What are “bots”?

The bot is the larva of a bot fly, which is a parasite, but that is not the “bot” I want to talk about.

“Bot” is a shortened form of “robot”, and that is the bot we should talk about.

As I sit at this computer typing and searching sites for information, I am the start of a bot. As I sit here wishing I could type faster, reach more sites and retrieve more information, I am wishing I had a robot to do these tasks quicker and more efficiently. I am wishing for a bot.

That bot would be a version of me. It is software to do something for me. It is a program written by people to do things people want to do quicker and more efficiently.

You want to buy all the good seats to the upcoming concert, but you can’t type fast enough to accomplish the task. You write a software program for your computer to visit the theatre site and buy the best ticket, and visit the site a nanosecond later and buy the best ticket remaining, and visit and visit, and buy and buy. In no time, you have purchased all the best tickets. I should say your robot software, your bot, has purchased all the best tickets. Enjoy the show.

Internet bots or “Interbots” are programs that visit and do, visit and do. Sometimes they do good, and sometimes they do bad.

When the stock markets crashed recently, some blamed hoards of frightened Interbots for selling stocks as prices fell, and selling more and more, as prices fell more and more. A crescendo of cascading bot pac men chewed and chomped value from a perfectly good market — tumbling the tapes to new depths.

Bots can do good. Some bots protect the virtual verbiage on the net by removing words of little value. Other bots retrieve valuable bits and pieces of widely scattered information to progress research to improve the human condition.

Bots themselves are not things. They are an activity launched from a solid computer located somewhere. Bots are talk spoken over the Internet. Bots do have the properties of communication, but they do not have standard dimensions. A bot has no discernible height and weight. Yes, they are similar to speech, but they do not have a form and mass you can readily grasp. They are the messages you send when you type on your keyboard, just many many more moving much much faster.

Nanoparticles, on the other hand, are true particles. They are vey small. A “nanometer” is one billionth of a meter. That is very small.

Nanoparticles are real particles for real things. They can be nanobots when they interact with the things they are designed to react to – like a thermostat reacts to a change in temperature. In computers, nanobots can be micro-micro switches that read and react to digital signals.

In Michael Crichton’s book “Prey”, nanobots swarm together and evolve into an artificial intelligence (AI). Those nanoparticles infect and control the humans who designed and made the small things. That is a far-fetched thought from the far-fetched creator of “Jurassic Park.” Most nanoparticles are helpful coatings and constituents of things we use everyday. They improve our lives. Still, they are bots, and we all know bots are changing the Internet.

Interbots and nanobots are bits and pieces that have affected where we come from, how we live and where we’re going.

You may say it’s just a game and not a big thing, but the nano’s often leave pain, and sometimes nothing seems to ever go right.

“Bits and Pieces” was released by The Dave Clark 5 in 1964. The song climbed to #1 in Canada and Ireland, #2 in the UK and Australia, and #4 in the Netherlands and USA. One writer referred to the tune as rocky, raucous and meaningless. Nonetheless, 1964 seems to have been a good year for the meaning of life and the new beginnings of the robots.

Grandpa Jim

What is life?

Helen Keller lost her sight and sound at 19 months of age. A baby, she was deaf and blind. Her parents sought the help of Alexander Graham Bell. Alexander was working with deaf children. He referred them to the Perkins Institute of the Blind and a young instructor, Anne Sullivan.

Helen did not understand that every object had a unique word identifying it. Anne Sullivan would place an object in one of Helen’s hands and trace the letters of its name in Helen’s other hand. Helen Keller did not understand and would hurl the objects away.

One day, Anne Sullivan ran cool water over one of Helen’s hands while tracing “w a t e r” on the other hand. It was then Helen understood the motions symbolized the idea of water. Freed of the frustration of a dark and lonely silence, Helen Keller shed a tear of real joy.

Years later, Helen Keller would say: “Life is a daring adventure or nothing.”

The young girl came from nothing. There were no sounds or sights. Now, every touch was an adventure, and she cried for joy. She would not go back. In 1904, she graduated from Radcliffe College, the first deaf person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The deaf-blind girl went on to become a famous writer, speaker and activist known the world over.

Carl Sandburg was hailed by President Lyndon B. Johnson as “the voice of America.” A writer and poet, his words and his poems hold the joys and tears of a young nation. Of the motions and signs of the passing years, Carl Sandburg shared this: “Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.”

Sometimes you weep, and sometimes your picture is in the paper. That happened for Carl Sandburg on February 12, 1959, when he addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. His was a life well lived, full of tears, joys and media attention.

Ogden Nash, the lyricist and witticist, said of another person in the limelight of the media’s kinder attentions: “Her picture’s in the paper now, and life’s a piece of cake.” Life is a piece of cake. It’s pretty fantastic. Now, every minute seems to require so little effort. Everything is so easy.

It can be that way. As some have felt, it may not be so easy. Life may not always be a piece of cake.

Forrest Gump was not very smart as smart is; but, as his mother taught him, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Forrest did not do stupid. He did quite extraordinary in his quiet, humble, unsuspecting, determined and accepting way.

The movie “Forrest Gump” was the Best Picture in 1994 and Tom Hanks was Best Actor for his portrayal of Forrest. The movie starts and ends with Forrest sitting on a bench at a bus stop with a box of chocolates in his lap telling those who sit down beside him the story of “Forrest Gump.” With the remembrances, there is always the offer of a chocolate, accompanied by this line: “Mama always said life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”

Life is like a box of chocolates. In Forrest’s life, Jenny was the love of his life. She was the sweetest touch, the happiest tear and the very best birthday surprise. Jenny dies young. Forrest, beside her grave, wonders if life has a meaning or purpose, or if it is entirely random? Forrest is truly extraordinary. He has a feeling that, somehow, “maybe it’s both.”

An adventure or nothing,

An onion and a tear,

A picture in the paper,

A piece of cake,

Meaning or purpose,

Or random as a box of chocolates?

I’m with Forrest.

In some mysterious way, maybe it is all of the above.

I think that’s what he learned from his Jenny.

Trees swaying in the summer breeze.

Standing, talking, touching.

Dreaming of her.

Grandpa Jim

There is something oddly comforting about cracked concrete.

What is concrete?

Concrete is the whitish grayish hardish stuff you walk upon, reside under and are surrounded by. In composition, concrete is a slurried mixture of water, aggregate (small rocks and sand) and a glue of various chemicals (the “concrete” from which the name derives) which, when dried, hardened and cured, is of the strong and solid form of a seasoned weight lifter. Much of our modern world leans on and is leant its strength by concrete.

Not always so pervasive, concrete aged slowly.

The first concrete held water. The ancient Nabataeans (Bedouins) of now southern Syria and northern Jordan discovered how to make a concrete some 8,500 years ago (6500 BC). That first use was limited. The desert dwellers constructed underground cisterns of a waterproof concrete of their special making, and they kept the location of their water supplies a company secret. Those hidden basins may be the one big reason the Nabataea traders thrived in the dry lands while others and their wares faded and were lost from view.

The Greeks elevated the process some 3,300 years ago (1400 to 1200 BC), employing concrete in their royal palaces and other edifices of note.

The Romans took the whole concrete thing to a new level. From 300 BC to almost 500 AD (a span approaching 800 years), Roman engineers went on a worldwide concrete-building spree: roads, aqueducts, bridges, huts, houses and hotels. You name it, the Roman built it with concrete. The Coliseum in Rome is largely concrete, and the dome of the Pantheon in Rome is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome on the planet — if not in the solar system and the space beyond.

Then, as concrete does, it cracked and started to come apart.

With the fall of the Roman Empire around 476 AD, the technological know-how to mix, make and manage concrete was lost to the Dark Ages.

And, during that time, the cracks begin to travel.

A crack is a curious thing. It is “a line on the surface of something along which that something splits without breaking into separate parts.” With time and inattention, the line separates farther and becomes an empty space. Without the knowledge to repair itself, things become “Lost in Space” as the Robinson Family did in their first TV episode in 1965. Space separates. A gap appears and widens to a hole.

From line to space to gap to hole, our world fragmented and lost its original identity. Many things crumbled and were lost. Yet, the human spirit is a resilient thing.

Politicians appeared.

On stumps, they pointed and argued: “Are all cracks connected?” “Is there a conspiracy of cracks and dirt?” they queried. It was an election year. “What’s around the corner?” they warned. And the new old tune that plays so well: “Change is needed!”

It was, and it was a long-winded race.

Until finally, about the mid-18^th Century, concrete was rediscovered and reapplied. Our world hardened and was revitalized.

Many blame the politicians for many things; but they, for their part, did their part. They kept the dialogue going through the worst of times; and, in that way, it was perhaps the best of times. We waited, and for our wait, there was the return of concrete.

Yes, there is something oddly comforting about cracked concrete.

Even, if not especially, in an election year.

Grandpa Jim

“The Book Thief” is a 2013 film that follows a young German girl from the borrowing of her first book at the graveside of her little brother, through her formative years in a backwater German town whose citizens fight a minute-to-minute battle to survive World War II, to the start of the writing of her first book in the basement and the loss of her family upstairs and her closest friend next door.

My favorite line is a response voiced twice in the movie: “It wasn’t always mine.”

Her new Papa asks her if the “The Gravedigger’s Manual” (the first of the line of her borrowed books) “is yours?” Later, the young girl asks the refugee hiding in the house if the book he carries is “your book?”

On each occasion, the response is the same: “It wasn’t always mine.”

It wasn’t always mine. Two books. Borrowed.

Two thieves?

Books have been with us for a long time.

The definition of “book” on the Internet is: “A written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers.” Today, we have e-books you can read on hand-held, pad and tablet. We have recorded books for playback and listen-up. None of these meet the Internet “bound” definition, but they are nonetheless “books” and equally enjoyed for the boundless stories they present.

The first book ever written may be “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” That book didn’t meet the Internet definition either. King Gilgamesh of Sumeria and his amazing adventures were recorded in cuneiform writing (chiseled wedge-shaped characters) on clay tablets. The oldest fragments of this first written story date to around 2100 BC — roughly 4,000 years ago.

That was the first “book.”

Who was the first “thief?”

By the way, a “thief” is defined on the Internet as “a person who steals another person’s property, especially by stealth and without using force or violence.” Today, most thieves, unlike many books, would probably slip within the Internet definition.

The first thief is in the book most often guessed to be the oldest book. The Bible is not the oldest written story – though many believe it to be. The Bible is old. The oldest section of the Bible is the book of Job. The sufferings of Job were likely scribed around 600 BC – some 2,700 years back from the future.

Retuning to the Bible and the first theft, in the first book of Genesis, the third chapter, the text reads: “She took some and ate it.” That was Eve, the wife of Adam, plucking fruit, at the Serpent’s suggestion, from the forbidden tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden. “She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” There you have it! The first theft was committed by Adam and Eve as co-perpetrators.

Though it was recorded later in time in the book of Genesis than the earlier writing of the Gilgamesh saga, the story in the Garden had to have occurred at an earlier point. Adam and Eve were Gilgamesh’s first parents and necessarily older — if not much older.

Interestingly, the scene of the first crime, the Garden of Eden, may be at the same general location as that of the first book. Gilgamesh’s Sumeria and Eve’s Eden are thought to have been situated somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is modern-day Iraq. There, King Gilgamesh ruled in the City of Uruk around 2700 BC (almost 5,000 years ago), long before his story was first chiseled into clay. This suggests that the written story was itself pilfered from a much older oral tradition, as was the theft of Adam and Eve, which necessarily was taken from an even older oral tradition.

We see, then, that the first story in the first written book wasn’t always the author’s: The writer borrowed Gilgamesh from another more ancient source.

We see, also, that the first thing taken in the oldest story wasn’t always the thieves’: Adam and Eve borrowed the fruit from another more ancient source. In turn, we see that the story of the theft was itself appropriated from an older tale of another’s first telling.

Like the borrowings of the little girl and the refugee in “The Book Thief,” the story of the first book and the story of the first theft appear to have similar origins: “It wasn’t always mine.”

In all the cases, the response is to something borrowed from someone else that by the act of the borrowing changed completely the course of things to come.

Perhaps, there is little that is truly ours, most is borrowed, what we have wasn’t always mine, and by the actions of our transfer we have become involved and, to some extent, accountable for what did and will happen?

Grandpa Jim