Travels With David, pt. VI

June 19, 2001: Portland, OR - Fortuna, CA

Thomas Kuhn and Ray Kurzweil were on my mind as I came down to the front desk to check out of our Portland hotel this morning, and then headed to the valet parking attendant to retrieve our car. I was thinking hard, concentrating so deeply that my mouth moved in silent conversation; but my thoughts were distracted when the valet reappeared, for it became evident that music had reappeared in the car, after two days of silence. The valet must have turned on the CD player, and the Beatles Rubber Soul album was blaring away from the speakers when the valet handed me the key with a flourish. David appeared a moment later, fiddled around with the CD player, inserted a couple new discs, threw his suitcase into the trunk, and hopped in the car. He then extracted a CD from his backpack and began reading the liner notes; it turned out to be the latest offering from the Ladybug Transistor, Argyle Heir, which he had purchased while exploring music stores in Portland yesterday.

"Why no music yesterday or the day before?" I asked him, as we circled around the block, headed east on Salmon, then south on Front Street, and picked up Interstate 5 toward Eugene and Grant's Pass.

"Short days," he replied, concentrating on reading the lyrics printed in the album liner notes. "Not much driving."

Well, perhaps he was right: we didn't need any music to keep us occupied during our short days of driving from Vancouver to Olympia, and from Olympia to Portland. But the first part of today's drive was deadly boring, and it was nice to have some music to pass the time. It was our own fault, I suppose, since the Interstate highways tend to eliminate any personality, features, or character from the local area: we might as well have been driving through the middle of New Jersey or Ohio as central Oregon. The traffic was heavy, but it flowed along at 70 mph; and the view on both sides was mostly farmland and gentle rolling hills, with occasional clusters of office buildings or auto dealers. But aside from that, I couldn't think of any way to describe the scenery; David agreed that even Proust would be hard-pressed to find anything interesting to say.

We passed through Salem, Albany, and a few other towns along the Interstate; meanwhile, David switched the music to a Nick Drake album, the third one of the group that he brought along for me to hear: Pink Moon is its name, and the title song turns out to be another one that has achieved recent popularity by virtue of being played as background music for a television car commercial. Alas, poor Mr. Drake turns out to have died some 25 years ago; I have no idea whether he achieved much popularity back then (I was much more aware of popular music at that point, and I don't recall hearing his name), but it's ironic that he should be appealing to a whole new generation a quarter-century after departing this vale of tears.

Meanwhile, I was still mulling over the conversation that David and I had had at dinner the night before, about the prospects of computers eventually surpassing human intelligence. The conversation had started when we were chatting about the remarkable improvements in music players and cell phones and other such gadgets; David wondered aloud what kind of technology we might expect to see 500 years from now.

"Isn't that the sort of stuff you learned about in your 'History of Science' course at the University of Chicago this spring?" I asked.

"Well, no, it was mostly about philosophical stuff, and cultural stuff," he responded. "Actually, the title of the course was 'Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization.'"

"Well, surely you read Kuhn in that course, didn't you?"

"Who?" he asked.

"Kuhn. Thomas Kuhn. You know, the 'paradigm shift' guy. His book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was published by The University of Chicago Press, and I'm pretty sure he taught there. It's a classic, it's the classic on the subject of how science changes its view of the way things work. If you're interested in how technology is going evolve over the next 500 years, you're got to read that book."

Well, no, it turned out that David had never heard of Kuhn, or the book, or the "paradigm shift" buzz-word (but he would have been pleased to learn that there is an even a band named "Paradigm Shift"). So he had to endure 15 minutes of babbling from me on the subject -- as well as a harangue on why his university course should also have included George Basalla's excellent book, The Evolution of Technology. But I managed to get back to his original question before he completely lost interest in the conversation and offered the following prediction: "Whatever else happens in the next 500 years, there's a pretty good chance that computer technology will have evolved to the point where computers are more intelligent than people."

David raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Really?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said confidently. After all, why not be confident? Neither of us are going to be around 500 years from now to see if I was right or wrong, and it doesn't really matter if a prediction like this is off by 10 years, or even 100 years.

"Here's another book you should read," I continued, as our dinner meal was served by a glassy-eyed waiter. "It's The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, by Ray Kurzweil. (David had never heard of Kurzweil either, which is more understandable than not having heard of Kuhn; if Kurzweil's name is unfamiliar to you, then you might want to take a look at his biography.) "The amazing thing," I said to David, "is that Kurzweil predicts that this will probably happen not just in 500 years, but probably within the next 20 to 30 years -- definitely within your lifetime, and mine too."

That launched a vigorous debate about the meaning of computer intelligence, which requires revisiting the so-called "Turing Test" and many of the basic axioms and philosophies from the computer field of artificial intelligence -- not to mention a few irrelevant stories from me about the agony of sitting through lectures by Marvin Minsky at MIT. Fortunately, you don't need a Ph.D. in computer science to understand what Kurzweil is saying about all of this; he discusses all of these cosmic ideas in a very approachable style of writing. For example, he introduces one chapter by saying,

"'I am lonely and bored, please keep me company.' If your computer displayed this message on its screen, would that convince you that it is conscious and has feelings? Before you say no too quickly, we need to consider how such a plaintive message originated."

While I was thinking about all of this the next morning, on our boring drive down to Eureka, the CD player finished playing Nick Drake's songs, and moved on to Hatful of Hollow, by the Smiths. I'm sorry to say that the Smiths made no sense to me, so I continued thinking about Kurzweil's argument that computer power has increased by a factor of approximately one hundred million (eight orders of magnitude) in the past fifty years, and that the progress is almost certain to continue for at least another 10-15 years just with current technology that's already in the R&D labs ; he has a much more involved theoretical argument for why such advances are likely to continue long after that. If you find it difficult to think back 50 years, consider what has happened just since the first PC's were introduced by Apple and Radio Shack and Atari back in the late 1970s; today's commonplace PC has approximately 10,000 more processing power and storage capacity for approximately the same price.

And what are the consequences of a continuing advance in computing power? Kurzweil wrote his material in 1999, and he looks forward in 10-year increments: in the year 2009, for example, he estimates that a $1,000 personal computer will be able to perform a trillion calculations per second (as compared to a billion today). Computers will be embedded in clothing and jewelry; most routine business transactions will take place between a human and a virtual personality. Translating telephones will be commonly used, which means that you'll be able to talk intelligently with anyone on the planet, without worrying what language they speak. And as a sign of things to come, human musicians will routinely jam with cybernetic musicians; I'm not sure what the Smiths, or even the Ladybug Transistor group, would think about that -- but it's likely to happen, according to Kurzweil, whether they like it or not.

By 2019, a $1,000 computing device will be approximately equal to the computational ability of the human brain, according to Kurzweil. Three-dimensional virtual-reality displays will be embedded in glasses and contact lenses, providing the primary interface for communication with other persons, the Web, and virtual reality. Realistic all-encompassing visual, auditory, and tactile environments will enable people to do virtually anything with anybody, regardless of physical proximity (let your imagination run wild with that one!). People will begin having relationships with automated personalities as companions, teachers, caretakers, and lovers.

By 2029, a $1,000 unit of computation will have the computing capacity of approximately one thousand human brains. Direct neural pathways will have been perfected for high-bandwidth connection to the human brain. A range of neural implants will become available to enhance visual and auditory perception and interpretation, memory, and reasoning. Computers will have read all available human- and machine-generated literature and multimedia material. There will be growing discussion about the legal rights of computers and what constitutes being human (you might want to get that classic 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner, based on the even more classic novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and watch/read it again). Machines will claim to be conscious by 2029, and Kurzweil predicts that those claims will be largely accepted.

Looking much further ahead, Kurzweil suggests that by the end of the 21st century, there will be a strong trend toward a merger of human thinking with the world of machine intelligence that the human species initially created. There will no longer be any clear distinction, he suggests, between humans and computers. Most conscious entities will not have a permanent physical presence, and machine-based intelligences derived from extended models of human intelligence will claim to be human. Life expectancy, he concludes, will no longer be a viable term in relation to intelligent beings.

My musings have come to an end: we've reached a small, anonymous town outside Eugene, and we stop for lunch at an IHOP populated primarily by blind people, retirees, and fat tourists. David orders French toast, and I order a chicken fajita salad. When I ask for a Diet Coke, the waitress responds with a standard line: "Will Diet Pepsi be okay?" And in a never-ending battle to train a nation of obfuscating waiters and waitresses, my answer is, "No, it's not okay. What I really want is a Diet Coke."

"We don't have Diet Coke," the waitress says huffily, as if I've asked for a bottle of Piper Heidsick champagne.

"Well, why didn't you just say so in the first place?" I ask patiently.

No answer. She simply stands there, waiting for me to decide whether I'm going to give up and accept the miserable substitute, or insist on being stubborn and end up with nothing but a glass of ice-water. I don't know why I persist with this ritual, but I keep hoping that one of these wait-people (is that what we're supposed to call them these days, in order to be politically correct? Or have they been elevated to "food service attendants"?) will go home at the end of the day, and say to his/her spouse, "Y'know what, honey? I just realized today that the Pepsi-Cola company has brainwashed us into hoodwinking our customers, by not being honest and forthright enough to just come out with the truth, and admitting that we don't have what they wanted, and that our cheapskate managers settled for that second-rate cola!" But I guess that such a revelation is not going to occur here in Eugene, Oregon tonight; the waitress glares at me to see if I'm going to make a fuss about anything else. Some kind of smart-aleck, huh? she's probably thinking. Anyone who doesn't think Pepsi is 'okay' is probably a pervert and a child molester.

Half an hour later, we've consumed our food and a glass of mediocre not-as-good-as-Coke cola, and we're out the door. David rearranges the CD music selection, and our hundred-mile drive down to Grant's Pass begins with Summerteeth, by Wilco (I was going to ask David whatever happened to Billy Bragg, who had teamed up with Wilco on the two Mermaid Avenue albums, but decided that it would expose far too great a degree of ignorance on my part.) Gradually, the terrain becomes hillier, and the trees change from whatever it is that grows on level ground, to the familiar pine and fir trees of the mountains. But it's also clear that the grass and meadows along the way are already losing their green color, and slowly turning a combination of yellow and brown. It's a striking contrast from the lush green countryside we saw throughout Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and even most of Wyoming and New Mexico. It's one thing to read about the drought in the Pacific Northwest, and its likely impact on the California energy shortage; it's another thing to see it first-hand.

As we roll through Cottage Grove, Sutherlin, Roseburg, and Myrtle Creek, the music changes to Sea Monsters, by The Wedding Present. I have to admit that it's not my favorite music, but it's okay; it helps to pass the time. The Diet Pepsi episode has made me sufficiently grumpy that I'm not interested in contemplating Kuhn and Basalla and Kurzweil again, and from the look of concentration on David's face, I can see that he's more interested in the music than he's likely to be in a philosophical discussion of computer intelligence. Meanwhile, we've started climbing up hills, and through mountain passes; but unlike the 7,000-foot and 8,000-foot passes that we navigated in Colorado and Montana, these are much lower: Canyon Creek Pass is a mere 2,020 feet high, and Saxton Mountain Pass is only 1,956 feet above sea level.

At Grant's Pass, we stop for gas and a snack, at 3 PM. At the local McDonald's a fat young teenage waitress greets each new customer with an air of desperate friendliness: "Well, howdy! How are you today? What can I do for you? What can I get for you?" To her credit, she's got Diet Coke, and she's just delighted to serve me one in any size I ask for; I can tell, just by looking in her vacant, muddy brown eyes, that she's going to grow up strong and brave, and that she'll never succumb to that sly subterfuge that the purveyors of Diet Pepsi are spreading across the land. Meanwhile, David has ordered a McFlurry; after working his way down to the bottom of the cup, he announces with great confidence that he has decided on a winner: McFlurries, he says, are definitely better than Dairy Queen Blizzards. This is something that America, if not the whole world, needs to know; I'm happy to be the one to bring the matter to your attention.

As we get back into the car, David takes over the driving chores, after checking on the inventory of CD discs. With an air of slight concern, he announces that after the next set of six discs, which he has already set aside for tomorrow's journey, there will only be about seven discs that we haven't yet heard. The notion that we could drive this far without having repeated any music is pretty staggering to me; out of curiosity, I ask him how many CD's he has altogether. That stops him for a moment, and I can see his mouth moving silently as he goes through some kind of mental computation. "About 280," is the answer. I'm stunned.

One of the 280 turns out to be Neil Young's Silver & Gold, which plays soulfully and mournfully as we navigate down through the extreme southwestern corner of Oregon, through Valley of the Rogue State Park (no rogues were present, I'm happy to report), Wilderville, Cave Junction, and O'Brien. At 3:52 PM, with the trip odometer reading 2,355 miles, we cross the border into California. There's still a long way to go: about 41 miles until we reach the coast at Crescent City, and then another 75 miles to Eureka, where we intend to stop for the night.

On the Interstate, this distance of 116 miles would take about an hour and a half; but we're on US 199, a narrow, winding road, behind campers and SUV's full of tourists gawking at the Redwood Forest that we've just entered. But that's not the real problem: what we hadn't anticipated was the series of 10-15 minute delays caused by road construction crews repairing winter storm damage that had occurred along the roadway. By the time we reach Gasquet, we're both fed up; we're past the construction delays at this point, but neither of us is particularly interested in seeing redwoods, sequoias, or any other tourist attraction. We stop for a soda, switch driving assignments, and continue on.

The last album of the afternoon pops into the CD player: it's Simon Joyner's Lousy Dance. It was a relief to finally reach Crescent City, and to have our first view of the ocean; at that point, we turned south, and followed a scenic, winding road that led 75 miles down to Eureka, through the small towns of Klamath, Orick, and Trinidad. Looking at the billboards as we approached Eureka, it appeared that the Bayshore Best Western hotel was the logical choice: in addition to being a "known quantity," it also had a restaurant known as Marie Callender's (which led to a running series of jokes as we rejected other hotels along the way, which clearly were not worthy of having a next-door restaurant operated by the aforesaid Ms. Callender; little did we know, at the time, that Ms. Callender is an ambitious lady with 170 restaurant locations!). Alas, the Bayshore Best Western was full, and most of the other hotels in town were flashing "no vacancy" signs; so we passed up the chance to dine with Marie, and continued another 15 miles down the road to a Best Western in the little town of Fortuna before calling an end to a fairly long day.

After checking into our rooms, David asked if he could log in on my computer to pick up his e-mail. He typed away at a rapid pace for a few minutes, and then looked up at me with a big smile, and said, "My grades have been posted." God only knows if the university bothered snail-mailing them, in the old-fashioned way, to either him or his parents -- but they did post the grades on their web site, for retrieval by the students.

I waited.

He rattled off the statistics: one excellent grade, and three very excellent grades.

A pregnant pause: I really didn't want to ask the obvious question.

Finally, he said, "The [excellent grade] was in that history course I told you about last night: 'Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization'."

"Well, it's not your fault," I said emphatically. "It was a lousy course."

"Yeah," he agreed. "If they had used The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and that book by Kurzweil, I would have gotten a [very-excellent grade]."

I pointed out to him that I hadn't gotten grades like that during my entire undergraduate career at MIT, and suggested that we celebrate with a good dinner. Which we did, at the nearby Eel River Brewing Company, a raucous micro-brewery and steak-house that serves the most enormous onion rings this side of the Mississippi River. But that's another story, for another day. This day has come to an end. Thank you, David. And thanks, too, to Thomas Kuhn and Ray Kurzweil.

Continue with pt. VII of this series ...