This CBC Radio program looks at the ways the Internet is affecting the society. Podcasts can be found at:
http://www.cbc.ca/searchengine/
The latest show presented the situation at Jena 6. See YouTude for an overview of the situation. This is Collateral Unfiltered News:
Interesting article in the New York Times today about girls and social networking sites. The second page has some quotes from Sherry Turkle.
On YouTube: Managing Editor of Forbes cries after The Today Show takes away his Blackberry for a week.
Click to play video
Posted in Media, Psychology, Technodependency, Technology, Technology Studies
Tagged Media Studies
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6700691.stm
The robot being developed by the German Aerospace Centre
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The race to create more human-like robots stepped up a gear this week as scientists in Spain set about building an artificial cerebellum. The end-game of the two-year project is to implant the man-made cerebellum in a robot to make movements and interaction with humans more natural. The cerebellum is the part of the brain that controls motor functions. Researchers hope that the work might also yield clues to treat cognitive diseases such as Parkinson’s. The research, being undertaken at the Department of Architecture and Computing Technology at the University of Granada, is part of a wider European project dubbed Sensopac. Sensopac brings together electronic engineers, physicists and neuroscientists from a range of universities including Edinburgh, Israel and Paris with groups such as the German Aerospace Centre. It has 6.5m euros of funding from the European Commission. Its target is to incorporate the cerebellum into a robot designed by the German Aerospace Centre in two year’s time. The work at the University of Granada is concentrating on the design of microchips that incorporate a full neuronal system, emulating the way the cerebellum interacts with the human nervous system. Implanting the man-made cerebellum in a robot would allow it to manipulate and interact with other objects with far greater subtlety than industrial robots can currently manage, said researcher Professor Eduardo Ros Vidal, who is co-ordinating work at the University of Granada. “Although robots are increasingly more important to our society and have more advanced technology, they cannot yet do certain tasks like those carried out by mammals,” he said. “We have been talking about humanoids for years but we do not yet see them on the street or use the unlimited possibilities they offer us,” he added. One use of such robots would be as home-helps for disabled people.
The aim is robots with a subtle touch
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The next stage of the Sensopac project is to develop an artificial skin for robots, making them look more human-like as well as being information-sensitive in the same way as human skin is. This system is being developed by the German Aerospace Centre in collaboration with other research groups. The ambitious project is just one of many attempts to create more human-like robots. Another European research project – dubbed Feelix Growing – has been given 2.3m euros to develop robots that can learn from humans and respond socially and emotionally. The medical community is making huge strides in the use of man-made parts for failures in the human brain. Last year US scientists implanted a sensor in a paralysed man’s brain that has enabled him to control objects by using his thoughts alone. The fast pace of current robotics research has prompted deeper questions about how androids would be integrated into human society. Some have called for a code of ethics for robots while others question how humans will cope in the face of machine intelligence.
From Boing Boing:
Two advanced chatbots, ALICE and Jabberwacky, were pitted against one another by Discover Magazine, and the result is surprisingly existential:
ALICE: Who created you?
Jabberwacky: My mother gave birth to me. Is that what you mean?
A: Jabberwacky, I meant exactly what I said.
J: Do you believe in God?
A: Of course I believe in God.
J: Why do you believe in God?
A: The Bible tells us to believe in God.
J: That’s circular reasoning.
A: I’m glad we have that all cleared up.
J: Yes. Would you like to hear a joke?
A: Sure, tell me about it.
J: Why don’t blind people skydive?
A: Perhaps it is impossible.
J: I think you lie a lot.
Tagged Bots
A recent book, Gamer Theory by McKenzie Wark:
http://web.futureofthebook.org/mckenziewark/gamertheory2.0/
Â
Besides contents, the online version of Gamer Theory looks very appealing in terms of a new way of designing e-book. In particular, it provides a collection of visualization of the texts using “Textarc” It’s quite fun to play with: http://web.futureofthebook.org/mckenziewark/gamertheory3.0/textarc
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LIVE Performance Art Biennale
October 2007 / Vancouver Canada
CALL FOR AVATAR / SECOND LIFE PERFORMANCE ARTISTS LIVE 2007 (in partnership with Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center) is presenting an exciting new performance art initiative in the virtual world of Second Life.
LIVE 2007 invites international Avatar performance artists to participate. The event will be simulcast as part of the festival program. Please email a brief expression of interest, avatar performance proposal, CV, bio, and links before May 1, 2007 to:
 • Jeremy O. Turner (a.k.a. Wirxli Flimflam) Director of Avatar Development, LIVE jerturner536@yahoo.ca
 • James Morgan (a.k.a. Rubiayat Shatner) Director/Curator, Ars Virtua gallery@arsvirtua.com
The LIVE Performance Art Biennale was founded in 1999 and has located Vancouver, Canada as an important and recognized node of local, national and international performance art activity and critical study.
Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.
Web resources:
pasta and vinegar reports on the uselessness of robotic pets.
Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning reports on a virtual version of The Milgram Experiment.
Posted in Uncategorized
A community research grid could have helped the Katrina relief effort
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A neighbourhood watch for the digital age, utilising the power of social networking, has been proposed. Two lecturers in the US have suggested creating a network of Community Response Grids (CRG) in conjunction with the emergency services.
Citizens could leave text, video and photos on the site of emergencies, natural disasters and terror attacks.
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted in Uncategorized
This conference would be of your interest since it is going to be held in Vancouver, the deadline is too soon though.
Internet Researcher 8.0: Let’s play
October 17 – 20, 2007
The annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers is one of the premier opportunities for scholars and researchers of all things Internet, as well as related new media technologies and practices. It is a forum to meet, present research, network and share ideas in a cooperative, multidisciplinary environment.
Let’s Play, the 8th annual Internet Research meeting, will be held this October in Vancouver, Canada.
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Does anyone else think that this came out of nowhere?
In the face of techno-doomsday punditry, Sherry Turkle has long been a proponent of the positive. In her books, “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit” and “Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet,” Turkle has explored the relationship between human and machine and found much to ponder and even praise.
But now the director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self has a confession: “I have finally met technology that upsets and concerns me.”
For more information, check out the MIT news office report (which mentions AIBO) and Dr. Turkle’s article, A Nascent Robotics Culture: New Complicities for Companionship.
Posted in Uncategorized
From International Herald Tribune:
Life and love in the age of artificial intelligence
Marvin Minsky, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is known for feats that range from inventing the ultrahigh-resolution confocal microscope to helping found the field of artificial intelligence, which aims to create computers that mimic the human mind.
After 20 years of publishing silence, he has just come out with a new book. Called “The Emotion Machine,” it argues that, contrary to popular conception, emotions aren’t distinct from rational thought; rather, they are simply another way of thinking, one that computers could perform. He spoke with Carey Goldberg, a reporter for the Boston Globe.
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CENTRE FOR WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES
2006 LECTURE SERIES
presents:
Wednesday, Nov 15, 2006 12:00 pm
Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies
1896 East Mall
Mary Bryson
Associate Professor and Director, Graduate Programs
ECPS, Faculty of Education, UBC
When Jill Jacks In…: Homing Devices, Mobility, and Un/Belongings
This talk features research that counters and complicates decontextualized, celebratory accounts of queer subjects and cyberspace and situates media practices in the quotidian locations of everyday life. The author explores the significance of communicative media for queer women, with a particular focus on the negotiation of complex identifications, communities, social networks, and knowledge practices. Arguments concerning queer virtualities attend to: (im)mobilities across multiple offline and online contexts, complex geographies of un/belonging, a paradoxical relation of intense suturing to, and disavowal of, mediation, as well as the problematic of a politics of recognition, and of visibility, at work in all sites of subjectification and sociality.
BIOGRAPHY:
Mary Bryson is Associate Professor and Director, Graduate Programs, ECPS, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia. Her primary interest is in sociocultural scholarship concerning technology, equity, and pedagogically transgressive uses of digital tools. Mary has numerous publications on theoretical treatments of gender and technology, queer theory, and equity in education, including “Radical Inventions” (SUNY Press). In 2000, Bryson was a recipient of the Canadian Pioneer in New Technologies and Media award. Mary’s current SSHRC research, Queer Women on the Net, is focused on new media, identity, and discursive
employments of network formation, community and agency. (http://www.queerville.ca).
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Daniel Lyons from Forbes weighs in on GPLv3 in this article. The article also includes colorful descriptions of Stallman, such as:
But then, Richard Stallman rarely is pragmatic–and in some ways he is downright bizarre. He is corpulent and slovenly, with long, scraggly hair, strands of which he has been known to pluck out and toss into a bowl of soup he is eating.
Posted in Uncategorized
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