From the archives.
Author Archives: Steve Mays
Drone Romance
“Directed by speculative architect Liam Young and written by fiction author Tim Maughan, In the Robot Skies is the world’s first narrative shot entirely through autonomous drones. In collaboration with the Embedded and Artificially intelligent Vision Lab in Belgium the film has evolved in relation to their experiments with specially developed camera drones each programmed with their own cinematic rules and behaviours. In this near future city drones form both agents of state surveillance but also become co-opted as the aerial vehicles through which two teens fall in love.”
Indians weren’t real
Growing up in a small town in the 1950’s, I had a Davy Crockett coonskin cap and rather amazing “Indian” war bonnet. Don’t recall who gave it to me or why.
Native Americans (don’t think we ever heard the term back then) were mentioned in our history lessons but rarely and inaccurately. The American “Indian” simple wasn’t real to us. Mostly they were the bad guys on TV and in movies. Tonto one of the rare exception.
My thanks to John Robison for sharing photos from his mom’s scrapbooks.
Memories
To some extent we are the sum of our memories. Or it feels that way. But neuroscience tells us that every time a memory is recalled, it is recreated by the brain, slightly different each time it’s retrieved. So, a memory of a memory. Of a memory. Imagine each memory as a photo in a shoebox. Everytime you pull one out, it’s just a little bit different. We’re not bothered by this because we are unaware of the change. We have no memory of the previous version. Neuroscience also tells us we are able to recall only a fraction of our experiences.
My conclusion: We are not our memories.
So who/what am I? Perhaps the most important question one can ask, and that few ever do. Are we our thoughts and feelings? If so, what are we in those rare moments when we are not thinking or feeling? I like Sam Harris’ description of such mental objects as “temporary patterns of energy.”
Gravel road
One of the best features of where we live is the gravel road that leads to our place. It comes up a moderatly steep hill and dead-ends at our driveway. It can be a booger in the winter and bone-jarring after a good rain. The roads are owned — and maintained — by our homeowners association so we all kick in to a road fund a couple of times a year. A few neighbors have lobbied for paving but it would cost a fortune and most of us are fine with living on a gravel road. A feature, not a bug.
Living at the end of the road, at the top of a hill, there is never any traffic. If I see or hear a car or truck it is a) someone coming to see us, b) someone coming up to turn around, or c) someone who is lost. I wouldn’t know how to put a price on that.