I was traveling all over Japan last week, not able to
\nparticipate much in the class forum. But I
\ndid try the chat bots as well and was not impressed with
\nthem. Darth Vader as a chat bot seemed annoying and very
\nstupid to me, I wonder if he ever guesses correctly?
\nMy thought he was to discover was ‘humility’ and he guessed
\n‘ivory.’ I guess it rhymed at least:-). It could be start
\nof a poem.<\/p>\n
Eliza was an interesting bot and for someone who can’t
\nafford a real therapist, she might serve to help someone
\nexpress his\/her thoughts\/feelings, albeit in a contrived
\nway, and not always useful. It seemed odd to call her a
\nher, when actually it seemed more like a conversation
\nwith one’s self in a sense.<\/p>\n
I wanted to share a bit on two things I learned over the
\nweek in my travels.<\/p>\n
1)I had an interview at a modern technology uni here in
\nJapan and saw blips of an emotional division between
\nso-called creative types (art, intercultural, creative
\nthinking skills–where I exist comfortably) and the
\nso-called hard science types (AI, robotics, fuzzy logic,
\nphysics–where I’ve gained some comfort due to the studies
\nwe are doing at UBC–Vancouver).<\/p>\n
Oh, most people were not divisive at all, thank goodness.
\nYet odd to say, I couldn’t quite see much logic in such
\ncold delineations myself. Certainly, different
\nskills\/protocol are needed for success in these fields,
\nbut many similar thinking processes are shared, too. I
\nargued the need for interdisciplinary work, which the
\nuni ‘officially’ is aiming for, but it seems there might
\nbe resistance from the a few conservative hard-science
\nfolks–a sort of visceral disdain (dislike?) for the
\narts. I won’t know if I got the job until late July, but
\nmy guess is that it hinges on whether I could convince
\nthe conservative faction to understand my belief that
\nwithout creative thinking and a broadminded approach
\nin the study of technology and science, the cutting-edge
\nresearch could never occur. I don’t know if I won them
\nover, sigh, but that’s on me, not them.<\/p>\n
2) At a Tokyo conference, I asked an Ainu activist, Koji Yuki,
\nabout the new supplementary government-sponsored textbooks,
\nwhich spend 99% of the pages to ancient history of the Ainu
\nand 1.5 pages to recent activism and modern (ala 1980’s) life
\nof the Ainu. I asked how he felt of that sort of representation
\nof a living culture. He said it was odd for him to see
\nhow the Japanese often portray the culture an antiquated
\nand\/or dead\/dying when he lives it every day. He said
\ngrowing up only one line was in his textbook: “The Ainu
\nwere once in Hokkaido.” He saw the 1.5 pages as an
\nimprovement. He said something powerful to me then:
\nrather than worrying about the info taught in textbooks,
\nhe said he hoped that eventually children would learn
\nnaturally from their parents and community the truth
\nabout the Ainu and their living culture. This he saw as
\nhis work. An admirable aim…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was traveling all over Japan last week, not able to participate much in the class forum. But I did try the chat bots as well and was not impressed with them. Darth Vader as a chat bot seemed annoying and very stupid to me, I wonder if he ever guesses correctly? My thought he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2782,2788],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ainu-rights","category-new-media-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}