So there I am trying to read things I can’t possible read and I stumble across a link to Daniel H. Wilson’s How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion.

From th Amazon book description:

How do you spot a robot mimicking a human? How do you recognize and then deactivate a rebel servant robot? How do you escape a murderous “smart” house, or evade a swarm of marauding robotic flies? In this dryly hilarious survival guide, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson teaches worried humans the keys to quashing a robot mutiny.

And this, from Publishers Weekly:

In this uncomfortably humorous survival guide, Wilson, a Ph.D. candidate at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, reminds readers that “any machine could rebel, from a toaster to a Terminator,” and though the forms our future robot enemies may take are manifold, they each have exploitable weaknesses that, fortuitously, match our natural human strengths. So, if a two-legged android gives chase, seek out a body of water, as “most robots will sink in water or mud and fall through ice.” It also may be a good idea to carry around a pair of welder’s goggles, as lasers will likely be robot attackers’ weapons of choice, and even a weak laser can cause blindness. Options for fighting back are plentiful, though not everyone will be relieved to learn the standard kitchen microwave can be retrofitted into a radiation gun that can destroy electronics and “cook human flesh.” (Instructions for such a project are not included.) Humorous and informative-Wilson drops robotics history trivia nuggets and includes brief descriptions of current robot research-this nifty little guide to surviving the inevitable robot apocalypse may have you reconsidering purchasing that “smart” (read: insidious) refrigerator.

This is just the sort of book my nephew Justin needs. He’s already an expert on zombies thanks to The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. Hrmm. Perhaps he’ll also need The Government Manual for New Superheroes?

tags: daniel h wilson, daniel wilson, how to survive a robot uprising, humorous, insidious, phd candidate, rebel robots, rebellion, revolution, robot rebellion, robot research, robotics history, robotics institute, robot revolution, robots, survival, survival guide, wilson

Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post wonders if PowerPoint is a killing app. She’s not the first to note that NASA administrators make decisions — sometimes fatal decisions — on the basis of PowerPoint presentations that mask or misrepresent details. I wrote about Edward Tufte’s Cognitive Style of PowerPoint essay in a previous post. Marcus doesn’t add to many new points, but the column is a sign that an anti-PowerPoint movement may be growing. Here are three paragraphs:

[T]he insidious influence of PowerPoint goes beyond the way it frustrates scientific analysis. The deeper problem with the PowerPointing of America — the PowerPointing of the planet, actually — is that the program tends to flatten the most complex, subtle, even beautiful, ideas into tedious, bullet-pointed bureaucratese.

The most disturbing development in the world of PowerPoint is its migration to the schools — like sex and drugs, at earlier and earlier ages. Now we have second-graders being tutored in PowerPoint. No matter that students who compose at the keyboard already spend more energy perfecting their fonts than polishing their sentences — PowerPoint dispenses with the need to write any sentences at all. Perhaps the politicians who are so worked up about the ill effects of violent video games should turn their attention to PowerPoint instead.

In the meantime, Tufte, who’s now doing consulting work for NASA, has a modest proposal for its new administrator: Ban the use of PowerPoint. Sounds good to me. After all, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the perils of PowerPoint.

tags: cognitive style, dyn, edward tufte, insidious, killer app, nasa, nasa administrators, perils, powerpoint presentations, powerpoint sounds, rocket scientist, ruth marcus