Why's that? Wow.

First off I want to say that it bugs me how different I can feel on a weekend day versus a weekday day. During the week I can feel beat, tired, down, grumpy as well as pretty good. On a weekend, even sitting at home doing work, I feel great and creative. Well, sometimes, but far more than I do at work. I have so many things I want to do and attempt and somehow my energy for these things is so much higher on the weekends. I just wish I could keep that up through the week. heck, I'm knocking off several creative things today and it just makes me feel alive.

Secondly, and this is what I was orignally going to write about, is my own sort of state dependent memory. Except it's location and aural dependent memory. Here it is: I walk to work nearly every day and nearly every day I listen to this american life on my ipod. I often have to stop my ipod in the middle of a story or a program because my walk only takes about 25 minutes and the shows are 50-55 minutes. So what I'm finding is that even if I don't listen for a few days, when I have to search through for where I left off my brain starts popping up images of almost my exact location at the point I was listening to whatever part I'm hearing. If David Sedaris is talking about going to Greece then my brain jumps to the image of walking up the 23rd street hill. This happens almost every time and it simply amazes me. Without paying specific attention my brain went ahead and stored that information. When I play back a trigger my brain shows me where I was and, I must say, I think it's pretty darn accurate, like within 10 feet. This is a lot like how smells, a specific smell, can conjure up a strong mental image of where you were and what it reminds you of. I'm sure the same thing often happens with music and songs. This, though, is something that happens several times a week and it really amazes me to have that experience. It's so visceral, emotional. LIke being transported in time and space by someone's voice and story in my ears.

Does anyone else get excitment, awe, uknown fear chills when reading this?

Imagining the future, the outcomes of this is like trying to imagine, to me, the size and age of the universe. As impossible a task for the human brain is the notion of really understanding how old and big and far back things go in the universe, so is the notion of trying to understand how far things can and could go in the future. Just reading this article about AI and the Singularity sparks my brain and I'm sure yours into spirals and spirals of possibilities. Machines that make better versions of themselves in faster and more complex ways than we can imagine. The article itself is short but gives you an amazing taste of what we may be dealing with in our lifetimes.

It also made me think that even if things spiral in a way that ends humanity, time continues on without us. We're a blip. If Artificial Intelligence took over and organic life as we define ourselves ended, would that artificial life be any less "natural" as it was the outcome life of evolving anyway?