kaolinfire

LOL...a brain walking around on skeleton legs. Yikes! It's been done in Sci Fi/Horror. Don't want it around in real life.

I was thinking more TMNT Krang-style. Only, you know, robot-brain. Then you'd have your choice of a brain that could plug into an android, which could drive a "human"-style car; or plug into a car to drive a car without human controls. Or operate optimized search/rescue vehicles... (or, I suppose, be the brain in an electric sheep).

Hmm. Almost picturing, now, a little pda that you can carry around and plug into "any" device to imbue it with "sentience". The devices having more memory, power, etc. Can just see the screen: "Merging memories". Can you imagine that from the AI's view?

Actually read a novel that that's starting to remind me of, some--ME (my god that's a hard book to track down to share... can't really find any information on it, though I did find the longer title, and I remember the author (and I do have it on my shelf) ~ ME: A Novel of Self-Discovery by Thomas T. Thomas). Not a great novel, but fun, and some good stuff in it. Kind of classic sci-fi AI in the "consciousness as goldfish paradigm" (will grow to fit any container). (reminded of Lawnmower Man, now, too).

Oh my...it's been done. I was going to suggest you write a short story about one.

By the way, Ken is at Clarion writers workshop. Did you ever think of attending something like that?

Well, most things have been done. But that doesn't mean they can't be done again, differently. It's reminding me I've got a "the final era of man" sort of piece I need to explore more (when we're all energy and the only thing to do is eke out the last energy we can from the universe before heat death... and live lives to the fullest until then).

Clarion--I think it would be a good thing for me, but I can't really imagine taking the time off for it.

This way lies. . . The Transformers! (drum roll, please). Machine intelligence that can take any form. Yes, this is a free plug to go read my LJ review. :)

Just so long as we don't end up looking like Daleks :)

:heh: I think most humans are wedded to our form--and those that aren't are more interested in aesthetic than function.

Still, I bet those sink plungers will still come in handy a few hundred years from now :)

Sinks? Won't we all have little Mr. Fusions by then? *pout*

Quimby's Usuform Robots, Boucher -- the humanoid robots designed for human interface usage go mad because they can't perform their jobs properly. Douglas Quimby begins healing the epidemic by redesigning household robots, is fired, and a startup business that results to create "Usuform" robots is quickly squelched by the hierarchy.

Deeply awesome, and worth noodling with that particular future, or some variety of it - I've never seen anything quite like it, although I admittedly haven't read everything, or anywhere near it.

I'll have to see if I can find a copy of QUR floating around; a mention of it pops up in "The Greenwood encyclopedia of science fiction and fantasy By Gary Westfahl", and I'm thinking that would be a good thing to absorb at some point as well to fill any gaps in my education ;)

Thank you, masked commenter =) [er, @littlefluffycat]

These robots are going to have trouble with the ubiquitous body image metaphors in human language.