#18 the heart & the chip

robots, a new book, sandworms, cats, and a very brief writing tip.

1. I didn't kill my neighbor's cats. He asked me if I could feed them while he and his family were away, and I said sure, but never followed up. He didn't either, but when I realized we hadn't connected a few days later, I asked, with more than a little trepidation, quietly terrified he'd been counting on me, if he'd found someone else to care for his felines. Thankfully, his mother had taken on the assignment. Also, he builds robots, which brings me to the next thing...

2. I have a new book out today. Today? Yes, today! THE HEART AND THE CHIP is a cautiously optimistic vision of our robot-enhanced future, and the main author and source of all these big ideas is Daniela Rus, Director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. (I'm the coauthor/ghost.) She has won all the awards for smartness and academic success. Click on the cover for more details:

We first met in 2005, when I was writing a cover story for Popular Science about the robots of the future. Every researcher I met said I had to talk to her if I was writing on that subject. In that first meeting, we talked about her tiny modular robots that could move around and link up with each other to create new shapes, but she had a whole bunch of other projects happening, too. Over the next 15+ years, anytime I was writing about robots or AI, I'd ask Daniela what she was up to, and she always had something fascinating in the works. Self-driving cars and boats, ingestible robotic surgeons, robotic fish, etc.

This book is her effort to share these ideas with a wider audience, and help people see and understand both the possibilities and the dangers. I'm particularly fond of the how-it-all-works sections in the middle. If you'd like a sneak peek, Technology Review is running a great excerpt here.

3. Why did I lead with the cats? Because you have to hook a reader at the start of any story. If I'd led with "I have a new book," then you'd roll your eyes, and scroll to another email, or maybe even delete the post because you find me intolerable.

4. Basho said you have to go to the pine. In The Narrow Road to the Deep North, the great Japanese poet talks about how you need to get up close if you want to write about something well. This is a pretty well-known rule. If you're going to set a story in Venice, find a way to get to Venice! But I love when old rules are framed in new ways. Go to the pine. That’s good, right?

5. The Dune sequel is fantastic. I do hope they make a third one, but what I'd really love is to see the fourth book turned into a film. At the end of the third book, Children of Dune, one of the main characters merges with a baby sandworm and becomes a kind of worm-enhanced superhero and announces his plans to rule for 3,000 years. It's a little weird. But not as weird as the fourth book, which takes place 3,000 years later and stars that same character as an oddly lovestruck emperor in a giant worm's body with tiny little atrophied hands. Now that would be something to behold on screen!

6. Jayson Tatum still talks to the refs too much. He's a basketball player. A very good one. But whenever he thinks he is fouled, and doesn't get the call, he completely takes himself out of the play and complains while the other team runs down and scores. As a recently retired youth basketball coach with a 3-14 career record, I find this annoying.

7. I'm hitting the storytelling road again. Not quite seanchai style, moving from house to house and trading stories for a bed and a meal, but the modern, school-visiting version. I haven't been doing this as much in recent years because of my writing workload, and I'm looking forward to getting out there again. Speaking in front of kids, and getting them interested in reading and writing, is one of the joys of my job.

8. "You don't have a job, Mone." Fair point. I've worked for myself for 19 years now. But it's still a job, even though I set the hours, right?

9. The Heart and the Chip is an audiobook, too. I do hope you get a chance to read or listen to the book. Daniela’s work is completely fascinating, and I think she might change the way you look at the world and the positive potential of intelligent machines.

Thanks for reading, and please click the little heart if you liked this post.