For our Fifth episode (the only one with two guests), we explore the field of Computer Science. Our guests Dr. Perry Fizzano and Dr. Aran Clauson talk to us about the integration of technology in our lives, past predictions of computer advancement and what we can expect in the future.
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[? Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]
? Neutron, proton, mass defect, lyrical oxidation, yo irrelevant
? Mass spectrograph, pure electron volt, atomic energy erupting
? As I get all open on betatron, gamma rays thermo cracking
? Cyclotron and any and every mic
? You’re on trans iridium, if you’re always uranium
? Molecules, spontaneous combustion, pow
? Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
? I’m every element around
? Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
? Iodine nitrate activate
? Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
? Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in
? Careful, careful with those ingredients
? They could explode and blow up if you drop them
? And they hit the ground
(Dr. Regina) [Laughing.] Alright. Welcome to Spark Science, sharing stories of human curiosity. My name is Regina Barber DeGraaff. We are broadcasting at the Spark Museum here at Bellingham Washington. I teach physics at Western Washington University and I’m here with my co-host, funny guy Jordan Baker. We are going to talk about computer science today. Resistance is futile. What do you think about robots, Jordan?
(Jordan) I like watching them on TV when they destroy the other robot.
(Regina) Right, but not humans?
(Jordan) No, no.
(Regina) We have two real computer scientists here, my good friends, I’m just going to lie now. [Laughing.] They exist upstairs. From me at Western Washington University, there’s Dr. Perry Fizzano, hi.
(Dr. Fizzano) Hi. [Laughing.]
(Regina) And there is Dr. Aran Clauson, did I say that right?
(Dr. Clauson) That’s right.
(Regina) Oh, good, good.
(Jordan) The son of Claw.
(Regina) The son of Claw. OK. I like to explore the idea that computer science and engineering aren’t the same thing. I think a lot of people get those confused right? We were just talking about putting together a computer versus programming a computer aren’t the same thing.
(Dr. Fizzano) That’s right but at the same time I think there’s a very grey area about what’s computer science, and what’s mathematic? What’s computer science and what’s electrical engineering? What’s computer science and what’s psychology? What’s, you know, things like that are on a border line. There’s things that can cross all of these disciplines.
(Regina) Right. So I’d like to talk maybe about that some more. Let’s talk about that. What are the interdisciplinary things that I think will be the most surprising. Like you just said, computer science and maybe psychology. Give me an example of that.
(Dr. Fizzano) A brain computer interface. Right? So to understand, we need to have people who understand how the brain is mapped. What parts of the brain do what? So, there’s examples over the last few years of people who were quadriplegics who haven’t left the wheel chair for years and years and years. Now they can put on a hat with sensors on it or whatever, and have a robotic arm pick up a glass of water on a table and bring it to their mouth and drink. Ah, that’s the first time they have been able to do that in their whole life. That’s because their brain works perfectly fine but their body doesn’t.
Now they can control a robot by just saying, “Get that glass over there on the table,” and they think that, and somebody has figured out what parts of the brain, those signals are going to that are exciting and reading those signals that move the robotic arm to feed them or give them a drink. That’s very inspiring stuff but, that requires some kind of neuroscience psychology angle to it. It requires a bunch of electrical engineering for all the signal processing of the brain. It requires computer science for the blending of all those disciplines and implementing that. So . . .
(Regina) I think that there, like you said, there is a disconnect with the public of knowing how computer science or technology in general, how it like, effects their everyday life. I think they’re very much aware of a smart phone but I mean, everything right? You can’t go, I don’t know.
(Dr. Fizzano) Pick a field, health, medicine, marketing, I mean, farming, you name it, astronomy, more data is coming in from space than we can even begin to process. We are gathering data at an astronomical rate. [Laughing.]
(Regina) [Laughing] pun intended. We were talking earlier at work about this analogy between, when people think of computer science technology they think of just computers. Like I was saying they just think of their smart phone. I think you made this analogy, what was it about the computer science is to, do you remember that?
(Dr. Fizzano) This is a quote that’s usually attributed to Dijkstra. I did some digging and that’s apparently questionable now. But, it’s says that computer science says as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes.
(Regina) Right. That really hit me as an astrophysicist/astronomer, whatever I am. I am very illiterate with telescopes [laughing] I don’t know, I’ve never really worked with one too much. We’ve talked about this on previous shows. I know to deal with the data. I’m very interested in astronomy but I’m not very interested in how the telescope actually works, right? So, I mean, I think that that’s something that hopefully, I think we’re up to four listeners now. We keep on saying three listeners but four listeners can learn from this. Computer science is about problem solving, not building computers.
(Dr. Clauson) Right. It’s a way of thinking, it’s a way of abstracting problems.
(Regina) Right.
(Dr. Clauson) I actually like this example. I was sitting in on a class at our local high school over at Sehome. It’s their AP computer science class. They were talking about sorting which is a great topic for algorithms. Everyone knows how to sort. You get a deck of cards and you have to sort them. How are you going to sort them? There’s only about 9,000 different ways to sort them. It’s a little hyperbole.
(Regina) We talk in hyperbole all the time.
(Dr. Clauson) 8,000 400 amp. So, one of the students said, if they’re doing this all in JAVA and JAVA’s library has a built in array.sort, so why do we need to learn this on our own when the system already does this for us? And, I was with the teacher who was from the industry as a software engineer, not the actual teacher of the class said, “Well, you know, somebody had to write it or maybe you’re going to be in an environment where it doesn’t, you know, it’s not there.”
To me it’s more fundamental than that. I get papers from students every quarter and I have to sort them. I’m doing the work, I want to know the most efficient way to sort those papers so I can get grades in. Its bubble sort.
(Regina) Bubble sort?
(Dr. Clauson) That’s a joke. Bubble sort is a terrible sorting algorithm. [Laughing.] I was hoping Perry would lough.
(Regina) We don’t get jokes. [Laughing.] I like how we’re laughing that we didn’t get jokes. OK.
(Jordan) Just a quick question. You were talking computer science and you mentioned software engineering. How closely related is that? You’re saying computer science is super broad but are there some people who do the software engineering, and some people who?
(Dr. Clauson) For me it’s three fields that get confused. One is information technology. This is the, I can’t fix your computer. The way I finally got my parents to stop asking me to fix their computer was I just installed Linux. Done. Fixed.
(Regina) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fizzano) That one you get. What Aran’s saying is that the IT field, you know the people that fix computers, build technologies, work on infrastructure, routers, stuff like that. Then there’s computer science which is more of an academic discipline and software engineering that is maybe a vocational arm of computer science to say, I’m building software and that’s a very common industry task, right? You have to like, work at Microsoft or Amazon or Google. You build software that people consume or it’d a product that people consume like a search engine or a photo sharing site, whatever it is. All those people kind of, they all . . .
(Dr. Clauson) There’s a form, they could have a computer science degree but they have gone off into these sort of areas. Some schools have degrees and software engineering, science engineering information technology.
(Regina) The IT degrees are more vocational, transfer, two year degrees that are IT?
(Dr. Fizzano) There’s plenty of people in IT that have PhDs, or they do hard stuff right? But the field itself, theories definitely entry level stuff without degrees or with two year degrees that you can go and have a very successful career in doing information technology.
(Dr. Clauson) I think closer to the point is that they are all inter-built as all the same foundation degree perhaps, but, it’s three different fields. I can manage my computer but I am not an IT person by any stretch of the imagination. I know how to use a cramping tool and I can make a network wire but that’s, the guys who know what they’re doing, really know what they’re doing and that’s not me. When it comes to software engineering and writing code, there’s some, [inaudible] “wax on.”
I think everyone should learn how to program. I think if you have a computer, or a smart phone, or whatever, you should be able to make this thing do whatever it is that you want it to do. Not what the app developer wanted it to do or whoever gave you the software. Customize it to do exactly what you want. That should be a normal interaction with the system.
(Regina) It’s very intimidating. Like, for me.
(Dr. Clauson) It’s funny you say that because after our meeting, I came back to my office, right next, actually between Perry’s office and mine is Catherine Potts who is another one of the teachers at the CS department. I asked her the same question you had asked right as we left; what do people think? What’s the misconception? She said, “The misconception is that CS is hard.” That it’s this magic black box, that it’s voodoo, or its way too hard for me to figure out. It’s not.
(Dr. Fizzano) That’s why I was joking in the beginning with Will I Am. There has been this big push to say, “Oh get everybody into computing.” There’s this one hour of coding thing that you can do online that anybody can do with no background. Go do it. It will probably take you way less than an hour if you’re into it. It starts to get you to the heart of like, what it is to write computer programs. It’s nothing more than just a series of logical things. If you can give somebody directions to your house, you can write a computer program.
(Regina) People don’t like logic classes. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fizzano) It’s just a sequence of steps. It’s just a recipe.
[? Flight of The Concords singing Robots ?]
? The distant future
? The year 2000
? The distant future, the year 2000
? The distant future, the distant future
? It is the distant future
? The year 2000
? (We are robots)
? The world is quite different
? Ever since the robotic uprising
? Of the late nineties
? There is no more unhappiness
? (Affirmative)
? We no longer say yes
? Instead we say affirmative
? (Yes affir-affirmative)
? Unless we know the other robot really well
(Regina) If you’re just joining us, this is Spark Science. My name is Regina Barber DeGraaff with my cohost Jordan Baker and we’re speaking to Dr. Aran Clauson and Dr. Perry Fizzano about commuter science.
[? Flight of The Concords singing Robots ?]
? Finally, robotic beings rule the world
? The humans are dead
? The humans are dead
(Regina) Talking about this public perception of, you know, computer science and let’s talk about the perception back in like, the 60s let’s say. I’m really fascinated by what society or any community, academic community predicted what the technology would look like in so many years. So, like, Aran was bringing this up at our previous meeting about the movie 2001.
(Dr. Clauson) I have looked all over to be able to get the quote to cite it. This is at this point a rumor because I haven’t been able to find it. The way the story was told to me, was that, after 2001 the movie came out, that computer scientists got together, probably at a conference, it was probably some throw away panel, discussed the movie. HAL, this computer system that runs the entire space craft, goes berserk. I hope I’m not ruing this for anybody.
(Regina) When did this movie come out?
(Dr. Fizzano) You’re spoiling something that came out 60 years ago.
(Regina) I’m sorry. Spoiler alert we’re going to be talking about the movie 2001. Continue Aran.
(Dr. Clauson) So, they went through the movie and took it scene by scene to try and identify what was believable by the year 2001. So, this would have been 1970. We’re talking 30ish years into the future. They said that by 2001, talking to your computer and having it talk back to you like HAL does, like a normal person would do, would be totally believable. We will accomplish that in 30 years. But playing games with a computer was completely unbelievable. There’s a scene where they are actually playing Chess because, you know, in 30 years you would never waste competing power playing a game.
(Regina) Their issue was memory right? And power?
(Dr. Clauson) Well, memory and expense. This was back when we thought, you know, in 30 years a computer will weigh less than 1.5 tons. Which again is not a real quote, but it’s the same idea.
(Dr. Fizzano) I think Bill Gates said something similar. Like, why would anyone need one of these in their house? Why would everyone need, I don’t remember what the quote was. It was something along that sentiment of, yeah, we’re building this operating system, Microsoft or whatever. Even they didn’t think that it would be ubiquitous to be in every single home. You know, that sort of thing. It’s not in my home by the way, Microsoft. Just kidding.
(Regina) So, this idea of AI,that we could be talking to these computers and they would be able to answer us in an intelligent sort of way . . .
(Dr. Fizzano) Totally believable. I’d buy it. You know like Siri. If Siri worked.
(Regina) If Siri worked. When did Siri come out? What year was that?
(Dr. Clauson) Five years ago?
(Dr. Fizzano) Something like that.
(Regina) Amazon also has this new thing called Alexa. Have you heard about this?
(Dr. Fizzano) Oh the tube that sits on your desk? I put myself on the preorder list for that bit I haven’t heard back.
(Regina) Oh, my sister has it. You’re missing out.
(Dr. Fizzano) If only they knew I was going to be on the radio, they could have had free advertising.
(Regina) They can be our 5th listener. [Laughing.]
(Jordan) Get them an Alexa. [Laughing]
(Regina) There’s no intelligent conversation that’s happening right? We’re in 2015 last I checked. It’s funny how these predictions, like, these predictions kind of turn out.
(Dr. Fizzano) OK wait. If we go back, this is like, Aliza period.
(Dr. Clauson) They won’t know what Eliza is.
(Jordan) It’s an island?
(Dr. Clauson) Yeah. It’s an island off the coast of [laughing.]
(Dr. Fizzano) So there’s a program called ELIZA. Its text based. You type in your comment and you press enter and it texts back. It types something on the screen back to you. It’s spooky. As you’re talking to this thing . . .
(Dr. Clauson) It’s a psychotherapist. So you say, “ELIZA, I hate my mom.” And then ELIZA says, “Why do you hate your mom?” And then you say, “Because my mom beat me when I was young.” And then ELIZA says, “Why do you think your mom beat you when you were young?” And all ELIZA is doing is repeating back what you say but in a question form right? There’s nothing spooky about this.
(Jordan) Why did your mom beat you? [Laughing.]
(Dr. Clauson) It goes on like this and after about 6 questions it deteriorates into, “I’m sorry, can you repeat what you just said?” You know, or something.
(Regina) To bring it back to Alexa, the Amazon thing, she does say that. We asked her how old is Scott Bakula and she’s like, “I cannot find the information about what you are saying.” And we’re like, “How old is the actor Scott Bakula?” I put the word actor in there. And then my brother in law was like, “Maybe Scott bakula…”
I love Scott Bakula. Quantum Leap! Come on you guys. So my brother in law is like, “Maybe he is not a big enough actor.” I said, “That can’t be it.” So my brother in law says, “Alexa, how old is Tom Cruise?” And she’s like “Tom Cruise is 50 something years old.” [Laughing.] And so, yeah, anyway, it just deteriorates huh?
(Dr. Fizzano) It deteriorates as much as you try to fight it. The reason I find it spooky is it’s a simple little program but you can actually detect some real intelligence there. That it is forming sentences, it is asking questions and it’s almost carrying on a conversation. But, again we’re talking 1969/1970 to say, let’s take that technology and yeah, it does get kind of thin after a while but, this is what cutting edge was in 1960 or 1970. They were looking 30 years into the future that seems to make, I mean, all you have to do is put voice recognition on top of that. How hard can that be? We’ll have that in 30 years.
(Regina) We should have been to Mars too obviously.
(Dr. Fizzano) Well yeah. Are you tying this into a previous show because I know you have? [Laughing.]
(Regina) [Laughing] Well, we actually just talked about 2001 in the interstellar episode which we have Kevin back. Are there other predictions that you can think of? Like, when you were studying in school, like high school? Or when you were way way back, like when you were little or something that your parents have said about predictive, you know, things about technology that just didn’t come true or did come true? Any memory?
(Dr. Clauson) I can remember when I was at Western the first time that we were talking about the day when it won’t be if you have a computer, it was just an assumption. I know my professors told me that and I didn’t believe it because it’s like, I had just spent like $800 for 4 megs of memory to upgrade my computer. There aren’t going to be people who can afford this. And now, if you ask that question, it’s how many, not if. I don’t think I can even answer that question right now.
(Jordan) There are 6 in this room.
(Dr. Fizzano) I don’t know what else to say about that. I feel like it’s the pace and the, you know, how it’s gotten more powerful and also how it is cheaper right? That’s what has made it ubiquitous. So in your car, in your whatever, self-driving cars.
(Regina) I was blown away by the web, that I could go on the web on my phone in like, 2000. It was just like, really bad pixels.
(Dr. Clauson) And when you got on the web was when?
(Regina) Um, in like 94 maybe? Yeah, I had just gotten into high school.
(Dr. Clauson) Yeah, so our undergraduate school got [laughing.]
(Regina) [Laughing.] That’s OK Aran!
(Dr. Clauson) You’re just making us feel old.
(Regina) It was 95, 95 sorry.
(Dr. Clauson) Yeah, that’s helpful. [Laughing.]
(Regina) [Laughing.] It’s ubiquitous. It’s everywhere. And it’s so integrated in our lives that at some point we won’t know where, what like, humanity begins and technology ends or begins or whatever.
(Dr. Clauson) Sure. Even going to things like pace makers, hearing aids, this is old technology that is being incorporated into people right? Laser eye surgeries and things like that, technologies, I mean, is that purer?
(Dr. Fizzano) I’m still thinking about your mental link to the robot arm. I’m a robot arm right now.
(Dr. Clauson) Who doesn’t want a third arm?
(Regina) Right.
(Dr. Fizzano) How much more could I get done during the day?
(Regina) [Laughing.] I just lost my train of thought because now I’m thinking about robots.
(Dr. Clauson) Good.
(Regina) We keep on refereeing to this previous meeting, again, I talked to Dr. Fizzano and Dr. Clauson a lot. We’re in the same building. We talked about this idea of like, using technology for games, we talked about that, but also this kind of virtual reality. You were saying that at some point, you know, there’s going to be this time where we no longer want to talk to each other.
(Dr. Fizzano) It could happen.
(Dr. Clauson) This right now.
(Dr. Fizzano) In the far out future. Are you trying to kick us out?
(Regina) No! No!
(Dr. Fizzano) I’m just kidding.
(Regina) I want to get to, you know, virtual reality.
(Dr. Clauson) I think it’s this blending, right? It’s this blending of the humanity versus the technology. How many people do you see walking down the street just looking at their phone when they’re not looking at the sunset or the next person walking down the street? I guess it’s because they feel it is more enjoyable than looking at the sunset or saying hi to the person walking down the street and so if you can start to tap into that, imagine if whatever your greatest joy is in life . . .
(Regina) TV.
(Dr. Clauson) OK, TV, that’s already kind of set up.
(Dr. Fizzano) Someday in the far off future. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Clauson) TV in your phone!
(Regina) Wow I can’t wait for that to happen and I don’t go over my data. But you know.
(Dr. Fizzano) So we have to work on better compression algorithms so you can get more data for less.
(Regina) Actually it was just yesterday I was walking in, because it’s been so nice in Bellingham, I can walk to campus, get stuff done, I was walking to campus and I remember looking up from my phone and seeing 3 guys coming out of the arboretum and walking up to campus. They were all looking at their phone. They were kind of in a line. They were obviously not hanging out together. They didn’t know each other but they were walking in a line, looking at their phones. I kind of laughed at myself like, “They look ridiculous.” And then I realized I had just been looking at my phone walking down and I looked just like them! [Laughing.] But yeah, you’re right.
(Dr. Clauson) And so, take it to the next level where you put on some goggles. OK, for other people maybe their greatest joy in life is something more than TV. Maybe they would say like, interactions with my daughter or something.
(Regina) I don’t know who these people are? Oh. I love my daughter. We watch TV together. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Clauson) [Laughing.] So, whatever, this greatest joy is that you have, if I could put a helmet on you and just press a button and you feel that joy, why wouldn’t you do that all day long?
(Regina) If Dory and I could play harvest moon, like, together in virtual reality, I don’t think we’d ever leave.
(Dr. Clauson) There you go. That’s my point. Resistance is futile.
(Regina) We would have our fake farm and it would be great. Do you know what Harvest Moon is?
(Jordan) No, is that like monopoly?
(Regina) No. It’s an RPG. It’s fine.
(Dr. Fizzano) It’s a rocket propelled grenade? [Laughing.]
(Regina) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fizzano) Excellent.
(Regina) [Laughing.] No.
(Dr. Fizzano) Most people don’t play rocket propelled grenades with their daughter.
(Regina) In video game form, probably.
(Dr. Clauson) Right. This is a new world.
(Dr. Fizzano) Where Gina is on the cutting edge.
(Regina) I am. I am. No, but, I remember a Star Trek episode that, Aran might remember this,
(Dr. Clauson) I need a little more. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fizzano) I remember that! There was a captain. [Laughing.]
(Regina) Yeah. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Clauson) And a spaceship.
(Regina) They were in space. It was Star Trek Next Generation where Riker goes on vacation and comes back with this headset that looks kind of like Google Glasses. It comes back and it’s this highly addictive game because every time you get a point it shoots chemicals in your brain that make you happy. The whole crew gets basically addicted to this game. Ashley Judd is in that episode, it’s really weird. Anyway, you talking Perry, when you say resistance is futile, we’ll all get to this point and no one will want to interact, that’s basically, yeah.
(Dr. Fizzano) We could just bypass the experience part and just exercise that part of your brain.
(Dr. Clauson) You get the brain signals and you think, “Wow, I’m getting eternal joy right now. So why would I turn the button off?”
(Regina) Wouldn’t you get numb to that though?
(Dr. Clauson) Maybe you would. And then you’d say, “This makes me more joyful.” [Making computer sounds] and then you dial the things and you would be more joyful. Then you would say, “I’m tired of this, make something more joyful.”
(Dr. Fizzano) The only trouble with that story is that the more joyful would be like an upgrade. Like an in out purchase.
(Regina) Right. And then only the rich people would have it.
(Dr. Fizzano) Yeah, unfair.
(Jordan) All of this kind of talking reminds me of the movie WALL-E where they’re all in their little chairs and have their little screens up and their all too fat to move.
(Dr. Fizzano) Yep.
(Regina) I love it too.
(Jordan) Just talking about this reminds me of that.
(Regina) That’s what a cruise is right? Just like in WALL-E. You get everything that makes you happy. You get to relax, you don’t have to move, there’s endless buffets, there’s lido deck, you know.
(Dr. Clauson) Unlimited Mai Tais.
(Dr. Fizzano) I get the point where it’s like, people start out walking on their own. Those chairs were just reserved for the elderly so grandma and grandpa could come to the Ledo deck with you and slowly over time, everybody’s in the chair. When WALL-E came out I thought that was hilarious. Its like, that would never happen. Now I walk across campus, everybody is looking at their phone, watching TV walking across campus.
(Jordan) It would be much safer if they were in a chair and they were on like a conveyor belt. But they wouldn’t bump into each other.
(Dr. Clauson) You wouldn’t need a conveyor belt because you would have good algorithms to run the chairs so they won’t crash into each other.
(Regina) Like self-driving robots.
(Dr. Clauson) Like self-driving cars.
(Regina) I call them robot cars.
(Dr. Clauson) Sure. Robot cars. That’s fair.
[? Flight of The Concords singing Robots ?]
? Finally, robotic beings rule the world
? The humans are dead
? The humans are dead
? We used poisonous gases
? And we poisoned their asses
? The humans are dead
(Jordan) Welcome back to Spark Science. My name is Jordan Baker, I’m with my company-host, Regina Barber DeGraaff and we’re talking with Aran Clauson and Perry Fizzano about computer science.
[? Flight of The Concords singing Robots?]
?(Affirmative – I poked one, it was dead)
(Regina) This hover chair that you’re in, that thinks for itself just like these google self-driving cars, if they hit somebody, what happens? Who’s liable?
(Dr. Fizzano) They should be locked up.
(Regina) Dr. Fizzano brought this up. So should the chair be locked up? Or should the person who wrote the code? Is it the person who’s in the chair?
(Dr. Fizzano) I mean, no company will sell that chair without you signing away your rights. They’re not going to get sued. You bought the chair, it’s your deal. I’m sure it will be the person in the chair that gets sued. Talk to your husband lawyer and he may have some opinion on this but it’s probably going to be the person in the chair.
(Regina) He doesn’t specialize in futuristic hover chairs but he could though. He would make so much more money.
(Dr. Clauson) It is a niche market.
(Regina) Is it?
(Dr. Fizzano) Eventually he’ll be at the leading edge.
(Dr. Clauson) This is pretty similar to, in one of the classes we do ethics. There’s an online story called The Case of the Killer Robot. It’s brilliant. It’s written as a bunch of newspaper clippings and copied emails and the whole story is, an industrial robot, robot arm, goes berserk and kills the operator. According to the newspaper clippings it was not pretty.
(Regina) [Laughing.] We’re terrible people.
(Dr. Clauson) The prosecutor in the story goes after the programmer for negligent homicide. You read all of these articles and who did what, and the backstabbing, and all of the interoffice politics, and you’re left with this question, well, is he responsible? Is the robot responsible? Is the operator responsible? Was the manager who . . .
(Regina) Was it suicide?
(Dr. Clauson) Well according to one of the clippings, it’s along that same . . .
(Regina) Is this in a textbook?
(Dr. Clauson) It’s actually online. It was a university, now I wish I had written it all down.
(Regina) That’s alright. Our 5 listeners will look it up.
(Dr. Clauson) Please look it up. It was written specifically as an ethics dilemma for computer science because everybody in the story is at least in a grey area. There’s all kinds of talking points in there, you know? What moral responsibility does the robot have in the situation? I think he should be locked up.
(Dr. Fizzano) That individual robot?
(Dr. Clauson) That individual robot.
(Jordan) Or unplugged?
(Dr. Clauson) That would be like a capital offense.
(Regina) [Laughing.] That brings me finely to my favorite point, that’s why I asked you guys onto this show, I want to talk about robots. OK. So, we’re talking about this robotic arm, if he, I shouldn’t say he, this is sexism again.
(Jordan) Sexist.
(Regina) Sexism. Geez. I call the Curiosity Mars Rover, he. And I shall be putting up on our Facebook page of why I thought that. I found the image.
(Dr. Clauson) [Laughing.] Is there something . . .
(Jordan) It’s got a big rear end. [Laughing.]
(Regina) It had a monocle. It looked like Mr. Penny Bags.
(Jordan) Sure, but everyone thinks it’s a girl because it has a big rear end.
(Regina) Ships or things of exploration and cars are women. Anyway, let’s, that probably should be edited.
(Dr. Clauson) That’s a different topic.
(Regina) I don’t know. So, is this robot liable? Is it a person? Once we actually start getting to the point where we can have conversations with our computers, Siri works and so does Alexa, she knows who Scott Bakula is and stuff like that.
(Dr. Fizzano) That’s the Turing test. Do you know who Scott Bakula is? [Laughing.]
(Dr. Clauson) When the robots are smarter than us because we don’t know who Scott Bakula is.
(Regina) That’s right! Then it gets to a point of like, rights, right? Not only are we signing away our rights by everything we sign online with like, Facebook or whatever. I’m so old I don’t know what people do, Snapchat, I don’t know.
(Dr. Fizzano) Instagram, iTunes.
(Dr. Clauson) Read one of these, you know, license agreements. They’re disturbing right? You say, “Oh, I’m going to put my data in the cloud or I’m going to do this,” and the thing says “Sure, do whatever you want but we’re not liable for anything.”
(Regina) Our responsibility is, Perry said something like, deflection of responsibility. So like, responsibility reflection.
(Dr. Clauson) Do you recall?
(Dr. Fizzano) No actually. [Laughing.]
(Regina) Again, previous discussions but as we’re signing away all of these things for iTunes it’s like a deflection of responsibility from iTunes right? They don’t want to have that responsibility. And like you said, the hover chair that we’re talking about, the company doesn’t want to be liable for that. They’ll never be sued right?
(Dr. Fizzano) Right.
(Regina) But like, getting to the point of like, what about the robot, if it becomes actual thinking . . .
(Dr. Fizzano) That would be the turning point right? If there are plenty of tools that even Siri or whatever is working to learn your voice if it’s your phone and it’s dialing it in to interact with you better. It’s changing. The Siri on your phone is different than the Siri on someone else’s phone.
(Regina) It’s true they’re individuals.
(Dr. Fizzano) In that sense.
(Regina) I don’t have a phone with Siri.
(Dr. Fizzano) I don’t either. But, my point is that there is the tailoring of the software so it’s, you know, somebody wrote the code but then it’s experience. So it’s nurture and nature. The nature is what the code is and the nurture is all in experiences it’s had. So who’s responsible for that? Did person who wrote the code not understand that it would experience these things and then turn into this? That’s kind of hard to, on some level right?
(Regina) And what’s our responsibility right?
(Dr. Clauson) You could apply that to children too. We nurtured them up and all the sudden they . . .
(Dr. Fizzano) They became a serial killer so the parents are responsible? If their son becomes a serial killer?
(Regina) What a crazy analogy. [Laughing.]
(Jordan) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fizzano) You took us there.
(Regina) It’s true. I was taking to like, enslavement of robots but you went somewhere else. Wow. If there is a killer robot, maybe they should be . . .
(Dr. Clauson) Maybe they should be turned off.
(Regina) But they can always be turned on again.
(Jordan) Put it in a garage somewhere.
(Dr. Fizzano) Take this from another direction. Again I was trying to get a reference to this but, some researchers took part of a mouse brain and mapped it into a CPU and allowed it to functionally replace that part of the brain. So it’s doing mousey things but part of the thinking was offloaded. So let’s do that to people. We perfect the technology and we can actually just copy the neurons or whatever is going on inside your brain in to some super computer. Does that program have rights?
(Regina) That’s where I’m trying to go.
(Dr. Fizzano) We make a copy. So, as the human, the source, did I somehow lose rights? Did I create them? Did they get duplicated?
(Regina) Is it a conservation of rights?
(Dr. Fizzano) Is it? But at the end of the day we can turn those computers off and turn them back on and we have yet to figure that out for me. The off part I guess we have figured out. Turning it back on. [Laughing.]
(Regina) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fizzano) We’re still working on it. As much fun as it is to talk about Data and all the other times we anthropomorphize these devices …
(Regina) Data from Star Trek the Next Generation.
(Dr. Fizzano) Data from Star Trek the Next Generation. Yes. I’m sorry. That was a Star Trek reference. At the end of the day we’re talking about machines that we can turn on and turn off. I have a vacuuming robot at my house.
(Regina) A rumba.
(Dr. Fizzano) We call him Sir Upton Comington Kincade.
(Regina) Every single person I know that has owned a Rumba actually names it. Every single one.
(Jordan) Do they name it after a butler?
(Regina) I’ve known three.
(Jordan) Mines Bob. I have a Bob sweep. It’s the cheaper version. “Did you turn Bob on?” “Yep.” [Laughing.]
(Dr. Clauson) So nobody’s impressed with Rumba, right?
(Regina) I’m impressed.
(Dr. Clauson) When you’re saying, “I’m impressed by robots,” or, “I want to talk about robots.” People are over Rumba right?
(Jordan) It’s fun when a cat rides it. That’s cool to see [laughing.]
(Regina) I did see the police robot and I was fairly impressed by that.
(Dr. Clauson) Oh, the bomb diffusing robot.
(Regina) Yeah.
(Dr. Clauson) Most of that is not intelligent. It’s controlled remotely. The Bellingham police robot. Yeah.
(Regina) Can it go upstairs?
(Dr. Clauson) I don’t know if it can go upstairs, maybe. The idea is that somebody’s out there controlling it either remotely or from some 50-foot long cord. It’s got a camera, it’s got an arm, it’s got a puncher [makes a punching sounds.]
(Dr. Fizzano) Technically for defusing bombs, I hope that cord is longer than 50 feet.
(Regina) Yeah. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Clauson) Maybe they put up a little [inaudible.]
(Jordan) He’s not a bomb expert. [Laughing.]
(Regina) I think you’re right. It has to have, for myself to be impressed by a robot, it actually has to be able to make some decisions on it’s own.
(Dr. Clauson) Right. Right.
(Regina) Plus look good.
(Dr. Fizzano) It’s gotta look good.
(Regina) It’s gotta look good. I’m totally shallow.
(Jordan) Like Rosie from the Jetsons.
(Regina) She looks good.
(Dr. Fizzano) She looks just like a maid. Exactly.
(Dr. Clauson) The Rumba comment was more about, my Rumba will every once in a while vacuum up the cords on the floor and just totally destroy them. I still use them as long as it still powers my iPad but I don’t blame the Rumba, like, “Man, Sir Upton you’re fired!” You know, “No recharging for 24 hours.” Usually it’s, I don’t know, usually I just get mad.
(Regina) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Clauson) I know, I should get even, but . . .
(Regina) No!
(Dr. Clauson) It’s the same kind of thing. So our hover board smashes into something else, well, it’s just an accident. The software is doing what the software is doing.
(Regina) What was your Rumba’s name again?
(Dr. Clauson) Sir Upton Comington Kincade.
(Regina) I’m just going to call him Upton.
(Dr. Clauson) He’ll come.
(Regina) If he looked like an actual person though, see, that’s the problem, when they have a head and two arms, maybe you would get more mad. That’s what I mean. It has to do with how they look, right?
(Dr. Clauson) OK. So the more human . . .
(Jordan) If it has a face you can slap it around or something? [Laughing.]
(Regina) We’re all violent creators. Just me?
(Dr. Clauson) I see how that’s attractive, you look more like a human, I’m going to give you more and more human expectations and responsibilities but it’s still a lump of plastic.
(Regina) I think it’s going to be hard for people once we get to that point to make that distinction.
(Dr. Fizzano) It’s hard for people dealing with other people.
[?Flight of The Concords singing Robots ?]
?Can’t we just talk to the humans?
?A little understanding could make things better
?Can’t we talk to the humans and work together now?
?(No, because they are dead)
?(Binary solo)
?Zero zero zero zero zero zero one
?Zero zero zero zero zero zero one one
?Zero zero zero zero zero zero one one one
?Zero zero zero zero one one one
?(Oh, oh-one, one-oh)
?Zero zero zero zero zero zero one
?Zero zero zero zero zero zero one one
?Zero zero zero zero zero zero one one one
(Jordan) Welcome back to Spark Science. My name is Jordan Baker, I’m here with my co-host Regina Barber DeGraaff and we’re talking with Aran Clauson and Perry Fizzano about computer science.
[?Flight of The Concords singing Robots?]
?Boogie, boogie
?(Roboboogie)
?Boogie, roboboogie
?The humans are dead
?Once again without emotion
?The humans are
?Dead dead dead dead
?Dead dead dead dead
(Dr. Clauson) I think it’s also like the Data thing from Star Trek. It’s like, how far in the future is Star Trek?
(Regina) Like 25 something?
(Dr. Fizzano) OK, so 500 years and we still can’t make skin that looks like human skin? All that’s going to happen is we’re going to implant technologies into bodies. Aran Clauson or whatever, we’re going to plant this in you, and that in you, and this in you and so you’re still looking just like you do but you’re being controlled by all these machines inside of you. I mean, that’s way before Data who’s not part human right?
(Regina) No, he’s all robot.
(Dr. Fizzano) He’s all robot. So that’s my point. There’s steps before the all robot thing that is amazingly adept and smart. It’s the augmented human that is all powerful or whatever because you have great memory and great logical and computational abilities but your brain, because you are just human plus we’ve added all this stuff to you to make you great.
(Regina) I’m placing robotic devices into a human. That makes it cyborg I believe, right?
(Dr. Clauson) But that’s the step right? That’s easier than what we’re doing.
(Dr. Fizzano) If I give you a hearing aid, it’s a lot easier than building an ear.
(Regina) The robot arm that we all want.
(Dr. Clauson) Yes. It’s easier to build a machine in there that can move your current arm when your elbow breaks.
(Regina) This thing you are talking about, this integration, it’s already kind of happening right? With the Google Glasses.
(Dr. Clauson) Amputees can control limbs, right?
(Regina) I was thinking of like, you wouldn’t even need to integrate things. I was listening to a story that had a guy, this was in the 90s or early aughts.
(Dr. Clauson) I thought I was the only one that called it the aughts.
(Regina) Um, I watch TV. Some people use it. Nothing that comes out of my mouth is original. So, this person, he had built a computer, which is like the early kind of prototype of these Google Glasses. He had this computer basically pull up documents that he had typed in. Let’s say he’s having a conversation with one of his friends and as he’s having the conversation he’s taking notes, like, this is what we talked about on February 8th 1999. And then the next time he talks to that friend, that information gets pulled up. He made it so that he would never have to forget anything.
He feels like learning something and then forgetting it was a giant waste. After a while, his personality kind of changed. He got better at talking to people because he actually remembered what they talked about last time, they had children or whatever. Slowly it started, this question was, where did he stop and the computer begins because he’s getting this constant assistance. He has this robot assistant the whole time. I think you don’t even need to insert things to start having this integration between human and robot. I don’t know.
(Dr. Fizzano) It’s the same thing at a dinner party when it’s who’s Scott Bakula and how old is he? My body of information now includes Google.
(Regina) Right, exactly.
(Dr. Fizzano) Or who’s doing the talking thing?
(Regina) It’s Amazon. Alexa.
(Dr. Fizzano) Right.
(Regina) They should just all give us money. Period.
(Jordan) Or at least a free trial or something.
(Regina) Right.
(Dr. Fizzano) Maybe they could replace us with Alexa and you could interview Alexa.
(Regina) I’ve tried. She does tell jokes. You can be like, “Alexa tell me a joke.” But um, unlike . . .
(Jordan) Garbanzo beans or chickpeas.
(Regina) Right. Aside. Our listeners can look up that joke which is inappropriate. Jordan here has years of experience with improv. His timing is pretty good, I don’t know, it probably is. [Laughing.]
(Jordan) Wait for it. Yep, it’s pretty good.
(Regina) So anyone that has Alexa, ask her a joke. She is terrible. She’ll tell the joke and she won’t give you time to think, she’ll just give you the punch line right away. So, they gotta work on that. She’s like, “Knock knock, who’s there?” [Laughing.] Then she just tells you the joke. She doesn’t give you time.
(Dr. Fizzano) It’s like the interrupting cow.
(Regina) Yes [claps hands] she’s exactly like that. There’s more ways where we can kind of make these robots more human.
(Dr. Clauson) So what you’re saying is, the computer science world needs to focus on more and better algorithms to tell jokes.
(Regina) Yes. That’s what I’m saying.
(Dr. Fizzano) Of all the things we are working on, it’s much easier to build things that will product what TV show you will like than what kind of joke or to make a joke, or to create art. Maybe what we’re doing, people always bust on computer scientists for being soulless creators of technology, I don’t know, maybe some people do.
(Regina) That’s what the comments say. Never read the comments.
(Dr. Fizzano) That’s right. Don’t read the comments. Maybe what we’re doing is freeing humanity to just do art all the time and improv. So we don’t have to handle all of these mundane tasks.
(Regina) Right. Except for, if we get actually serious, the DARPA competition with the robots to help with disaster, have you guys seen this?
(Dr. Fizzano) Oh sure.
(Regina) Oh sure. I was going to post the video on our Facebook page. It’s so funny how the public thinks of robots. They think of Data from Next Generation is just around the corner. These more humanoid robots can be our best friends, just around the corner. Then you watch the video of these disaster response robots and they’re just falling over, they can’t even open a door and their supposed to be able to do this not only by themselves but with remote control. It’s very frustrating. One of the tasks was walking up stairs. There are these robots that can’t even walk up stairs, which is a very hard task, right?
(Dr. Clauson) I think what you’re seeing though is the difference between people that are letting robots learn how to do tasks internally and not programming them like, this is how you walk up a set of stairs, you shift your weight you do this, you lift your leg, you shift your weight, right, because that we can do. But its like creating that algorithm that says, “Here’s how gravity works, here’s how motion works, now you figure out how to walk.” Right? And then the robots learn and they fall over and they do all of these things when confronted with something slightly out of what they’ve seen before. They don’t adapt. That’s what you’re seeing is the difference right? There are robots out there, what was the company that MIT just bought or not MIT but some company bought some MIT project, Boston Dynamics or something?
(Dr. Fizzano) I forget what that was. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Clauson) It’s some technical, some company that built these four-legged robots and these things can run 55 miles an hour.
(Regina) Oh yeah! I saw those where there just a torso and legs.
(Dr. Clauson) Just a giant torso with legs but they can cover any kind of terrain. They’re cruising along. These are for real robots. They’re programmed for this task. They’re not say, learning how to walk as well. So, a lot of these DARPA things, if you’re going to be disaster recovery you . . .
(Regina) Have to think on your feet.
(Dr. Clauson) Think on your feet. Yeah. And you have to be able to adapt to the situations.
(Regina) I think, at least for me as somebody who likes reading sci-fi novels, watching these movies, we have this idea of this very humanoid looking robot. I think we have this expectation that is just not being met right now.
(Dr. Clauson) Because we’re much more concerned about the task than the looks. Just take the evolution of computer programs or computer science back in the 60s and 50s or whatever when people were writing computer programs, your interface was typing. There was no mouse, there was no graphics. And that’s how a lot of us still interface with computers a lot of the time. It is incredibly efficient once you understand how to interface with this text base. The mouse feels incredibly slow and laborious.
(Regina) What are phone going to look like in 20 years.
(Dr. Clauson) Nothing.
(Regina) Nothing? There’s no phones.
(Dr. Fizzano) There’s so much research going on today in augmented reality where the idea of having a separate device, we’re talking Google glass, that isn’t projected right into your eye. Low technology is just a pair of glasses that present something over the top. That’s today. If you go out 20, I was thinking 30 years, the idea of having a phone, a discrete device that’s going to be your connection to the world that’s separate from you, it’s going to be all the time every time.
(Regina) Within 20 years though? You think that’s going to happen?
(Dr. Fizzano) Oh, absolutely.
[?Flight of The Concords singing Robots ?]
?The distant future
?The year 2000
?The distant future, the year 2000
?The distant future, the distant future
?It is the distant future
?The year 2000
?(We are robots)
?The world is quite different
?Ever since the robotic uprising
?Of the late nineties
?There is no more unhappiness
? (Affirmative)
?We no longer say yes
?Instead we say affirmative
?(Yes affir-affirmative)
?Unless we know the other robot really well
(Regina) If you’re just joining us, this is Spark Science. My name is Regina Barber DeGraaff with my co-host Jordan Baker. We’re speaking to Dr. Aran Clauson and Dr. Perry Fizzano about computer science.
[?Flight of The Concords singing Robots ?]
?Finally, robotic beings rule the world
?The humans are dead
?The humans are dead
?We used poisonous gases
?And we poisoned their asses
(Dr. Clauson) So you look back and say, “This all happened in the last 5 years.” But then you look at the last 50 years before that of computer science and as much has happened in the last 5 years as those previous 50 of not 100,000 times more. You see what I’m saying. So then, why that whole span of 5 years will get compressed to whatever, a year.
(Regina) Do you think that growth is going to stay? You’re talking about exponential growth right? Do you think that rate is going to be sustained?
(Dr. Clauson) I guess it depends on how you define it. In the 70s or 60s the founder of Intel made that production of exponential growth in terms of what we can fit onto a chip.
(Regina) What was that quote again?
(Dr. Fizzano) Is was every 18 months, the number of transistors that they could put onto a chip doubles.
(Dr. Clauson) Because of that, because you are doubling the number of circuitry on the chip, you’re also halving the distance between things in the chips and you’re making things faster. You’re making it more dense, quicker, cheaper at the same time. All of this has fueled our current state. We feel like that law, Moore’s Law, Gordon Moore predicted that. We feel like that’s flattening out. We’re not packing more and more stuff on the chip. Just in the last few years.
(Dr. Fizzano) But as far as I understand, we’ve hit the theoretical limits of what our transistors can do. So we’re at mach speeds now where we’re kind of fighting physics. If physicists would step up to quantum competing, that’s the next step.
(Regina) It’s not my fault. I should have somebody on here that talks about competing next.
(Dr. Fizzano) You should have Seth do it.
(Regina) I don’t know if Seth is going to want to do that. He doesn’t even listen to this show.
(Dr. Fizzano) That would be number what? 6? The speeds we’re talking about, the clock cycles of high end computers, you were talking about 6-7 gigahertz, light can barely get across the die. So how fast? We can’t get information from one unit that needs it to the other side of the chip. So now, all of the sudden, we can’t pack in twice as many transistors because they’re getting so small that tunneling effects take over. The transistors quite working. We’re as small as we can get. We’re as big as we can get. The next thing is to pack multiple cores on one die. Yeah, the light can’t get across the die but we don’t need to, we’re going to segregate our dies down to 4 processors or 8 processors or however many. We’ve sort of been enjoying this exponential growth but it’s not, it’s going to be different.
(Dr. Clauson) Now it’s like the exponential growth is coming from the number of people and the number of projects and things that are going on at once, in my opinion. There’s more people working on technology for computer science today than there have been ever in the past. That’s continuing to grow if you look at Western’s enrollment for computer science, it’s through the roof. The reason for that is students are coming in, “I want to do this, it seems like the most cutting edge thing I can do,” or something. It’s challenging, there’s lots of jobs out there, whatever it is that excites them. But now you get that pile of people working on things and now we’re just going to keep knocking one problem off after the next. So solving chess or checkers, this is trivial to us now. You could have a college student write an artificial intelligence to learn how to play simple games.
(Dr. Fizzano) Would you call chess simple?
(Dr. Clauson) Yeah. I mean, it’s just, yeah.
(Dr. Fizzano) Alright.
(Dr. Clauson) All I’m saying is that we still can’t do “go.” We’ve conquered jeopardy, the IBM computer that played jeopardy, you saw that?
(Regina) Yeah, I did. I like how you’re like, “We did, we conquered it.” [Laughing.]
(Dr. Clauson) Well not me. I’m just saying we as humanity through robots and that’s a big powerful robot to ply Jeopardy. In terms of the future, I don’t know, medical diagnostics, you want predictions? It’s like, medical diagnostics. I think every doctor is going to be well versed in interfacing with the computer to do diagnostics. I think a lot of science is going to be driven by discoveries by computers. There was something last week, you know, all of these human experiments that we’ve done over the years, not experiments on humans, but humans have carried out biological experiments. All the data is there, they fed it into a computer and the computer said, “These three genes are responsible for this behavior.”
No biologist has ever figured that out before. So it’s kind of a thing, OK so it’s aiding scientific discovery. It’s not to say the computer is smarter. The humans did all of these experiments that fed the data to the computer but the computer made a conclusion that the humans didn’t see, right? I think it’s going to aid every aspect of education, healthcare, you name it.
(Jordan) Do you think there will be some sort of a matrix sort of thing with like a jack? Maybe not in the back of their head but like, something to go through a diagnostic thing of what’s wrong with somebody?
(Dr. Clauson) Sure. I think your blood stream is going to have numbers small nano robots, if you want to call them robots, floating around your blood stream.
(Regina) Nanobots.
(Dr. Clauson) Nanobots, OK, there you go. Taking measurements, reporting wirelessly back to some computer to say, “Hey, there’s something going on in this vain that’s constricted.”
(Regina) In 20 years.
(Dr. Clauson) Oh yeah. I think even sooner perhaps. I think that’s very doable. The technology is very achievable. When I say that you can’t be surprised by anything I just said, a small thing in your blood stream reporting wirelessly to some computer, I mean, this is not beyond us.
(Jordan) There’s a movie about it in the 80s.
(Dr. Clauson) Well you have some predictions. I want to hear those.
(Regina) I don’t have any.
(Dr. Clauson) You said you have predictions when we started this.
(Regina) Did I really?
(Dr. Clauson) Yeah.
(Regina) My only production is, or my wish, is the whole Star Trek tricorder like the diagnostic that you were talking about. Not the tricorder, what is it called? I think it is the tricorder where you can scan somebody and you can say, “Oh, broken rib.” And it wasn’t just the tricorder that I really liked in that medical part of it. It was also the injecting of the medicine through the skin or something without needles. I kind of basically just want Star Trek to be real. I mean, be reasonable, reasonable, the scanning, the medicine . . .
(Jordan) The spaceship?
(Regina) The spaceship and time warping I’ve kind of, you know, not in 20 years. But I think the other two things. I mean, holodeck, that would be awesome.
(Dr. Clauson) Teleportation.
(Regina) Teleportation, I don’t think that’s going to happen in 20 years. I think the medical stuff of Star Trek, maybe we can do that.
(Dr. Fizzano) So, there is an XPRIZE out right now for a medical tricorder.
(Regina) Right. Yes there is. That’s why I think 20 years is an OK thing.
(Dr. Clauson) It’s a million dollar prize or something.
(Dr. Fizzano) Yeah, it’s a million dollar prize and there’s like, I think, 7, it has to diagnose 7 different . . .
(Regina) Illnesses.
(Dr. Clauson) People built apps right, for third world countries where you can take a drop of blood, take a picture of it and it can tell if you have some predictable diseases or another. Not just any diseases but yeah, just a picture of your blood cell on your cruddie camera on your phone. Not just a microscope or anything. And it only works for a couple of different things, stuff like that, but, the point is that the technology is out there.
I think I told you the other day, if there’s X people in the world, there’s .9X cellphones in the world. So 90% of the number of people. Not to say that 90% of the people have cell phones because maybe some have two but the number of cellphones is approaching the number of humans on Earth. That’s ubiquitous technology.
If you got some health care thing that could work through that device or some other socially impactful app that worked through that device, you could make an impact worldwide. I think that’s sort of the power of where we’re at today. You really can, with just your mind and a device that is not very expensive, create something that can make an impact worldwide and globally change society. That’s pretty awesome.
(Regina) I think we’re going to stop there. Alright, I want to thank you, Dr. Fizzano, Dr. Clauson, for coming to talk to us.
(Dr. Fizzano) It’s been fun.
(Regina) Thank you.
(Dr. Clauson) Thanks for having us.
[?Flight of The Concords singing Robots ?]
(Regina) This show was recorded at the Spark Museum on Bay Street in the heart of Bellingham Washington. Our producers are Suzanne Blaise and Katie Knutzen. The music is Chemical Calisthenics by Blackalicious and Wondaland by Janelle Monae.
[?Flight of The Concords singing Robots ?]
?Come on sucker
?Lick my battery
(Regina) Our feature song today is robots by Flight of the Concords. Join us again next week at this time. If you like our show and would love to support us, please go to KMRE.org and click on the button “donate.”
[? Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]
? Neutron, proton, mass defect, lyrical oxidation, yo irrelevant
? Mass spectrograph, pure electron volt, atomic energy erupting
? As I get all open on betatron, gamma rays thermo cracking
? Cyclotron and any and every mic
? You’re on trans iridium, if you’re always uranium
? Molecules, spontaneous combustion, pow
? Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
? I’m every element around
? Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
? Iodine nitrate activate
? Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
? Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in
? Careful, careful with those ingredients
? They could explode and blow up if you drop them
? And they hit the ground
[End of podcast.]