Art

  • A Look Back at “The Crazy Ones”

    I remember being mesmerized the first time I saw Apple Computers iconic "Crazy Ones" video as part of their Think Different campaign.

    Steve Jobs originally recorded a version of "The Crazy Ones" himself, but chose to release the Richard Dreyfuss narrated version. 

     

    via YouTube

    Here is the text version of the script.

     

    Here's to the crazy ones.
    The misfits.
    The rebels.
    The troublemakers.
    The round pegs in the square holes.

    The ones who see things differently.

    They're not fond of rules.
    And they have no respect for the status quo.

    You can quote them, disagree with them,
    glorify or vilify them.
    About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.

    Because they change things.

    They push the human race forward.

    While some may see them as the crazy ones,
    we see genius.

    Because the people who are crazy enough to think
    they can change the world, are the ones who do.

        –     © 1997 Apple Computer, Inc.

    Click here for extra material about the video and campaign. 

    I think it has held up pretty well, and I had this piece of art commissioned for my office. 

    Crazy Genius_GapingVoid

    There's a lot to be said for carving your own path, for pushing past perceived limits and accomplishing something hard to ignore.  

     

  • A Quick Visit to Cuba

    I went to Havana with a diverse group of business people, financial professionals and representatives from the US Fed. 

    Here is a photo taken with some of the classic cars that proudly dominate the roads despite cheaper Russian and  Chinese alternatives.

     

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    The city was beautiful … dirty and broken, for sure … but still beautiful.  Here is a view from my hotel room.

      

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    I commented that it was almost like seeing a severely wounded elephant. You can tell that it's hurt (and barely a shadow of its old self). Nevertheless, you can see the amazing bone structure. It is easy to imagine what it once was.

    In Cuba, the geography and the architecture are amazing. However, money hasn't been spent on the upkeep. Even though people live there, it seems surreal (almost like a post-apocalyptic wasteland).

     

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    In the story of Exodus, the Jews spent 40 years wandering the desert after escaping from Egypt. That means two generations of people, who didn't remember life as slaves, were ultimately the ones who entered the “Promised Land”.

    On some level, that's how Cuba is now. Most inhabitants weren’t born (or can’t remember) the 1960s. They have known nothing but this.

    Cuba is an interesting place … and I’d bet that it has an interesting future.

    The “lack” had a side effect. It produced a mutation. A portion of society grew more resourceful and resilient.

     

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    Like natural selection … nature finds a way.

    The rules change, the players change, even the game itself changes … That is how new ideas and new leaders emerge.

    Sometimes, almost no one notices. Sometimes they do. 

    Ultimately, change remains the only constant.

    Onwards!

  • How Long Does It Take To Get 50 Million Users?

    Cool tech often gets adopted by porn and gambling before more mainstream uses.

    Porn was the launchpad for video streaming, mobile-enabled sites, VR, and (unfortunately) pop-up ad technologies. 

    With that said, the next chart surprised me.  It shows the number of years it took for various products to gain 50 million users.

     

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    Pornhub tracks data like its business depends on it.  Well, it is the number one site for pornography.  What does that mean? In 2018, over 5,517,700,000 hours of porn was watched on their site. That’s approximately 6,298 centuries of video.

    Moreover, last year, it got  33.5 BILLION visits. That’s 1,064 people a second, or 92 million a day.  To put that in perspective, that's more people than live in the entire country of Germany.

    Here are some additional factoids about its use.

    • 4403 Petabytes of data transferred (574 MB of data for every person on earth)
    • Consumed more bandwidth than the entire internet in 2002
    • Stormy Daniels was the number 1 "trend" search in 2018  (followed by Fortnite …)
    • 4k ultra-hd overtook 1080p in search trends

     

    via Pornhub

    For the full list of stats click here. 

    They are so popular, it is almost obscene.

  • A.I. in Film: A Retrospective

    AI has been around in science fiction for over 1oo years. As it becomes reality, it's amusing to look at different depictions and attempt to connect the dots. 

    AI first broke onto the film scene with Metropolis in 1927. "Maria" the evil robot disguising herself as a human played on many human fears; deception, lack of control, and perhaps most importantly being replaced.

    Maria represented a future that was bleak and set the foundation for AI in cinema. Since then, there have been approximately 100 movies starring AI.

    According to Enlighten Digital,  52% of movies portray AI positively, which means it's about 50/50, and there has been a 144% increase in AI movies since 2010 – so we're becoming more saturated with AI.

    According to a study by Cambridge, seeing more films portraying robots (whether positive or negative) is associated with more positive attitudes toward robots. This is in line with the theory that the more exposure one has with "out-group" members (i.e. robots, or people of other races) the more positive one's attitude toward them. 

     

    Robots-Agglomeration-Infographic_Edit(Click to view Full Size) via NovaStor 

    The depiction of AI has always been a reflection of its time … as our values, ambitions, and technology has changed, so has on-screen AI. 

    So what does today's AI look like?

    On HBO, we have Westworld. In movies, iRobot, Chappie, and Blade Runner 2049 … it's clear the promise and the peril of AI has continued to evolve.

    These movies all have different tones but there's a trope that remains common from that initial film in 1927 to films in 2018. 

    We're always imagining that next step. What's going to happen as AI becomes (in some ways) smarter than us? What's going to happen when our creations surpass our control? What's going to happen if the line between human and robot blurs?

    There are a lot of advancements in real-life, in respect to AI. As such, there is a lot of movement on AI ethics, and how to best limit or best enable AI. 

    In film, we gravitate toward two extremes – utopias and dystopias. In real life, we can recognize those extremes are unlikely … but the effect of AI is still profound. 

    We're expanding a technology with the ability to radically change our world – for better or worse – so it's important to keep a purpose-driven approach. We can't lose track of humanity in the pursuit of AI. 

    Metropolis's final title card (that first AI movie from 1927)  still rings true … "The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart"

     

    The Heartbeat of AI is Still Human_GapingVoid

    Onwards!

  • The Sound of Silence [The Disturbed Music Video Version]

    I spent last week with almost no Internet or cell service.  On one hand, I suffered some withdrawal symptoms.  On the other hand, it was nice to hear the sound of silence.

    50 years ago, Simon & Garfunkel become folk-rock stars with their song, ‘Sound of Silence’.  I don't think that's what they meant.

    Recently, someone else made it a hit … a heavy metal rock band, Disturbed.

    Here is the video.  Believe it or not, totally worth watching.

     
     
     
     
    Surprisingly good.

  • If Algorithms Came with IKEA Instructions …

    Some Professors put together IKEA inspired instructional booklets for their algorithms and data-structures lecture. 

    So far they've created assembly instructions for Quick Sort, BOGO Sort, Public Key Crypto, Binary Search, Merge Sort, Balance Tree, Graph Scan, and One Stroke Draw algorithms. 

    3202018 bogo-sortvia ideainstruction

    This is a pretty cool idea, or at least I thought so. My youngest son said "I don't particularly understand IKEA directions or algorithms so this is basically the worst of both worlds for me."  Finally, we agree about something.

    Hopefully, you find it helpful. If not, there's always Wikipedia. 

  • What’s Next … Robot Rockstars?

    Artificial Intelligence has already been used to compose various pieces of music, but they're not replacing real "stars" anytime soon. 

    A New Zealand musician, Nigel Stanford, released a video with an imagined collaboration between himself and a team of crane-armed robots.

    He spent about a month programming the robots. 

    Check it out.

     

    DailyDot via Youtube

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – July 16th, 2017

    Science, Art, or "PooPoo De Toro"…

      

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    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

    Lighter Links:

    Trading Links:

  • Postmodern Jukebox’s Cool Cover of “Creep” [Music Video]

    Creativity isn't limited to creation.  

    Sometimes how you approach something changes it. 

    For example, in music, there are some pretty famous covers that "beat" (or revitalize) the original. 

    • Aretha Franklin's Respect (An Otis Redding song) is so familiar that it seems like it's the original.
    • Disturbed's The Sound of Silence (A Simon&Garfunkel song) has a whopping 236 million views on YouTube.
    • Johnny Cash's version of Hurt (A Nine Inch Nails song) has over 50 million views on YouTube.

    If you want to stretch it … how about a death metal version of Mary Poppins?

    Some bands exist primarily to do covers.  Few do it like Postmodern Jukebox, which an avid following – and an abundance of talent.    

    Here is one of their hits, a torch song inspired version of "Creep" by Radiohead.  Worth a listen.

     

    As I was putting this together, I came across a different version of Creep played on a Gayageum (a traditional Korean instrument).  

    Different … but interesting.

    There are many ways to approach almost everything.

     

  • I Don’t Fear Artificial Intelligence – I Do Fear Artificial Stupidity

    I don't know if you've ever tried to paint a room – but if you have, I'm sure you've come across some bizarre paint names. 

    How does that relate to AI?

    Well, Janelle Shane is a research scientist, and neural network aficionado – as any good data scientist should, she spends a lot of her free time playing with neural networks (… to varying results). 

    Recently, she attempted to train an algorithm (specifically char-rnn, a neural network that attempts to anticipate the next character in a sequence) to create new paint colors and accompanying names. 

    After it was fully trained, here are the results: 

     

    5212017 Paint1 5212017 paint2

    via LewisandQuark

    As you can see, it knows there are colors, but it struggles to keep the names associated with the appropriate color. 

    "Turdly" seems pretty close though … but I always wanted to paint my room "Stanky Bean."

    As you might know, that was not the first time artificial intelligence has created something artificially stupid. 

    For example, how about when Microsoft attempted to create an AI chatbot named "Tay" by analyzing tweets?

    Tay quickly became very …. very racist. 

    5212017 Twitter

    via TheVerge

    Clearly, mistakes were made (and Tay isn't as dangerous as a human racist) – but, it does raise questions.

    AI is cool … But, artificial stupidity is still scary.

    For now, that is the way it is. 

    As we explore new avenues and smarter algorithms for AI to be trained with, it will be interesting to see what Frankenstein's monsters we create.