Wow! Excellent observations, Nadeen! You offer a logical explantion for Dr. Calvin's appreciation of robots. In addition your comparison of the varying degrees of the treatment of/respect for animals by humans is right on the mark. Well done!
Jonathan, your points are valid. Robot psychology can be a bit of a stretch for the most part. Although I would argue that people living in the early 1900s probably would have had a difficult time getting their heads around the idea of manned missions to the moon, computer games (PSP, Xbox, etc.), and ipods (not to mention what we're all doing on this forum via the internet!). That said, here in 2005, it could be quite a challenge for us to comprehend the shape of things to come in the next 50 - 100 years.
Robot psychology could be an idea as simple as software programming. A robot psychologist might be a programmer who creates the programs that control how robots tick--their reactions, decision-making processes, how robots interact with each other and/or respond to human beings. Not such a crazy idea since many computer games have characters that are programmed to behave in certain ways. However, at the moment, they don't leave the screen to join us at Starbucks for a mocha frappucino!
Robots and their emotional development is a common theme in science fiction. I've seen it in some of my favorite sci-fi series (Star Trek: The Next Generation and Battlestar Galactica). In both series the "robots" who either want to feel emotions or can feel emotions are combinations of electronic wiring, positronic brains, and organic matter (all in different percentages depending on the series/character). Of course, the more interesting story lines occur when the the robots look and feel like human beings leaving everyone (the viewer and characters alike) to wonder what/who is real...and who decides what "real" is...
So, how does this all relate to our theme of "the perfect world"/utopia/dystopia?
2 comments:
Wow! Excellent observations, Nadeen! You offer a logical explantion for Dr. Calvin's appreciation of robots. In addition your comparison of the varying degrees of the treatment of/respect for animals by humans is right on the mark. Well done!
Jonathan, your points are valid. Robot psychology can be a bit of a stretch for the most part. Although I would argue that people living in the early 1900s probably would have had a difficult time getting their heads around the idea of manned missions to the moon, computer games (PSP, Xbox, etc.), and ipods (not to mention what we're all doing on this forum via the internet!). That said, here in 2005, it could be quite a challenge for us to comprehend the shape of things to come in the next 50 - 100 years.
Robot psychology could be an idea as simple as software programming. A robot psychologist might be a programmer who creates the programs that control how robots tick--their reactions, decision-making processes, how robots interact with each other and/or respond to human beings. Not such a crazy idea since many computer games have characters that are programmed to behave in certain ways. However, at the moment, they don't leave the screen to join us at Starbucks for a mocha frappucino!
Robots and their emotional development is a common theme in science fiction. I've seen it in some of my favorite sci-fi series (Star Trek: The Next Generation and Battlestar Galactica). In both series the "robots" who either want to feel emotions or can feel emotions are combinations of electronic wiring, positronic brains, and organic matter (all in different percentages depending on the series/character). Of course, the more interesting story lines occur when the the robots look and feel like human beings leaving everyone (the viewer and characters alike) to wonder what/who is real...and who decides what "real" is...
So, how does this all relate to our theme of "the perfect world"/utopia/dystopia?
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