There’s this silly/creepy scene in the god awful Teminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles series that is probably ALL the series did right. Here it is:
Out of context, the scene probably makes no sense at all, so let me provide the context. The “man” singing the song with the little girl is a terminator (well, he’s just an robot– they don’t call them that yet). His name is John Henry, and depending on which version of the show’s convoluted time travel changing reality you believe, he either is what will eventually be Skynet or he’s something that someone from the future built to fight Skynet. Skynet, of course, is the hivemind that runs the Terminators in the movies, a sentient computer that would enslave all of humanity were it not for John Connor.
The scene is interesting to me for four reasons:
1) It’s sweet, but it’s also amazingly creepy
2) The song they chose (it’s meant to be a song the child’s deceased father sang to her, which she has “taught” to John Henry, his first outward indication that he can understand and learn from people and not just from having code uploaded– he learns the song like a person might, from another singing it to him/with him) is simple and so perfect for the pacing of that scene
3) I made jokes about the song for months, imagining that one of the most evil things in all of Sci-Fi first learned to sing a song about not having pants on.
4) It’s a computer speaking back to a human– and I think that’s really cool.
So today I got sort-of-a-second-late-to-be-bleeding-edge to http://yes.thatcan.be/my/next/tweet/ . The quote in my subject line is a piece of one of the tweets it made for me. Here’s a fresh one, which I will also post to Twitter:
I’m 33! That’s so you could happen someday file: Phill would open up on the purple lightsaber comment!
and I don’t want to spam Twitter, so here’s five more, quickly:
He knows I’ve added Nation Builder to go back to work on the last kid picked.
Duh!” : I know what I am just home from Adult Swim. Gamer cred +50 DKP. Keep running up on bloggin’, and!
I was. To be what is fun. Next week my FYC students the future, we graduate?
Isn’t good– you always Jimmy Johns. Crazy fast. Crazy across that no getting a conservative think if I.
Reason Your tweets make awesome decisions in the island. Re: Sam the future hours ago. I promise.
The site– http://yes.thatcan.be/my/next/tweet/ — claims to “generate… your future tweets based on the DNA of your existing messages.” I’m not sure what sort of coding sits behind it, but looking at the tweets, it’s clear it’s not perfect. There are disjointed moments and grammar errors.
But I marvel at how these random reconfigurations of things I’ve tweeted sound “like” me.
How long will it be before a machine can write for me. Then what? Who needs a Phill when you can fit me on a pocket USB drive?
I better start learning old folk songs. 🙂