Star Wars and Technology
Chris, Fraser, Nick and Peter talk about the technology of the Star Wars galaxy. Can you really have all that hardware but so little software? Why didn't R2D2 just commit the Death Star plans to Github? And what's the point of science fiction?
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by Tell Me Studios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Peter Coghill, Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing technology in the universe of Star Wars. So Nick, technology in Star Wars. We've got lightsabers, we've got robots, we've got interstellar spaceships, jet packs, holograms, incredibly advanced technology
Speaker B:right? Yeah well this is the interesting thing. As we all know the film Rogue One which is a Star Wars spin-off, it's not in the main anthology, is coming out in December and it's the hitherto untold story of how the rebel spies manage to infiltrate deep into the levels of the Empire and get the plans to the Death Star. Okay and this is I suppose I ought to say spoiler alert, if you haven't seen episode four A New Hope, otherwise known as Star Wars, then go and watch it now. The plans to the Death Star are what the first film is all about, so the first film that was made chronologically which is episode four. It is all about the hunt for R2-D2 who has the plans to the Death Star sort of inside him from quite early on in the film and these plans enable the rebels to work out a plan. They find the one vulnerability in the Death Star and it means that they can, with a very small force you know, take on this giant space station and ultimately destroy it. Now the interesting thing is, and it's a question that lots of people have asked, is why did he have to carry it around? Why couldn't they just email the plans to the Death Star, you know, wirelessly or something, just transmit them? What's going on there? And I think actually there is an interesting consistency about the way that technology appears in Star Wars and this I think is what we want to unpick today, is that it's full of really really advanced hardware. So you have, you've got, you know, robots everywhere, apparently cheap as chips, but they're all highly specialised robots. They're all, they seem to have their capabilities baked into their hardware. What there doesn't seem to be much of is software. That seems to be sort of missing from Star Wars somehow. And so we've got these two puzzles, we've got very advanced technology but we at the same time don't seem to have sort of very much software and in general, you know, the fact that these Death Star plans are so important but somehow only able to be carried on this one memory stick suggests that there also isn't really such a thing as data storage. And my question really, not being an expert on the technology is, is that possible?
Speaker A:So fortunately we do have an expert on technology with us. Peter Coghill, what's the answer to Nick's
Speaker C:question? Well the expert's been stretching it a bit but yeah, so what the, clearly the technologies in Star Wars are fictional, but for assuming a minute that they are there, but they're quite different to our own. Now computers that we have, they almost universally follow a similar architecture, sometimes known as the Von Neumann architecture or an alternative is the Harvard architecture, which relies on certain things and it relies on a mutable memory that's persistent, a common clock signal, so there's a synchronous element to it, and then separate arithmetic units which perform the addition and multiplication functions. And that's really it, they all follow the basic same practice and they're more and more complicated. So in this, in our sort of technology, there is no specific link between memory and computation. You can have a computer that's incredibly powerful with very small memory or vice versa or both. But there are potentially other technologies which are not necessarily silicon-based which, and other architectures in silicon that might impose a trade-off between computation and memory. So for example, there are architectures sometimes called amorphous, there are ones called systolic, and there are analog computing where you don't necessarily need a memory, an immutable memory, sorry, a persistent memory that you can recall stuff from, because there is no state base to these machines. There is no sort of state that they flip between one state to another and to another to another based on their program. They're inherently asynchronous and there is no, the memory per se is just what happens, whatever voltage or current happens to be on any given line at any one time. And these systems often have a sort of strong feedback element to them, so they can just perform a function, do some computation with no real memory state. So assuming the Star Wars technology is based on something similar to this, and they haven't found a way of manufacturing silicon or other architectures, then yes, you could assume that there's some sort of constraint on memory storage, but you've got an ability to perform high volume
Speaker A:computation. Okay, great. So the answer is yes, is that it's a viable technological universe that
Speaker C:we've, that's been revealed to us in Star Wars. Yeah, but there's no theoretical reason why the two is linked, there's no sort of trade-off that you have to have between computation and storage.
Speaker A:Okay, great. So let's bring in Chris, let's have your sort of two-penneth in this.
Speaker D:Yeah, well I think there might actually be tactical reasons why you would have very, very sensitive information cut off from a system and people's ability to interrogate that system and steal the information. If this information is critical to the survival of the Death Star, you wouldn't want people to be able to access it, so you might actually build that in for sensitive material. Equally, when it comes to the rebels trying to get this information, keep it safe and transport it between places, you might also want to use a physical courier, in this case a droid, wandering through the desert, because that might be safer than trying to send it through an electronic communications system. And in fact, we see that paralleled today in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency where, you know, post-Snowden and all the revelations about how the West gathers information on its enemies, people are reverting to carrying information around on bits of paper, effectively, in order to avoid detection. And so I think there might be pressing tactical reasons why you would have a droid wandering around with some information.
Speaker A:Okay, so I mean, just hold on. Actually, maybe you want to say what I want to say, Peter, so you say.
Speaker C:Well, I can understand that for the point at which you're stealing the information, you're smuggling it out to maintain, you know, protecting the spies who got the information in the first place, but once you've got it, rather than sending this droid on, this hapless droid on a bit of an adventure across the galaxy, why not just program the droid to wander up to the nearest computer terminal and push it to the Star Wars equivalent of WikiLeaks, or upload or commit it to GitHub, so it's just there, and then it becomes public and completely immutable because there is a version out there everyone can find. Yeah, because the answer is, if you're on the rebel side,
Speaker A:actually, you probably never do want to hide that information, you just want to get it out there. But anyway, the principle is that they could be using their email all the time in Star Wars, it's just we don't see it, right? But anyway, it looks like you wanted to take...
Speaker D:Yeah, no, I was just going to say, I mean, I imagine the Empire as being a bit like, say, North Korea or something, where they have the complete capacity to control whatever information people have access to, and that's one of the reasons why they're in charge. And, you know, so you can't upload it to some public space, because the technology has developed to the extent where they can completely control and monitor that information.
Speaker B:I think actually, I can back up, I've got some facts to back that up, which is that in Star Wars, apparently, someone has decided that there is a thing called the holonet, which is indeed Imperial controlled, and that is able to transmit signals fast using faster than light transmitters. So that's another important thing, which we ought to mention, which astute listeners may well be thinking, which is the problem with sending a signal, a wireless signal is that it only only travels at the speed of light, right? And actually, here, we're talking about into, you know, well, solar system to solar system distances. And actually, physically, if you can't use the holonet, so if you can't send faster than light signals, then actually popping the information in a droid and physically sending the droid is the only way to get information somewhere fast. But I think this is, I mean, this is all really interesting. I think the but I think the why, what there is clearly an absence of in Star Wars is kind of the artificial intelligence technologies that we're inventing at the moment, not not Aleph Insights, per se, but you know, the kind of AI research program at the moment is very much geared around, around learning. So have we, you know, what we want to do is get to a general artificial intelligence that can be set any problem, you can just tell it, look, we need to we need to destroy Death Star, or we need to translate this bit of language, or we need to build a, you know, a moisture evaporator or something. And and it'll just be able to do that. In Star Wars, you see all these incredibly sophisticated, but specialized robots, which is a very different direction to the way that our artificial intelligence research is seems to be going. And and so the question is, why? And I think I think you have to look for some sort of technology constrained. I was gonna ask Peter, I don't know much about the materials aspect of this, but it looks to me like Tatooine is pretty full of sand. Like, is it made of something other than silicon? I mean, why do we use silicon? Is it possible that the Star Wars galaxy, which we know is far, far away? Is it possible that that galaxy is sort of very low in silicon or something? Well, silicon is not the only option in terms of
Speaker C:semiconductors. Indeed, many of the early transistors and things actually used other semiconductor materials like gallium. So it's not, it's not beyond the possibility, but it would seem unlikely given that it's constrained by the same physical and chemical laws as our own galaxy that they would have lots of sand, given that it's pretty prevalent here. Now, that's not to say that but it may be that they've just that their technology tree has gone off in a slightly different direction. It's found a different local maxima. And so rather than rather than inventing the transistor, they invent something else. Maybe they've invented a neuron first, some sort of maybe semi-biological approach to computing that just sort of outstripped, and for whatever commercial reasons, was more popular than our own. Indeed, many of the early integrated circuit manufacturers were experimenting with all sorts of weird and wonderful things. And it was just, it was a commercial choice rather than anything else that made the silicon transistor more popular. And it would be, it's easy to imagine a semi-biological or biological computer or optical computer that has that more that constraint of processing versus memory
Speaker B:more baked into it. So like C-3PO is basically a C-3PO chip. And if you have one of those, it's not that you get the, you get a general chip and program C-3PO software into it, it's that the chip itself is designed to make a C-3PO work. Indeed. So it might be,
Speaker C:you might have some sort of semi-biological process, which is very good at spitting out C-3PO chips in the same way that you grow bacteria. But it's very difficult then to customize that process to make other things that are more general. I've got a question I want to
Speaker A:ask, but Chris, you look like you want to chip in. Yeah, no, I was just, I was just intrigued
Speaker D:to know whether this would have any reflection on the fact that R2D2 can fall into a swamp and then come out again, functioning, functioning perfectly. Well, I guess the problem is probably
Speaker C:made of water and other fairly benign organic materials. And as long as there's nothing too corrosive in there, it should be all right. I would have thought. I thought you were going
Speaker A:to ask how come he can fall into swamp and get out fine, but he can't walk upstairs or something.
Speaker B:Yeah, indeed. Why does he only speak in beeps? I mean, he seems to be able to communicate fine, but why didn't they just put a little thing that turns it into English? I don't know. There is another thought, of course, which is that actually the blueprints for these droids were designed in some previous age of Star Wars, you know, which is now, you know, we're now the kind of technology or the know-how to design those things has been lost. And now what we have is the blueprints, but not the not the kind of process by which they were developed.
Speaker A:Okay, so look, but are there any rules of science fiction? And is there a way that we can use science fiction scenarios thinking about our own world?
Speaker D:So I mean, I think there's obviously a question as to what's the purpose of science fiction? You know, is it to make comments about the future? Or is it to make a comment about the, you know, where we where we are now? And I think, you know, if you look at this, the original Star Wars trilogy, and the the fact, you know, they were obviously produced in the late 70s, early 80s, and almost no film came out of Hollywood that wasn't influenced by the Cold War at that stage. And so, you know, is that is that they're not allegorical, obviously, but, but there is, you know, there is this evil empire that has a weapon capable of destroying planets. And it's quite easy to see the parallel. So is this, you know, is the purpose to accurately predict what's going on in the future? No, it's to sort of entertain people and, you know, make a comment on the world they're living in, in at the time. So I think, from that point of view, you should, you know, you shouldn't be looking to science fiction to, to accurately predict things. But nevertheless, I do think, you know, there is something called science fiction prototyping, which is a recognized analytical approach towards trying to understand the implications of future technologies and events. Well, tell us more about that. Yeah, so well, essentially, what it what it does is, it builds a, you know, much as science fiction does, it builds a world based on particular technological parameters that you're interested in, in exploring. So, you know, what happens if we have computing embedded in people? Okay, so, you know, what would be the implications of that? And it takes authors as the, as the analysts, they create the world, which is, after all, just scenario building. And then they pose questions about that world from the basis of the characters, which is essentially, you know, like red teaming, really. And so by, by exploring this world and doing what they are very expert at, which is, you know, empathizing with particular perspectives, and building a world, it starts to gain insights that you might not get through using more structured and more sort of traditional analysis to try and try and understand, okay, how would people live with this, this technology? And what would they do? And it does. And it and it also has the effect of communicating to the to the readership, in a more engaging way than a than a tech report about, you know, sort of, yeah,
Speaker B: Backward by Edward Bellamy in: Speaker A:Um, I want to get on some other stuff in a moment. Peter, is anything you want to come in on at this
Speaker C:stage? Well, yeah, just to go back to the technologies, the brain and if related technology to to the brain, so we, if you think about the human human memory, we're we're a human computation, we're pretty general intelligence devices, you know, we're capable of lots of complicated, diverse and complicated tasks. But our memory is pretty poor in comparison to the volume of computation we've got, we although we it feels like we can remember a lot, but most of the time when we're remembering things, we're not recalling from a hard, solid state memory that is that is totally accurate, we are actually re perceiving the thing that we perceived in the first place. So we've maintained a sort of bit of a blueprint for how we experienced it. And we just relive that experience is also pretty noisy and nonlinear, there's all sorts of, you know, you make mistakes a lot about what you remember. So in that way, the human brain is a very good analog for these, these, these systems in Star Wars, where you've got a huge amount of computation, and pretty low memory capacity. So I think, you know, as a way to maybe there is a biological element to or analog element to the the way that these computers work. And in the same way that we can able to use our computers brains to do stuff, but we don't understand how they work. Maybe this is true for for these, these, these droids and star in Star Wars, you know how to you know how to make them,
Speaker A:he reproduce them, but you don't know how they work. Okay. I'm loathe to sort of wrap things up. And don't worry, I'm not wrapping things up. There's so there's some other stuff I want to go on to. All right. Unless there's anything burning anyone wants to say at this point. Okay, so I want to do a quick survey on a few things. Right. So some of our answers can be longer, some shorter than others. So let's start things off really simply one word or two word answer. What's let's
Speaker B:start with Nick, your favorite Star Wars character. I think I'm that is I'm, you know, what popped into my head was C-3PO. Okay. I cannot for the life of me think why. You're a bit like C-3PO actually. Thanks. I don't speak I don't I'm not fluent in 6 million forms of communication.
Speaker C:But you are a bit prissy. And you've got great protocol. Peter. I, I quite like Jar Jar Binks because he's so divisively divided the Star Wars universe and Star Wars fan base. And I think that's there's no one on the other side of the divide, Peter. Well, the kids, apart from you, the kids
Speaker B:love it. You know, it was there to be. No they don't. What toys do you see on sale in the Star Wars shops? It's not Jar Jar Binks, is it? It's Stormtroopers and Darth Vader. Oh, yeah. But the lots of effigies of Jar Jar Binks. We got through this without mentioning the prequels. And now
Speaker C:look what you've done. Okay, so Jar Jar Binks. But actually, I think the, I really like the sort of universal, the soldier-esque Stormtrooper. So everyone is exactly the same. They're all the same height. And it turns out because they're possibly all clones or originally clones. And there's something quite scary about that concept. There's bits of Cyberman or. They've got a great look to them as well. Yeah. And they just, just the fact that, you know, the sheer force this represents is a huge number of. Yeah. Different kind of force. Totally obedient soldiers is scary. Okay. Chris? So I think my
Speaker D:favourite character, really only a cameo, is Dr. Evazan, who is the chap in the bar in the first film who tells Luke Skywalker he doesn't like him and nor does his friend. He's got the death sentence on 12 systems. Is that right? I think so. I think he's, I think he's a cosmetic, a failed cosmetic surgeon. But he's not got a very nice face. No, he hasn't. But I think, I think the reason I like him is because he, he, he just picks a fight with the wrong person. And I like the fact that he's, he's punished for picking on somebody who looks vulnerable and then gets his arm locked off.
Speaker A:Brilliant. Good. My answer is just way more boring. My favourite character is Han Solo. I just think
Speaker B:he's cool. I'd say actually, if I really had to pick a person I'd want to spend any time with, it'd probably be Princess Leia. Not for, not for sleazy reasons, but she actually is probably the most sort of, Han Solo would be a bit wearing, wouldn't he, with his kind of macho larking about Luke Skywalker's a bit wet. But Princess Leia is, you know, tough and interesting and brainy and
Speaker A:she's a princess. Yeah, good point. Favourite sci-fi film and or favourite scene in a sci-fi film.
Speaker D:Okay, Chris. Yeah, so I think, again, probably a little bit cliche, but the, the Matrix as a film and the, what, what I particularly like about that film is the, the, the scenes where they have an inject of knowledge. So where, where he suddenly learns Kung Fu immediately. And I love this, this notion of knowledge and expertise. You know, you have all these, these studies and the thesis about to be an expert in something, you must spend 10,000 hours over your lifetime doing it, that you can just eradicate that, capture what expertise is and inject it directly into somebody's,
Speaker B:somebody's brain. I think Isaac Asimov came, came up with that idea in, in a short story, actually, about, about sort of 40 years ago or something. But, but that was a brilliant answer and combined
Speaker A:in that film with some brilliant aesthetics and music as well. I hate the Matrix. No, okay, so we've got a naysayer, a non-believer. Yeah, but I think that's a great answer. Peter? I'm a big
Speaker C: fan of the: Speaker B:the, the, why, and it's why I love the film so much. It's not, the focus isn't on the sci-fi, it's on the people and the situation they're in. But the, the whole opening sequence when their pods open and you realize that everything's a little bit dirty and a bit used, because it makes sense. The Sulaco is a big mining vessel. And, or is it the Nostromo? I've forgotten which, which one is alien. But it's a huge mining vessel. And the great thing is, you know, you have the, you've got this crew of seven on this gigantic mining, you know, ore carrying spaceship. But the, the, you know, the kind of two blue collar guys are sitting there arguing about, you know, what shares they're going to get. And, you know, they've been woken up early because they've intercepted a distress signal. And they're kind of using that to try and work out how they can say, well, this isn't in our contract. So can we have more pay? It's just a very realistic human kind of scene, which, which really sets, sets the scene for the rest of the film. Okay. Because actually
Speaker A: hich is I really like, I like:
