DIGRESSION: kon-tiki and real ai

From: Not Quite Invisible (luminousegg@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat May 05 2001 - 09:34:17 MDT


Hi all,

Yesterday Onar [a Webmind co-founder who happens to be
from Norway] & I met with the Norwegian VC firm
Venturos, and it went about as well as such a first
meeting can possibly go. They stated from the outset,
that they do not invest in business plans, they invest
in great technologies with great people behind them.
And we seemed to hit it off on a personal level. Of
course, I am now far too jaded to get really excited
about a great first meeting, but nevertheless it is a
lot better than a BAD first meeting.... They are
interested in helping us to apply our technology to
the oil industry....

I spent today wandering around Oslo (Onar flew home to
Stavanger), which in spite of being a very boring city
for a major European capital, has enough interesting
stuff for a full day of tourism. A very active club
scene at night as well, heavily slanted toward house
music. The entire Norwegian youth population also
seems oddly obsessed with kebabs. After hours of
drinking and dancing, they all gather around the kebab
places and about 3 or 4 AM and stuff themselves with
greasy meat...

Aside from the Vigland sculpture park, which was
pretty amazing, the highlight of the day's touring was
the Kon Tiki museum. (Kon Tiki was the balsa raft on
which Thor Heyerdahl traveled from South America to
Polynesia in 1947, to prove his theory that Polynesia
could have been settled by Incas way back when, even
though the Incas only had primitive rafts and not
sophisticated boats.)

For some reason, sailing across the Pacific on a balsa
raft reminded me of building real AI using
contemporary computer software and hardware.... Not
impossible by any means ... from a certain point of
view even straightforward ... but a damn sight harder
than doing the same thing with more advanced
technology... (OK, so I`m twisted; I see the whole
world through Webmind-tinted glasses ;p)

ben

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