Greenflame » Research

XBox Apocalypse: Video Games and Revelatory Literature

stepheng — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:19:00 +0000

A interesting short article by Rachel Wagner at Ithaca College.

See SBL Forum: XBox Apocalypse: Video Games and Revelatory Literature

Will add it to the reading list for the Bible and Popular Culture course.

Living in a Simulation?

stepheng — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:04:04 +0000

Nick Bostrom’s question - are we living in a simulation? - gets another airing over here: Clay Farris Naff: Sims, Suffering and God: Matrix Theology and the Problem of Evil

Bostrom’s original article “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” is over here: http://www.nickbostrom.com/

Biotech and bioethics resources for schools and young people

stepheng — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 08:41:14 +0000

Hat tip to New Life From Old for this link through to the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s resources for schools and young people, including Stem cells - science and ethics - BBSRC.

The other week I was looking for this sort of thing for a homework project one of my children was doing so I’ll bookmark it for future referencing.

Could also be a useful set of materials for next year’s ethics class - looking at how ethical issues around stem cells are framed in educative settings.

Until Cryonics Do Us Part

stepheng — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 10:33:30 +0000

It’s been a while since I looked at anything related to cryonics, having been more preoccupied lately with things related to religion, popular culture and/or new media, so I was interested to see this article on cryonics in the NY Times. Discussion about cryonics has tended to get subsumed in the hype about super-longevity research or bypassed stories of potential cybernetic immortality, but it apparently still continues to function as both a though experiment and a business.

Anyway, the article Until Cryonics Do Us Part - NYTimes.com comments on how the partners of cryonics proponents are not always as keen on the idea as the proponents. In the article, one of the interviewees comments:

“Cryonics,” Robin says, “has the problem of looking like you’re buying a one-way ticket to a foreign land.” To spend a family fortune in the quest to defeat cancer is not taken, in the American context, to be an act of selfishness. But to plan to be rocketed into the future — a future your family either has no interest in seeing, or believes we’ll never see anyway — is to begin to plot a life in which your current relationships have little meaning. Those who seek immortality are plotting an act of leaving, an act, as Robin puts it, “of betrayal and abandonment.”

One of the things I look at in my research is how the stories of technological salvation parallel those of religious salvation, and that comment above could equally applied to families of those who have a member ‘convert’ to a religion or ideology.

Related link: Greenflame · Death as an engineering problem - which has a number of links to documentaries on super-longevity.

Robot babies

stepheng — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:57:12 +0000

IEEE Spectrum has a new chart up of different robots the mimic human babies and children in various ways (on capabilities vs. appearance axes). See IEEE Spectrum: Invasion of the Robot Babies (Infographic) for that and some other interesting links on humanoid robotics.

Of course, if you have time and access to the DVD, a good robot baby movies can be found in Robot Stories. Trailer below

Cyborg life…

stepheng — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:31:23 +0000

My browser has been collecting cyborg-related links over the last few weeks - so I’m getting them all out of the bookmarks here.

Portraits In Posthumanity: Claudia Mitchell

stepheng — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:02:29 +0000

From the io9 posthuman newsfeed is a brief article looking a this form of muscle/nerve prosthetic. I’m constantly amazed by this kind of thing, and can’t imagine what it will look like in 10-15 years time. See Portraits In Posthumanity: Claudia Mitchell - Posthumanity - io9

Posthuman/Transhuman Science Fiction Reading List

stepheng — Thu, 06 May 2010 08:57:29 +0000

This is a nice list. I’ve read a number of these (and there are some obvious ones missing) but this will give me some more options when I head to the library looking for something like this to read on the train.

See The Essential Posthuman Science Fiction Reading List - Posthumanity - io9

As an aside I’m currently reading ‘Devices and Desires’ by K. J. Parker on my brother’s recommendation. So far, so good but I hope it speeds up a little. (I like engineers as protagonists)

Virtual Choir

stepheng — Sat, 01 May 2010 10:09:12 +0000

This project is really interesting - the creation of a virtual choir. The original idea can be found here - Virtual Choir Project II: Lux Aurumque – Blog – Eric Whitacre

The lead into the project can be found here - The Virtual Choir – Eric Whitacre
(with links through to the media resources produced)

HT: The Technium: Virtual Choir (with some other comments there)

Robot Ethics?

stepheng — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 21:07:58 +0000

A couple of related articles about encoding ethics into software: