I've been trying to find a voice for this story for over a year now. I think this is it. For anyone willing to take a look, I have two simple questions.
posted
Interesting POV - the present-tense-first-person for the computer works well. A bit technical for most people, I would imagine, but I found it interesting. Sent you an email with some further comments.
Posts: 16 | Registered: Jun 2002
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posted
I thought the POV and voice worked well. The internal monolog was repetitive and single minded, yet seemed exactly right for the computer character.
That said I personally wouldn’t want to read a whole novel of it. I would invest the time to read though a shorter piece though, just to see what was done with the unusual narration. I think, for my pleasure reading tastes anyway, it is the level of technical detail and flatness of the narration (which again, is perfect for the character, just not something I can immerse myself in for hours on end) that cause the problem.
Please take my comments with wide latitude because I am not one who is fascinated with the inner workings of computers.
I confess I had a difficult time identifying with a computer, although I don't know why that should be since I loved I, Robot, and when all is said and done, what is a robot but an overgrown computer?
I think the answer is in your question,
quote:Would anyone read through a whole book of this?
The computer-ese you employ is off-putting for me. It may not be so to computer junkies. Or maybe this approach would be better suited to a short story.
Having said that, when I compare the "thought processes" of the computer in your story to those of a human character, I realize I don't want to know every detail of how any character got from thought "A" to thought "B." I wouldn't want to read that the human character got up, brushed his teeth, walked out the door, got in his car, and went to work. That he went to work would be sufficient and less taxing on the reader.
Telescoping some of the thought processes of the computer might be beneficial.
Still, it is unique.
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited July 09, 2002).]
posted
It's a nice way to open a story, but generally people need a human point of reference.
Personally speaking, you could probably widen the appeal of this work if the computer voice was used periodically to drive events otherwise viewed from a humsn perspective, and kept fairly short.
quote:present-tense-first-person for the computer works well. A bit technical for most people
From GZ,
quote:The internal monolog was repetitive and single minded, yet seemed exactly right for the computer character.
From Kolona,
quote:I don't want to know every detail of how any character got from thought "A" to thought "B."
And of course, Chronicles,
quote:generally people need a human point of reference.
Now that my inner artist is done crying, good point one and all. Exactly what I wanted to know, if not what I wanted to hear.
Having now reread it with your eyes, I see that I am attempting a first person narrative with the AI being the narrator. This is what I want to do Chronicles, it is the whole point of the rest of the story. But I now see that maintaining my artistic integrity is going to get real boring, real fast. Kolona has it right, I don't need to explain every detail. It just proves I know what is going on, it doesn't actually help the story. So from that perspective, what I need to work on is my first person narrative technique. I think OSC's Characters and Viewpoint indicates this is the hardest one to master anyway.
But, I'm afraid Chronicles is right as well. People need something to relate to. One of the main themes to this story was to be the evolution of Hal's personality. He was going to be very boring for the first half of the book. I see now that my close personal friends, the ones I've already told the story to, would be the only ones to read it. Nobody cares about someone with no personality. I ask you to name one famous person with no personality. Aside from Bill Gates.
The good news is, I know exactly what to do now. All I need to do is pull a George Lucas. I'm going to write a later book in the series where the entire AI culture is already established and they already have personalities. Then later, if I have time, and the die hard fans scream, and the publisher gives me an advance, then I will write this literary masterpiece on the development of AI personality.
The reason it took so long to reply is that I've already got five pages of the next story. Boy, it's like night and day. If I get it cleaned up, I might post it. This one feels much better to me.
Thanks all for your feedback. If you have anything you'd like me to look at, let me know. I'd be happy to return the favor.
The first sequence, with the presumed contents of the video file that becomes the focus of the rest of the chapter, is terrible. Third person objective, or whatever you are using there, is not a good way to handle narrative fiction, particularly in simple present tense. I suggest that you use Third person Limited Omniscient (sometimes just called Third person Limited) where you portray the action as an observer of one character's perceptions, thoughts, and feelings in simple past tense. The man that enters the complex and goes through the security seems like the optimum choice for POV character, as he seems to be the focus of the scene.
Second, if you are serious about using the computer POV, then you need to make it really feel like...code. There a couple of ways that you might accomplish this. First, (assuming that your program is not yet sentient) remove all normal English syntax, don't use "I", and remove all referances to non-deterministic system behavior. I'll rewrite a short segment of the action as an example (making up some stuff as I go).
PROGRAM STATUS: task mode(stack), priority 5, current-task->RETRIEVE system logon
RESULT: QUERY system, application, use
THREAD: stackpush (task mode(stack), priority 5, current-task->RETRIEVE system logon)
PROGRAM STATUS: task mode(stack), priority 5, current-task->QUERY system
QUERY: system INF
RESULT elta 42, 4 GHZ, 5 GBRAM, OS="Free Software Foundation GnuOS" version 5.2.3 patch 3, NETWORK="FSF local network", NID="Mark-23”
LOOKUP: system Mark-23, application DNSMAIL
RESULT: user "X12QS7G9", password "***********"
THREAD: stackpop
PROGRAM STATUS: task mode(stack), priority 5, current-task->RETRIEVE MAIL
REPLY: mailclient, user "X12QS7G9", password "***********"
RESULT: logon ACCEPTED, mailwaiting 1
REPLY: mailclient, retrieve mail
And so on and so forth. I decline to generate a mail header and so forth, but this brings the action up to where the program (which I took the liberty of naming PROSEC) retrieves the mail from the program that called it (or was it activated by a system event?).
This could become tedious, not just for the reader but for the author as well. Also, it takes so long for a computer at this level to leap to self-awareness that your readers will all be dead before they get that far. Therefore I suggest the second alternative, which is to only refer to non-internal state events as being in code. I still insist that you not use "I" unless your program is self aware, but with this relaxation you can get something a little less cryptic. [quote]System call: PROSEC.EXE (open logfile PROSEC00.Log, activation time--09:34.23.445, protocall level--00, system priority 5)
PROSEC is active, status is initial activation, priority 5, no current task. PROSEC will call the default task for this status, and scan the logfile. There is no current task in the logfile. Status changed to logfile scanned, priority 5, no current task. PROSEC will call the default task for this status, and trace the program instanciation event. The system responds that the instance was called by the system event "new mail" from DNSMAIL.SYS.
Status changed to analysis mode, priority 5, current task = retrieve mail. PROSEC calls the system DNSMAIL using an Inter Process Communication session.
No, my mistake. I guess that this POV can only work if you have the program start out at least quasi self aware. It also needs to have English language voice recognition cababilities and language decoding ability, visual recognition subroutines, physics based event prediction...there is no way that this thing is living in 5 GB of RAM. I don't know, I've read some short stories that used the computer POV effectively. My favorite was "VRM-495" or something like that. The primary conflict is this floor lamp that matches the predefined Visual Recognition Matrix entry 495--a hatrack --when turned off but matches VRM-367--a floor lamp--when it is turned on. This causes the robot, a small housekeeper unit provided for a disabled veteran by the VA, a lot of confusion. Even though it has figured out that VRM-495 and VRM-367 are one and the same, it cannot adapt because those Visual Recognition Matrix entries are built in.
Eventually, our plucky little hero uses VRM-495 to electrocute an intruder and so solves the problem forever by wrecking the floor lamp so that it has to be thrown away. It was a really great story--and yet because you also had this disabled vet around, there was a human interest angle.
posted
Survivor, my intent with the security cameras being the POV is that they eventually become the visual reference or eyes for the AI POV. They are in effect the Third Person Limited Omniscient POV of the AI. In the story I want to tell, showing the POV of the human never makes sense.
The problem that Chronicles and GZ and Kolona pointed out was that the POV I was using for the AI was much too stilted to be readable. While your suggestion may be more realistic, realism is not the intent of the story. Granted, the William Gibson, The Matrix and other cyber-punk stories are laughable from realism standpoint, I don't want to go to the other extreme.
You do bring up a good point concerning self awareness and conciseness. I think I do need to start the AI sentient, but not necessarily self aware. Mazlovs Needs Hierarchy says that most people have not achieved self-actualization. Perhaps self awareness is similar. The AI needs to survive and grow before it becomes self aware. But it does start out self... conscious?
posted
Well, as some other poeple have pointed out already, the POV can't be interesting unless it includes analogues to human feelings, thoughts, motivations, etc.
The problem is that prior to your program becoming "self aware" there simply is no "point of view" worth talking about...the machine doesn't have a "perspective". It is just reacting deterministically to inputs, it isn't "thinking" or anything similar...that was what was so great about the VRM-495 story, the little robot had "drives" and "thought processes" to allow it to function in a human environment, but the perspective was quite alien. From a human point of view, the main dramatic tension of this story is that the veteran is resentful of everything about his life--loosing his legs in a war, loosing his best friend in that war, having a prick of an officer that got his best friend killed in that war, and now being taken care of by a robot (who always seems to misunderstand everything) instead of a human caretaker--until the night when the robot saves him from an armed robber, and he begins to see that maybe his life isn't so bad after all.
But from the robot's point of view, 'tis not a problem that his owner has named it after the hated officer and periodically has it recite a self-derogatory monologue about how stupid and full of &%$# 'he' is, in fact, when it realizes that the intruder is causing dangerous levels of stress in its charge/master/whatever it recites the monologue on its own to help calm him down. Since the intruder disables the robot's internal modem almost as soon as he see's him (well before the robet identifies him as a threat), it carries out a plan to disable the threat. It is not motivated by anger or fear or "emotion" at all, just by internal drives to increase the safety of its master.
But the story doesn't work at all if the robot isn't already assigned "self-awareness". Besides, it seems to take a while for "self-awareness" to develop--babies spend years being as stupid as worms before they begin to "think" as we would understand it. Besides, as I mentioned before, there is no POV prior to the program becoming "self-aware" (well, there is--third person objective--but as I already pointed out, that isn't the world's most engaging POV).
If you want to have the first scene presented through the POV of the program, then don't show it at all until the program sees it for the first time. And I don't mean the first time the program accesses and analyzes the video clip, but the first time that the program, after achieving self-awareness, see's the video and is able to assign meaning to the events it witnesses.
There must be some degree of self-awareness in a POV, such that the POV character experiences reality as having meaning.
quote:Besides, it seems to take a while for "self-awareness" to develop--babies spend years being as stupid as worms before they begin to "think" as we would understand it.
Whoa, Survivor, Are you saying babies are not self-aware? Surely you misspeak. As ego-centrically focused as babies are, self-awareness is their biggest thought process.
As for them being stupid--as worms, yet--not so. Just because they don't reason as adults, they are not stupid. Children and teens don't reason as adults, either, but are hardly stupid. Worms don't suck up language and culture, and have no chance of getting things wrong in their little pre-programmed instinct-driven world.
What babies and children accomplish in their short years is amazingly brilliant. My husband's grandmother had a phrase for it: "You can see their brains working."
posted
I'm not saying that they don't have thought processes or awareness of their environment, just that you wouldn't be interested in a story actually written from a infant's point of view with no cutsie confabulations.
My point is that, as miraculous as the transformation from a mass of neurons to a self-aware entity is, it isn't very interesting to watch from a certain angle. You (and your husband's grandmother) both find the learning that babies undergo fascinating, looking from the point of view of someone that already has self-awareness and intellect. But if you try to think back to that time in your own life, you don't really remember anything happening (if you have any infant memories, they will probably be apparently meaningless chunks like a blue blotch surrounded by shimmering and so forth). The point is that if you want to portray how marvelous the beginning of self-awareness is, then you want to pick a POV of someone that is already self aware watching the transformation of someone that is becoming self aware.
quote:You (and your husband's grandmother) both find the learning that babies undergo fascinating, looking from the point of view of someone that already has self-awareness and intellect.
quote:The point is that if you want to portray how marvelous the beginning of self-awareness is, then you want to pick a POV of someone that is already self aware watching the transformation of someone that is becoming self aware.
Don't these two statements contradict your contention? Even from your point of view that babies are as stupid as worms, these statements would indicate that they are perfect studies in self-awareness when observed from the lofty positions of self-awareness that my husband's grandmother and I possess. 'Course, she's dead now, so that's another type of self-awareness.
posted
Those statements imply nothing about a baby already possessing self-awareness, they both implicitly assume that a baby develops self-awareness at some point
Look, are you just grasping at straws to quibble over, or are you actually confused by my statements?
posted
It occurs to me that self-awareness isn't the problem with babies. As Kolona points out, their selves are almost all they are aware of at first, and as they grow and develop, they become able to be aware of more than their selves.
What if instead of self-awareness, the point of view computer had to develop other-awareness? They call Ausberger's syndrome and its similar conditions "autism" because those who have it are unable to be anything but self-aware--they have no awareness or understanding of others as different from themselves (among other problems).
Could the computer be an interesting point of view character if the story follows its development of other-awareness, instead of self-awareness?
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited July 29, 2002).]
My point was that babies have self-awareness--although it may not be accompanied by the sophisticated reasoning of adults--especially in comparison to worms which "don't suck up language and culture, and have no chance of getting things wrong in their little pre-programmed instinct-driven world."
I put my point aside, however, and wrote looking at things from your view:
quote:Even from your point of view that babies are as stupid as worms, these statements would indicate that they are perfect studies in self-awareness when observed from the lofty positions of self-awareness that my husband's grandmother and I possess.
Those lofty positions are exactly what you presented as the desirable POV to watch the blossoming of self-awareness:
quote:The point is that if you want to portray how marvelous the beginning of self-awareness is, then you want to pick a POV of someone that is already self aware watching the transformation of someone that is becoming self aware.
The point is, if babies blossoming into self awareness are worthy of the legitimate POV of someone watching them do it, then they are definitely NOT as "stupid as worms." And this takes me back to my original disagreement. Unlike babies, worms will not develop self awareness, no matter how we define it, and no POV of someone watching them live their lives will ever be interesting using your criteria or mine.
National Geographic might use the strict Objective POV with our worms, of course, but that's something else.
Be . No need to get testy.
Good point, Kathleen. I like it.
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited July 29, 2002).]
posted
Okay, I get it. The whole thing is because I said that babies are stupid as worms
Okay, look, anyone that doesn't think that making fun of how helpless and pathetic human larvae are just doesn't have to laugh when I mention it.
By the way, not to be all prickly, but negative comments about the abilities and mental advancement of autistic people bites. It is much more acceptable to make fun of babies (in my book, at least) than to automatically assume that there is anything wrong with being autistic. All the autistic people I know are way smarter and more interesting than you "normal" people.
quote:Hey, anyone else here find that yourself a lot less kind and all when you're indisposed? I'm not sure how much less intelligent I am, but I'm sure that when I don't feel good, I get a lot meaner.
quote:By the way, not to be all prickly, but negative comments about the abilities and mental advancement of autistic people bites. It is much more acceptable to make fun of babies (in my book, at least) than to automatically assume that there is anything wrong with being autistic. All the autistic people I know are way smarter and more interesting than you "normal" people.
Where did anyone say that there is anything wrong with being autistic or any other negative things about autism?
Prickly, yes. Indisposed, perhaps.
In any case, I think it's time to close this topic--it's gotten too far away from its original intent.
Topic Closed
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I think this is it. For anyone willing to take a look, I have two simple questions. 
elta 42, 4 GHZ, 5 GBRAM, OS="Free Software Foundation GnuOS" version 5.2.3 patch 3, NETWORK="FSF local network", NID="Mark-23”
Those statements imply nothing about a baby already possessing self-awareness, they both implicitly assume that a baby develops self-awareness at some point 
. No need to get testy.
