From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Thu Jul 27 2000 - 21:29:51 MDT
> --- Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net> wrote:
>
> > Then we hire prisoners or retirees etc, to go thru libraries,
> wearing
> > the hat, page thru all the books... How about that?
> > spike
>
> Scott Badger wrote: Humans wouldn't be good for this. Better to
> design a
> machine that adjusts to any book size...This wouldn't be very hard,
> would it?...
Scott Ive argued long that robots could be built to do things
such as this, but lately Ive had some second thoughts. I still
think robots *could* do things like this, however humans might
make fairly good low cost robots. Actually we use them for
that purpose now, when you think about it: push line electronics
manufacturing for instance. We have a loooot of people we
dont know what to do with as it is.
Nowthen, there are definitely issues yet to be worked. The
mechanical details are relatively easy. I am quietly watching
the napster debates, and what to do with the question of how
to pay the artists.
Do allow me to toss in my two cents. When the nanoschmooze
was going on here in May, Damien Broderick was staying at my place
and he was working on an updated version of The Spike. One
passage had a couple of paragraphs covering a topic on which I have
modest expertise, prime numbers. We updated those two
paragraphs using the latest from GIMPS, etc. Damien and I
did a *ton* of calculations, polished, debated, researched on
the web, polished more, calculated some more, and by the time he
had rewritten *two paragraphs* into three, two grown men had spent
over two hours. The entire book has things like that in it. So
get that book, and read it.
Please, napster fans, how do we motivate people to do things
like writing The Spike if their blood, sweat and tears can so
easily be copied free? How much thought do you put into
your extropian posts? Very little if you are anything like me.
Would you want books that were no higher quality than what
we read on our chat groups? Have any of you chat groups
that are *not* brainy ones like extropians? I do: a motorcycle
enthusiasts group. The writing there is so poor and the thoughts
so shallow it is scarcely worth the effort to hit the delete key on
most of them. Is our literary future to be like that? Napster fans?
spike
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