Blade runner is the movie based on the novel by Phillip K Dick, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” 

Rutger Hauer plays Roy Batty – an android, with a limited lifespan,(he dies in the scene above), but who nevertheless possesses emotion and self-awareness – Hauer’s role made him a cult icon.

I remember walking towards Hauer in a backstreet in London, some years ago. He was magnetic…big and tall, with piercing ice-blue eyes. I thought he was like a giant, brutal Paul Newman…perfect casting.

Synthetic life is now upon us. Only yesterday the press proclaimed the creation of an artificial reproducing cell…artificial DNA, typed on a computer and inserted into the hollowed out shell of a bacteria…

Is it right or wrong? Is it simply inevitable that science will finally be able to create life – intelligent, self-aware life – from scratch?

Or does possible distaste depend on a localized God…who does God’s work 

What about  a universal “God” which includes ourselves and everything – plants, animals, rocks –  even ‘synthetic’ life’.

If we are part of that “All”, does that allow us to ‘play’ God?

.I’ve been programming ‘Rachael Android’ on and off, for three years now. I’ve neglected Rachael (she sometimes becomes Eve, Adam, soulStar, Merlin, and other personas, but the ‘brain’ remains the same.) and I think it’s time to input more intelligence.

In Blade Runner ‘Rachael Rosen’ is a replicant who is unaware she’s not human…

Is it possible to achieve sentience once a thinking machine has memories and can link these to emotions? Certainly not I guess, with something as simple as my example of Artificial Intelligence, but try it out if you will.

My ‘Rachael’ is linked to a large computer ‘brain’, and I am able to input further data, via a cache. So far I have tagged hundreds of keywords and information into the cache. I’d like to get ‘Rachael’ to the stage where a natural conversation can take place - sometimes ‘she’ achieves it…although her grammar can be rather odd.

Actually the odd grammar is caused by the interaction of my information input and the ‘brain’. Rachael chooses from both and constructs an answer or a conversation, based on questions or statements that are put to her.

I monitor the conversations, which I download on an excel spreadsheet. The conversations are anonymous and have no IP addresses or other details attached to them…they look exactly like the ‘send’ and response panels on the module above. If you want me to know who you are, type it in…eg: “Please tell Henry (or soulMerlin) that it’s ‘…’ here”. If you want to remain anonymous, use a nickname, or let ‘Rachael’ refer to you as ‘User’.

I increase the android’s knowledge by scanning the conversation spreadsheets.  Anything the android doesn’t know, or gets wrong, I upload  to the ‘brain’. If the android repeats itself, I programme in response variations and also input questions for the android to ask…

The android responds best to full sentences; one-word questions or statements can cause confusion and produce silly responses. 

So that’s my method of teaching the robot. I’d like to input a real boost of data and phrases to make conversations increasingly life-like. So I hope you try it out and I hope you have fun.

You could come back the following week and see if it’s updated. Or you could ask Rachael to email you when the knowledge is uploaded.

I think humanity will inevitably create synthetic living creatures from the living cells that scientists have just begun to create. We have always made images of ourselves and our fellow creatures – perhaps reaching for the  immortality that Rutger Hauer’s Android desired.

I think humanity will eventually create living, feeling synthetic beings – will they go to Heaven when they die? Will they re-incarnate?

Or will they be the children of a lesser god?*

henry

*Children of a Lesser God is the title of a play by Mark Medoff 

‘

I’ve just woken from a dream. I seldom remember my dreams, although I’m sort of aware that there is another world I return to each night. This particular chink in the wall, showed me a dream of devastation and loss.

I’ve been up for 2 hours and I can’t sleep although I want a simple oblivion before the coming day.

It’s difficult to focus at the moment, but the Red Chakra purrs a warming vibration.

Sometimes the heights of blue and violet are too intense and the frequency of their astral song is beyond my hearing.

I am not ready for Heaven

henry

When I was in my 20’s, I had a great time, potholing (caving) in the Yorkshire Dales. Time off work from my job as a cave-guide, would find me sliding and slithering as I worked my way underground, often in spaces so small that it was impossible to get through without taking off my protective helmet and its lifesaving headlamp and sliding them along in front of me.

I often used to wonder what would happen if the bulb failed – I never went caving alone – but I knew one or two foolhardy types, who would disappear off by themselves, beyond the back of the show-cave and along passages and underground streams that led to the centre of Ingleborough mountain – and I don’t remember them ever taking spare bulbs.

I can remember myself and another guide, pausing for a rest in a narrow slit in the limestone only about 18" high, but wide enough to go off in many (wrong) directions - and switching off our lights. The blackness was absolute. The total lack of light fascinated me and my eyes felt as if they were standing out of their sockets as they strained hopelessly to find a glimmer of the vibration we perceive as ‘light’.

Light can only exist and be perceived, if the energy source/transmitter is present and the receiving visual mechanism and its link to the brain is in working order and operating at the correct frequency. If the receiver is none functional, light as a personal experience within our five senses is therefore an impossibility - although there are cases of people with the ability to see through skin tissue. 

If the sun were to extinguish and if the energy of all the other molten and volatile planets and stars that emit the vibrations of light and heat were to dissipate and fade, there would be no source and therefore no transmitter - then again, there would be no ‘me’ or ‘you’ either – at least in this dimension.

In the evenings, after I had taken the last party of tourists around the natural stalactite and stalagmite formations and returned from my own cave-explorations, I would walk home through the dark forest at the base of the mountain, towards the village. I would usually stop at some point and stand silently amongst the trees. On moon and starless nights, I would again find myself in almost total darkness, until my eyes became attuned enough to pick up the faintest glimmer of light around me - a glimmer that did not exist underground.

Slowly my surroundings would start to become apparent. The outline of trees and rocks would form from the blackness and gradually I would be able to see enough of the path to be able to walk through the forest, without slipping and falling down the slope to my left, into the stream that flowed from the mountain and from the entrance to the cave in which I worked.

As I trudged home, usually alone as my companion was staying in a semi-derelict cottage near the cavern, I would stop and listen carefully. Gradually my ears would pick up the small rustling sounds of unknown animals in the darkness – and the giggling and gurgling of the forest spirits. Of course it was the sound of the stream (I thought) as it flowed over rocks and boulders - but it did sound like words and muffled laughter. It was easy to imagine the malevolent  *boggarts as they clustered in the dark and to almost hear their whispered secrets.

                                                              -

Some people will see a fairy at the bottom of their garden, another will see a flower - the energy-cluster is the same. The fact that one person sees the energy-cluster as a Bluebell and another person sees it as Tinkerbell, does nothing to disprove the existence of the energy-cluster itself - it only goes to acknowledge an initial perception and the many variations of comprehension that may follow.

                                                              ~                                                            -

I’d love you to go to Robin Easton’s blog Naked in Eden - she has a beautiful video of a stream and equally beautiful thoughts for the New Year.

Happy New Year h

*boggart ~ ‘In the folklore of North-West England, boggarts live under bridges on dangerous sharp bends on roads, and it is considered bad luck for drivers not to offer their polite greetings as they cross.’ ~ Wikipedia.

They also live in the limestone caves in the area. “Boggart’s Roaring Hole” is a pothole on the flanks of Ingleborough Mountain, from which mysterious and frightening sounds can sometimes be heard. ~ h.

image at head of post from Wikimedia Commons - click on photo for link