Sign in

Michael Will 🍁

@scidata.bsky.social
160 followers 75 following 848 posts

computation from first principles 0101 FORTH PROLOG GOFAI RISC-V HPC Spaceflight Astronomy Zebrafish SciFi CitSci Archaeology Anthropology Psychohistory Website: www.scidata.ca Discussion: worthdefending.blogspot.com GOFAI Forum: gofai.discourse.group

PostsRepliesMedia
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
It's sometimes useful to go backwards too. PygmyForth is an extremely useful language for fossils like me. It's written in Python and new primitives can be coded in Python. I've resurrected some of my ancient code with it (#GOFAI, #Astronomy). #Python #Forth #ComputationalThinking
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
And the Asimovian bow-tie perfects the scene. Might be a psychohistory engine (early prime radiant).
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Don't overlook the old stuff (GOFAI). Remember that the very best LLMs are neurosymbolic centaurs.
001
Reposted by Michael Will 🍁
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 23/09/2026
Good morning from @perimeterinstitute.bsky.social ! ☀️
A chalkboard on an outdoor wall next to a reflecting pool, with chairs and a sofa in front of the wall. In chalk, there is a drawing of the institute and the words “Welcome to Perimeter. Discovery starts with curiosity.”
1448611
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
How can anyone comprehend a data center without grokking the miracle of a single transistor? To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour. - William Blake #ComputationalThinking #Information
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The cylinder to the right almost looks like a crude #QuantumComputer. This pic would look good on the cover of a period SF paperback.
020
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A Canadian is someone who can make AI in a canoe. #GOFAI #ComputationalThinking #Canada www.scidata.ca/the-picoxper...
scidata.ca
The picoXpert Story
picoXpert was one of the first (if not THE first) handheld artificial intelligence (AI) tools ever. It provided for the capture of human expert knowledge and later access to that knowledge by gener…
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Chekov: "That may take some time." Scotty: "Let it take time, lad." - s2e25 "Bread and Circuses" Scotty's discipline and patience saves the entire crew. A lesson to remember in these times of snake oil, contrived urgency, panic, and frantic flim-flammery. Measure twice, cut once. #StarTrekWisdom
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Might have been a big hit iff it had threatened the extinction of our species. Weak marketing, Hasbro. #GOFAI #ComputationalThinking
010
Reposted by Michael Will 🍁
Jason Moore @moorejh.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Chat? No! It’s Think-a-Tron! #vcfmw
2111
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
It's a trillion dollar parlor trick. Really cool, super powerful even. But intelligent? No. I'm old enough to have seen this before. It was called Expert Systems, and it took down some brilliant companies and hard working people when it fizzled out. I'm one of them. www.scidata.ca/the-picoxper...
scidata.ca
The picoXpert Story
picoXpert was one of the first (if not THE first) handheld artificial intelligence (AI) tools ever. It provided for the capture of human expert knowledge and later access to that knowledge by gener…
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
The last machine that Bill Gates was personally involved in making. A harbinger of the laptop. I used it while canoeing in Canada way back then. www.scidata.ca/the-picoxper...
scidata.ca
The picoXpert Story
picoXpert was one of the first (if not THE first) handheld artificial intelligence (AI) tools ever. It provided for the capture of human expert knowledge and later access to that knowledge by gener…
020
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Takes me back to my commercial ROV days. www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLaR...
youtube.com
Building a Lego-powered Submarine 5.0 - moving weight for pitch control
YouTube video by Brick Experiment Channel
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Learning is what humans do by nature. Even if we're not engineers. The current "AI" wave is actually the outsourcing of thought. The enshittification of thought in fact. The KIM-1 and its cousins were true intelligence amplifiers. #ComputationalThinking #GOFAI
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
The glasses make the scene. I once asked an optometrist if he could sell me a pair of Isaac Asimov style horn-rimmed glasses. He found the perfect frames, but the price was 5X what the lenses cost! So ironically, nerdism ain't cheap. #Asimov #ComputerHistory #NouveauNerd
020
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
CDP1802: flexible 16x16 bit registers, clockable down to DC Powerful instruction set, interrupts, CMOS efficiency No wonder it was the brain of several space probes. ELF-II plus KIM-1 pretty much did it all. Halcyon days. #ComputationalThinking #GOFAI
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
If Forth had been widely taught in schools, we'd be on Titan by now. If it had also been invented earlier, we'd be on Triton. #ComputationalThinking #GOFAI
020
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Make your favorite film sound as boring as possible without giving away the title: A space gardener tends to his plants, aided by three mediocre robots. Things go downhill quickly.
031
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
HP made at least one calculator/computer (HP71). And there's a really nice one for Android (just called the Forth Calculator). There were one or two amazing Forth implementations for the Palm handheld too. But Clive could have majorly changed the world. We'd be on Titan by now, or maybe even Triton.
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Perhaps explains why the flirtation with #FORTH never took deep root. If it had, what a different world this would be. Even before the ZX81, I used to eagerly await each issue of Scientific American hoping to see a Sinclair Forth-based programmable calculator. Alas. #ComputationalThinking #RPN
100
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
My secret sauce is to use two wildly different programming languages in the same model. The environment and the agents are entirely different critters. Unfortunately, neither language was popular where I worked in Waterloo back in the glory days of Canadian software dev. #ArtificialLife
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
I never had any spare coins in my youth. They all went immediately into Lunar Lander skills development. Or Asteroids if the Lunar machine was occupied. The 6809 was a gamer's dream machine - dual stacks, 16-bit arithmetic, smooth 2D memory map space. I was sorely tempted to go into game dev.
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Whenever I see that form factor and an 8085 (or even Z80), I'm transported back to the early 1980s in northern Ontario. I spent long, warm summers canoeing and coding on a Tandy Model 100. Mostly celestial mechanics and expert systems. Anything seemed possible in those heady, halcyon days.
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Oh oh, the techbros took their "our AI is so advanced that it even scares us" marketing shtick a bit too far. Flim-flammery backfire. #GenAI is the hare, #GOFAI is the tortoise
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
As of this moment, the Jays are in the playoffs. Start spreadin' the news.
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Whither the Builders? "You know what I used to love when I was a kid, Phil? Building blocks. Erector sets... We don't build anything, Phil. We don't make anything" - Edward Lewis in "Pretty Woman" (1990) “Courage, my friends; 'tis not too late to build a better world” - Tommy Douglas
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
One of the most formative weeks for a 9y old me was building a crystal radio. Rec'd a really cheap kit as a gift. My sister's friend's dad owned the radio repair shop in town, and he sold me a spool of thin copper wire for 5c. I climbed trees outside my window to string a long antenna. Magic ensued.
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
The laptop is not the key. It's a very 1st world take on learning. It could quickly degenerate into an apps and networking frenzy. The key is opening a door into the machine universe (via BASIC or FORTH). David Brin captured this notion in 2006: www.salon.com/2006/09/14/b... #ComputationalThinking
salon.com
Why Johnny can't code - Salon.com
BASIC used to be on every computer a child touched -- but today there's no easy way for kids to get hooked on programming.
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
The Canadian Museum of History is a good place to tell our story - a breathtakingly beautiful one. A calm and thoughtful inspiration to a weary world. #Canada #Anthropology
070
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
"Is AI a good bet?" Nerds, analysts, investors, influencers, politicians, and journalists will often answer, "Yes, we just need to be patient because we've never seen anything like this before." I have. It was called #ExpertSystems. It never scaled, triggering a decades-long AI Winter. #AI #GenAI
010
Reposted by Michael Will 🍁
Ken Shirriff @righto.com · 31/07/2026
This vacuum tube module was used in an IBM programmable calculator from 1948. This module, called a "trigger", stored one bit of information. Let's take a closer look and see the module operate.
A cylindrical tube module. It consists of a U-shaped metal frame forming a handle, with a vacuum tube and some electronic components (resistors and capacitors) mounted on insulating disks. At the bottom of the module, nine metal pins allow the module to be plugged into a socket.
111021
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
HP Calculators QuickBASIC TurboPROLOG dBASE III Almost any FORTH Almost anything from Palm(tm)
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
It's the 17th C. Dutch Tulip Bubble redux. Hype makes everyone an instant expert. Actual study/comprehension is for losers.
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
I'm lucky to have lived and worked in those glory days. The promise of democratized computation lit up the world. #ComputationalThinking #Forth #8-bit #Syntonicity
020
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Never ignore serendipity.
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
A good example of how we think. Not tabular, but associative. #GOFAI and CPU architecture had (has) so much to teach us. We're not data centers, we're computational centaurs. #ComputationalThinking
040
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
In the 1980s, I did a lot of embedded stuff for the energy sector. Mostly Z8, with a bit of Z80 on bigger systems. Bare metal Z80 coding on custom systems was fun. The Zilog rep was a joy to work with. Would love to visit the show, but the Atlantic ocean gets in the way.
030
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
20 years ago, @davidbrin.bsky.social wrote a touchstone essay on early-life computational thinking. The ZX81 and its kind offered the perfect platform - easy, affordable, pervasive BASIC in ROM. If we had taken that path, the world would be a much better place today. www.salon.com/2006/09/14/b...
salon.com
Why Johnny can't code - Salon.com
BASIC used to be on every computer a child touched -- but today there's no easy way for kids to get hooked on programming.
041
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Toronto FC. Like Manchester, but with more snow. And we have a complicated relationship with raccoons. www.cbc.ca/news/trendin...
cbc.ca
Conrad, dead raccoon in Toronto vigil, 'now gone but will never be forgotten' | CBC News
Toronto paused to pay a bizarre tribute to a fellow denizen of the downtown, sparking a Twitter shaming of the city's animal services.
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
#CanadianMusic #UnderratedSongs www.youtube.com/watch?v=azqS...
youtube.com
Worlds Away
YouTube video by stesul
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
University teaches shiny young people to cheat, and GenAI (I refuse to call it AI) is only the latest vehicle. Nothing is more important than the paper-chase. The Ivory Tower is just a better dressed neighborhood. Eventually, the entire society could slide into corruption. Oh, wait... #GOFAI
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Deep Time, Deep Space, and Deep Complexity. The rationalist trinity. #CitizenScience
000
Reposted by Michael Will 🍁
qrper.bsky.social @qrper.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Siccar Point: A POTA Activation at the Birthplace of Deep Time by Thomas (K4SWL) On Saturday, June 20, 2026, my wife and I decided to spend the day exploring one of the most remarkable places along Scotland's southeastern coastline: Siccar Point. The Siccar Point Site of Significant Scientific…
qrper.com
Siccar Point: A POTA Activation at the Birthplace of Deep Time
by Thomas (K4SWL) On Saturday, June 20, 2026, my wife and I decided to spend the day exploring one of the most remarkable places along Scotland's southeastern coastline: Siccar Point. The Siccar Point Site of Significant Scientific Interest (GB-1358) is tucked away in the Scottish Borders overlooking the North Sea. I'd been eyeing this park for a couple of days. Looking at satellite imagery on Google Maps, I had a feeling it would make for a spectacular activation.
222
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Halt and Catch Fire
020
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
One day as an undergrad at U of Toronto, I ran into Jim Butterfield at at an early computer store downtown. Intense microprocessor debate ensued (8080, 1802, 6502). A scholar and a gentleman. Good Times. #ComputationalThinking
051
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
It's nice to have so many from the Old Country joining us. Bring on the next match. Set phasers to milky and get in amongst yeh. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xar7... #Canada #WorldCup
youtube.com
Taysiders in Space
YouTube video by lessthanj
100
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Many years ago, there was a little book entitled "BASIC and FORTH" that described both together. I once wrote an integer BASIC in FORTH that directly interpreted Backus-Naur Form. Not super useful, but it turned a few language-theory nerds' heads. #ComputationalThinking #GOFAI #BASIC #FORTH
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Analogous to 'pre-atomic steel'. Atmospheric tests contaminated subsequent steel production, polluting and degrading it with often unwanted isotopes. Newer is not always better. Measure twice, cut once. #Metallurgy #Literature #GOFAI
010
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
If you're gonna rip off something cool, you can't beat The Time Tunnel. #ComputationalThinking #GOFAI #TimeTravel
000
Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Everything I know about on-plane etiquette I learned from this DC-2 scene in "Lost Horizon" (1937). www.youtube.com/shorts/XoMxr...
youtube.com
never conversational before coffee is a mantra for life ☕ 🎥 - Lost Horizon
YouTube video by Silver Scenes
120