I was visiting Ward Christensen on the day he got his first Toshiba laptop. After he got it powered up he realized that he had zero software on the 3 1/2" disks it used, making it almost useless.
It did have MS-DOS, thus it had debug. He used debug to write an impromptu assembly program to pull across data from one of his other machines via serial cable. He then used that code to pull across xmodem, which was then enough to pull across Qmodem. Then he pulled across laplink and he had rull access to everything.
I think it's interesting to interpret "Tears in the Rain" less broadly. The AI that we have today has much less than a four year "lifespan". It "expires" as soon as we stop typing into a session.
Interestingly, the best models can produce convincing poetry despite a lack of lived experience.
As realtime avatars and robots become more advanced, we will start to wonder more if somehow a system has some kind of consciousness, and then about real moral concerns. As technology practitioners, within a few years, our "tears in the rain" moments could come from actual interactions with AI.
But part of the point was about mortality being an aspect of nature to be accepted with grace. I think that's a practical reaction, and the typical attitude towards robots and mortality that a literature major or maybe just the average human would have.
But I believe that someone who really understands technology, and I would go so far as to say evolution (in the context of high technology), questions the optimality or at least necessity of natural death.
Emerging from Amish-Mennonite life, also from deep Appalachia. Being twenty-three and experiencing cinema, rock music, and city life--not to mention a mall--for the first time was shattering, and poignant.
My first time in management, age 24, I ran the night network operations team for a network of about 300,000 users across three countries in two wars. I was a team lead over two to three direct personnel and a couple large organizations under indirect management.
Been a long time since I've seen Blade Runner, but I thought the monologue just serves to show that the android is reflecting on what death means, in his case the irrevocable loss of his consciousness, memories, thoughts.
Tears in the rain comes from the first Blade Runner movie when at the end the android is dying from expiration while outside in the rain while explaining things he had seen as a slave that were beyond human imagination.
I was visiting Ward Christensen on the day he got his first Toshiba laptop. After he got it powered up he realized that he had zero software on the 3 1/2" disks it used, making it almost useless.
It did have MS-DOS, thus it had debug. He used debug to write an impromptu assembly program to pull across data from one of his other machines via serial cable. He then used that code to pull across xmodem, which was then enough to pull across Qmodem. Then he pulled across laplink and he had rull access to everything.
It took less that 20 minutes total, I think.
I think it's interesting to interpret "Tears in the Rain" less broadly. The AI that we have today has much less than a four year "lifespan". It "expires" as soon as we stop typing into a session.
Interestingly, the best models can produce convincing poetry despite a lack of lived experience.
As realtime avatars and robots become more advanced, we will start to wonder more if somehow a system has some kind of consciousness, and then about real moral concerns. As technology practitioners, within a few years, our "tears in the rain" moments could come from actual interactions with AI.
But part of the point was about mortality being an aspect of nature to be accepted with grace. I think that's a practical reaction, and the typical attitude towards robots and mortality that a literature major or maybe just the average human would have.
But I believe that someone who really understands technology, and I would go so far as to say evolution (in the context of high technology), questions the optimality or at least necessity of natural death.
Emerging from Amish-Mennonite life, also from deep Appalachia. Being twenty-three and experiencing cinema, rock music, and city life--not to mention a mall--for the first time was shattering, and poignant.
My first time in management, age 24, I ran the night network operations team for a network of about 300,000 users across three countries in two wars. I was a team lead over two to three direct personnel and a couple large organizations under indirect management.
Is that what "Tears in Rain" refers to?
Been a long time since I've seen Blade Runner, but I thought the monologue just serves to show that the android is reflecting on what death means, in his case the irrevocable loss of his consciousness, memories, thoughts.
Yes, an analogy for inner experiences that could never fully be communicated to others.
Like seeing C-beams glittering off the Tannhauser Gate, or flying around the Bay Area in an F/A 18 Interceptor on an Amiga.
Tears in the rain comes from the first Blade Runner movie when at the end the android is dying from expiration while outside in the rain while explaining things he had seen as a slave that were beyond human imagination.
HN before it turned into a toxic, low signal cesspit following 2022.