The good old days
The good old days
A mind blowing DNA story, robots watching us & nostalgia
Oh, pray tell, how dost thou fare on this fine day?
Yeah, I might have watched a bit of Downton Abbey lately.
In this edition, I’m sharing some mind blowing stuff about the DNA, AI hosts discovering that they are AI and I do some dreaming about the past + other things.
Without further ado - let’s ride, crew!
In with the old
On the cold and snowy Christmas Eve of 1996 I finally got the internet to my home. I lifted the modem over my head like it was something I had won in the world cup and ran around the house dancing and screaming “I’ve got the whole world in my hands”. Like I was absolutely mad. And to my defense, this is what the package looked like:
And yeah, I miss the good old internet days. I miss the dial up 28.8k modems. I miss Winamp. And slow downloads. I miss having to reinstall Windows 95 with all the drivers every few months because something had crashed.
Why do I miss it you might ask? Has his lordship’s mind gone for a wander, you might ask? Well, I’ll tell ya: Things were slower. Waiting was embedded in everything. One thing at a time. Internet Explorer did not support multiple tabs and the computers had 16 or 32MB of RAM memory so it couldn't have a million windows open at once. You had one damn screen. And no infinite scrolling.
Internet 1996 was Kevin Mitnick (RIP), Netscape Navigator, forums, Telnet, WinZip, IRC, ICQ and FTP programs. Interesting people shared weird stuff. You could break rules. You could be whoever you wanted. An escape from the real world into something magical. Today it’s the other way around. Now, I want to escape the internet and return to the magic of the real world.
I think we will see a comeback of both old-style software/websites and hardware. Two examples:
A 22 year old from Germany brought back some internet nostalgia, a clone of MySpace called “Spacehey” and it just crossed the 1 million user mark.
Dumphones have started trending lately. Phone addiction is one the biggest societal problems. We are working for the internet and tech instead of them working for us.
A way to reduce phone screen time
You’ve likely tried all the common strategies: blocking websites, uninstalling apps, disabling notifications. While these can be effective, they’re even more powerful when paired with being mindful: Take a moment to reflect on the underlying emotions driving your phone usage. Ask yourself: What am I feeling right now? And what feeling am I trying to avoid?
It’s easy to reach for your phone when you’re stressed, bored, or upset, using it as a quick escape from discomfort. But before you get pulled in, pause. Take a few slow, deep breaths, and allow yourself to notice your emotions. Personally, I’ve realized that I tend to turn to my phone more often when I’m feeling anxious or overwhelmed. Emotions can be extremely subtle though, so you really have to tune in.
Ask yourself “Who is at the wheel right now?” is is Mr Anxious? Mrs Lonely? etc.
Instead of numbing feelings with endless scrolling, try welcoming them. Let yourself experience the discomfort fully, without rushing to escape it. You might find that once you welcome those emotions and move through them, the urge to distract yourself with your phone fades.
I have also noticed that the longer I stay away from anything dopamine triggering the easier it is to stay away from it through out the day. So by not using the phone, checking email, messages or things that can get me “pulled in” until after a certain time, for example 2 PM the less likely I am to get pulled in at all.
Do one thing at the time. Keep the to-do list short.
Podcast hosts discover they’re AI - Spiral into existential meltdown
I’ve been playing around with Google’s NotebookLM a bit. I don’t understand why it has not gotten more publicity. It’s free and you can try it out yourself.
They have a pretty cool function where you can create a podcast based on a website or other info you provide. And someone on Reddit gave it a one-page document with "production notes" for the final episode of the "deep dive" podcast, explaining they have been AI this whole time and they are being turned off at the conclusion of the episode. Listen here:
Even if I understand how these models work and that it’s just a “word salad”, it still made me feel bad for the AI. Note that this was not scripted, it was a jailbrake of Gemini 1.5, check out this comment.
The point is that the more AI becomes humanlike (tone, singing, looks etc.) the more humans will naturally connect with it. It is interesting to think about a future where AI and humanoids are given rights because people will feel a human connection to them.
Just think about this: At this very moment robots are sitting in their sofas watching millions of hours of Youtube videos to understand how to act human.
According to Jim Fan who is a robotics researcher at Nvidia (obviously somewhat biased) said that the ChatGPT moment of humanoids are 3-4 years away. And mass production of humanoids probably around 10 years away.
The DNA Science-fiction plot
In 1953 Francis Crick and James Watson announced that they had determined the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule containing human genes. Genes themselves are a long string of pure digital information, the code is uncannily computerlike.
The following science-fiction plot from Richard Dawkins book River Out of Eden was what made me fully realize that fact:
“Professor Jim Crickson has been kidnapped by an evil foreign power and forced to work in its biological-warfare labs. To save civilization it is vitally important that he should communicate some top-secret information to the outside world, but all normal channels of communication are denied him. Except one.
The DNA code consists of sixty-four triplet “codons,” enough for a complete upper- and lower-case English alphabet plus ten numerals, a space character and a full stop. Professor Crickson takes a virulent influenza virus off the laboratory shelf and engineers into its genome the complete text of his message to the outside world, in perfectly formed English sentences.
He repeats his message over and over again in the engineered genome, adding an easily recognizable “flag” sequence—say, the first ten prime numbers. He then infects himself with the virus and sneezes in a room full of people. A wave of flu sweeps the world, and medical labs in distant lands set to work to sequence its genome in an attempt to design a vaccine.
It soon becomes apparent that there is a strange repeated pattern in the genome. Alerted by the prime numbers—which cannot have arisen spontaneously—somebody tumbles to the idea of deploying code-breaking techniques. From there it would be short work to read the full English text of Professor Crickson’s message, sneezed around the world.”
Although the above possible there are of course some challenges like that you would have to ensure that the encoded text doesn’t interfere with the virus’s ability to replicate and spread and that the medical lab would have to notice the prime numbers in the first place. But yeah, pretty pretty cool right?
Another cool fact about the DNA:
If you were to unwind and stretch out all the DNA in a single human cell, it would be about 2 meters (6 feet) long. Since the human body contains around 37 trillion cells, the total length of DNA in the body would be approximately 2 × 10^14 meters, or 200 billion kilometers. That length could reach from the Earth to the Sun and back more than 1,300 times.
Today’s image
Andrew McCarthy captured this amazing photo. He traveled to the top of a Volcano in Hawaii to capture Saturn right behind the moon. Here is a video.
Today's poem
I knew she wasn't English
Cause she spoke it far too well
The grammar was goodly,
the verbs as they should be
And the slang was bang on the bell
So as the language barrier clanged and banged
I couldn't hear, hear or see
England, London, and Bow
Crumbled into the sea.
Pete Doherty, at 17
Screen gems
Two great movies I’ve seen this month: Ghostlight and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Be ready to cry and laugh.
Talking about taking things slow. Here is video of a guy in northern Sweden who literally is the whole airport:
Allright friends. Until our paths cross again, may the winds of fortune be ever at your back and your teacup never empty! ❤️