Fifteen Minutes of Fame.

c2011Shalako


On Sunday, I got an e-mail notification that Amazon had dropped the price of 'The Handbag's tale,' a highly-satirical short story involving the murder of portly playboy banker Emile Danton in Paris, 1924.

That was because I was giving the book away on Smashwords and they have a price matching policy.

Okay, that's fine, but on Sunday night my computer went down. Somehow I turned off the POP settings or something incredibly stupid like that...imagine my surprise to open up my account Tuesday morning and see that I had given away about 1,700 copies at that point.

The reader may imagine what I was thinking: 1,700 x $1.00 - 35%, right?

But then I decided to let it ride. That was because a quick calculation showed that I was giving away 400 copies per day, and that is an achievement in anyone's book.

Right now we stand at about 3,800 copies and it's only Saturday night. But I am wondering if I can give away 5,000 copies of 'The Handbag's Tale,' in one week.

Right now it's at #19 in the Amazon UK Kindle Store, under the site's free crime>thrillers>mystery category, and at #63 on the overall free fiction list in Amazon UK. This has actually dropped down from #15 and #41 respectively just yesterday.

Also, the book is at #272 in the US Amazon Kindle free fiction rankings, down from a high of #251 observed yesterday or this morning. As you can imagine in the cyber-world of e-comemrce, the ranks are pretty fluid, changing even over the course of an hour.

The temptation to meddle and to extend my fifteen minutes of fame is admittedly there, but after not having my computer for a week or so, it's almost like I need retraining...I don't even really know what to do next.

Hopefully I will think of something.

Donut Vs. Doughnut.

Today, I jumped in the car and went up the road. I found myself turning into the local drive-through doughnut* shop. That’s fine as far as it goes, but I was actually going to the grocery store.

My dad just gave up his driver’s license. Normally he would have gone to the grocery store.

Was I driving on ‘automatic?’

Was it ‘muscle memory,’ so beloved of fable and song?

Was my mind ‘elsewhere?’

What happened…was I even conscious? Was I ‘sleep-driving?'

***

Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) was an American mathematician and the founder of cybernetics.

During WW II, Wiener attempted to produce a mathematical and electronic system for communicating vital information in such areas as radar and anti-aircraft gun control.

He became interested in automatic computing and feedback theory.

Wiener founded the study of cybernetics. Cybernetics deals with the automatic control of machinery by computers, ‘robotics,’ but also the study of the human brain and nervous system.

The two systems are analogous in the interrelationship of communication and control systems. The difference is organic. It is a matter of degree and complexity of design and function.

He wrote ‘Cybernetics,’ (1948,) and ‘The Human Use of Human Beings,’ (1950.)

In philosophy and psychology, ‘will’ is considered to be a capacity to choose among alternative courses of action.

This is held to be true particularly when the action is directed toward a specific goal or is governed by definite ideals and principles of conduct. This is in contrast to behaviour which stems from instinct, impulse, reflex or habit, none of which involves a conscious decision-making process.

What is artificial ‘intelligence?’ Is it the ability to choose between two or more courses of action, none of which lead directly to clearly defined or decisive outcomes?

For the sake of modernity, let us accept John Dewey’s notion that will is not a faculty of the mind that we are born with; neither is it acquired through heredity.

He saw it as a product of experience, evolving gradually in the mind and personality of the individual. Otherwise we are stuck with ancient philosophers, or metaphysics, neither of which are very satisfactory in the age we live in.

Let them quest for God or the soul, the meaning of life if they will. We will attempt to find ‘artificial intelligence.’

If you blog on Google, or post on Facebook for a while, you will note that the ads that magically appear actually appear pretty relevant after a time. This is not a machine ‘learning’ in the classic sense. What happens is that little ‘crawler bots’ run up and down every line of text and note key words. Those words are collated in terms of subject, frequency, and association with other words. Then, if you are blogging about child care, diaper and fomula ads appear on your blog, even if you have never actually used the word ‘diaper,’ or ‘formula.’

It would seem that our machine can compare imputs, and choose between a number of courses of action, and it requires no real ‘will’ of its own. And if a machine did something unexpected, we would merely consider it a glitch or malfunction. We would inquire no further—the machine is merely broken.

Or is it? Is it really broken? Maybe it was just trying to tell us something.

But ‘will’ is a human attribute.

My will directed me to the grocery store…habit took me to the doughnut shop.

Somehow my brain, being elsewhere, still managed to drive the car safely, (or maybe even a little too fast,) and it eventually took over and got me to the destination.

‘No harm done,’ and it made me think, which is not always a good thing, but I like it.

Maybe I am being held in thrall by Tim Horton’s. Everyone says they put something in that coffee to make you go back.

Public opinion has a certain wisdom of its own, and the stuff in there is caffeine.

Nicotine is the most powerfully addictive drug I have ever had, and without coffee and smokes, I would be miserable.

In that sense the 'stick and carrot' are involved in behavioural training...right?

*Editor’s Note: For our U.S. readers, that’s ‘donut.’