Moving forward amongst the mean streets.

Table of contents

• Fifty Episodes!
• Streets Ahead
  • Episode Updates
• Tron(s)
• New to Dr Implausible's Bookshelf
• Multi-melting
• Recently on the blog
• Know Your Robot
• Updates on past stories

When I started the Implausipod a little over 3 years ago, I wasn't quite sure where it would go.  I definitely didn't realize how hard it would be, and how many different tasks were involved. The relatively simple idea of "record audio, post to the world" has a lot of little hidden behind-the-scenes work going on. So kudos to all who do it, and a big thanks to all who have been helpful behind the scenes of this one, with the feedback, suggestions, and support. 

We'll celebrate this one for a moment before we get moving on (whoops, already got to 51 (see below)), and we'll keep the episodes coming. 

But wait!

Like we mentioned in the episode, the stories about self-driving cars are coming our fast and furious.  Not like the movie, of course, but also kinda a little bit? Since we released the episode a week ago, a few articles caught our eye.

Autonomous Trucks

Swedish firm Einride has been making advances with cabless autonomous electric trucks, looking to compete in the small delivery truck market, and have recently been testing cross-border driving within the EU.  There's a tendency to assume that autonomous vehicles simply mean individual drivers and family vehicles, but there is a massive market in trucks (and farming vehicles) that will may reshape the world in short order.

Connected Tires

As we heard in the episode, sometimes it's not the "big" innovations but the small ones that can have a big impact.  Pirelli's new "CyberTires" connect to the car via bluetooth and provide an increased range of information when compared to the current ABS and tire pressure sensors in modern cars.

JohnnyCab Lives!

The Google (sorry, Alphabet)-owned robotaxi service Waymo is expanding the range of their vehicles in certain cities to include freeway driving, taking it out of the slower-speed areas it has been operating in and providing round-the-clock service.  While their use is still contested, the ideals of the "Magic Highway" are still being worked on in 2025.

Not just Streets Ahead, but also racing forward in other dimensions.  Well, three of them, but virtual ones.

When Nick Bostrom described the race for AI as the new global space race for the 21st century back in 2012 in the book Superintelligence, I'm not sure how many took him seriously, but a lot of the activity and investment we're seeing seems to bear that out. So in addition to the USA and China, it's no surprise that another former superpower is attempting to get in the game.

... with somewhat less that impressive results. The Russian AIdol took a bit of a tumble after it's first tentative steps.  We'll hold off on adding it to our Know Your Robot series until we know a bit more. For now, check out the video from the BBC on the whole event.

A few titles showed up over the last month, one newish and a few new to me.

Cultish (Montell, 2021)

This jumped to my attention due to the current state of the world, and our ability (or inability) to communicate within it, to find common ground and understanding.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Wolfe, 1968[2024])

On a somewhat related note, a cheap copy of Wolfe's classic was available, and I thought I'd check it out.  The Merry Pranksters that Wolfe details have interesting ties to subsequent hacker culture and the ideas we've talked about in The Californian Ideology and related stories.

On Quality (Pirsig, 2022)

Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is rightfully a classic, one that I referred to during my dissertation work on makerspaces and the maker movement, so this posthumously-published edited collection of notes, letters, and essays attracted my interest.  I haven't finished it yet, but I'll give a more formal update once it's done.

Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Bookchin, 1971)

We spoke about Bookchin's work on Social Ecology a while back, but this older group of essays struck a chord, and we're integrated some of our reading of this book into recent blog posts. Forward-thinking, Bookchin has a lot to say about our current era, and it's worth a read.

Pluribus (2025)

After hearing some friends discuss the interesting ideas and themes in this show, I took the plunge and got caught up in this one.  I'm not a particular fan of Vince Gilligan and his earlier work, but there's an episode or two of X-Files that I did enjoy.  Overall, it's an interesting premise about humanity and consciousness, mirroring the talk about p-zombies from works such as Peter Watts' Echopraxis, along with a thinly disguised allegory for communism v capitalism and American exceptionalism v the rest of the world.  (Hint: the supermarket scene is key).  We'll see how it plays out.  Cautiously watching for now.

Murderbot (2025)

...and seeing as I had signed up for AppleTV for a month or so, what better chance to check out their other programming.  A few others caught my eye, we'll get to them later, but Murderbot got bumped to the top of the list by virtue of being the easiest to get caught up on.  Something to be said for brevity.  Halfway through, I'm enjoying the show: it has a wry sense of humour and decent narrative momentum, with cliffhangers showing up during the brisk 22 minutes episodes leading one to actually look forward to the next episode. Recommended.

Echanger and Amazon

We're stilll seeing signs of echanger everywhere of course, but a major recent announcement by Amazon of layoffs might not exactly be what it seems. (Here's a second source.)

What neither of those sources are touching on is that the impact of AI may be more of a fiscal replacement than a labour replacement.  As fund get shifted internally for development of AI tools and datacenters, those monies are getting drawn from somewhere.  The echanger is still down the road.

Spotify Fools Humans

Back in July, we talked about how for many listeners, having music as background sounds was good enough, and how this led to the rise of Muzak and other music-as-service options.  In the age of AI music, this is turning out to be true, as a recent survey by Deezer and Ipsos revealed that 97% of listeners can't tell the different between AI-generated and human-made*.

*: Of course, as there are no known sentient AIs at the time of writing, it's all human made, technically.

By the time this issue is in your hands, the next episode of the Implausipod should almost be ready for release.  Our examination of the Weyland-Yutani Cinematic Universe begins in earnest with a look at the Predator franchise.

We'll review that episode, and some related material in our next Adaptive issue of Implausability.  Until then, take care and have fun.