Signals

You probably have at least a passing awareness of James May. He was one of the trio who hosted Top Gear (recently reincarnated as The Grand Tour) and is a bona fide cool car guy. But he has also hosted a variety of interesting, verging on odd, television shows. Perhaps the oddest show, and my favorite, is The Reassembler in which Mr. May, well, reassembles things.

You can tell the age of a tree by counting its rings. You can tell the age of a person by counting the number of times they say something anachronistic. For example, if I start talking about Compact Discs, kids will instantly identify me as being, uh, mature. They will make snide remarks about the La Brea Tar Pits and mastodons. Kids can be cruel. Ask me how I know.

I have great news for you! All that gear in your home theater will soon be junk. Or, more specifically, obsolete junk. You see, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will soon revolutionize everything, including audio/video. Instead of wasting precious time twiddling knobs, you will simply have a pleasant conversation with an AI that, I am told, is far more intelligent than any of us.

Many years ago, I would ride my bicycle to the neighborhood record store, lean it against the window (no need to padlock), spend an enjoyable hour lipping through LPs, pick one out, and buy it (cash, of course). I would then slip it into my backpack and ride home, put the needle in the groove, and enjoy the sound of my purchase. Oh, how times have changed. In particular, the cool kids are now buying music as non-fungible tokens (NFT).

Experts now agree that within five years everything on planet earth will be controlled by robots. As they cruise far above us in their giant balloons, the robots will look down and decide that we look like ants, and treat us as such. That's not great, but at least we're not actual ants, who will be totally screwed.

In a previous blog, in an attempt to create images of music, we discussed Supreme Court decisions, oscilloscopes, and Jerobeam Fenderson. The images were certainly entertaining, but our depiction was confined to oscilloscope green screens and the “music” creating the pictures was not always exactly musical. This time, let's try a different approach.

Clearly, things that are apparent to our senses are real. For example, if I see or hear something, it’s real. But I see and hear things in my dreams, and they certainly are not real. What if the things in my waking life are just as illusionary? Hmm, perhaps we can only say that reality is what we believe it to be.