Scribbles

Our capabiliy to think is one of the greatest mysteries of modern science, as well as the greatest miracle of the naural world. Thoughts are the products of not only education, but also of an activeimagination and keen observations of the surrounding world.

While watching IBM's Watson, a supercomputer with natural language processing capabilities, play a practice round of the Jeopardy! game show in January 2011, I had two thoughts: Computers can perform complicated calculations in a fraction of the time that the human brain can, and it can be trained to understand the subtleties of how we speak and pick up on clues and puns.

However, what Watson does, no matter how amazing, does not come close to the creative process. Watson cannot imagine something new.

I've always been a scribbler, jotting down stories, sketches and ideas. I count myself fortunate that I get to write for a living. There was a time when I didn't think it would ever happen. It's easy to get lazy, though, and just write the same kind of stuff day in and day out. I try to mix things up and stretch myself to try new styles. Perhaps someday, I will have a row of books with my name on them on the bookshelf.

Another supercomputer may someday come along that can leave humans in the dust in creativity the way Watson dominated the Jeopardy tournament in February. It's a sign of the human capacity for creativity that created Watson in the first place, so a Watson capable of imagination doesn't seem all that far-fetched to me.

Some of my writing projects are on this site.

• Interactive Fiction
• National Novel Writing Month
• Sketches
• Fiction
• Non-Fiction