I'm Robby Garner.
I once was a data entry clerk in a factory that made metal buildings. My day started early collating about a 2 ft stack of printouts from Oklahoma City.
A law firm hired me to acquire and install all the office computers and put a suite of software that they used on each one.
Travelled further south for a transportation company developing software for dispatching trucks for freight brokering.
A software contractor sent me to Dallas Texas for about a month. Those were the best part of Visual DataFlex.
As president of a company that made software for municipalities, I worked in Water Departments, Probate Courts, and Lawyers Offices.
I was sent to Honeywell Bull in Philadelphia to port software that we wrote, so that it could be used in Mini Computer environments. I was there for what seemed like a long time. It snowed, so that was a treat for me since we don't get much snow where I'm from. Honeywell showed me be best hospitality. I was treated very kindly and they were nice enough to provide me with with entertainment so I didn't get lonely.
Man, I could port anything. Give me a serial port and Centronics on one end of a cable.Nah. That's for when the COBOL programmer is dead already. We ported to AT&T UNIX System V in Atlanta. Similar porting to Data General in Atlanta. I was invited to Dallas Texas to port over to IBM AIX. The car rental at the airport ran out of economy cars so I got a sports car. Was a fun trip.
My company also made AI software that generated user's manuals by reading the program's source code for DataFlex applications. Company's like NASA, Ratheon, TRW and The Rand Corporation were looking at it. Was a fun time for the Company, mailing those out to people and then working with them on their projects.
I started competing in Loebner prize contests in 1994, and we incorporated our company in 2000 after winning the Loebner Prize Contest in 1998 and 1999 with the same program. My program fooled 2 of 11 judges in 1998 for a Turing percentage of 18%. This went mostly unnoticed as it took place in Australia that year and the next. The program fooled another judge in 1999. It fooled someone every time it was employed.
There was an Albert2 program that was developed for another company. It never engaged in a Turing test or prize race. One of the people I worked with on it once said to me, "it goes by how you spell things. If you spell things wrong it will say one thing, and if you spell it another way, it does something else." That was about 2 years out of my life. But it was then that I learned that I could portray Robby Garner better than I could succeed at being myself.
Robby Garner and Dr. David Hamill in Cedartown, 1999. Photo by Dr. Lynne Hamill.
University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Artists to watch
Robert Cambron
works with a variety of color and monochrome images, motion and motionless. Still images and optical printing of multiple subjects. Official photographer of Flux Oersted. Public gallery exhibits and live projection shows form a riveting subject stream in interesting compositions.
Rollo Carpenter
As a writer Rollo Carpenter blipped into being for Versality, his first novel, but it represents a lifetime of scientific interest, spontaneous ideas, climbing trees, and creative computing.
Aged 16 in 1981, Rollo spent all his savings on a 1k 'microcomputer'. He jumped inside the machine, programming games to play, and a bot to talk to – years before that word even existed.
His ideas evolved into Cleverbot, a website and AI. Thanks to wacky and user-reflecting tendencies it became popular, and has spoken to and learned from hundreds of millions of people around the world. The real world.
Hear Rollo's music at SoundCloud.com under the name Muterial and read his novel Versality in print and electronic formats.
Frank Fuller
Started at Yamaha music school in Marietta, GA aged 6. Started private lessons with Mark Gaber from age 7 to present and studied music composition. Studied piano for 2 years at Young Harris College with Mary Ann Fox and Jeff Bauman from 1996-98. Played at several local places in the Atlanta metro area between 1996-2009, including at small venues, private events, and open mic nights, including events at MARS music, the Cobb Galleria Mall, the Ferst Center for the Arts at GA Tech, Georgia State and Clark Atlanta (3rd place talent show, Clark Atlanta, 2002), Oglethorpe University and Young Harris College. Performed at a local Asian restaurant in Marietta from 2006-2008. Keyboard player with a local rock/punk band, Philadelphia, PA 2010-2012. Taught piano at several academic institutions between 2017-2019. Taught private music lessons between 1998-2019 to various age groups in the Atlanta and Philadelphia metro areas.
Radio station experience:
1999-2001 Oglethorpe university radio station WJTL.
2000-2002, 2006-2009 WREK Atlanta 91.1 FM GA Tech student radio
2003-2005, 2006-2007 WRAS Album 88. 88.5 FM Georgia State University
Spring 1999,. Internship, CNN Atlanta bureau
Education:
AA, Liberal Arts, Young Harris College,
BA, Politics, Oglethorpe University
MS, International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology
MA, Political Science, Georgia State University
EdS, Curriculum and Instruction, University of South Florida
PhD, Political Science, Clark Atlanta University
Song releases:
White Dolphin Records, 2022, "Never Losing Hope (Techhouse Version)" from the album Voxdeus Compilation
New Releases: from the IMS, 2023, "Frank Fuller 7", 10 song album.
David C. Hamill was a part-time Senior Lecturer at the School of Electronics, Computing and Mathematics, University of Surrey. David taught computer programming and electronics and conducted satellite engineering research. Previously he was technical director of PAG Ltd, a manufacturer of electronic equipment for the broadcast industry. David has a PhD in electronics, and is a Chartered Engineer, a member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, a senior member of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers, and an affiliate member of the British Computer Society.
Adeena Mignogna is on a quest to encourage others to develop a love of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math… through a love of science fiction!
Adeena is a physicist and astronomer (by degree) working in aerospace as a software engineer and manager. More importantly, she’s a long-time science fiction geek with a strong desire to inspire others through writing about robots, aliens, artificial intelligence, computers, longevity, exoplanets, virtual reality, and more.
Adeena is writing her Robot Galaxy novels now. These have been keenly anticipated and a good read says Sara Garner, our resident Sci-Fi afficionado. Read about Adeena and her books at AdeenaMignogna.com and learn about podcasts and appearances that she's in.
Rachel Rhodes is a French-American bassist, singer, composer, songwriter, and recording artist. She plays a custom Elrick Gold Series 6-string fretless bass and a custom Elrick Gold Series 8-string fretted bass.
We are at the beginning of several new art forms that are coming together now. Artificial Intelligence has progressed to the point that we can program computers to imitate people, giving them The Illusion of Life as Dr. Hanson, a former Disney Imagineer recommends to all new hires at Hanson Robotics. Texting sees text as a medium with more than one channel of information, invoking the recognition of identity and personality. The art of story tellingwith software robots, and real robots portrays the characters of a story arc, much the way film tells a story, but using natural languages to tell their continuous narrative of machines living as we do yet online all the time, waiting for an interaction, never sleeping, never hungry, never tired.
Music seems the way to reach people beyond language. Music is universally accepted in all its various forms. Some people will agree with your music and some will not. Press on.
University of Surrey, Guildford, UK, 2005 Colloquium on Conversational Systems
Hanson Robotics is the gold standard of artificial intelligence androids. They have the "illusion of life" and the story telling together in one place. Imagination brings future activities.
The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation Hardcover – Illustrated, October 19, 1995
by Ollie Johnston (Author), Frank Thomas (Author) Recommended by Dr. David Hanson as the ideal handbook for newcomers to the Hanson Robotics Company.
Cold Red Eyes Of Home "Fred built Sydney as a robot companion, but his job required him to build the world's most sophisticated artificial intelligence for the department of defense. Somehow, Fred got them mixed up, and signed on to a vacation that few could hope for. Sydney could appear as anything to anyone, but chose to take Fred's place at work. Fred didn't mind and nobody else had to know." Kindle Edition, Garner, 1984.
Can machines think? A report on Turing test experiments at the Royal Society
Kevin Warwick* and Huma Shah 2015.
Robby's Dad, Robert J. Garner, and Sister, Pam Herring, worked together with Robby for customers from Seattle to South Georgia, to the Netherlands to Australia. Beginnning around 1987, we were invincible.
DocuFlex User's Manual Synthesizer (Pascal / C++) used by NASA, Raytheon, TRW
Probate and Traffic Court Docket with Encumberance Accounting, various permits and periodic reports.
An industrial band in NW Georgia playing in bars and auditoriums. Available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
EllaZ Systems Artful Intelligence
collaborated with 2002 Loebner Prize Contest winnner, Kevin Copple. Contributed music and texts to add to the EllaZ robot.
“Our battle, our struggle, is to create art. Our weapon is the moving picture. Because we have the moving picture, our paintings will grow and recede; our poetry will be shadows that lengthen and conceal; our light will play across living faces that laugh and agonize; and our music will linger and finally overwhelm, because it will have a context as certain as the grave. We are scientists engaged in the creation of memory... but our memory will neither blur nor fade.” -- JOHN MALKOVICH - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, from Shadow of the Vampire.
Flux Oersted
I once was a data entry clerk in a factory that made metal buildings. My day started early collating about a 2 ft stack of printouts from Oklahoma City.
