September 2005

From the New Zealand Herald’s technology section - New Zealand Herald - Medical students learn on ‘breathing’ robots

MEXICO CITY - Faced with a growing number of medical students and few training hospitals, a Mexican university is turning to robotic patients to better train future doctors.

Science & Theology News have a new email newsletter out that delivers links to science and religion articles on a daily basis. You can also subscribe to their weekly wrap up, job news and book reviews on the same page.

See: Science & Theology News - Newsletter.

Off on Friday night to hear this public lecture at BCNZ by biblical scholar Joel Green. I’ve referred to some of his work in my thesis so it’ll be nice to put a voice to the articles. More details at Bible College of New Zealand - Events - Joel Green - What are They Saying About the Soul?

Green’s got an article online over at Catalyst that touches on some of what I’m expecting him to talk about. It’s available at Catalyst: Body and Soul, Mind and Brain: Pressing Questions. From that article he raises some of the following questions:

• Is there anything about humans that our mechanical creations, our innovations in Artificial Intelligence, will be unable to duplicate?
• What view of the human person is capable of funding what we want to know about ourselves theologically — about sin, for example, as well as moral responsibility, repentance, and growth in grace?
• What portrait of the human person is capable of casting a canopy of sacred worth over human beings, so that we have what is necessary for discourse concerning morality and for ethical practices?
• How should we understand “salvation”? Does salvation entail a denial of the world and embodied life, focusing instead on my “inner person” and on the life to come?
• How ought the church to be extending itself in mission? Mission to what? The spiritual or soulish needs of persons? Society-at-large? The cosmos?

Some good questions, especially the ones about mission. One of the good things about teaching the course “Humanity and Hope” last year was the space to ponder how the combination of our understandings of eschatology and of Christian anthropology shapes our activism.

On the issue of human cloning in “Human Cloning: Religious Responses” Ronald Cole-Turner says,

There is something far worse than theological disagreement, and that is theological silence.

Something to think about with respect to a great many other issues too.

In his introduction to the collection of essays in the book “Understanding Artificial Intelligence” Rodney Brooks raises the following five questions relating to A.I. Having noted that much of the inspiration for A.I. research (and the related fields of A-life etc.) comes from people - that they walk, talk, see, think and do, he asks,

1. Are people somehow intrinsically different from machines?
2. Can human intelligence be emulated computationally?
3. How should the computation, or whatever it is, be organised?
4. How to get all the necessary capabilities into a machine? (Classical A.I. vs. situated/embodied robotics)
5. Where will A.I. lead?

More in his books and interviews,

1. Flesh and Machines : How Robots Will Change Us (2002)
2. Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI (1999)
3. Edge: BEYOND COMPUTATION - A TALK WITH RODNEY BROOKS [Click the "Continue" link at bottom of this page for the interview proper]
4. Edge: THE DEEP QUESTION : A TALK WITH RODNEY BROOKS [Click the link at bottom of this page for the interview proper]
5. BBC NEWS | Programmes | Hardtalk | Robot risk ‘is worth it’ (includes 24 min video interview)

Went to the cinema, saw the film, loved it. For the uninitiated - watch all the Firefly episodes in the order on the DVD set, read the comics, go to Serenity. (Repeat)

So much for it being a relatively unknown film. It sold out the Megascreen at the Village on Queen (400+ seats) and we had to queue for ages to get in (some tickets were up for sale on TradeMe too). I can’t remember the last time I queued to get into a film. The clientele looked decidedly geeky (so we fitted right in, though we didn’t go as far as wearing suits and blue gloves like some!). Felt like I was back in a computer science department with some of my old colleagues. A good night out.

Off to see the pre-release screening of Serenity tonight in town. After a day of cold, wet rain, hail and strong winds (& snow in Christchurch) it’s a nice way to end the day - especially as I’m going with a couple of other enthusiasts. Managed to get the first two of the comics that bridge the gap between TV and movie - was hoping the last would be in today in the reorder but no such luck. The comics capture the atmosphere of the show really well, as well as the style of dialogue.

The Ballad of Serenity (Firefly theme)

Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don’t care, I’m still free
You can’t take the sky from me

Take me out to the black
Tell them I ain’t coming back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can’t take the sky from me

There’s no place I can be
Since I found Serenity
But you can’t take the sky from me

(MP3 version available here)

The special issue of the Journal of Evolution and Technology focusing on religion and transhumanism is now online. An interesting collection of papers from various perspectives (e.g. sociological, theological and historical). The introduction by Mark Walker and Heidi Campbell makes for interesting reading as they track some of the previous history of interaction between transhumanism and religion. See,

Campbell, Heidi, and Mark Walker. “Religion and Transhumanism: Introducing a Conversation.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 14, no. 2 (2005): i-xiv. (HTML / PDF)

My paper looking a transhumanism through the lens of Christian social concern is up there as part of the issue. See,

Garner, Stephen R. “Transhumanism and Christian Social Concern.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 14, no. 2 (2005): 29-43. (HTML / PDF)

From the introduction to the issue.

Garner is concerned with social discourse and investigating what religion and transhumanism have to offer society in terms of narratives of hope and justice for the future. He strongly addresses the techno-optimistic tendencies he sees within transhumanism, yet calls for the Christian community to consider more seriously the role technology has to play in the alleviation of suffering and improvement of the quality of life. While detailing a tight Christian theological framework of reflection be entertained for contextualizing technological use, Garner states “engagement with the transhumanist technologies is demanded by this social vision”. He also stresses that “democratic transhumanism”, which addresses human dignity and personhood, offers a more complete perspective to the technological project of enhancement and the place where Christian social concern might find more consonance in dialogue.

A very windy and wet day here. Went out to Riverhead to preach on Ps 13 and the role of lament this morning. I enjoyed the service and the sermon seemed to go well. Apart from that a lazy Sunday afternoon watching “Robots” with the kids and thinking about the next week. The smell of Kim’s chocolate chip and oat biscuits cooking has just reached the office. Mmmmm.

In this week’s NZ Listener Russell Brown’s column “Wide Area News” is mostly dedicated to the ongoing tensions, or should that be conflict, between established providers of information (i.e. encyclopaedia publishers) and projects like Wikipedia. Some interesting points about Wikipedia and its like being open to the placement of “viral marketing.”

See: NZ Listener - Wide Area News - 10 Sept. 2005 (You’ll have to scroll down past the David Kirk bit and it flows over onto the next page).

Here are some relevant links. The first two were cited in the paper edition of the article but ironically left out of the online version. I’ve added the latter two because, while mentioned in the article, they weren’t linked to at all in any version.

• TCS: Tech Central Station - The Faith-Based Encyclopedia : Robert McHenry’s (ex-editor in chief - Britannica) critique of Wikipedia.
• Free Software Magazine - The FUD-based Encyclopedia : Aaron Krowne’s reply to Robert McHenry.
• Wikipedia:Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia.
• Wikipedia:Errors in Wikipedia that have been corrected in the Encyclopædia Britannica

Update - some more links that go with the above ones.

• On Getting It – A follow-up response by McHenry to his own article above.
• McHenry responds to Aaron Krowne.

Also check out these posts by Tim (especially the comments sections). See “Wikipedia vs Britannica” and “What matters about an encyclopedia?“

A few books on the go this week.

Firstly, I picked up Richard Bauckham’s Bible and Mission : Christian Witness in a Postmodern World the other day in a sale pile for $5. A collection of four reworked essays delivered to various audiences in Britain and Ethiopia, including material relating to the place of globalisation and fundamentalism in the world.
    

Secondly, “Understanding Artificial Intelligence” which is a collection of essays put out by Scientific American. A fairly easy read with some of the familiar names (e.g. Minsky, Brooks, Moravec etc.) popping up. (I think there’s an eBook version out too, though my trusty paperback works better on the train.)

And finally, Guy Gavriel Kay’s “The Lions of Al-Rassan“. An alternative history, or at least a novel set in a world not to dissimilar to our own, based around the tensions in a land like Moorish Spain.

Over at Political Compass there’s a graphical representation of the NZ political scene.

Hat tip to Subversnz

We had our pre-election sermon this morning, with a list of things to consider when voting - from issues of “system morality” (from comments on Stu’s blog) through to others of “personal morality”. I tend to be a multi-issue voter so it was good to see more than one issue up for all to see (and to see the justice, mercy and creation care points on the list).

Anyway here’s a list of web links I’ve been collecting with respect to the election here in NZ. Some are more helpful or provocative that others.

• http://www.nzvotes.org.nz - The Maxim Institute sponsored election site - has brief party comparisons. Variety of opinion pieces too - including Sam Chapman’s piece on the Politics of Race Relations in NZ.
• http://www.policy.net.nz - Another site comparing party policies to more depth than the above site.
• www.election.org.nz - Official election site - all you need to know about MMP.
• http://www.parliament.govt.nz/ - New Zealand Parliament site. All you need to know how NZ parliament works.
• The Churches’ Agency on Social Issues election page - A Christian agency (Methodist, Presbyterian, Churches of Christ, and Quakers) dealing with social, economic, ecological and political matters in Aotearoa New Zealand. They’ve published a document “Before You Vote” (PDF) that looks at social and environmental issues to consider.
• Vision Net NZ - Election. Vision Net’s PPT about how the party vote works. Personally, I think Slide 3 “What does the Lord require…?” doesn’t really capture the Micah 6:8 text the title was lifted from, but it does have helpful information on how the party vote works.
• Variety of Reality articles
  • “Neither to the Left nor to the Right”
  • “Is the Left Right and the Right Wrong?”
  • “The Left is not Right”
• Every Child Counts election material.
• PointSeven - A Make Poverty History campaign.
• New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services (NZCCSS) election material.

I’ll post others as I come across them and if I have time.

Picked up a bug last week that left me feeling really tired (lots of coughing at night instead of sleeping) and I’ve got a reasonable lot on this week. Firstly, I’m off the the Stardome tomorrow for the day as a parent helper for a school trip. I’ve been looking forward to it, but hope I don’t drop off while tilted backwards in the dark of the planetarium. Then Tuesday is the dentist (again) - but that looks less likely now. A sermon to prepare for next Sunday for the congregation out in the country at Riverhead - probably based on psalms of lament (similar maybe to Carl Truman’s “What can Miserable Christians Sing?“). And somewhere along the way trying to polish off a thesis chapter.

Okay, so I’ve installed WordPress 1.5 and it works well. No problems with the install on my web host, it connects to Ecto fine and from the comments in the blogosphere is handles spam well. Plus it has a polling module which I want to add.

But getting it to look like I want could be a problem and looks to be one place that Movable Type 3.2 (but not necessarily 3.1 or 2.6) has over it. A nice simple 3-column layout would be nice, with easy to configure parameters. MT3.2 support for alpha, beta, gamma and delta models is a big plus here. Instead it looks like I’ll have to find someone else’s WordPress theme they’ve made available for download and then hack that to get it how I want. And what’s with all the themes that put the two sidebar-type columns both on the right?

Looks promising - Greasemonkey - a user-centric model for controlling the content you see in your web browser. See Wired 13.09: START : Monkeying With the Web.

Arvind at Movalog notes that the new MT 3.2 styles and layout lend itself to Greasemonkey style hacking.

I’ve been playing around with this over the past few days. Looks like it will be a toss-up between WordPress and the new, improved Movable Type for this blog. Only have one author for this personal blog so licensing isn’t the issue it might be for multi-author type blogs. The style management in MT3.2 looks really good - providing you forget a lot of the 2.6 and 3.1 stuff and start again. Now standardised across Movable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal.

Movable Type 3.2 (Check out the style library)
WordPress

Had a good weekend when we had two barbecues (one here and one at a friends). On Saturday we hosted the end of season gathering for Mark’s soccer team. 37 people (13 adults + 24 children) came spent the afternoon here - we had sausages on the barbecue plus other good food and drink. Very enjoyable to catch up with everyone and start to think about next season.

On Sunday we headed over to friends at St. John’s for their daughter’s birthday party. Again a nice barbecue and good company. Kim discovered Playstation SingStar which was scary - luckily after my first attempt I was excused from attempting again.

And it was Father’s Day in NZ on Sunday and my family recognised my space opera withdrawal and gave me a couple of Star Trek DVDs to complete my Star Trek movie collection.

It’s Friday, which is normally my evening of space opera - Andromeda followed by Star Trek : Enterprise. But Andromeda finished last week leaving the total amount of space opera across all channels as Doctor Who and Enterprise. TVNZ seems to have dropped the ball on Stargate (Stargate on TVNZ) and I guess in NZ they figure that the science fiction genre has less mileage than yet another reality TV show.

So I’m really looking forward to the arrival of the Firefly movie Serenity in the cinemas relatively soon (10 Nov in NZ - with an advanced screening 19th Sep in Auckland). Here’s a recent Wired article about how fan pressure in response to Firefly’s cancellation helped generate the movie - Wired 13.09: PLAY - Serenity Now! If you’re thinking about going to the film try and get hold of the DVD box set of Firefly and watch the 14 episodes in the order they’re in in the box (TV3 played them all in order too). Firefly had the potential to be really interesting - the right mix of humour and human drama, as well as being a vehicle to explore questions about the world. Dark Horse has produced a comic series that bridges the gap between the TV series and the movie though these might be scare in NZ.

Mike, a friend of mine, forwarded me this link about the new family world envisaged by Intel its recent developer forum. The author comments that a colleague of his saw it like this,

Wolfgang’s issue with what was presented is that our future family life would have little in common with a typical scenario of today. Availability of various digital devices, ubiquitous broadband and wireless connections will enable every family member to be engaged in their own digital worlds. Just like in Total Recall, we would become trapped inside our own heads.

More at: Tom’s Hardware Guide Columns: Intel Does a Total Recall at IDF.

Seems similar to the observations a while back by Michael Lewis in the very watchable BBC documentary series “The Future Just Happened”. You can watch episodes at the main web site BBC : The Future Just Happened - the key episode for this topic is “Promise vs. Threat” (Real Player). (Book available here.)