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The Best Show on WFMU => Show Discussion => Topic started by: Dammit on March 03, 2018, 12:28:45 AM

Title: Harlan Ellison?
Post by: Dammit on March 03, 2018, 12:28:45 AM
Has Tom ever discussed Harlan Ellison on the show? Because I've never heard a creepier story than this one: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. It's not for everybody (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream).

Review Part One
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7_PRxmBZl8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7_PRxmBZl8)
 
Review Part Two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrDvi1GXatk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrDvi1GXatk)

Edit: Shortened question.
Title: Re: Harlan Ellison?
Post by: fonpr on March 07, 2018, 12:41:46 PM
Has Tom ever discussed Harlan Ellison on the show? Because I've never heard a creepier story than this one: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. It's not for everybody (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream).

Review Part One
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7_PRxmBZl8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7_PRxmBZl8)
 
Review Part Two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrDvi1GXatk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrDvi1GXatk)

Edit: Shortened question.

The story takes place 109 years after the complete destruction of human civilization. The Cold War had escalated into a world war, fought mainly between China, Russia, and the United States. As the war progressed, the three warring nations each created a super-computer (with AI) capable of running the war more efficiently than humans.

Prescient.
Title: Re: Harlan Ellison?
Post by: Dammit on March 11, 2018, 10:46:14 PM
Well, I had an interesting, one-sentence discussion with a literary type who had met Harlan years ago on an interview program. He remembered the story. "It sounds like Harlan," he said, "is projecting his own ruthless desires upon humanity through a story with a strawborg." 

He didn't care for Harlan very much.
Title: Re: Harlan Ellison?
Post by: BadGuyZero on March 13, 2018, 09:03:33 PM
Well, I had an interesting, one-sentence discussion with a literary type who had met Harlan years ago on an interview program. He remembered the story. "It sounds like Harlan," he said, "is projecting his own ruthless desires upon humanity through a story with a strawborg." 

He didn't care for Harlan very much.

Nobody cares for Harlan very much. He is one of the biggest jerks to ever walk the planet.
Title: Re: Harlan Ellison?
Post by: Krokodil_Gena on March 20, 2018, 03:42:16 PM
Well, I had an interesting, one-sentence discussion with a literary type who had met Harlan years ago on an interview program. He remembered the story. "It sounds like Harlan," he said, "is projecting his own ruthless desires upon humanity through a story with a strawborg." 

He didn't care for Harlan very much.

Nobody cares for Harlan very much. He is one of the biggest jerks to ever walk the planet.

Because he is one of the greatest genre writers America produced in the last fifty years, a guy who can write stories at lightning speed, who was willing to put drug culture elements into his Star Trek script ("City on the Edge of Forever") knowing full well he would never get another shot at writing for that show (and the fights he had over how the script was changed made sure of it.) So yeah, he has a gigantic chip on his shoulder from his early short-story days (he and a few other writers had been stiffed, he complained, and publishers have long memories), he has no tolerance for fools.
Title: Re: Harlan Ellison?
Post by: Dammit on March 20, 2018, 06:21:03 PM
Yes, Krok, there is also that. I am dying to see Dreams with Sharp Teeth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDwEr942gMY), a documentary that I cant find, since I don't torrent (not for moral reasons, but because I don't think that I would thrive in jail).
 
I guess that the "No Mouth, Must Scream" story struck a nerve in me from current events. Maybe it's not AI that we have to worry about; instead, it's the people behind it who may already be making life a living hell for many people on the planet. For example, there is the recent BBC report on Cambridge Analytica and dirty tricks (https://youtu.be/mpbeOCKZFfQ (https://youtu.be/mpbeOCKZFfQ)), which is fun to contrast with their Online Rockstars presentation (https://youtu.be/6bG5ps5KdDo (https://youtu.be/6bG5ps5KdDo)), and even more fun to consider within the context of this: https://youtu.be/FXdYSQ6nu-M (https://youtu.be/FXdYSQ6nu-M).

So maybe Harlan's story affected me, because it has just occured to me that it would not take AI becoming conscious to have that kind of impact - we have plenty of morally bankrupt people around to do that and worse (kinda like, yeah, I've discovered how to boil water all by myself!).  Anyhoo, being at the mercy of some alien (to me) AI is one thing and scary, while being tormented by a fellow "human being" who is using AI (or BS) is maybe all too real and familiar and actually possible and more and more likely.

Edited to correct bad grammer and other misteaks.