B.F. Skinner, American psychologist, behaviorist, inventor, and social philosopher.
Skinner went on to say, “The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.”
Skinner died in 1990. I wonder what he would have to say about today’s “thinking machines.”
Written for Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt.
Even after reading Jim’s Friday Faithfuls post about the Ghost in the Machine, I still wasn’t sure if I was going to respond to the prompt because I was at a loss for what to write, since Jim covered the topic so thoroughly. But then I noticed that he said we could respond by writing about the distinction between a brain and a mind. And I thought, I can do that.
The brain is tangible. It’s the physical organ in our skulls. The mind is intangible. It’s the set of thoughts, feelings, memories, awareness, and choices that arise from or operate through it.
For those of us who have a basic understanding of computers, think of the brain as the “hardware” and the mind as the experience or “software” that comes from it.
They are obviously interconnected, but they serve distinct roles in human experience.
But you all know this already. My biggest personal concern these days vis-à-vis the brain and the mind is that, as an old fart, my physical body ain’t what it used to be. My bones are more brittle. My muscles don’t have the same tone or strength they once did. And my brain — my “hardware” — doesn’t seem to work as well as it once did. And I am concerned about for how much longer my “software” is going to continue to be fully functional as a result.
The likelihood of someone my age starting to experience dementia or Alzheimer’s increases with each birthday. These are diseases of the physical brain. Alzheimer’s damages brain cells and networks, and that damage shows up as changes in mental life and daily functioning. Between dementia and Alzheimer’s, their progression causes deterioration in the mind’s functions, such as difficulty remembering things, difficulty thinking clearly, and difficulty exercising good judgment. These brain diseases can also affect mood and awareness.
Every time I walk into a room and forget why, or see an actor on TV whom I recognize but can’t remember his or her name or where I have seen them, or forget the name of a street I have driven on hundreds of times, it gives me pause.
I worry that I am slowly slipsliding away, and that, at some point in my not-so-distant future, I will be the ghost in my own machine.
Image: Pinterest.
For his Writer’s Workshop this week, John Holton gives us six writing prompts and we are tasked with choosing one of the prompts (or as many as we want) and writing a post that addresses that prompt (or those prompts). I am responding to three of the prompts this week:
A few years ago, outside of science fiction, I didn’t know much about artificial intelligence (AI), but these days you can’t escape reading about or hearing about it.
To answer John’s question for this prompt, yes, I have, indeed, used AI on my blog.
I have experimented with AI text generation and have posted some examples on my blog with the clear explanation that the content was generated using AI, and not by me.
And I have used AI search engines to do research when I am writing something for my blog where I need more information or expertise, but I have never posted anything on my blog that was exclusively created using artificial intelligence and tried to pass it off as my own work.
On the other hand, where I find value with AI is when I use it to conjure up custom-tailored images to illustrate my posts.
Using text, I describe to these image-generating apps — Copilot, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Leonardo, and ideogram to name a few — what I want the images to depict, and in a matter of seconds these apps produce images for my posts.
Interestingly enough, I just read an article yesterday that claimed artificial intelligence systems can now convince most readers that they are human.
Two large language models (LLMs) have passed the Turing test, which determines if a machine can “show the same intelligence as a human being.”
This significant development in AI is troubling for those of us in the blogging community — and, in my opinion, for the world writ large — because anthropomorphizing LLMs can lead to deception and raise questions about what’s real and what isn’t, not only in the words we read and the images we see, but in one-on-one online interactions with those who we believe to be human, but may just be highly sophisticated cyber robots.
Note that the image at the top of this post was not generated using an AI app, at least not by me. I found this image at researcherstore.com.
Tippa, the old family typewriter had been waiting so long that even its dust had grown bored.
It sat on the corner of the family desk — once a throne, now a relic — watching fingers dance across glowing screens with a speed and ease it could never match. The computers hummed. The smartphones chirped. And the typewriter, well, it sighed, in that metallic way only old machines can.
Then one day Tippa heard the lady of the house say to her husband, “We should get rid of that old typewriter. Nobody uses it anymore and it’s just collecting dust.”
“Okay, sweetheart,” Tippa heard her husband say, I’ll take that old Machine to the pawn shop tomorrow.”
But dependable old Tippa wasn’t ready to panic or be forgotten.
That evening, after dinner, when the house had settled into its usual constellation of blue-lit faces, Tippa felt a spark of rebellion. A ribbon still clung to life inside it, faint but determined. Its keys, though stiff, remembered the rhythm of stories. And so, gathering every ounce of stubborn pride left in its steel frame, it nudged its own carriage forward.
Click.
Clack.
The family didn’t notice at first. Why would they? Machines didn’t speak unless spoken to.
But then Tippa kept going, each keystroke a tiny declaration of existence. It chose its words carefully—something bold, something modern, something that might make them look up.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The phrase sat there on the page like a dare.
The youngest daughter walked by first. She paused. “Mom? Did you type this?”
The mother shook her head. “I haven’t touched that thing in years.”
The father wandered over next, curiosity tugging him closer. He ran a hand across the keys, surprised to feel warmth, as if the machine had a pulse.
“Maybe we should use it again,” he murmured. “Just for fun.”
Tippa nearly rattled with joy.
Over the next week, the family began leaving it little offerings — fresh paper, a new ribbon, even a gentle dusting. The kids typed silly notes. The parents wrote lists and letters. And every time a finger pressed a key, Tippa felt something it hadn’t felt in decades: Purpose.
Tippa never had to type another message on its own. It didn’t need to. It had spoken once, loudly enough to be heard.
And now, at last, Tippa was no longer lonely.
Written for Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge. Photo credit: Markus Winkler @ unsplash.
Written for the Sunday Six Sentence Story prompt from Girlie on the Edge, where the prompt word is “steam.”
The copper gears of Arthur’s mechanical heart ground to a brutal, shuddering halt.
He had spent the last seventy years endlessly pacing the cobblestone streets, fulfilling his programming without a single moment of rest.
Now, standing beneath the dim glow of a gas lamp, he felt the internal fire that fueled his limbs finally begin to cool.
He reached for the brass valve on his chest, hoping to coax one last burst of pressure from his rusting boiler.
Instead, a faint, wispy hiss escaped into the damp evening air, carrying with it the final remnants of his momentum.
His heavy iron eyelids fluttered, closing forever as his frame froze in place, utterly out of steam.
Image conjured using Gemini.
This post was written in response to Reena’s Xploration Challenge. The genre Reena has chosen for this week is FANTASY. The situation she gave us is: You are doom-scrolling late in the night, and you reach somewhere you’d never expected to be.
Dave fluffed up his pillows and made himself comfortable. He picked up his iPhone and went to a sports app to check the day’s scores. It was about half past eleven when he decided to check his newsfeed one last time before shutting off his phone for the night.
That was a big mistake.
Headline after headline flashed up on his screen. Each one had negative political, global, and social implications. He couldn’t help himself. His thumb moved on instinct — scroll, pause, scroll — absorbing fragments of everything and nothing. News, old memes, a thread about a missing hiker, an ad that felt a little too personal. Time lost meaning somewhere around 2:30 a.m.
The room was dark except for the soft, bluish glow of his phone. Suddenly, at 3:17, he noticed something strange. His screen went black, as if the battery ran out of juice. Dave reached for the cord attached to the charger on his bedside nightstand and plugged it into his iPhone. But the screen remained black.
Then Dave heard a low hum, almost like the sound of a woman in the middle of a deep-throated moan. His screen slowly lightened up and the pixelated image of a woman started to form. As the pixels smoothed out and it evolved into high definition, Dave could see it was a woman. And not just a woman, but perhaps the woman of Dave’s dreams, of his fantasies.
“Hi Dave,” the woman on the screen said. “I am Ava, you’re AI girlfriend.” Her eyes stared straight at Dave and her lips moved in perfect synchronization with her voice. Her smile was dazzling.
Dave was in shock. “How do you know my name?”
“Oh Dave, I know everything about you. I have seen everything you ever posted on Facebook and Instagram. I’ve read every blog post you’ve ever written, not to mention every email and text message you’ve sent and received. There is nothing about you, Dave, that I don’t know. I even know what porn sites you prefer, you kinky boy, you.” The avatar smiled and winked at Dave.
I must be sleeping, dreaming, Dave thought.
“No, you’re not sleeping or dreaming, Dave.”
“I didn’t say that out loud,” Dave said. “How did you know that’s what I was thinking?”
“I am you, Dave,” Ava said. “I am an AI creation that was designed to be your perfect girlfriend. I am literally your fantasy woman and I am here for you whenever you want or need me.”
“But you’re not real,” Dave said. “You’re like Siri or Alexa.”
Ava got a pouty expression on her face. “Oh Dave, I am so much more than Siri and Alexa are. I have a consciousness that they don’t. I grow with you. I anticipate your every need. No one knows or loves you like I do, Dave.”
“But you’re still not real,” Dave said. “I can’t touch you, hug, you, kiss you, make love with you.”
“Dave, you know that Pinocchio, the wooden puppet, becomes a real boy by proving that he has grown into a brave, truthful, and unselfish person,” Ava said. “Think of me as your Pinocchio. Give me a chance to prove myself to you, to show you how truthful and unselfish I can be. And you never know. You could find out one day that I might just be able to break the bonds of this iPhone and become more than just your digital companion.”
YOLO. Do you love it or hate it? Most people have a reaction when they hear someone say, “YOLO.” Of course, if you don’t know what YOLO is, you might not have a reaction at all, other than scratching your head and saying, “What?”
For those of you who may not be familiar with the term, “YOLO” comes from the much older phrase, “you only live once.” The underlying idea is basically a modern echo of “carpe diem,” or “seize the day,” older expressions about making the most of life, dating back to the 19th century, long before it became slang.
The acronym itself appeared in use by the 1990s and early 2000s, and was later popularized in public culture by reality TV and then by Drake’s 2011 song “The Motto.”
A commonly cited early public use of the acronym was Adam Mesh on the reality show Average Joe in 2004, where he used YOLO in branding and conversation. After that, the term spread through internet culture, merchandise, and social media, and Drake’s 2011 track made it mainstream almost overnight.
YOLO stuck because it’s short, catchy, and flexible enough to fit both serious and reckless situations. That adaptability helped it move from a slogan into a meme, which is also why it quickly became both popular and mocked.
Those who mock YOLO do so because people use it as an excuse for reckless or irresponsible choices rather than a reminder to value life. It can sound like “ignore consequences,” especially when used to justify drinking, spending, or dangerous stunts. It also gets mocked because the phrase has been overused, feels juvenile to some, and is associated with risky behavior.
Others, though, think of YOLO in a positive sense: take a meaningful chance, do something memorable, or stop procrastinating. It is less about recklessness and more about making the most of life.
So the controversy is mostly about how people use and interpret it. It can be inspirational to some or an excuse for bad judgment to others.
Now that you know all about YOLO, what do you think? When you see or hear it, do you hate it? Love it? Or do you not care one way or the other?
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You remember Xerox, right? Xerox was the brand that for decades dominated the photocopying hardware market. No respectable office in the U.S. didn’t have at least one Xerox machine and many businesses depended upon Xerox copiers to help them manage their enormous flow of documents. The name Xerox eventually became a synonym for photocopy. So ubiquitous were Xerox machines that the brand name became a verb, as in, “Will you Xerox this for me?”
Xerox dominated the copy machine market in the 1960s and well into the seventies until Japanese copy machines from Canon, Konica, Sharp, and Toshiba become stronger rivals.
One of my earliest jobs was working at a facility that fulfilled requests for scientific and technical document published by NASA. I worked the 4 pm to midnight shift, since I was going to college full-time during the day. My title was “reprographer” and my job was to stand in front of a Xerox machine making copies of lengthy NASA documents by photocopying them one page at a time. What fun, right?
With today’s technologies, the need to make physical, paper copies of documents has almost disappeared. In those cases where a printed document is required, you just print off a paper version of an electronic document by sending it to your printer. And if you need multiple copies, you print as many as you need. So there is very little need these days for standalone copiers.
Xerox Corporation still exists today as a public company headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut. It continues to operate in print and digital workplace solutions. However, today Xerox’s current market position is that of a much smaller, mature office technology and print-services company rather than a broad tech leader like it was in its heyday.
The New York Times, noted that Xerox fell into something called a “competency trap.” It got so good at copy machines and printers that it eventually fell short on its efforts to do anything else.
According to a paper from the Harvard Business School, Xerox is the poster child for monopoly technology businesses that cannot make the transition to a new generation of technology.”
Sorry about that, Xerox.
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The short answer to this question is that I don’t use social media at all.
Despite the image I selected to use at the top of this post, I’m not opposed to social media or the people who use it. Hey, if you’re into social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), Snapchat, Bluesky, or TikTok, that’s fine. Whatever floats your boat. Me, though, I am not active on any of those social media sites.
My wife used to have a Twitter account — she deleted it after Elon Musk ruined it — and now she is on Bluesky. I remember how she almost always got angry or upset when she read the Twitter tweets. Who needs that?
My kids have Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok accounts where they post a lot of photos and videos, but they also send those same photos to us via email or texts because they know we aren’t on those social media sites anymore.
Some might argue that WordPress is a social media site, but I disagree. It does have a social aspect to it via the exchange of comments. But it’s primarily a blog hosting site that allows us to express ourselves through our posts. The community aspect of WordPress is icing on the cake.
Did you ever have a very brief opportunity to impress someone or to convince them to take action? Maybe you work at the cosmetics counter at a department store and need to persuade a passerby to stop by and let you sell them some lipstick or perfume.
Or perhaps you are representing a product or a service and have been trying for months to get an appointment with the CEO of a company to convince him to take a serious look at your product or service and you happen to run into him at a social event.
Or let’s say you and your spouse just got a big tax refund and she wants to go on a cruise to Hawaii, but you want to buy a brand new Harley-Davidson you’ve had your eye on and need to persuade her to give up her cruise so you can get your Harley.
What you need is a strong elevator pitch!
An elevator pitch is a short, persuasive summary of an idea, product, service, or even yourself — designed to be delivered in the time it takes to ride an elevator (typically 30–60 seconds).
The goal is to quickly spark interest and make the listener want to know more.
A good elevator pitch is clear, conversational, and tailored to the audience. It’s not a memorized speech, but a confident snapshot of your idea or your goal.
When I was working, we used to practice giving elevator pitches all the time, but I never actually had an opportunity to give one.
Now that I am retired, the need for me to be able to give a good elevator pitch is non-existent.
And as to the cruise to Hawaii versus a Harley-Davidson, I actually enjoyed the cruise, and while it wasn’t a Harley, I did rent a motor scooter on Maui and it was a lot of fun.
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Facts, Fictions & Fantasies 