Electronic Intelligence

My ipod reads my energy. I'm sure of it. Tonight, after two days of agonizing over my taxes that are due in three days, I took a break to do some of the dishes that've been piling up. Wanting to listen to some music, I got out the ipod, put it on shuffle, donned the headphones, and got to work with the sponge, soap, and day old dishes. What's the first song my ipod decides to play? Out of 1669 songs that my husband and I have loaded since getting it three months ago? Taxman. By The Beatles. No shit.

The second song was from Rodrigo Y Gabriela, a group that I've been listening to, almost exclusively, for the past few months.

It'd be a bit disconcerting if it weren't so fascinating and coincidental.

It reminds me of an email I got a couple months ago from a man I interviewed. Jordan Pease, the director of the Rogue Valley Metaphysical Library. One day, while working feverishly on the article that profiled him, Jordan sent me an email:

Hi-
You’ve got to try this if you haven’t already. It’s called “20Q” and it’s an amazing Artificial Intelligence Technology (AI) demonstration website in the form of a guessing game.

Players think of something and answer 15-30 questions about it (yes, no, maybe, unknown, etc) and the computer will guess correctly nearly every time you play!

It is downright spooky how accurate it is, especially with such seemingly vague questions. They claim it’s 80-98% accurate, and so far I’d agree.

20Q.net Try it.

Maybe my ipod has some of the same inherent intelligence. Yeah, a pretty whacko proposition. But the fact that Taxman was the first song it played has me wondering.

When a library closes in a community . . . does it make a sound?

Yesterday's closure of the Jackson County Library System in Southern Oregon, due to lack of funding, is the largest ever shuttering of libraries in the history of the United States.

The doors at Ashland's public library were locked at 5pm on Friday, April 6th.

In a staged protest/sit-in--proposed by several young library patrons
and carried out with the help of supportive adults--a large group of
young people, ranging in age from 5-16, refused to leave the
library until Malcus Williams, an officer with the Ashland Police Department showed up (as part of the plan) to escort them out.

The following is a video I shot and edited for the local newspaper.