Sylvie's reflection on blog discussion

From this blog I found an interesting talk about personal robots in everyday live. The video and the discussions on thewebpage really stimulate my thoughts in relation to this course.

Summary of the blog dsiscussion:

The talk is held by Cynthia Breazeal, who is a roboticist building personal robots that are socially intelligent i.e. interact and communicate with people. In the video she talks about her discovery, which is human interact with robot like it is a person & robot responds to human's non-verbal cues. This finding helps in 1) developing new scientific tool to understand human behaviour, 2) expanding new communication technology by using physical social embodiment to help distant relationships, 3) supporting health issue by applying robot in maintaining diet and managing exercise program and 4) evolving children's media to have kid's imagination in real world. She emphasised "robots touch something deeply human within us" and "robots are all about people".

My reflection on the blog discussion:

In week 2 lecture, I learnt that it may not be a true interaction if the robot does not understand what a person said while people did not care whether they were really understood. (Turkle, 2007, p. 503) The authenticity is in doubt. But here, Cynthia built robots interact with human.

The robot Leonardo learnt about new object from watching human's reaction.

The human-robot Nexi helps researcher to learn that people respond with robot like they respond to people.

Cynthia even pushed the children's media further from Tamagotchis to character coming off the screen to the real world and even letting kids create their own imagination in the real world. It does not only reinforce the emotional connection and the fantasy of reciprocation, but also the human susceptibility.

However, the aliveness of robots, i.e. expression and gestures, causes illusion of relationship. Robot does not have emotions; the emotions are only generated by program code. And what if the technology is applied to adult games? If the character of the game, for example a young sexy female, can come off the screen and have interaction with players, illusion of relationship will confuse the definition of love and diminish the human uniqueness.

Continuing the example of applying the technology to adult games, what will happen when player can have their imagination in the real world? Will the technology be used to fulfill male gaze, reinforce their masculinist power and worsen the gender issues?

Her study of new communication technology, including her invention Mebot and ideas about the future, can be treated as a cyborg.

Mebot is a robot accessory for mobile phone, that can fully express human's reaction. It can mimic human's gesture to the other side of the phone call. She even imagined sooner or later, there will be a robot accessory for the computer that can enable human to actively interact with others in distance.

Mebot = Me+robot, neither fully human nor fully machine, just like JenniCam. (Adam and Jimroglou, 2001, p. 288) It blurs the dualities of human and machine and combines the mobile phone with body. In order to contact with relatives and friends in other parts of the world, people will have a close relationship with the robot/machine. Thus, Mebot is a cyborg.

At last, the video and the discussion below have triggered me to rethink whether this kind of human-robot helps to break the boundary between human and machine or contrarily emphasises the superiority of human over machine. Although viewers generally appreciate the technology enhancement, some of them commented that they would much prefer real human interaction rather than with robot. Some even thought it is ridiculous and harmful for children to play between virtual and real world. For me, I would like to have a Mebot, since it would really help me to contact with my friends oversea. But I also feel it would be dangerous for my future children to confuse between virtual and the real world. And if I really intend to keep fit, I will not need a robot to remind me. I think robot in these two cases is just an unnecessary additive. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to learn about so many new developments of robot.

Natalie's Newstory Reflexion

Bordeaux's digital drive to get citizens online
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9459014.stm

This news describes how the dogmatix technology has been applied to the Bordouax, a city in France. With a smart phone and a scan on the graph, you’ll know more about the city as the graph will bring you to the Internet and present relevant information of an object. It can be a description of a tree or a bottle of wine. The company spokesperson said that the graphs are made on demand.

I think it is a good idea in way that technology is used innovatively to better circulate the knowledge of citizens’ environment. I guess this enhances a sense of belonging of a community. It seems that we people living in urban areas learn to become more privatized from technological devices. People travelling in the MTR are on their PSPs or iPads while those walking on the streets are on their phones or iPods. It seems that we seldom take a look at our surroundings and learn more about it. This is an easy way. You don’t need to google it.

Let’s go to several decades later, assuming this technology is used all over the world. How would the world be? What if we use this kind of graph as our name card? I think this is quite a good way to keep in contact with people. We can edit our personal information on the web anytime. For the ones keeping our dogmatrix ‘name-graph’, they can always get our updated contacts as long as they can scan it with a smart phone.

So how would you use the technology innovatively?

Newstory Reflection by Abe

“Human hearts created in the lab have scientists excited”. It was a news topic of the beginning of this month, which had impressed me most. The feeling was complicated after reading this news. I feel delighted as the technology in our human world has stepped forward and being more advanced. It also makes me feel strange.

I bet most of the people will agree that every singer human is unique, and for the species as a human being, our body structure and stems are also more complex than the other species in the world, like the high complexity of our hearts and brains is still a difficulty for the scientists. However, as this news came out, it implies that there is a chance of achieve this goal, although the technology of creating a real human heart is still experimental.

I feel strange because the “real human heart” that created in the laboratory is unlike the artificial limb, it do contains real human stems and tissues, which can be say to have life. I believe that in some days of our future, that this technology will become so common and at that time which may bring the possibilities of human cloning. As our technology getting more advanced by time, the distinction between the original human and the artificial human is getting blur. The uniqueness of human no longer exists and it will lead to the philosophical question of “You are not really you .” may become the concern of virtues.

News Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/human-hearts-created-in-the-lab-have-scientists-excited/story-e6frg8y6-1226032923689

Ann's newstory reflection

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-12921831

This news is about a father of four, who has worked as an IT manager for more than 15 years decided to set up a “safer” children social network. He did this because of he was quite concern who is actually playing, chatting, communicating with his 4 children. According to Mr. Dance (the father), "As a parent myself I know the concerns about people using fake identities to befriend children on social networking sites."

It could be understandable that the aim of Mr. Dance that he wanted to provide a safer social network for the children. Some people might think he is being over-protective, the news makes me think about one of the very important concepts in this course after reading this news, that is, the online/offline identity. Teenagers from all over the world are addicted to the social network in the contemporary society. There was a survey stated that for the younger teenagers, there are more girls use social network as a tool to communicate with friends then that of boys; for the same age group of boys, they tend to use the social network as a way to flirt with the others. However, do the teenagers really know who is chatting with them? There are always news about the teens were deceived by “net-friends”, date them go out and rape them or ask for money. Everyone could use a faked name, age, gender, profile picture to set up an account in the social network. In this case, the online and offline identity of this people is not the same. Even if someone who use different online and offline identities without doing something bad to the others, there could be a chaos of IDENTITIES.

Moreover, since no one could ensure one’s identity is true or not in the cyber world, what the parents concern is needed. What is more important is that there are no laws to protect the online users in many ways. For example, from the reading “A Rape in Cyberspace”, one of the female players was annoyed by some “dirty wordings”, for example, “eat your own pubic hair!” which typed by another player. The female player was being hurt, however, the law in the real world could not help much.

To prevent those children who are too young (since the safer social network is designed for who is under 18) from being cheated by some bad guys, although it might be related to some issues about privacy or controlling the children, I do think that it might be a nice invention for the parents.

News story Reflection by Ayaka Lai

source : http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/220806.php

This news story was talking about scientist team from India has developed a biological components which made from human blood and they also explored the possibility of creating a liquid memristor from human blood. The biological components can help to create a cyborg interfaces and circuitry that links human tissues and nerve cells directly to an electronic device, such as a robotic limb or artificial eye might one day be possible.

“Memristors” were a theoretical electronic component first suggested in 1971 by Berkeley electrical engineer. A memristor is a passive device, like a resistor, with two terminals but rather than having a fixed electrical resistance, its ability to carry a current changes depending on the voltage applied previously; it retains a memory of the current, in other words.

As you may know that we control our body by send electric pulse to our muscle, but what if a person suffer neuron damaged or lose a limb? Usually, they can install an artificial limb but there are limitations on the movement of those limbs, with the development of this biological components, we may fix the technical problem on connecting artificial limb to human neuron system. This can let the patient move their artificial limb freely or move like their real arm, since the artificial limb may stronger or more powerful than the real one, the patient may get more power by it in the future.

But this also lead to a problem, with the fully function artificial limb connected to human neuron system, we should ask our self what is human and what is machine?

With the development of technology, I believe that the boundary between human and machine will become blur. To me, I will use soul to define human and machine. I don’t think soul can be replace by any mechanic things, so, human can keep the uniqueness by having soul, even if their body is a machine, but as long as someone can keep the human soul, I will regard that person as a human.

Joey's reflection on blog discussing cyberstalking/online harassment

The internet is just like a mirror of the real world, problems like harassments occur in the real world somehow can also occur on the internet, in what has become known as online harassment. In this blog post, I know even more about cyberstalking/online harassment than in readings. It mentions more about the actual situation or treatment of the victims. People won’t take any cyberstalking serious until it becomes “IRL” stalking (In Real Life stalking). The most distinct difference between the virtual and real world is that people will only listen to you when you are being stalked or harassed in the real world. If you are being harassed in net, the common response is “just turn off your computer” but no one will consider that those victims have already bear a devastating experience. In the internet world, you will realize nowadays not all the bad guys are uneducated, some are university graduates with computers. Insufficient evidence is one of the biggest reason that connive cyberstalkers. Behavior. The blog also suggests some prevention to cyberstalking. “Stalking” is a “power” crime, stalkers enjoy the power which makes you suffer, and they crave power over others. The best way to protect yourself is to protect your privacy. Never give any personal information across the internet.
Although I’m not the kind of people that go random chat rooms chatting with strangers, I still gain a little bit more information on how to protect my privacy online even better.

blog: http://abusesanctuary.blogspot.com/2006/06/cyberstalking-real-life-problem.html

WEEK 10 online community

Hello, this is Ann, Ayaka and Joey. Our presentation topic is “Online Communities”. We used some cases in the reading “A Rape in Cyberspace; or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a society” to discuss (1) how we should define “rape” in virtual world as well as (2) who are the one to judge what is right and what is wrong in the cyberspace.

Cases we used were about “rape” and “annoying acts” happened in the virtual reality, LambdaMOO. A player Mr. Bungle in this virtual reality typed some words that made other players feel like they were “raped” by him. For example, Mr. Bungle asked one of the players to eat his/her own pubic hair or to violate his/herself with a piece of kitchen cutlery. We wanted to think about should we call this act “rape” and therefore we tried to use some laws that related to rape and sexual harassment for reference to compare the differences between. In our world, according to the law, rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. Since in the cyber world, it is impossible for the online players have the real physical touch with each other, not to say the sexual intercourse, therefore we don’t see there is a “rape” between them. Moreover, according to the law, sexual harassment, includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and annoyances to actual sexual abuse or sexual assault. Therefore we might be more suitable for us to treat that “rape” in cyber world as “sexual harassment”.

What our group assumed the players have their own choice, that is, they join this virtual reality due to their own will but not forced by the others. Firstly, if they did not join virtual community, there is no way for other players to “rape” him/her. Secondly, if he/ she feels uncomfortable after reading some wordings, he/she can choose to read it or not, they could just close the window or log out.

And for our stance on this topic, first, we need to define what is cyborg, cyborg is a hybrid of mechanism and organism which means when human use an virtual identity to log in the virtual world to have any activities, then he or she will become a cyborg. We think that cyborg can not rape a cyborg coz there are no physical touch involve, it could only be regarded as “sexual harassment”. If need to redefine “rape” in order to define the sexual crime of cyborg.

When it comes to the regulation of cyber space sexual crime, first, we assume that cyborg cannot rape another cyborg nor virtual identity rape virtual identity use cyber space as a tool. Beside, we assume cyborg has emotion which comes from the organism part, with in this process, part of the real world identity convert into virtual identity. In the real world, if you are sexually harassed or rape by somebody else, you can call the police and the law can protect you and regulate the criminal. However, in virtual community, there are no police or law that could regulate these things, the on who control the regulation of a cyber space is a webmaster. Webmaster as the role to judge what is right and what is wrong but that is not fair as every single webmasters has different stances on different aspect. In the reading, Mr. Bungle was not allowed to log in LambdaMOO after the “rape”, later on, Dr. Jess appeared, is there are possibility that Dr. Jess is Mr. Bungle?If yes, the webmaster did not able to solve the problem. The webmaster can punish or banish a user, but it has a very limited function, because one can change it IP address, ID information in order to establish a new account in certain community.

To conclude, If we could not redefine what is “rape” in the cyber world, rape between cyborg is not applicable, those action can only be regards as sexual harassment. The punishment could only applied impractically to the cyborg as there are no concrete punishment.