Ennie

That too.

I have been there.

Although I often think: If we allowed vacation time to be counted as a pseudo billable … like time allocated to marketing, meaning if you took it your hours would look the same, maybe I wouldn’t think I have to maintain absolute perfection to “earn ahead” vacation. Which I never will.

I’d be doomed.

Oh my god Obama.

But you can't bill for/while doing admin work! When hourly rates are lower, you need to capture as much time as you can -- I say, hypocritically, as I download emails one by one, convert to pdf, and stitch them together to bates-- and attorneys doing admin work totally messes with the calculus.

There is one scene where the girlfriend asks him what he is thinking while he kisses her, and he mentions all these calculations and processes. He is aware, readjusting, considering. His motivations and experience are different, but he is still more than a feedback bot.

Yes, and they made him get way more therapy after that.

But note: Despite that, Barclay doesn’t turn the computer into a friend. Nor, even, does lonely Geordi.

But actually, we know that Data is not a “Computer,” in terms of being a mere interface that provides feedback. He is a conscious being, aware of people around him, their reactions, and is scrupulous about making his limitations and differences clear.

See, also: Episode where he has a girlfriend.

I knew we were going to get all “measure of a man.”

Full-time Shran Stan?

If we were going to have science, and the humanities, and all, maybe we’d come to learn things, like inherent in human-human interaction are thousands of internal safeguards that keep us from nudging each other over the edge, absent from human-appearing feedback bots. And maybe require warnings.

If we still were going to have science, and the humanities, and/or social sciences, we might perhaps come to learn that it is actually safer to avoid that blurring.

“Computer,” vs. “Hal.”

Picture of small bird sitting on the exterior window framing of an anonymous office tower

Office tower bird

“yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high”

AI is underpants gnomes all the way down. A product the market can really use BUT they still have no path to profit. OpenAI is writing checks on a valuation 100x its annual revenue! There aren't enough new customers to make that up & its already priced about what people think its worth.

These thoughts went nowhere. If you have reached this far, I still haven’t chosen between Shran and Weyoun 6, in terms of my favorite Combs.

And there is likely an in-universe explanation for this — I had a toddler during the early seasons of discovery, you kind of need to give me a pass on that — but it seems like, there is an actual safety function served by “let’s not have computers, no matter how useful, appear to be people.”

And even the loneliest of the crew, those most likely to form pseudo relationships with invented people, and characters, etc., may be slightly less formal with the computer, but the computer does not change in response to these interactions.

The computer can clearly distinguish between the voices of different crew members — it is, at time, a security feature, albeit one frequently circumvented — but doesn’t tailor responses to any. It has no relationship with the crew.

The computer’s responses are colorless. Brief. Declarative. Pattern.

“Commander Riker is not on Enterprise,” not “I can’t seem to locate him for you, dear. Perhaps you should see if any escape pods have launched.”

The computer — if you somehow got here without having watched the show, why would you — has command of a vast store of data, and responds to the crew’s verbal requests, in Majel Barrett Roddenberry’s voice.

If you think I am cute, fun, and normal (why would you) please skip, because I am about to get deeply, deeply nerdy:

This AI stuff, including the AI-induced psychosis or pseudo-psychosis has made me think a *lot* about the computer on Star Trek: TNG.

Yeah that looks more like an intentional tort.

This is how I sext:

You’re a regular globetrotter.

Don’t they kind of already?

Drop an old person that you’re going to turn into in the future.

I’m about ten years too young for that. Phoebe Judge/Molly Jong Fast era.

I have also been to Buffalo. Twice. So you know I am well-traveled.

I know, it’s a horror. I like travel, but I only get to do it for business. Obama was president the last time I took a vacation.