Adapting a novel into film or TV requires a ton of decisions. What parts of the book are most important? How can we reduce the cast size, or the number of locations, or do things practically or with effects to meet a budget. Things have to change for the new medium. But there are a few things that should never change.
The most important of these is your main character. There are a ton of reasons…
The Prisoner’s Dilemma is one of game theory’s all-time great puzzles. It goes like this: Two men are taken into custody for a crime. The cops have a little evidence, enough to put both men away for a few years, but if they had more to go on, the punishment could be a lot more severe. The two men in the holding cell know the cops won’t have much if they both keep quiet. All the crooks have to do…
My first game console was Pong, which was THE first game console. Pong was created a few years before I was born, but by the time I could twiddle a knob it was the only thing in the household to jack into a TV. From there, we had an Atari, ColecoVision, my dad’s Apple IIe, and then the NES.
It felt like the videogame industry was five guys with pocket protectors rummaging in a Radioshack to see…
Apple just announced the premiere date for Silo season three! The first of ten episodes drops on July 3rd. This is, by far, the best season yet. You all aren’t ready.
I dream about space a lot. I was obsessed with NASA as a kid. I used to build model rockets and see how far I could shot them into the sky. My obsession with the cosmos in high school is the reason I majored in physics in college. Han Solo was my spirit animal — all I ever wanted was to explore the stars with my beater of a starship and a few friends.
The closest I could get to this was living…
The first time I flew overseas was in high school. My mom chaperoned a school trip to England and France. We did all the tourist things, saw some cathedrals, ate strange food, walked around museums, had too much to drink for the first time. Traveling to Europe felt exotic. The only other times I’d left the country were trips to the Bahamas and a cruise that took us through Jamaica and…
I grew up in the deep south, the buckle of the Bible Belt. My dad was a farmer and my mom was a schoolteacher. Everyone I knew was a Republican.
I was taught to pray so early that I don’t remember it happening. I just always said a prayer with my mom when I got in bed “Now I lay me down to sleep…” A terrifying nursery rhyme about the possibility of not waking up and hoping God would take my…
A lot to unpack here, but first let me stress the difference between the AI investment bubble bursting, the AI hype train derailing, and any chance that AI is going to disappear from your life. All three are big questions and each has a very different answer. Working backwards:
AI is not going to disappear from your life. In fact, you’re gonna have a difficult time avoiding it. Software…
A year ago, I wrote a piece about the asymptotic nature of intelligence and the limits of AI. It’s long been my contention that intelligence is not boundless; it doesn’t shoot up an infinite curve to the stratosphere. Rather, there is an upper limit on what can be known and the inferences that can be made based on what’s known. That is: a complete understanding of the universe may theoretically…
