Excerpts from Understanding the Ribbon Automaton, 1880

[Sofia Exactness]

Excerpts from Understanding the Ribbon Automaton, 1880

Foreward
This text is printed just as it was in the first edition, without editing. The publisher recognizes that terminology and understanding has changed over time, and that this is not a modern explanation of the subject matter.

Excerpts on The Ribbon
On the left side of the page is an ink-drawn diagram of a ribbon wound around a spindle, and weaving between a number of other spindles. For those familiar with them, the visual is not unlike film running through a camera or projector.

'The underpinning of all modern automata is the Record Ribbon, or the 'Heart' Ribbon, a wax-coated strip of fabric that runs through the spindles that make up the core. Memory and experience are transferred to the ribbon in real time, by dozens of tiny needles, carving marks of various widths and depths along the ribbon, which can be read back by matching sets of dull reading needles. A series of spindles within the core winds and positions previously recorded sections of Ribbon, allowing the automaton to have complex thoughts, and multiple ideas running at the same time.

The entirety of the automaton's life experience is held in the ribbon. There are no instincts or reflexes present initially, and all behaviors must be learned. This can lead to drastically different Automata built around this very straightforward system, and the quality and depth of its initial training has long lasting effects on its operational timeframe. An automaton for simple labor may be ready for service within a year, but more complex tasks, particularly social ones, can require a decade or more of experience and training. Because of this, labor automata are more often and easily replaced, due to the logistics and economic factors.

Naturally, a ribbon can be manufactured as long as necessary, however, the true limiting factor is thickness. Cheaper ribbons take up a notable amount more space, and therefore, less length can be effectively fit into the finite space of a core. Every year, manufacturing processes become more and more refined, and while 30 and 50 year automata are the norm today, I have no doubt that we will soon see automata who outlast humans. This is because an automaton's experiences fill its ribbon over time, and when all of that space has been filled, no more 'memories' can be created, which prevents the automaton from effectively interfacing with the present in any useful way. Such automata have reached the end of their ribbon, and are best decommissioned.

A number of experiments have been done on overcoming the limitations of the ribbon system, but so far, none have proved entirely viable. Ribbon extension has been tested, for particularly successful or well trained automatons, however, the join point of the ribbons extension has proven to be a weakness that often fails. At the least, as long as the automaton was already at or near the end of its operational timeframe, there is little loss to the proprietor. Ribbon splicing has been attempted, to combine the best of two or more automata, and maximize operational timeframe while minimizing initial time investments. However, this creates weak points in the ribbon as well, and often creates ineffective or unfit automata who struggle to interpret disparate memories and experiences. In the opposite direction, a number of devices have been built to smooth over a record area of a ribbon, either to reuse the ribbon in place of creating a new one for a new automaton, or to smooth out troublesome recordings that are leading to ineffective behaviors from an automaton. Finally, the duplicate ribbon theory proposes that if an automaton could be trained, and then identical copies were made of its ribbon, you could create any number of pre-trained automata. However, no satisfactory copies have been made of a used ribbon.'