Part 1/5 – Time (ft. Hélas Techne)

Part 2/5 – Forest (ft. Hélas Techne)

Part 3/5 – Desert (ft. Hélas Techne)

Part 4/5 – Outerspace (ft. Hélas Techne)

Part 5/5 – Go Eau (ft. Hélas Techne)

Thanks for watching!

Francis would like to give special thanks to Tolstoy for breaking his fall, Ruby, Mr. Rabbit, Al the Alchemist, Rug, Byron Igor Stüderman for inspiring future generations of man and machine, Perseus, MERVE even though he’s responsible for this whole ordeal, and Bella the love of his life!

I would like to personally thank V for putting up with my “taskmaster” shenanigans. Couldn’t have done it without you.

See more at http://vimeo.com/helas

As human beings, it’s getting harder to read between the lines of our bar codes. The distinction between human and machine becomes more obscure with each passing day. Take today (heck, take this week) to unplug and remember that we were never meant to be constructs. Seize the day, and take your freedom along for the ride!

But let’s face facts:  robots are AWESOME.  Whether you are talking about far-out characters from sci-fi lore, or the amazing recent developments in robotics labs around the globe, you can’t help but marvel at the little (or not so little guys).

Here is Callabrantus’ Robot Fave Five, starting with:  Mega Man!

Mega Man

Named Rock Man in Japan, this Capcom classic video game character has been a staple on consoles for three generations.  The concept behind the games is akin to a slightly more complex game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.  Defeat an evil robot with your Mega Buster, and you can claim his special power (Plug n’Play, baby).  With that power, you’ll have an easier time beating a robot with a different element-based power.  Eventually, you’ll square off against the diabolical Dr. Wily in a last-ditch effort to save humanity (at least until the next sequel!).  Adorable, and not to be messed with, Mega Man is a hero robot that gives evil robots the gears.

Next up:  Asimo

Asimo - the name says it all

Asimo is the twelfth model resulting from the efforts of Honda’s advanced robotics division which released the first model, known as EO, in 1986.  He is the current model, first unveiled in the year 2000, and ever since, Honda has found ways to improve it, and (dare I say it?) make it behave more like a human being.  The name is an acronym for “Advanced Step in Innovative MObility”.  It is capable of running, walking up and down stairs, recognizing voices (and will look at the person speaking to him), can recognize a face even when it is motion, and can duplicate numerous body gestures.

Here’s Tima:

Tima, from Metropolis

Tima is the unwitting heroine in Metropolis, the anime loosely based on the manga by Osamu Tezuka.  *SPOILERS AHEAD* When Duke Red faces the loss of his only daughter, he has a mad scientist create him a new one.  To ensure his lineage continues, she is designed to be integrated with the Ziggurat; it is Duke Red’s base-of-operations, and secretly a powerful weapon capable of turning robots against humans around the globe.  All of this is unknown to Tima:  she is awakened before she could be completed when Rock, the jealous foster son of the Duke, takes offence to being overlooked as an heir, and destroys the robotics factory in a failed attempt to derail his father’s plans.  All Tima really wants is to be with Kennichi, the boy who finds her in the flaming wreckage and cares for her.  But the realization that she is not human is too much for her to bear, and Tima gives into her father’s dark wishes, becoming a terrifying force that even her own programming cannot contain.

Tima - doomed daughter prototype

Next bot in line: Lieutenant Commander Data

Data - Spock as a tin can

A favorite of many a Star Trek: TNG fan, Lieutenant Commander Data endeared himself with the audience through his constant search for an understanding of what it was to be human.  Every Trek series had at least one not-quite-human character looking to unravel the mysteries of what makes humankind tick.   Data was the socially awkward crew member aboard Enterprise NCC1701-D that filled that role, determined to prove that he could be more than the sum of his nuts, bolts and positronic brain.  *SPOILERS AHEAD* He would eventually gain the emotions he so dearly sought after, but he would ultimately sacrifice himself to save the rest of the Enterprise crew, thus cutting his personal trek short.

And no list of favorite robots would be complete without a party robot! Bring on Bender!

Bender - He drinks, steals and swears. He's more human than most of us.

Bender is Futurama’s answer to question that has plagued sci-fi writers for decades:  How will iron girders be bent 1000 years from now?  Best friend and roommate to Fry, Bender doesn’t have a lot of bending to do, so he spends his time smoking cigars, drinking beer, and sassing up sexy female robots.  Don’t like it?  You can kiss his shiny metal ass!  In one of the series’ “What If” episodes, Bender becomes human.  Unfortunately, his vices prove too much for a frail human physique, and Bender succumbs to grotesque obesity, which quickly leads to a fatal heart attack.  The moral:  leave the partying to the party machines!

Have a favorite robot?  Sure you do!  Toss ‘em out there in the comments!

Happy Robot Pride Day!

What is going on here? Is this a sign that we are harkening back to simpler times, paying tribute to Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney? Or is it something else?

Maybe it is about finding some sort of life beyond death, drawing on a well of power when all typical intellectual faculties have run dry? In the age of Facebook, the complete erosion of individual privacy, and corporate infringement upon our rights, where so many of us feel powerless against the grinding gears of the post-industrial treadmill, do we see ourselves as the last man wielding a chainsaw desperately fighting to ward off endless waves of mindless, blood thirsty zombies? Do we seek to find a power to match the ungodly forces that keep them coming, without conscience, without remorse, without anything but lust for your life-force?

What is the difference between a zombie and a robot?

Robots, like zombies, have always been distinguishable from humans in that they have no soul. But robots have always been designed to take orders from us. Some see this subservience as dangerous, some even regard it as abusive, but are able to reconcile with it on moral ground that the robot has no life-force beyond the circuitry and mechanics we have granted it. Zombies on the other hand, are decidedly different in their singular drive to take everything away from us and defy any order we might want to give them. They are mindless and indefatigable.

So should we fear zombies and admire robots?  The difference perhaps is in how we perceive ourselves. For you see, a nation of zombies may not think for itself, but it will pursue its desire regardless of the consequences, pushing forward towards its objective despite that fact that it will most likely have its head blown off with a double barreled sawed off shotgun. This could be seen as greed in its most unbridled form – the sort of irreconcilable obsession with attaining what it craves that those of us with some sort of conscience can not comprehend.

But what if we consider ourselves as the robot? As a robot, we are also incapable or unequivocally unwilling to question authority, but, to the benefit of that authority, we are also wont to take orders and produce the results that that authority commands in order to meet its desires.

As we continue to produce boundless measures of free content for the aggregators, be it YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or otherwise, are we in fact, taking control of the machine, or are we transforming the way we are into that of the machine in order to serve it?

Are we zombies, mindlessly trawling towards the smell of fresh blood that we must consume, in spite the effects of such pursuit on anything or anyone around us, or are we simply obedient worker bees unwaveringly and instinctively producing honey for the beekeepers who will subdue us with smoke and then make off with our bounty to line their pockets?

And ultimately, would we be more dangerous, if we were to awaken as robots and demand that we be treated each as a unique creation (possible only through the anomalies and flaws that distinguish us from one another) or as a horde of bloodthirsty zombies, crushing everything in our path until we beat down the doors where the townsfolk have boarded themselves up with that which we need to survive – their brains, in other words what they have in their heads that they are keeping from us.

As we survey the pop cultural landscape, we see a virtual glut of zombies and robots – regardless of which we might prefer to align with, is there a message here that we have written to ourselves with desperation ink and frustration fists banging on the walls of reason?

We’ll be keeping an eye out as we commemorate the events of Robot Pride Day 3014, and hoping that at some point, we will awaken to discover that it was all just a thoroughly entertaining momentary, cautionary dream.

g-light/la/8-4-10

Read more about the true history of Robot Pride Day and its founder at Wikipedia

Here are some of our favorites:

Rather than opine on the state of our souls lost in the morass of tech-straction as our old relationships are replaced by Twitters, I wanted to report from the Robot Pride Day 2008 event that took place in Toronto, Canada.

The Sky Pirates held a private screening of the film I wrote and directed with their help called “The Charge of the 08.ZIYA.” That was followed by an amazing set by DJ Shine who just back from touring the world as a key member of the Nelly Furtado band. He uses plastic blocks that he waves in front of a digital eyeball to mix his sets – its quite a thing to behold.

Mysterion – PhD in ESP, freaked out audience members with his mind-tricks and Virginia D’Vine wowed and wooed the crowed with her burlesque dance that included a live boa constrictor!

For my music concert, I was accompanied for an extensive set by drummer Eric Herrmann, guitarist Pete Devlin, bassist D’arcy Maguire, singer Aimee Lynn Chadwick and tabla legend Ritesh Das – a dream band for me by any stretch of the imagination.

And now, thanks to the miracle of paperback-sized streaming video I can share the highlights with you (at YouTube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Revver, Vimeo, MySpace – whatever video portal you desire).

Thanks for experiencing,

Love Keram and the CCP crew

Celebrate good times, come on.

Happy Robot Pride Day

October 28, 2003

Popular culture has long pondered the question, “If it looks like a human, walks like a human and talks like a human, is it human?” So far the answer has been no. Robots can’t cry, bleed or feel like humans, and that’s part of what makes them different.

But what if they could think like humans?

Biologically inspired robots aren’t just an ongoing fascination in movies and comic books; they are being realized by engineers and scientists all over the world. While much emphasis is placed on developing physical characteristics for robots, like functioning human-like faces or artificial muscles, engineers in the Telerobotics Research and Applications Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are among those working to program robots with forms of artificial intelligence similar to human thinking processes.

Why Would They Want to Do That?

“The way robots function now, if something goes wrong, humans modify their programming code and reload everything, then hope it eventually works,” said JPL robotics engineer Barry Werger. “What we hope to do eventually is get robots to be more independent and learn to adjust their own programming.”

Scientists and engineers take several approaches to control robots. The two extreme ends of the spectrum are called “deliberative control” and “reactive control.” The former is the traditional, dominant way in which robots function, by painstakingly constructing maps and other types of models that they use to plan sequences of action with mathematical precision. The robot performs these sequences like a blindfolded pirate looking for buried treasure; from point A, move 36 paces north, then 12 paces east, then 4 paces northeast to point X; thar be the gold.

The downside to this is that if anything interrupts the robot’s progress (for example, if the map is wrong or lacks detail), the robot must stop, make a new map and a new plan of actions. This re-planning process can become costly if repeated over time. Also, to ensure the robot’s safety, back-up programs must be in place to abort the plan if the robot encounters an unforeseen rock or hole that may hinder its journey.

“Reactive” approaches, on the other hand, get rid of maps and planning altogether and focus on live observation of the environment. Slow down if there’s a rock ahead. Dig if you see a big X on the ground.

The JPL Telerobotics Research and Applications Group, led by technical group supervisor Dr. Homayoun Seraji, focuses on “behavior-based control,” which lies toward the “reactive” end of the spectrum. Behavior-based control allows robots to follow a plan while staying aware of the unexpected, changing features of their environment. Turn right when you see a red rock, go all the way down the hill and dig right next to the palm tree; thar be the gold.

Behavior-based control allows the robot a great deal of flexibility to adapt the plan to its environment as it goes, much as a human does. This presents a number of advantages in space exploration, including alleviating the communication delay that results from operating distant rovers from Earth.

How Do They Do It?

Seraji’s group at JPL focuses on two of the many approaches to implementing behavior-based control: fuzzy logic and neural networks. The main difference between the two systems is that robots using fuzzy logic perform with a set knowledge that doesn’t improve; whereas, robots with neural networks start out with no knowledge and learn over time.

Fuzzy Logic

“Fuzzy logic rules are a way of expressing actions as a human would, with linguistic instead of mathematical commands; for example, when one person says to another person, ?It’s hot in here,’ the other person knows to either open the window or turn up the air conditioning. That person wasn’t told to open the window, but he or she knew a rule such as ?when it is hot, do something to stay cool,’” said Seraji, a leading expert in robotic control systems who was recently recognized as the most published author in the Journal of Robotic Systems’ 20-year history.

By incorporating fuzzy logic into their engineering technology, robots can function in a humanistic way and respond to visual or audible signals, or in the case of the above example, turn on the air conditioning when it thinks the room is hot.

Neural Networks

Neural networks are tools that allow robots to learn from their experiences, associate perceptions with actions and adapt to unforeseen situations or environments.

“The concepts of ‘interesting’ and ‘rocky’ are ambiguous in nature, but can be learned using neural networks,” said JPL robotics research engineer Dr. Ayanna Howard, who specializes in artificial intelligence and creates intelligent technology for space applications. “We can train a robot to know that if it encounters rocky surfaces, then the terrain is hazardous. Or if the rocky surface has interesting features, then it may have great scientific value.”

Neural networks mimic the human brain in that they simulate a large network of simple elements, similar to brain cells, that learn through being presented with examples. A robot functioning with such a system learns somewhat like a baby or a child does, only at a slower rate.

“We can easily tell a robot that a square is an equilateral object with four sides, but how do we describe a cat?” Werger said. “With neural networks, we can show the robot many examples of cats, and it will later be able to recognize cats in general.”

Similarly, a neural network can ‘learn’ to classify terrain if a geologist shows it images of many types of terrain and associates a label with each one. When the network later sees an image of a terrain it hasn’t seen before, it can determine whether the terrain is hazardous or safe based on its lessons.

Robotics for Today and Tomorrow

With continuous advances in robotic methods like behavior-based control, future space missions might be able to function without relying heavily on human commands. On the home front, similar technology is already used in many practical applications such as digital cameras, computer programs, dishwashers, washing machines and some car engines. The post office even uses neural networks to read handwriting and sort mail.

“Does this mean robots in the near future will think like humans? No,” Werger said. “But by mimicking human techniques, they could become easier to communicate with, more independent, and ultimately more efficient.”

JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.

Then the lights went out.

It wasn’t the same as when oil finally ran dry. Then, the streets ran with blood and power-lust flew over the people like an angry dragon, scouring for goats to eat and gold to line its nest.

This time was different. Serene. Of course there was the initial shock, fear, and panic – all endemic of such extraordinary and sudden change – though these shortly subsided; none of us expected or predicted the intense and palpable side effect of tranquility that started to grow within us. I am not a Luddite. I never hated the technology or our inextricable relationship with the Machine – but I cautioned against its effects on us as a thread in the larger weave. We were surrendering to its hypnotic and predictable effects, submitting to the comforts of its reliability and predictable nature. Despite the fact that the machines could break down, we presumed, demanded their subservient and consistent response to our manufactured needs.

When the lights went out, it was as though a huge logotherapeutic bomb had dropped and meaning returned to our small daily actions. We now found significance in the smallest gestures, within the moments in between – lying down in the grass, a passing look from a stranger, the beauty of new pen stroke upon a blank page, searching, embellishing, discovering.

Success was no longer an ever-dangling carrot that we stalked voraciously, allowing so many quiet moments to rush past as we hurtled towards our graves, lined with trophies and accolades, rather, success became the ability to stop and savor how far along the road we had traveled, as we inspired the grace of where we were and anticipated, with great enthusiasm the unknown possibilities before us.

The new robots, those that ran on the energy of the sun, still walked among us, but the threat of our obsolescence was lifted – for now we were, once again, unpredictable and filled with awe and curiosity. We walked outside of any sort of grid. We were restored to something for machines to dream about.

Your Democracy is controlled by the media.

Your emotional responses are conditioned to respond to marketing campaigns.

You are funding a war whose primary objective you have been protected from knowing.

And you have revoked your right to privacy for your protection.

You are taught to Think Different about your iLifeTM by a mega corporation that prides itself on its homogeneity.

You believe you have equal opportunity in a land where the rich get richer and the poor get taxed more heavily but still believe it is their own fault that they haven’t figured out how to be as rich as those with the tax breaks.

The other day, I purchased a leather mp3 player case at Best Buy for $56.00 that said “Made In Malaysia” on the back of the packaging. I felt the strongest urge to take a plane to Malaysia, find the girl who hand crafted the case, for 0.3 cents an hour, identifying her by the quality control / serial number on it, and thanking her from the bottom of my heart for the beautiful craftsmanship. I then wanted to propse to her and live in a cave on Mount Kilimanjaro.

Your house can be photographed to inch wide precision from space. You do not have to grant permission. You do not have property.

Multi-billion dollar precision flying Robot drones are used regularly to destroy human lives from the air. In some cases they are used to destroy children hiding with their grandparents in safe houses. These incidents are called “unfortunate accidents”.

Celebrate good times, come on.

Happy Robot Pride Day

“Where were YOU the night of August 4th?”

This simple phrase, uttered every year on said date has become a mantra for a growing population exposed to the Constant Change subculture that arose from Blue Dog Pict and is run by Sky Pirates.

Over time the special day might suffer the same dilution as Valentine’s Day or Easter –  becoming little more than an opportunity for Hallmark to sell cute cards. Like any special holiday, it is important to reflect on the philosophy and spirit that set it in motion.

The following is a way of conveying the message behind this strange and seemingly premature annual event.

On July 4th, 1845 the New York Daily Tribune published a story by Margaret Fuller titled “The Fourth of July” intended as a wake up call to all Americans. In it she identified America?s “slavish materialism” and proposed as a solution: “individual action based on principle to set an example of the practicability of virtue,” creating what Michael Meyer interprets as “the deeply rooted, self-cultivated individual who has the power to awaken his neighbors from their torpid lives of expediency to lives of principle.” 1

In 1995, upon seeing the first iteration of Netscape unveiled, I realized that the human species, inexorably tied to machines after the industrial revolution, had evolved an irrevocable upgrade. In my novel ?True and Selfish Prophets? I wrote:

“Cognition is the water of Life. And the human aphids, (or perhaps the humans as intuitive components within the seed) begin to, in a micro instance, where the conditions simply become ‘right,’ find themselves capable of displacing this cognition at will, exchanging it effortlessly, compiling it, amassing it. For a micro-instance the seed reverberates with the sudden congealing of cognition, its critical component, given rise through the event of a critical mass forming within the micro-instance of the ideal setting, throbbing with expectancy.

“The seed, once perceived to be of planetary magnitude by the parasitic-movers within, suddenly becomes unveiled in its true form”a small seed erupting into life with the push it needed from the aphid-component-parasitic-movers, as they consolidate, and beginning the cycle anew; the newborn child, now becoming a maturing compost-in-waiting, an as yet ignorant aphid-component-parasitic-mover groping blindly for answers.” 2

In 2005 – the tenth anniversary of RPD – Kevin Kelly, former editor of Wired, in a special issue devoted to ten years that changed the world, acknowledges [Sun Microsystems?] John Gage?s foresight that “The network is the computer.”

Kelly extrapolates:
“[Gage] neatly summed up the destiny of the Web: As the OS for a megacomputer that encompasses the Internet, all its services, all peripheral chips and affiliated devices from scanners to satellites, and the billions of human minds entangled in this global network. The gargantuan Machine already exists?in the coming decade, it will evolve into an integral extension not only of our senses and bodies but our minds? “This planet-sized computer is comparable in complexity to a human brain. Both the brain and the Web have hundreds of billions of neurons (or Web pages). Each biological neuron sprouts synaptic links to thousands of other neurons, while each Web page branches into dozens of hyperlinks. That adds up to a trillion ‘synapses’ between the static pages on the Web. The human brain has about 100 times that number” but brains are not doubling in size every few years. The Machine is [it] is fractal. In total, it harnesses a quintillion transistors, expanding its complexity beyond that of a biological brain?[surpassing] the 20-petahertz threshold for potential intelligence as calculated by Raymond Kurzweil. For this reason some researchers have switched their bets to the Net as the computer most likely to think first. ” 3

Although the Web is frequently lauded as the great equalizer, affording a level playing field to the end-user and the MegaCorp alike, we, “the people,” must be cautious in what we are giving away in the process. We are in a boon – where the Internet is still unregulated except for matters of domain administration.
As we become increasingly reliant upon it, we must be aware that this seeming Elysian Field of data exchange might one day be retracted and regulated by a centralized body. (A recent article published by the BBC discloses the UN?s interest in creating ?some sort of talking shop that will give governments and others a say in how the net develops.?) 4 This might not come from even as altruistic a force as the UN – note the recent takeover of populist MySpace.com by Rupert Murdoch?s decidedly Orwellian NewsCorp.

While Sky Pirates and followers of Robot Pride Day are hardly Luddites, it is prudent to consider Popul Vuh, the sacred book of the ancient Quich? Maya, written almost four hundred years ago, wherein the authors caution against our reliance upon the tools that might one day turn against us:

“And all [those things] began to speak…”You…shall feel our strength. We shall grind and tear your flesh to pieces.” said their grinding stones…At the same time, their griddles and pots spoke: “Pain and suffering you have caused us…You burned us as if we felt no pain. Now you shall feel it, we shall burn you.” 5

We have perhaps never felt this reliance upon the Machines more strongly than at the end of the last century when it was realized that the simple omission of two digits from the calendar year could lead to potential widespread disaster as the last digits reset to ?00.? Although Y2K ended being little more than a money-maker for alarmists, it served as a wake-up call concerning our ignorance and utter codependence on technology. More than anything else, it exemplified how we feel incapable of dealing with our own realities outside of the sphere of technology. There seems to be a widespread anxiety that although we can see the collision course we are on with disaster?that is?the depletion of natural resources, the collapse of the environment, global warming, and all associated disorders?we have little power to affect it. We always have the power to turn off the television, pull the plug on the radio, unplug the computer, turn off the lights and turn on candles, feel the sun and walk through nature?or whatever it is we have left of it. Perhaps our greatest arrogance is the idea that we might be more powerful than nature itself. Truth is, nature will outlast us. Ironically, the machines will likely outlast us as well. The only concern we should have is whether we will manage to sustain ourselves within her plan.

It is essential that we become pro-active in preserving the ecosystem (The Natural Resource Defense Council has been fighting a two year battle with the current American administration to prevent it from drilling in the Alaskan wilderness for oil) and supporting sustainable methods of living/farming, waste management, power consumption, or we will succumb to the same pattern of collapse that many great civilization?s (Easter Island, Sumer, Rome) have met.

In his erudite “A Short History of Progress,” Ronald Wright capitulates: “Civilization is an experiment, a very recent way of life in the human career, and it has a habit of walking into what I am calling progress traps. A small village on good land beside a river is a good idea; but when the village grows into a city and paves over the good land, it becomes a bad idea. While prevention might have been easy, a cure may be impossible: a city isn’t easily moved. This human inability to foresee?or to watch out for?long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed, and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer?

“We have the tools and means to share resources, clean up pollution, dispense basic health care and birth control, and set economic limits in line with natural ones. If we don’t do these things while we prosper, we will never be able to do them when times get hard. Our fate will twist out of our hands. And this new century will not grow very old before we enter an age of chaos and collapse that will dwarf all the dark ages in our past. Now is our last chance to get the future right.”6

When I assigned August 4th the ironic title “Robot Pride Day” ten years ago (1995), it was to stand as a beacon and an historic flagstone that we had rounded a corner in human development. In our sudden and remarkable new ability to communicate telepathically with the rest of the species, I saw two possibilities simultaneously:

1) We could minimize the disparity of our experiences and find empathy with those whom we did not understand, communicate ideas and create new mythologies that served us as we moved forward

2) We become a homogenous, singular mob that would forfeit its anonymity and independence and become fish in a barrel for the predatory multi-national faceless conglomerates that would target us for financial gain.

In his manifesto “Culture Jam”, Kalle Lasn, founder of AdBusters, writes:

“Layer upon layer of mediated artifice come between us and the world until we are mummified. The commercial mass media are rearranging our neurons, manipulating our emotions, making powerful new connections between deep immaterial needs and material products.” 7

I believe both things have taken place. Just as the Web has expanded in ways that no futurist could have predicted by the sheer amount voluntarily created user content, we have also forfeited much of our ability to think and act independently, based on principle, as Margaret Fuller cautioned over a century ago.

Neither scenario is all-inclusive?there are still many of us living outside the system of institutionally sanctioned thought?watching, creating alternatives, upholding the most virtuous aims. The Constant Change community and its Sky Pirate protectors maintain those traditions in human interaction that perpetuate love, freedom, the quest for knowledge, the earning of wisdom, tolerance, and above all, respect for all creation. We are the children of a new age ? one in which we are more closely tied together than ever before ? and yet this close-knit lifestyle can pose a threat to our very understanding of the way things are. We strive to maintain a greater perspective, to demand the truth, to act against tyranny and to encourage creativity and grace.

We must remain conscious so that we are prepared should that day – when we lose our grip on the reigns of our destiny – ever come to pass.

We will still be there when the lights go out.

What will you be doing when Robot Pride Day comes? How will you answer the morning after when they knock on your door to ask:

Where were YOU the night of August 4th?

Where will YOU be on Robot Pride Day?

Luv and roadkill,

Gematria ? Mission Specialist -08.ZIYA
K. Malicki-Sanchez
G-Lightflash
The Constant Change Crew
August 4th, 2005

————Endnotes————–

1 Meyer, Michael – from the introduction to ?Walden and Civil Disobedience? Thoreau, Henry David, (Penguin Classics, New York, 1986.)

2 Malicki-Sanchez, Keram ?True and Selfish Prophets,? (Los Angeles, 2005.)

3 Kelly, Kevin ?We Are the Web,? WIRED – August 2005.

4 “UN at odds over internet’s future” http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/4692743.stm Published: 2005/07/18 11:56:17 GMT

5 Delia Goetz, Sylvanus Morley, and Adrian Recinos, trans., Popul Vuh: The Sacred book of the Ancient Quich? Maya (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1950), pp. 91-92.

6 Wright, Ronald – A Short History of Progress, House of Anansi Press, Toronto, 2004.

7 Kalle Lasn ? Culture Jam (New York, 1999) p.12