigned to Cortical’s operations. Oh, the woolly mice, while they may
have other unsettling characteristics, are
universally recognized as being wonderfully cute.
While the lab that developed them declares it
has no intention of breeding and selling
them as companions, one wonders if public
demand will bring about their appearance in
pet shops. Maybe they can be modified further to
hunt and kill (or at least distract from
reproducing) the invasive Burmese pythons that are
devastating more desirable life in our southern
swamps. Yeah, disquieting. APROPOS
OF NOTHING IN PARTICULAR… except the bone-wearying effort to commercialize new technology…we recall an incident in the late 1970s when we were trying to sell a computer software technology called SAVVY. Built initially using FORTH, it was extensible, combined a plain English (or plain anything else if you wanted it) programming language with neural net pattern recognition capability that compensated for typos big and small, and it interacted gracefully with other software. Even I could program a little bit in SAVVY, and Dar Scott created a SAVVY bookkeeping application that we used for decades. Only a few people were comfortable just using it, because it seemed improbable and a bit creepy. (Many insisted on knowing how we parsed English. We didn’t, and when we said so, they assumed we didn’t know what “parse” meant.) Anyhow, no big company picked it up, though we had close calls. Some small customers did use it, and loved it. One of those companies liked it so much they stole it, repackaged it with a logo that looked a lot like SAVVY, and sold it to customers beyond our reach in those pre-internet days. We didn’t know about this until I was called from my office to our conference room one day to meet a couple of visitors who were on a mission. They were with a Brazilian computer company, and they explained that they had appropriated our product, were selling it, and felt sort of bad about it. They didn’t reverse-engineer the product, just copied it. They proudly showed me their very handsome repackaging. I called a couple more people in to talk about this. The visitors wanted to know what arrangement they could make that would allow them to continue their activities with a clean conscience. Our sales manager, stunned like the rest of us, said we might license it to them, but would certainly need a substantial payment up front. “How much?” they asked. Caught off-guard and not thinking very clearly, Bill said, “At least five thousand dollars.” One of the visitors opened a brief case that must have contained a hundred thousand in U.S. currency. He carefully counted out $5K, handed it to Bill, and closed the briefcase. The two visitors picked up their stuff, shook hands with us, and departed, never to be heard from again. I wish $50K had popped into Bill’s head. Our company ran out of money and was put into the hands of people who didn’t understand the implications of the technology. Disheartened, the Old Guard technical team left, as did I. A couple of years later, the company was inhaled into one of the now-still flourishing big-tech companies. Apart from that particular bone-wearying effort, we’ve had (and have) other before-their-time things to enjoy working on. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Item: As the Correspo
has commented more than once, people seem absolutely determined to make huge
lighter-than-air craft practical. See
this one developed with vast amounts of Google profits at Moffett field
in the San Francisco Bay area (incidentally, our fourth kid was almost born
in that hangar…owing to an important dinner meeting…long story). And here’s
another…love the name FLYING WHALES…in Finland. One of the problems with
these things, pointed out by a pilot long ago, is that the big dirigibles are
so large that “weather conditions” can be very different at the front from
what they are at the back (for all I know, also top and bottom), making
control, even survival, very touchy. How can that be tested except by flying
them? Item: Exoskeletons
that increase people’s strength and leverage seem to be coming along very
handsomely. Now, apparently, “AI
enhanced exoskeletons” can be
rented by tourists embarking on multi-hour climbs up
stairs to high levels of mountains in China. The article doesn’t
really explain the AI aspect of the system, but the idea of reducing energy
expenditure by 30+% while hiking up stairs is
increasingly attractive. Item: Word came recently that Joann’s is
planning to close all 800 of its fabric stores nationwide. While that may not
distress everybody, and I admit that I really avoided going to Joann’s and its like with Mado over the decades, preferring to find a nearby coffee
shop or better, a bookstore, than to wander uninterestedly among the bolts
and the notions. On the other hand, ours is a family of costume designers.
Chantal, Ondine, and their associates are thrilled to the bone by any
opportunity get to L.A. and other centers to stroll the districts of fabric
stores. This catastrophe of Joann’s will leave Albuquerque, and presumably
many other cities, even of some size, with no stores dedicated to the
genuinely important business of providing wonderful materials to the
community… only a few places like Walmart whose enthusiasm for selling
fabrics does not rise to the level of fervor. We’ve not yet seen informed
commentary on the apparent decline in retail fabric sales…have people just
quit sewing? _______________________________________________
ITEM FROM THE PAST This item from 2006 is brought to mind by a
spate of recent
reports of labs monkeying with new
applications for bioluminescence. BIOMETRICS IN
SPADES The Microtox
system, with which we were long
involved, uses luminescent bacteria as
test organisms. The bugs naturally release about ten percent of their
energy in the form of light that is plenty bright for easy measurement (I
once had four petri dishes with these bugs growing on agar with me in a hotel
room, which they must really have liked, because they were lighting the whole
room startlingly (I could almost read by it)
when I woke up at two in the morning). If they are exposed to anything toxic, the bugs get sick, and their
light output dims proportionally. Using a clever approach to getting
linear data from sloppy biology, the system works great. An intriguing new system along somewhat similar lines is far more
complex, but potentially effective for special applications. In this
case, genes from fireflies are
transferred to the eggs of zebrafish, so that the cells of the fish hatching from them will produce luciferase,
as fireflies do, when properly stimulated. Additional genes may be injected into the fish so that the
stimulation of luciferase is caused only by specific chemicals, such as
mercury. If a mercury-sensitive fish
has been exposed to mercury in polluted waters, and is then exposed to
luciferin in a test tank, it will glow like a firefly... indicating its exposure to that specific pollutant. The
developers of the test think they can
tailor the fish to respond to a spectrum of different toxics of interest.
They point out, somewhat defensively one feels, that the fish are not
necessarily expended in the testing, but can live to glow again another day.
Oh, good. Like
most everything I’ve been involved with, Microtox was
25 years ahead of its time, and the company was sold
off before we could get it off the ground. About a year
ago the most recent owner of the now-in-use- worldwide
technology said proudly that “more than 500
papers have been published about it.” *sigh* I wrote
the first one. People have been trying to use bioluminescence
commercially in a lot of ways. One recent article
explains a project to create wood that glows.
They’re infusing wood (it takes many weeks) with
bioluminescent fungi that apparently alter the structure
of the wood without reducing its strength as
well as finding a new home to rest in and glow green for
as many as ten days. Another group is editing the genes
of critters like rabbits so you
can have pets that shine at
you. Gee, we just took the bugs as they came. March 2025 HAVE A
SEAT Back in
what must have been 1976, I received a proposal for an article in Personal
Computing Magazine, of which I was Editor. (In those quaint old days of
print, the protocol for offering a piece to a publication was to send a
letter outlining it to see if the editor would be interested.) Yes, the idea
was appealing, and I replied that I’d soon be in the author’s home territory
and could meet with him. He invited
me to his home in South San Francisco, which was one of those houses not
common outside California whose front is at street level, and whose back is
supported on stilts over a chasm. He gave me a tour, pointing out a storage
area stacked high with folded corrugated cardboard objects. They were kits of
model airplane gliders, cleverly die-cut so the purchaser could pop out
the pieces and assemble the aircraft following instructions printed on them.
When a customer ordered a glider, my host could just slap a label on the
sturdy folded object, and mail it off. Impressive. I was
offered a comfortable chair, handed a draft of the proposed article, and
asked what sort of music I liked. He played a number of
instruments, and planned to practice on a recorder while I read. I said I
liked Bach, and he indeed played Bach while I read. I said we’d
publish the piece. We chatted interestingly about the
computer biz before I left. It was an unusual experience. He was more than talented (he invented computer languages, was an artist, initiated the design of the Apple MacIntosh, had much to do with the Mozilla Firefox browser, which I use routinely, etc…); he was also outspoken and influential, His work is present in daily life these fifty years later. He was also highly quotable. e.g: “Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers and nobody thinks of complaining.” Partly
because of his influence, our computers now work much of the time. Unlike
most of the techie creators of personal computers, who thought that computer
users cared how the infernal things work, Raskin
promoted the idea that computers were appliances that customers used for
doing something they wanted done. Good on him. I saw Jef
last at the West Coast Computer Faire in 1977, where Faire proprietor Jim Warren
roller-skated around the floor of the San Francisco Civic Auditorium,
visiting his exhibitors. That show was notable for the introduction of the
Apple II, which became an icon of its era. As we looked around the busy
hall, Jef commented, “This is either the end of something or the beginning of
something.” I think it was both. Jef Raskin
died in 2005 at only 61. Too bad. He
was really interesting and had more to do. GETTING
THERE Forty-some
years ago,
pre-artificial neural nets and LLMs, I published a couple of things speculating
on the potential for turning “personal robots” into companions who would be
helpful and comforting to old folks like me, now. I had expected such
critters to be among us long ago, but it takes a while for fundamentally
different ideas to come into general use. Robot companions seem to be
creeping up on us at last. A
WIRED article
reports interestingly on experience with an “AI travel companion” in
Tokyo. The author found it…um… companionable and helpful as well as error-prone. (Who of us is not error-prone?) She seems
to have been glad of its company and utility. A Quartz article, 2025
could be the year AI Grows Up deals with less “personal” AI agents performing
functions in business, and the probable need to set agents watching agents
to be sure that they don’t do anything harmfully silly. “Who watches the
watchers?” is a classic issue, just in new context. That’s what auditing
firms are about. We haven’t found a way to predict comprehensively what “emerging technology” will be able to do what we’ll be either glad of or sorry about, just too many unknown variables. Wikipedia says that “
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NELS
MUSES Item: While looking at references to Jef Raskin, I found this quote from him: "An unlimited-length file name is a file. The content of a file is its own best name." Remarkably, while explaining to ignorant me in 1968 what a computer is and does, Woody Bledsoe used this key phrase: “The information is the address; the address is the
information.” With
the rise of LLMs these many years later, what they were saying is becoming
crystal clear. Item:
It has apparently occurred to Saudi Arabia that, while they have had immense…really IMMENSE revenue from oil for quite some time now, that resource is not unlimited. Maybe they should use some of that money to create other resources. One of the things they’ve come up with is The Line, a city 1600 feet tall, 656 feet wide, and 105 miles long. They’ve already started to build it…and there’s a remote chance that the mad scheme can be carried through. Holy Smoke! It’s in a special area of the country, called NEOM, formally dedicated to doing new stuff. The general population of Saudi Arabia is not especially noted for embracing new stuff, and one can imagine a certain reluctance to accept social changes that must inevitably accompany a project on this scale, but the country’s management does not shrink from enforcing its dictates. This should be scary as well as fascinating to watch in coming decades. Item: A report about a lady collecting slime moulds on her Tasmanian property
reminds us that these are extraordinarily interesting living…er…things with
capabilities that still puzzle us. For example, they can work their way
through a maze to find food. This interesting short article from Discover,
admiring their talents, is a bit rude about them. They deserve better. _______________________________________________
ITEM FROM THE PAST This item from March 1996 just seems appropriate for the start of this forty-first year COMFORT IN
CLASSIFICATION You’ll notice on the Correspo
Home Page that we finally have a real
ISSN...an “International Standard Serial Number”...assigned by the National
Serials Data Program of the U.S. Library of Congress to the Online Edition of
the ABQ Correspondent. What
does it mean? Well..unh...
um...who knows?. The printed edition of the
ABQ Correspondent has sported an ISSN for some years. In the case of printed
publications, serial numbers are
potentially helpful to librarians who hope to arrange all documents in
orderly fashion, so that scholars can find them again in the future. It’s
less clear that an ISSN assigned to this online edition of the Correspo has
value for anybody. Where the heck will anybody look to find the material? I forgot to save the first few files of
this, and even the ones now preserved are just WordPerfect files copied
to fragile floppy disks. A scarier
idea is that the material is stored in a great Monitoring Computer in the Sky
by agencies of governments unspecified, whose work is aided by the ISSN. That’s
goofy, but who knows? The ISSN gives a certain cachet to the publication, and one’s ego is bolstered by the
notion that some scholar in future years may be
interested in these paragraphs, improbable as it may seem. The Online Correspo seems more
“official” now, with a definable place in the world. It was challenging to move the Correspo
online after ten years of publication...two sides of an 8½” x 11” sheet of canary yellow paper…printed out, copied at Kinko’s or some such shop, folded inside another sheet of paper with somebody’s address on it, stamped, and mailed. (A first class stamp must have been about fifteen cents at the time…more like fifty cents now… couldn’t afford it.) Without practical constraint on the length of the online copy, we arrived at trying to limit pieces to 400-500 words, but sometimes wander
embarrassingly beyond that. Should we automatically show reader responses? Goodness, no. How about frequency? Well, the print edition had been every-other- month but monthly was practical online and not a nuisance to readers…and so on and so on. Lots changed . …and it has been a sort of meaningless comfort all these years to have an International Standard Serial Number to make the Correspo seem real. Onward. --------------------------------------------------------------------
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