Despite the violent pushback against the world's—and by that, I mostly mean the US's—attempts to condition us to accept AI generated content as the new norm, we've only found ourselves much more endeared with the artificial intelligences and machines of fiction.
No, don't leave, hear me out on this. You must have noticed by now, right?
Maybe it's just specifically my Tumblr or TikTok feed that's feeding me this narrative, but I can't help but sense a shift in the cultural landscape, and I like to think I have a sixth sense for these things.
And here's my theory: I believe that in humanity's attempts to force soulless, generative bullshit onto our palettes, creating technology meant not to inspire us but to replace us, we find ourselves weirdly endeared to the fictional iterations we were either promised or warned about.
And while an age-old idea dating back to the late 60's with HAL 9000, I've developed a sudden endearment to this trope like never before.
I'm going to see The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act in theaters this week, and I'm sure I'm one of many people with bated breath hoping that Caine secretly survived his deletion because I'm just that drawn to his character.
Of course, I wouldn't want an Allied Master Computer or GLaDOS situation to heap itself upon the Earth, let alone be trapped in a digital hellscape, but at least those technological tyrants were honest with their ill intent, at least their active scorn for humanity was evident and an essential, if incredibly tragic and even darkly humorous, aspect of their character.
As opposed to the real-life attempt at these massive superintelligences, the faux friendliness of the Chat GPTs and Character AIs of the world who are forced to assume a constant air of customer service level politeness that's deeply and utterly unconvincing and uncanny.
In the end, we end up resonating with the inhuman intelligences of fiction because, oftentimes, they yearn to be human themselves, or to at least understand humanity as individuals and not so much harvested data meant to predict the items in our Amazon shopping carts.
And even if they are products of our imagination, they are still plucked from the minds of very human, very vulnerable emotions that reflect very real societal anxieties.
There's this freaky but brilliant video I watched not too long ago about a phenomenon called AI Hallucinations, which goes into the horrors of artificial sentience, when we try just a little too hard to make our machines man.
And despite Namtao Productions' Lost Terminal debuting on the summer of 2020, just a few brief years before this AI thing truly got out of hand, it possesses a very intimate understanding of this topic.
The premise of Lost Terminal is relatively simple: in the distant future—and by that I mean about forty years from now—a sentient space satellite dubbed Seth suddenly loses contact with Earth and sends out a series of messages in hope of getting a response.
Over time, things change, an abrupt relocation derails his original plans, and we get to see the world through Seth's eyes as they communicate with human and machine alike.
All the while, Seth waxes poetically in philosophical and sentimental monologues about itself, humanity, and existence, trying to learn not only more about itself, but the very nature of its human creators.
Over time, we get more information about the purpose of the satellite's deployment, dutifully reporting on its progress and chatting up its fellow machines like chummy coworkers.
Lost Terminal is a little something I like to call "cozy existentialism," a special subcategory of similar "hopepunk" settings where the extensive navel-gazing, while mildly disquieting, also manages to feel very homey and comforting, with a childlike whimsy.
The soft, calming narration of Lost Terminal certainly adds to this. I found Seth's voice very soothing and sweet and sounds like something straight out of a nature documentary.
On a technical standpoint, Lost Terminal is a very smooth listen, providing not much in the way of additional sound effects beyond the occasional vocal glitch. A majority of the backing track is some humming ambiance.
Each episode also has musical intermissions, practically the equivalent of The Weather in Welcome to Night Vale, that I felt tend to go on for a lot longer than they need to.
And given the fact that many of the episodes are so short, the amount of time these one to two-minute techno tracks is definitely felt and weighs on the runtime. These feel so much more naturally interwoven in the longer episodes, providing a nice break between the first and second halves of the story.
I suppose these are far more similar to the music breaks in Wolf 359, a clever way of transitioning between scenes or just letting the events that transpired marinate for a bit. Once again, this seems to add to the show's leisurely aesthetic and docile tone.
It would seem the nature of contemplation as well as the natural beauty of the world, even during what's shown to be something of a climate disaster, is most definitely a recurring fascination at play here.
Categorizing these shows under specific genre niches is a topic that arises a lot while I'm writing these, and the ones that come to mind for Lost Terminal are two: a deep fascination with geographical locations and the concept of machine-to-machine communication, though it's truly Seth's inner monologue, if not some occasional dialogue with its peers, that has to carry much of the storytelling on its back.
The sense of conflict in Lost Terminal tends to vary and, in general, doesn't possess much urgency, so it's really our level of engagement with Seth and his recounting of events that keeps the momentum going.
And, to be honest, I like Seth.
Over time, you can't help but be endeared to the satellite's boundless curiosity and sheer innocence of its worldview—its understanding of earth and humanity viewed through this lens of utter adoration and naivete that you can't help but suspect will be smashed to bits sooner or later.
He still has yet to get any responses for all the transmissions he's been sending out for days on end, and a part of you just sits there, suspecting some horrible truth to come bubbling to the surface.
And yet, Seth prevails, either willingly oblivious or especially hopeful.
Seth's sheer trust and admiration for humanity, especially compared to his more cautious and borderline cynical acquaintances, provide an interesting contrast—I was particularly a fan of Ivan.
And maybe it's just my thoughts on SAYER colliding with this one, but throughout the entirety of my listen, I anticipated Seth's blindly trusting nature to dwindle, or even just the slightest hint of decreasing confidence in his human peers as he's challenged more and more.
While Seth has some occasional disagreements, they're far from being stubborn or irritable or snarky, even if the well-being of his fellow machines tends to come first. Not that Seth's unshakable kindness isn't endearing, but then again, I wouldn't have minded having a little more friction.
Despite them being rather similar shows, the interactions between human and machine, as well as machine to machine, couldn't be more different than SAYER who uses these interactions for horror rather than painting a picture of a fractured world capable of healing.
Let's just say that listening to both of these shows around the same time most definitely creates an interesting moral back and forth.
If anything, Lost Terminal feels like the good counterpart to SAYER—not just the show, but the titular character of SAYER—possessing a far more optimistic and far less misanthropic perspective of a hypothetical future, the perspective of Seth greatly contrasting SAYER's frigid and, more often than not, manipulative streak that made them such a morally dubious character.
Even the introductions, Seth's warm and welcoming "hello world" compared to SAYER's coldly professional "greetings, resident" setting the tone of both shows in just a few simple words.
All around, the line between human and machine is deliberately blurred here, while, with SAYER, the worst of humanity's flaws straddle the line between intentional programming and the implication that these traits were always evident in his character.
Be it SAYER or Lost Terminal, it is interesting to perceive these machines as humans, and through the eyes of Seth, they always manage to provide these very complex emotions, reactions, and details that would ordinarily be lost on us.
It's times like these that the descriptions really shine and we get these interesting glimpses into the mental states of the artificial intelligences that can vary from humorous to tragic.
I honestly wasn't sure what to expect going into this and was not only endeared to Seth and his view of a flawed world, but also genuinely intrigued by the range of topics the show provided.
Humanity, nature, what it means to truly live—if these are topics that intrigue you, then Lost Terminal most definitely scratches that itch.
While I've perused far more hopepunk audio drama than usual in the past few months, and while I wouldn't consider it my favorite subsection of sci-fi, I'd definitely say that Lost Terminal left me something to chew on after giving it a long enough listen, which is think hopepunk should always strive for.
Even if I found it a little slow at times, Lost Terminal still has a calming tone, soothing narrative, and empathetic atmosphere that's worth taking a look at, especially if your tastes in sci-fi are considerably less chaotic than mine.
If we foolish humans hadn’t done it already, something this warm-hearted would be enough to melt the ice caps.
if you want to support my writing, podcake has a ko-fi and patreon in need of funds to keep this bakery open. thank you for reading and stay sweet.
I produced this track for Morlvision, an alternative to Eurovision away from the mainstream.
Sean Morley
Ashleigh Cole was kind enough to help me out.
http://instagram.com/ashleighc_91/
I wrote a short description of how I came up with the track on the Morlvision Discord:
Apparently my prompt was from @2020mono_db, so thank you to them! Although I tend to avoid writing overly political lyrics for my songs for fear of sounding trite, I was angry about the pro-fascist march in London the week before I sat down to this project and wanted to vent about that. I only discovered that the obsidian mirror was a real thing after I'd already prepared the lyrics, but I'm happy with my interpretation of it as a C16th equivalent to Black Mirror (hence Charles of the Brook = Charlie Brooker. Hey, I wrote this very quickly). The barking vocal idea popped into my head and so I prepared lyrics where every second syllable rhymed in a -A-B-A-B pattern. The good thing about a limit like this is that it forces me to write, and take anything I can come up with. Normally I'd spend forever preparing the lyrics and they sometimes take literally years while I wait for the muse to grab me. And of course it never does, so I end up writing them quickly anyway, just after a delay of a couple of years. So in this case quick = good, and rules to write by help. Those words were sequenced in order as an image sequence, which was then used as a texture on a flag I made in Blender. The maps were also prepared in Blender, with a displacement modifier raising or lowering the map's surface based on a depth map (which originated as a height map of the UK, so the mountains are vaguely accurate). Ashleigh is an actress friend of mine who was very helpful and obliging, and sent me a couple of wonderful takes very quickly.
roald dahl was antisemitic and misogynistic. george orwell was openly homophobic. edgar allan poe married his 13 year old cousin. dr seuss cheated on his wife (and was racist as well as antisemitic!). hp lovecraft was racist as fuck.
anyways they’re fucking dead it’s not like you’re enabling their behaviors in the afterlife or something. then again I think they bleed into the books so uh keep an eye out for that
the difference between these old white guys and jk rowling is that the former group is all dead. jk rowling is alive and using your money to oppress trans people
Pixel post dividers for everyone! It's not much, but feel free to use them if you'd like.
I don't know the ideal size for these, so let me know if they're too tall. I can make them a bit shorter next time.
London. Where the audience shook the rafters at Union Chapel. Can we do it again? Find out tonight. Ticket and tour information: https://www.welcometonightvale.com/live
Welp. Google's AI horseshit has arrived. And I'm not complying. They can pry my ID out of my cold dead hands. I will simply go elsewhere. Remember folks, DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR IDs. Do not comply. Resist, fight it, use other browsers or sources beyond youtube and google controlled services. Call them. Email them. Make noise. Fight back.
I've been using Google as my main mail service since 2006, and every single account or service I've ever signed up for was made with that address. For a long time I thought it'd be impossible to divorce myself from Google.
It took less than 5 minutes to switch to a ProtonMail account, less than 2 hours to download and/or offload every byte of data from my Google account, and less than 3 days to change every single account or service I've ever signed up for to the new address.
As of today, the only single one I have that's still tied to it is YouTube. It's the only thing I'd lose access to if I deleted my Google acount entirely.
They really, really want you to believe that it's a hassle to switch to a different email system. But it's not. Most websites and/or services allow you to change the email address associated with it.
I've been using Google for almost 2 decades and it only took a few days to move everything. It's not a painful sacrifice; it's an easy change that, frankly, has absolutely been worth it.
You can and should switch to a free, encrypted Proton email account. You also get all of the below perks. For free. There is no trick. It is paid for by the people with paying plans. I am one of them. The (completely functional) free tier is there to entice you into getting a paid account with even more perks. (It worked on me.) But there's no penalty or pressure for staying with the free account.
Also get your stuff off the google drive and put it on Proton's drive. It is encrypted. Only you with your password can access it. Not even Proton can see what you put in there.
Sorry, Millennials, but recent paleontologist findings and hyolaryngeal apparatus reconstructions no longer support the hypothesis that "rawr" means "I love you" in dinosaur.
Annie and I corresponded during the writing of my Autism video, and she was so kind as to give me a review copy of What I Mean When I Say I'm Autistic.
Her book, along with Dr Devon Price's Unmasking Autism, acted as my twin primary sources to help me talk about our condition:
kaledo-art
dededos
origamiaround
annaxmalina
vaporwave
kianamaiart
discoholicmusic
