Saturday 11 July 2015

From Pluto with Love

I wonder if there's someone on Pluto wondering this
Whether mass extinction or a pandemic could result from an asteroid
colliding with their world...
...and whether early warning systems exist to prevent such a thing.
They probably have an early warning system.
With many heroic types ready to scramble at a moments notice.
In defence of the realm.

Would they have realms on Pluto ?





After all, Pluto is so small it was declassified for a while.
But who's to say it's not inhabited by Lilliputian people ?
To them it could be infinitely large.

Tardigrades could be their biggest threats.

They survive in space...


The reason for this ramble is the imminent flypast -
New Horizons, after an epic journey of nine years
will hurtle past Pluto, taking snapshots as it goes
at approximately 32000 miles an hour.

Not even slowing down for a pit-stop.

Drive-by mapping.* ( now is a livelink to New Horizons app )


But I digress, I was discussing the possibility of someone on Pluto watching a shooting star cross the heavens.
Would they make a wish for luck ?
What would they think if they knew it was us ?
It makes me aware that we are the aliens...

New Horizons, the Google street - mapping car of the heavens?

Not quite, but you get the idea.
It's one thing that Google are not involved with.
Speaking of which,
the latest tinkering Google-wise seems to stem from software known as Deep Dreams*
essentially virtual neural networking which can produce dream - like images.
 Do computers dream of electric sheep, and all that.
They've even made it open source , so everyone can get strange...

I tend to be wary of this sort of thing as it makes me question - why are they so intent on showing us their new toy ?
Do they really want people feeding endless images into it ?

Monkeys, dogs and insects are common Deep Dream warps...


Personally, I think the end results are interesting / nightmarish, but ultimately, rather dull.
Exactly what you'd expect from a virtual attempt at dream simulation;
Beyond the initial 'oh that looks trippy like 'shrooms or acid',
Images that look ' a bit weird ' but are ultimately repetitive in content.
Morphing and convoluting into endless permutations of increasingly outlandish oddities.
So, yes, it's a bit trippy -  if every trip was a bad one.
It's as though the machinery freaked out and went into meltdown, obsessing one element of the 'trip'.

The images are only really interesting when you realise they have been made by a device with no cognitive awareness.
The ongoing attempt to emulate humanity by machine is absorbing huge amounts of money and producing - not much.

Give it up, I say.
Or show us ground-breaking advances in medical technology.
Just stop tinkering with this sub - Terminator world of Skynet that doesn't exist.
Although recent news involving a death at a German car factory indicates otherwise.

Perhaps we could combine the two -

Let's make Pluto a Penal colony for murderous robots !

I'm sure there's a film there

If so , please remember where you read it first - intellectual property and all that.

I want a percentage on the merchandise.

Thank you!


This post contains a link to a sequence created  by Johan Nordberg , using Deep Dream .
Please exercise caution if viewing under the influence of psychedelics.
Actually, you won't need any...
I accept no responsibility for disturbance / flashbacks induced...