a + eyear :: 2009music by Paul Dempsey
January 1, 2019
the Kurzweil Library
section: a + e
image | below
A portrait of music artist Paul Dempsey.
label ::
music artist: Paul Dempsey
album: Everything Is True
track: Ramona Was a Waitress
year: 2009
watch :: music video
IMAGE
features
1. |
broadcast: ABC
channel: Triple J
music show: Home + Hosed
story: Paul Dempsey teams-up with a robot waitress.
presented by ::
broadcast: ABC
web: home ~ channel
banner: t
channel: Triple J
web: home ~ channel
banner: The freshest local tunes from right around Australia.
music show: Home + Hosed
web: home ~ channel
banner: New Australian music.
quote ::
name: Paul Dempsey
bio: A musician, singer + song-writer.
bio: The lead singer of music group Something for Kate.
So “Ramona Was A Waitress” is an unusual song. It’s about a guy arguing with an artificial intelligence (AI) robot waitress about mortality. A strange subject for a pop song. It’s what I was thinking about as I scrawled the lyrics — AI + conscious robots arguing about the meaning of life.
Where Ramona actually comes from. There’s an interesting inventor named Ray Kurzweil. He’s one of the foremost thinkers on AI — and what the future holds for tech. He created this computer software program called Ramona — like a virtual, interactive person.
As tech progresses he’s trying to build her up so she becomes more sophisticated. He hopes one day she’ll become conscious. That’s his point — future tech will be arguably conscious. An idea I managed to pack into a pop song.
Kurzweil says humans will augment themselves — with emerging science + devices like nano-tech. We’ll improve our biology, reverse aging. We’ll merge with machines. We’ll prolong our life-spans indefinitely.
So Ramona in my song is a trans-human woman who lives forever. I think it’s interesting to be a waitress in that position. I wanted to make it about something banal. This fascinating, amazing idea — an immortal AI that can eternally augment + improve itself. But life is still life — you have to keep-on doing something with life.
— Paul Dempsey
note ::
Paul Dempsey is into fringe science. The track on his album the Official Fiction titled “Max Planck” — is named for historic German physicist Max Planck PhD.
2. |
publication: Mess + Noise
story: New York state of mind
presented by ::
company: RACAT grp.
web: home ~
banner: Media inspired by good nature.
division: Junkee Media
web: home ~
banner:
publication: Mess + Noise
banner: A local music magazine.
quote ::
name: Paul Dempsey
bio: A musician, singer + song-writer.
bio: The lead singer of music group Something for Kate.
My character Ramona in the song is supposed to be this kind of artificial intelligence (AI) and the 3rd bridge. The inventor Ray Kurzweil has all these wacky ideas about paths to AI + trans-humanism — the 3rd bridge is part of his concept of when human beings will transcend their biology.
— Paul Dempsey
webpages
1 ::
music artist: Paul Dempsey
web: home ~ channel
2 ::
music artist: Something for Kate
web: home ~ channel
image | below
A portrait of the music group Something for Kate — with band members Paul Dempsey, Clint Hyndman, Stephanie Ashworth.
lyrics ::
music artist: Paul Dempsey
track: Ramona Was a Waitress
Typing letters to the dead.
Late at night on a closed piano lid.
She circles past, she fills your glass.
But she doesn’t recognise the song.
Once in a lifetime she says.
The waking life stitched together in your head.
Well, what if it’s only worth.
The bundle of nerves it’s written on?
And I don’t need these arms anymore.
I don’t need this heart now to love.
I don’t need this skin + bone at all.
There’s a way you’ve always known her.
Telephone between her cheek and her shoulder.
And eyes like crystal balls.
That just won’t shut-up about the future of the future.
And Ramona was a waitress.
All but made of information.
In a bar under the third bridge.
She says she’s looking forward to living forever.
When I won’t need these arms anymore.
When I won’t need this heart now to love.
And I won’t need this skin and bone at all.
At all.
And Ramona was a waitress.
notes ::
ABC = the Australian Broadcasting corp.
AI = artificial intelligence
