What is Consciousness?
As an undergrad I once asked my Professor, the famous neurobiologist, John Allman, "So, what is consciousness, anyway?" Imagine my pride and delight when in a conference keynote lecture many years later Professor Allman remarked (roughly) "There's a huge problem in our field. We still aren't close to answering the really interesting questions like, What is consciousness?. It's embarassing, really. Undergrads ask you this question and we just don't have anything to say to them."
There's now a conference on this topic.
I don't have the time or energy to follow what all the philosophers are saying about this. But, I have a semi-serious after-dinner talk on what it will take to answer the "Hard" problem of What is Consciousness. I think we need to build a Consciousness Machine. The last slide is a map which puts this endeavor in a larger context.
Electronic Sculpture
Learning about Markov Models in grad school, and being a visual kind of guy, I wanted to see what one looked like. So I built one. The result was a step into electronic sculpture.
My first piece, "Stochastic Cube," was a 1' x 1' x 1' cube. Lights at each corner were controlled by a microprocessor, generating cool and amazing patterns semi-randomly. This sculpture was stolen from the room outside my office in building E10 at MIT over the Christmas break, 1987, breaking my heart and causing me much grief. If you ever see it, please let me know, as I would very much like to recover it.
Architecture and Construction
I spend most weekends working on my house. I talk kitchen design, backyard streams, exposed aggregate, plumbing, ceramic tile, wood floors, french doors, home lighting controls, weeds, corian, compost piles, stuff like that.
Interesting Places