Woke up way to early this morning and could not fall back asleep, therefore I will be running on lots of coffee.
Personal Computing Continues To Get Real
Back in 2011 when Apple announced the iPad I believed it marked the real beginning of the personal computing era rather than the beginning of the Post-PC Era as was being pronounced at the time. As I argued then, and think it is still the case, we have historically thought of a personal computer as a device that one person uses. In other words, “personal” meant one. My argument back then is that “personal” really should mean what everyone knows it to mean, which is computing specific to you, the user. I imagine personal computing as the mashup of hardware + software + Internet + intelligence.
Today I learned via manton about Rabbit Inc. and a mobile device and operating system it has introduced built around a Large Language Model and what the company calls a Large Action Model to provide a user interface based on natural language processing and execute actions rather than generate text and pictures. I don’t know whether the NLP works as well is demoed, but the demo at least shows exactly how I imagined how personal computing should work. Speech is our primary mode of interaction and typing is really abnormal and frankly unknown to the majority of people in the world.
I think the software is the most important part of what Rabbit Inc. has made, the purpose of the device is to prove the software’s functioning and capability. If it does perform as well as shown, I expect the company and product to be acquired by one of the big tech firms.
First significant snow storm of the winter in southeast Michigan resulted in no snow at my home. So far this year we have had some snow flurries that lightly cover the grass but melts away soon after. Seems odd to me to be in the second full week of January and not have a good inch or two on the ground.
A lot of attention is being spent on Artificial Intelligence, with most seeing it as the next big technological iteration after mobile Internet access (smartphones), and that might be right. Consequently many are overlooking what the company responsible for that last iteration is launching this year, with Apple’s Vision Pro going on sale in stores for $3,499. Much focus is on the hardware, but what one will be able to buy in February is analogous to the original iPhone. Steve Jobs knew when he announced that first iPhone that mobile Internet access will change the world, and it has for both good and ill. Spatial Computing has the potential for changing how we interact with and thus use personal computing, while Artificial Intelligence has the potential for changing what personal computing does for and to us.
Intentional Trusting
This article in The Atlantic, We’ve Been Thinking About America’s Trust Collapse All Wrong by Jedediah Britton-Purdy is very good. Too bad it’s behind a paywall, but worth trying to read. Here is one of the many important points:
Another distinction between personal and political trust that we need to learn involves living with sharp moral disagreement. In our own lives, we may refuse to enter close and lasting relationships with people who, say, disagree with us about questions as fundamental as how we should raise our children or what gender roles mean in our family. (I don’t mean that this is necessarily the right approach, and we may lose something when we cut ourselves off from challenge in this way, but the decision is an intelligible one.) But politics is about coexistence with disagreement around issues as fundamental as these, such as abortion. If we treat moral disagreement as proof of moral badness and as a reason, effectively, to cut off civic as well as personal relationships, then politics is done. Politics is a relationship we cannot escape, for better or worse. We can poison it, though, and confusing it with personal relationships that we can refuse or leave is one way of poisoning it.
Recently discovered Tal Wikenfeld, via YouTube and her song Corner Painter. Currently listening Prince’s Welcome 2 America album on which Tal plays.
I store personal data like the steps that I walk in Exist.io, which I highly recommend. Today I received my Year in Review summary that told me that in 2023 I walked 3,203,658 steps for a distance of 1,457.1 miles, all of which went toward walking the equivalent of the Appalachian Trail. My average steps per day is 8,375 now, up from 7,969 in July 2020.
This article in The Atlantic implies that people, many of them Republican, are resigning from Congress due to frustration with getting nothing done. However, I think it doesn’t really matter whether members of Congress are frustrated, it should matter more whether voters, particularly Republican but Democrat too, are frustrated. I personally think that many people specifically do not want Congress to do anything, they want gridlock, and find the theatre much more entertaining. Too many people vote based on how a person makes them feel or how they want to feel rather than on any facts.
I have Microsoft Copilot installed on my Pixel 7a and my iPad Mini and don’t understand what are the practical uses for it. It’s a nice search engine, but I don’t really see the point of using it to generate pictures or text, particularly on a phone. So far, to me, the best use of generative AI is in natural language processing so that I can verbally control computers without having to use specific syntax or commands. I also see how it could be beneficial in assisting in programming, basically with “how do I do X” scenarios.
What scares me most about a possible second presidential term for Donald Trump is not Trump himself but rather the fact that for his supporters there is no line that Trump cannot cross at which point he will lose their support. We appear to be split 50/50 in the United States which means that the only way Trump can be held accountable is if members of his own party do so, and that’s not just people in Congress but also actual citizens. So, you say you support Trump and you will vote for in November, fine, that is your right, but does that mean you give him a blank check? What can he not do?
Year in books for 2023
I doubled the number of books that I read in 2022. Here are the books I finished reading in 2023.
Enjoying a day in Grand Rapids before hockey tonight.
Today I reached a milestone of sorts, our car crossed the 100, 000 mile mark. It’s the first time I’ve owned a car that I’ve put that many miles on. When I was younger I leased cars so never put this many miles on, but I’ve grown to appreciate not having a car payment and that along with a big decrease in how much we drive has us holding on to our cars longer.
We got a green Christmas, but there is a strange glowy thing in the sky.
“When we say “Come, Lord Jesus” on this Christmas Day, we are preferring his Lordship to any other loyalty system or any other final frame of reference. If Jesus is Lord, than Caesar is not! If Jesus is Lord, then the economy and stock market are not! If Jesus is Lord, then my house and possessions, family and job are not! If Jesus is Lord, than I am not! That multileveled implication was obvious to first-century members of the Roman Empire because the phrase “Caesar is Lord” was the empire’s loyalty test and political bumper sticker.”
— Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent by Richard Rohr a.co/6HYJqgR
“We do not think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”
— Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent by Richard Rohr a.co/czanKJf
Weird weather on Christmas Eve. The birds seem happy, they are very vocal.
Finished reading: This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley 📚
“A life that is holy is a life that allows for all of your uncertainties, your curiosities and unbelief. That doesn’t just allow for them but holds them as sacred. Spirituality that is not permitted these liberties is merely subjugation. It is not in protection of the divine; it is in protection of fragile people who are unable to allow spiritual freedoms without their own spirituality feeling threatened. It’s a spirituality that is terrified of meditation for fear of resembling another faith tradition. It’s a spirituality that spends more time on apologetics than conversation and telling stories.”
— This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley a.co/7ANtBzb