"Robots are the lovechild of computers and power tools..." narrates Linda Hamilton, veteran of the Terminator movies 1 & 2. The actress who has spent a considerable amount of time being terrorized by robots, gives voice to an interesting documentary on human/robot interaction; Living Machines-Rising of the Robots. As you'll see in the documentary, robots are saving people from the three D's; jobs that are dirty, dangerous or dull. Robots are flying to other planets, communicating vital information and deactivating bombs. They are sentinels who never tire and may be the only way to colonize other planets. But even the eminent physicist Stephen Hawking is not convinced Asimov's Law of Robotics will be sufficient to protect us from the dangers of robotic intelligence. When interviewed by the BBC, Hawking said, "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." So, will robots save us or destroy us? … [Read more...] about ▶ Living Machines – The Rising of the Robot
Automatons: Imitation of Life
The creation of robots and androids has always fascinated mankind. There are accounts of automatons in ancient mythology such as the artisan/god Hephaestus who created divine machines like the bronze man Talos to defend Crete. There are accounts of Greek temples housing "god" machines that belched smoke, replicated thunder and even bled. and philosophers like Aristotle mused about robots replacing slaves. But throughout history, there have been actual attempts to construct such mechanisms. This is where mythology and reality blur. The Physical proof of such pursuits came in the form of the Antikythera mechanism (150 to 100 BC), recovered from a shipwreck off the coast of Greece in 1900/1901. The device served to calculate the positions of stars and planets. Other notorious accounts of automatons appear in the 8th and 9th centuries. Wind powered automatons appeared in the Abbasid Palaces of Baghdad and the Arabic alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan (writing under the name of Geber) recorded his methods of constructing snake, scorpion and human automatons in The … [Read more...] about Automatons: Imitation of Life
Future Shock: Writing Sci Fi, Drones & Paranoia
Dystopia. The word hisses off the tongue with sibilant ease, a slow slide into the dark cellar of the collective psyche. The black regimes of our fears, the fascism, the rage, the oppression which mirrors our inner shades, often realized in nightmarish reality. Conversely, Utopia sounds so hopeful, so inclusive, like a suspended note of a celestial choir. A future where technology is used compassionately to further creative pursuits, knowledge and collective awareness. What's it going to be? One of the great tasks of Science Fiction is to explore humanity in the context of earth shattering change. In the case of Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 with its mechanical hound or George Orwell's 1984, the startling portrait of the darker probabilities of the future, shaped the minds of a generation. The word "Big Brother" is now part of our lexicon of ideas. On the Utopian side, Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek inspired cell phones, interactive computers and has scientists noodling over the possibility of matter transfer and warp drive. Because I'm writing a dystopian novel, I … [Read more...] about Future Shock: Writing Sci Fi, Drones & Paranoia
