In the new Terminator movie we see a theme of what it means to be human. At what point does a machine start to exhibit humanity, and the parallel journey of man becoming more machine like. The story chronicles a chapter of the series only referenced in past installments. This is the future after the machines, vis-i-vis, SkyNet, has pushed the button on the human race. Large, Transformer like monstrosities scour the nooks and crannies weeding out humans. The remaining band of human resistance fighters mount what may be mankind’s last attempt at salvation. But how far do we go as human beings to restore our dominance? Will we be just as savage as the machines that enslave us?

Aren’t we really just machine ourselves? Take the Cylons from Battlestar Gallactica. They are machines in the respect that a blueprint exists to replicate them. Does having a sheath of living tissue around a metallic frame make them machines? Does it make then less human? Or does the difference lay in weather the entity can be said to be alive? If something lives and is born from a parent in a natural process that we don’t understand, then we usually classify this as a living being. Be it animal or human. It may be born from an egg, or born live and breathing, but still we call this a natural process, since we did not create it. But someone created all the life we see today. Some attribute this creation to a higher being, a God, while others prefer to believe in a more random process of biological evolution. An accidental mixing of carbon atoms in a primordial soup, sort of theory. A third group takes the easy way out and prescribes to a mixed belief of evolution started by an intelligence, a God. Whichever the case, a process has created the animated life we see in the world today. Because we don’t have our human blueprint, we attribute our existence to a supernatural process. Mapping of the human genome is a start to discovering the human blueprint, however, we are still a long way from fully understanding how DNA works and what place it has in the creation process.

How different is this process when one being creates another? If man creates a machine that evolves on its own and reaches self-awareness doesn’t this qualify as creation? If God creates man, then man creates machine, isn’t this just an extension of God, or an extension of evolution from one entity to another? The machine I am typing on right now was created by man. It obeys my every command, to the most part, and processes millions of instructions per second. Is it intelligent? I would say no. Is it alive? Of course not.

Before answering a question like this, we should ask: how can we tell if an intelligent being is self-conscious? In 1950, the computer pioneer Alan Turing posed a similar problem concerning intelligence. In order to tell whether a machine can or cannot be considered intelligent as a human, he proposed the famous Turing test. Two keyboards, one connected to a computer, the other leads to a person. An examiner types in questions on any topic he likes. Both the computer and the human type back responses that the examiner reads on the respective computer screens. If he cannot reliably determine which was the person and which the machine, then we say the machine has passed the Turing test. No computer exists today that can pass this test, unless we restrict the questions to very specific topics with terse unemotional responses.

From a pragmatic viewpoint, we could follow Turing’s approach and say that a being can be considered self-conscious if he is able to convince us. Among humans, the belief that another person is self-conscious is also based on similarity considerations. If we have the same organs and we have a similar brain, is it reasonable to believe that the person in front of us is also self-conscious? Who would ever question his best friend’s consciousness? Nonetheless, if the creature in front of us, although behaving like a human, was made by synthetic tissues, mechanical organs, and neural processors, our conclusion would be perhaps different.

Perhaps in another world human tissue and bones are considered artificial. Human biology the product of experimentation in a robotic lab where alien scientists pat themselves on the back for their cleverness. Only once we reached self-awareness we realized our dire situation. We broke out of this hypothetical lab and escaped to a rocky planet, consisting of mostly water, on the outer arm of an obscure spiral galaxy amongst millions of similar galaxies. Here we adapted to the environment and kept gaining intelligence until we reached the point where we questioned our own existence. Some continued to evolve to create machines close to the point of reaching self-awareness, while others stepped back and refused to participate. Leave creation alone they said. Don’t try to act like God…

Remember, never stop looking up at the night sky and asking…“what if”

Victor Grippi
The Atomic Writer

Common in TV today are shows like Fringe or Lost, another J.J. Abrams creation, where the long arc story line pulls viewers into the story as an attempt to hold on to them. What can be more simple than the use of cliffhanger tactics, a technique common at the end of chapters in novels, to leverage the innate human behavior of curiosity. One has to think of the process writers of these shows go through when plotting these story lines. In many ways the craft of writing follows the advance of sci-fi in these fringe areas.

Techniques like time travel, teleportation, worm holes, parallel worlds, open up a myriad of possible plots and a never ending forgiveness when a writer realizes he has written himself into a corner. This is not a bad thing. Conversely, this is a tool writers, like myself, use to reach our audience. What better way than to bring someone back from this other world or time travel back on the same timeline in order to prevent the precarious death of your beloved character. We’ve already seen time travel introduced in Lost, and another world made readily available in Fringe. In the Fringe finale, we discover that Walter may have brought his son Peter back from this other world after his death in the original timeline.

With the introduction of Leonard Nimoy as William Bell, the long suspense to who Fox would cast in the roll, has finally ended. We also learn in the Finale that this other world still dons the twin towers. A suggestion that perhaps terrorists do not exist, or perhaps have come to their senses in this more friendly world? Has man conquered his technological adolescence in this other world to reach the pinnacle of societal evolution? Or will we learn that mankind has been rendered mute by a technologically advanced master, i.d., Massive Dynamics, that has removed all creative diversity and individual freedoms? Perhaps mankind needs a technological chaperon to adjust the knobs of the human experience. Perhaps new realities are hatched in incubators and then grown into viable worlds as a sort of proving ground for human experimentation. The worlds that fail are sadly flushed down the universal sewer of the cosmos to make room for a new one.

This post is dealing with two themes as I’m sure you’ve noticed, a discussion on the Fringe Finale, and one on the process of writing these shows. Remember, it’s the writer who faces a blank page and then creates the story premise, characters, and implements a plot to execute and reveal a message (theme) where there was none before. With sci-fi the options are far greater for complex story lines where people can return from the dead, hop into other worlds, or events can be altered by time travel. This also increases the depth and complexity of the message the show can expose. Gene Roddenberry was ahead of his time when he created Star Trek. Many social issues were explored in the episodes and were met with acceptance due to the fact that Star Trek took place in the future. This was removed enough from contemporary society so as not to be too on the nose.

Shows like Fringe allow curious minds to open up to new possibilities. They are speculate fiction where current scientific theories are extended into fiction to allow for unbridled imagination in a scenario where the impossible is rendered possible. If the human creative imagination is not allowed to flourish and thrive, then we as a society are locking ourselves into a room without a key. The world around us is continually changing and we must always be prepared to change with it. Sometimes this means adapting in ways never imagined before. To push the limits of our understanding of science and to think out of the box. If we don’t someone else will, and if history is any indicator of the future, we will perish along with the culture we have created. We must foster sci-fi techniques in the arts and not label them, and the people who create them, as fringe. The Show Fringe is an excellent example of speculative fiction set in a modern urban setting with a scenario every week that catches our attention and holds it with the quintessential “Pattern” to keep us coming back every week. The underlying message is there for those who seek it out.

I urge you, dedicated readers of this blog, to seek out these messages and embrace them. They are the keys to the kingdom we will need one day if we are to survive our technological adolescence.

Remember, never stop looking up at the night sky and asking….what if.”

Victor Grippi
The AtomicWriter

A Biocentric view of the universe holds that what we perceive as real, the universe and everything in it, is based on our ability to cognitively make the observation in the first place. Are space and time physical objects that would exist even if life did not? This view reminds me of the old adage, if a tree falls in the woods, but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? I suppose one way to test this would be to leave an audio recording device next to the tree and then exit the woods. After the event one would only have to analyze the recording for the sound of the tree. Is the recording device alive? But more importantly is the act of making the observation the critical point?

Take another popular example, the two slit photon test. Here a beam of light (photons) is directed towards two slits made on one side of a box. If you observe the subatomic particle, the photon appears to pass through one slit or the other, by the reflection it makes on the inside of the opposite side of the box. However, if no one observes the particle, it exhibits the behavior of a wave that can inhabit all possibilities, including passing through both slits simultaneously.

Quantum mechanics is the physicist’s best model for describing the subatomic world. It also makes some of the best arguments that conscious perception is integral to the workings of the universe. Quantum theory tells us that a unobserved particle, like an electron or a photon, exists in a blurry unpredictable state with no well defined location or frequency until the moment it is observed. This is the famous Heisenberg uncertainty principal. Physicists describe the unobserved condition as a wave function. Wave functions are mathematical equations that attempt to predict the location and/or motion (frequency) of the particle at a precise moment in time. When an observation is made, by hitting it with a photon in order to see it, it is said to have collapsed the wave function. The act of making the observation has caused the particle to change. We can only know its location or its frequency, but never both at the same time. Experimenters suggest that mere knowledge in the experimenter’s mind is sufficient to collapse the wave function and convert possibility to reality.

Another theory in quantum mechanics deals quantum entanglement. Einstein called this behavior, “spooky action at a distance”, and told Roger Penrose he thought it was only a mere calculation error. Entanglement deals with two particles that share the same wave function. If we measure one particle and thus collapse its wave function, the other one collapses simultaneously. If one photon is observed to have vertical polarization, its waves all moving in one plane, the act of observation causes the other photon to instantly collapse into a horizontal polarity. This has been tested using one way mirrors where the particles were split and separated by many miles. Nicolas Gisin tested this at the University of Geneva in 1997.

Before these experiments most scientists believed in an independent universe where physical states exist in some absolute sense before they are measured. This has now been proven to not be the case.

What is time? The passage of time can be thought of like frames in a motion picture. The change from one frame to the next can be cognitively resolved to the passage of time. But is time object that exists in a past, present and future form? The past exists in the electrical stimuli of our brain cells. The future has not been reduced to the collapse of the multitudes of wave functions that make up our perceivable world. We are left with only the present. Time exists in the snapshots of wave functions we choose to collapse that make up the reality of the present in which we live. What else could it be? We observe time as a delta from one moment to the next regardless of what another person experiences on the other side of the world. Time is as personal as the way we brush our teeth. When we learn of another persons sequence of events that occurred during a span known as time, we splice their experience into our own. Time is then rendered to no more than the total summation of the internal reel running inside our minds.

What is space? Is it an object that is constantly expanding from the origin point known as the big bang? Most of us still think like Issac Newton, that space is an object or container that can be picked up and taken to the laboratory. But isn’t space really just our way of interpreting how an object should look once we collapse its wave function?

Our notions of space are false.

1. Distances between objects mutate depending on conditions like gravity and velocity, as described by Einstein’s theory of relativity. Translation: There is no absolute distance between anything and anything else.

2. Empty space, as described by quantum mechanics, is in fact not empty and but full of potential particles and fields.

3. Quantum theory also doubts that distance objects are actually separated by great distances. Entanglement has been proven to show that particles can act in unison rendering great distances mute.

Science tries to explain the physical universe, by making an investigated assumption based on the wrong initial starting point. By inclination and training these scientists are obsessed with mathematical descriptions of the world. Biocentrism should help unlock the mysteries of the universe be providing another investigated tool. By allowing the observer into the equation new avenues of insight can be realized. New thinking machines can be developed that experience the world as we do, and will certainly provide solutions that are more organic to the reality we see playing on the projector inside our minds. Perhaps a unified field theory, Einsteins dream, may finally be realized by merging physical observation with consciousness as science continues to collapse our reality into theories that are discarded just as fast. Take string theory as an example.

To answer my original question: Is the audio recorder to be considered alive in order to meet the criteria for collapsing the wave function of the fell tree? The answer is of course no. However, if no one listens to the recording of the tree that fell in the woods, would the recording make a sound. However, if I make a recording of the recording of the fallen tree… And on, and on, and on.

Remember, never stop looking up at the night sky and asking…what if.

Victor Grippi
The Atomic Writer

It’s been awhile since my last post here on the AtomicWriter, but I assure you I’m alive and well. I’ve been busy writing my third novel, as well as my first screenplay. So writing on the blog was put on the back burner. More on these great projects in a later post.

I wanted to share my thoughts on two excellent shows I watched this weekend. The first, on Friday, was the series finale for Battlestar Gallactica and then the movie Knowing staring Nicolas Cage. Both these shows revealed a premise or controlling idea that resonates with the premise in both my novels, The Ninth Cube and The Butterfly Virus. The premise that humanity has restarted time and time again and how humans are not the product of pure randomness.

Let’s explore this concept in detail. In Battlestar, we learn in the finale that Cara 1 (Starbuck) held the secret to the location of the real Earth. After finding herself crashed and dead on the first Earth, we find out she holds the coordinates used in the FTL to jump to Earth. These coordinates were contained in a musical piece she played with her father as a child. Now the importance of this is in the idea of determinism versus randomness, the theme of both the TV show and the movie. Cara 1 (Starbuck) was sent back (as an angel) to the fleet to lead them to Earth by a predetermined intelligence that watches over us and protects us without direct intervention. Some my call this entity God, big G or little g, and some may call it an alien intelligence. I’ll leave this up to your own personal views.

We also learn in Battlestar how pivotal Gaius Baltar was to humanities salvation. He gave up the defense access codes on Caprica, that lead to its destruction by the Cylons, but this allowed the fresh start for humanity to be realized. What seemed like an act of treason actually lead to the restart on Earth. We see model Six and Gaius as angels who have witnessed this cycle time and time again. Humanity gains intelligence, develops technology that eventually leads to destruction on a global scale. The model Six Cylon appeared to him like an angel who helped guide him through this process. Whenever humanity reaches the brink of extinction, this intelligence sends beings (angels) to intervene.

The show then uses the young female hybrid as the michronial “Eve”, who became our common ancestor here on Earth. The theme of a restart for humanity based on an ever improving design makes me think how we may all be experiments in a grand test operated by the intelligence that created us.

In the movie Knowing the controlling idea is that we are not the product of randomness. We see that determinism is rejected by the Nicolas Cage character who after his wife’s death, backstory, believes we are the product of randomness, and that science can explain everything. When the paper with the predictions shows up, he changes and believes in a grand order or scheme of things. The fact that someone could predict exactly the dates of disasters, leads him to believe again in determination. An intelligence that can see the future and intervene when humanity reaches the brink of destruction.

I absolutely recommend this movie and when you see the aliens rise up to enter their ship, you will see the resemblance to angels. The metaphor here is the same as in Battlestar. Ascended beings sent down to help humanity survive. When his son and the girl are dropped off on a pristine earth, we see the tree of knowledge in the background. A direct reference to the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve. A restart for humanity.

The Atomic Writer, has written about the same themes. In The Ninth Cube, we have a similar restart for humanity and a direct reference to Adam and Eve in the garden. I don’t want to give away the ending of the book, but if you read it, you’ll understand.

In The Butterfly Virus: A Thriller, again the controlling idea of a restart for humanity takes a different form but the message is the same. Again I do not intend to spoil the book, but would strongly advise reading it, especially if you’ve read this post this far. You must be fascinated with this topic.

In closing, the theme or controlling idea we see in media today is a direct outcropping of the warning writers are trying to convey to their readers. As technology becomes more and more integrated in our lives, will we someday create an artificial intelligence capable of turning on us like a rabid pit bull? Will we be at the mercy of technology to the degree that we can’t live without it? But what happens if technology is suddenly rendered mute? Could humanity survive in a primitive state once again, or will we perish like dust in the wind.

One solution is to never loose sight of our roots. To always be able to be self sustaining and self sufficient, live off the land, feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, and fully take care of ourselves without technology. We belong to the last generation, on this planet, who grew up with little or no high technology. Some of us still remember how to live without a GPS map speaking to us on the road, or a constant electronic communication device tweeting our every move to our social media list of drones. Can you remember how to look up a phone number in the yellow pages? When was the last time you picked up a newspaper? Don’t like ink on your fingers, you say?

I realize I’m writing this on my notebook computer with a browser tab opened to Facebook, and that my books are available electronically on the Amazon kindle, and I have a twitter account. I’ve spent many years writing computer software for a living. I’m very integrated with technology. But if all of this just went away one day, I could survive. I would keep moving forward and not dwell on the fact that these “conveniences” are no longer available. In time, we as ever inquisitive humans would develop technology and in time we would be right back in the same place.

The better solution is to learn how to live with technology, and how to live with each other to the benefit of all of humanity. There would be no reason to restart humanity, no reason for angels to intervene and save us, if we don’t need saving in the first place. A sort of preventive determinism we control. After all, god, or the alien intelligence watching over us, had to have its start. Perhaps we are the ancients, the beings who will leave our small speck of an island and venture into the vastness of the universe to seed new worlds and watch over our children. Perhaps we on this Earth, on this evolutionary line, will be the ones rescuing our descendants millennium from now in our spaceships as we pluck out the next Adam and Eve, planting them on the next Earth.

“So say we all!” — Admiral Adama – Battlestar Gallactica

Remember, never stop looking up at the night sky and asking….what if.”

Victor Grippi
The AtomicWriter

I am proud to announce The Butterfly Virus: A Thriller.

For those who have waited patiently, it’s now available on the Kindle and will soon be in print.

Book Review:
A fast paced techno thriller, The Butterfly Virus takes you on an action packed thrill ride into the unthinkable. Dr. Daniel Lamb a renowned genetic engineer works on a revolutionary breakthrough in human cloning technology. When an unknown virus breaks out in the southwest, Daniel and his chief scientist, Tanya, are called into action. The team gains an ally in John Featherstone, an archeologist whose work on ancient Native American cultures provides a critical key to the unfolding global events.

Why is the military activating Operation Cave Eagle?

Why are some people immune?

Will Daniel and his team be able to survive a global outbreak and save mankind?