I'll post a thorough report of my weekend tonight. In the meantime here's a quick post.

Has no one else noticed that the breakthroughs which led to the motion-sensing technologies in the Nintendo Wii can be applied to robotics? Robots have almost never had the slightest clue where their bodies were positioned in space, except through dead ( Read more... )

Goatchurch on the MundaneSF blog posted about his skepticism of molecular nanotechnology. He asked why we think a self-propelled miniature machine can exist, when we still don't have a robot that can vacuum the living room. (Given the existence of Roomba, that's another claim which, in itself, I would highly debate.) Here is the response I put ( Read more... )

MIT's Technology Review has a video documentary series titled "The Impact of Emerging Technologies" which is exclusively online. It's really interesting! It covers stem cells; robotic prosthetics with a mind/machine interface; artificial polymer muscle; computer interpretation of body language; nano-scale valves; and more ( Read more... )

The researchers who constructed a robot with "mirror image cognition" are evidently looking at their project from the point of view of asking whether the robot is doing what it is we do. Or at least, what very simple animals do, such as insects. "Consciousness." "Self-awareness." I think the attempt to make that comparison only leads to ( Read more... )

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Last time I posted this I think all of you skipped over it, since memes are ordinarily so boring. So I'm posting it again. I picked up this meme from jeffreyab and rikhei. Take the timeline and fill in the story of your past and your plans for the future.

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Cory Doctorow asked to present a panel at Penguicon about "The Hidden Totalitarian Assumptions of I, Robot." I've been curious ever since he told me this.

Now it turns out he's published a new story about it on the Infinite Matrix website titled I, Robot. After the story he writes, "Last spring, in the wake of Ray Bradbury pitching a tantrum over ( Read more... )

This address by Christian cognitive scientist Edmund Furse is a totally straight-faced explanation of how robots, in his opinion, will be able to do things like sin, or communicate with God. An excerpt:

..."give us this day our daily bread" might have to be replaced by "give us our regular electric feed ( Read more... )

Scientists today detected a slight wobble in the earth's orbit. It was determined to be caused by Isaac Asimov spinning in his grave. I was seriously annoyed when I saw the trailer to I, Robot and realized it was yet another modernity-phobic action movie. The book I, Robot was a thoughtfully philosophical collection of detective stories about the ( Read more... )