Month: December 2013

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On Editors and Other Respected Professions

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After wrapping up another round of editing and unwrapping some awesome presents, I can only wonder how editors [ the ones that actually get paid ] keep their wits about them. Editing myself has felt like running a marathon while holding a flashlight in the dark, rerunning the route to make sure no short-cuts were taken so it could be retraced, and then finally going back again to pick up any trash that may have been left on the course.

It’s funny, thinking back to earlier times, when I just knew I wrote platinum… where everything that came off my pen tip was sacrosanct and impervious to review. Not editing then was more of a refusal to acknowledge my shortcomings than any real lack of effort. While I sometimes feel a twinge of nostalgia for the reckless passion it imparted into my writing, these days I don’t even write my own name without spell checking it twice.

Maybe editing someone else’s work is always easier because a call for help can be made if one gets lost. But the trailblazers, to whom do they turn? They’ve been lost since the beginning. Being found, to them, is merely to visit the same place again.

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The Misnomer of the Technological Singularity

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Recently, I have come across the term technological singularity in my journey through cyberspace (i.e. The Artificial General Intelligence Society; the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence; and Humanity +). Essentially, the technological singularity is a theoretical point in the future where the rate of technological progress and artificial intelligence develops to such a tremendous level that it dwarfs all other intelligent life, transforming the world beyond anything humans can predict or fathom. A more comprehensive description of the technological singularity, along with who coined it and who popularized it is available here:

Technological Singularity

This scenario doesn’t sound that scary, right? Yet, something very ominous and forbidding is implied when one compares something to a gravitational singularity. In astrophysics, a singularity is a point theorized to have infinite density and zero volume, such as at the center of a black hole.

If one considers the technological singularity from the more sensationalistic doomsday scenario, then it might be a point in the future when all intelligent life is swallowed up by artificial intelligence and reduced to fiery smithereens in an apocalyptic accretion disc of death and destruction. Going by this interpretation, one might be lead down the road into believing that humans are incapable of foreseeing the consequences of their own actions. It would be the equivalent of telling a child, “Yes, you can go build yourself a robot, but you may not play with it because it might hurt you.” Inherent in this is a deeply-seated notion that people should be afraid of what they are capable of creating, and hesitant to master the tools at their disposal.

On a side note, after spending the better part of a week busting out a book proposal, revising a query letter, editing half a book, and finding the first literary agency I want to submit to yesterday, I discovered that they are on vacation from December 23rd until January 6th [ *Grumble Grumble* ]. It’s fair enough though, everybody needs a holiday. It’s taken me eight years to finally get around to making this book happen, so another two weeks won’t hurt it.  Though, I wonder where all of those artificial literary agents are hiding at and if they charge an arm and a soul…hmm.

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Learning Curves and Tangents

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Ahh!  There’s nothing quite like the rush one gets from witnessing one’s website turn up on a Google search… except the realization that it’s a link to the first site one made upon installing WordPress to the wrong directory, not the one made after deleting and reinstalling it to the correct one. One’s initial ineptitude during the learning curve of creating a website would be on full display for the world to see.  That sounds pretty embarrassing doesn’t it?

It’s still early.  Maybe nobody noticed.

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The Light at the End of the Tunnel

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Work on editing chapter seven began yesterday.  For the first time since I starting writing it hasn’t required open-heart surgery to fix or demanded any major revisions.  Chapter seven is smack dab in the middle of the book and early on it was my favorite part, the one I looked most forward to writing.  It was the non-fiction book writer’s equivalent of a candy bar scene ( search for candy bar scene at  http://hollylisle.com ).

Yet, for a while, it seemed like every time I came back to this part in the book something went horribly wrong… like “the relatability of this to prominent theories is too perplexing,” or “This picture has to explain the concept better,” or “The plumbing needs fixing.”

Anyone, author or not, can attest to the stress of middles. Invariably, everyone will come to a moment in some endeavor when they realize that the light at the end of the tunnel they see is really an oncoming train.  So what do you do?

Flee in the other direction or try to jump on it?  Nope, you’ve come too far to consider retreat or it may not even be an option.  The possibility of having one’s remains plastered all over it doesn’t sound that appealing either.

Duck and cover? Sorry, that train will run over you like [ insert metaphor… a steamroller, the Amazon River, a train ].

March headlong towards it and see who wins?  That sounds like the only viable option. Best of luck to you!

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Bettering a Mouse Trap Builder

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The process of making one’s first blog post is usually fraught with nerves, as it’s the standard bearer against which all other blog posts will be judged. What course should one take? Low ball it and hope people will be impressed by one’s improvement, or aim high regardless of whether or not inspiration will continue to strike like clockwork? Personally, I prefer stargazing to puddle gawking and sandbagging.

As I start to edit my manuscript for this new discipline, Affect Engineering, I can already hear the technophobes yelling at me, “Why would anyone want to invent a math equation to model emotion? That’s just like asking for the androids to come in and replace us!”

To them, I would say, “The androids would be too late.” People must always be the masters of their own tools, or else they risk being dominated by them. A robot is a tool built by people. Emotions are tools most of us come ready-equipped with but not knowing how to use.

I am not building a better mouse trap. I am bettering a mouse trap builder.