Or more particularly the implications of gender for robot design and human-robot interaction: Robot Sex.
Must be Robot Week out there on the web.
Greenflame
Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand
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Recent article on the use of robots for the care of the elderly. Early work so far, working on supporting those with failing memories, but I remember seeing a video of Pearl (the robot in question) last year and it looked promising.
Robot helps elderly with personal care.
Video clips available at CMU/Pitt Nursebot Project.
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Doing some surfing around the science and religion web sites on the net and came across this recent article by Paul Davies posted at Metanexus: Metanexus Institute: Into the 21st Century.
It’s an interesting (and quite readable) opinion piece on science and religion interaction as we move into the next century. It’s worth a read if you’re interesting in this sort of thing (or even if you’re not).
Religion faces extraordinary challenges in the 21st century. Dazzling advances in science and technology have transformed our world view and produced dramatic changes in lifestyle and material wellbeing. But this enormous progress has left religion behind. Few theologians have kept up with the revolutionary developments at the forefront of astronomy, physics, molecular biology or genetics. Churches and other religious institutions seem ill-equipped to deal with the brave new world of big bang cosmology, quantum reality, genetic engineering and nanotechnology. As a result, many people see religion on the defensive against the onslaught of scientific progress. They think of science as undermining or displacing religion.
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PhD supervision meeting postponed until next Monday and today I found someone who’d developed a model of technology/religion interaction that is similar (but subtly different) from the one I’ve been thinking about (i.e. trying to invent) for the past month or so.
A measure of God’s grace, perhaps.
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Over in his new blog Tall Skinny Kiwi has posted about people borrowing Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the noosphere – a global mind or interconnected consciousness or even soul – to visualise cyberspace. (See: RecycledSpam: Noosphere). It was interesting to see it crop up as I’ve just finished writing a paper that looks at how cyberspace technologists “borrow” religious concepts or language to inspire or describe what they are doing, and Teilhard crops up being cited by a variety of people from a variety of backgrounds.
Teilhard’s vision of the noosphere, from the Greek nous for �mind,� is seen as the materialization of a global consciousness, that results the earth being clothed in a �new skin� and even a soul. Its arrival is portrayed by Teilhard in The Phenomenon of Man in terms of fire,
A glow ripples outward from the first spark of conscious reflection. The point of ignition grows larger. The fire spreads in ever widening circles till finally the whole planet is covered with incandescence.
If you’re interested in that sort of thing then the following books and articles will give you some idea of how Teilhard (and others) crop up in cyberspace creators’ imaginations.
Cobb, Jennifer. A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain [Internet]. Wired Magazine, June 1995. Available from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/teilhard_pr.html.
Cobb, Jennifer. Cybergrace : The Search for God in the Digital World. 1st ed. New York: Crown, 1998.
Davis, Erik. Techgnosis : Myth, Magic, Mysticism in the Age of Information. 1st ed. New York: Harmony Books, 1998. Reprint, London: Serpent’s Tail, 1999.
Wertheim, Margaret. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Reprint, London: Virago Press, 2000.
Most of these people have also published stuff on the net so have a search there as well.
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Found this editorial the other day when looking for a reference to a paper in The Christian Century. It’s about a survey of what sort of pastors churches desire and what’s actually available.
Churches seeking a new pastor tend to want a man under 40, preferably married to a nonworking woman who volunteers on church committees. It’s a caricature, but only slightly so, says sociologist Adair Lummis, who is describing not congregations from the 1950s, but those today. This preference exists “even in those denominations which have ordained women to full ministerial status for 50 years or more,” according to her little-publicized nationwide study.
It’s an interesting, if somewhat depressing read. You can find the article at: Young, male and married: What search committees want.
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I was flicking through the April edition of Third Way magazine yesterday in the library and was struck by Michael Symmons Robert’s poem Jairus. We are left to our own devices to imagine what Jairus and his family felt after their daughter is brought back to life by Jesus but this poem captures some of how it might have been.
Jairus
by Michael Symmons RobertsSo, God takes your child by the hand
and pulls her from her deathbed.
He says: “Feed her, she is ravenous.”You give her fruits with thick hides
— pomegranate, cantaloupe —
food with weight, to keep her here.You can read the rest of the poem here at: Ploughshares: Jairus.
I was so struck by the poem that I did a search of the net to see if there were others out there by Roberts. Sure enough there were.
- Flesh
- Food for Risen Bodies: Two poems (The first is my favourite)
I like the incarnational, fleshly imagery.
I see there he written several books of poems. so I’ll be checking the libraries to see if they have any.
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Sometimes you read stuff on people’s blogs and it fits in really well with other things going on in your life. I was preparing a lecture on human sexuality last week and both Maggi Dawn and Paul Fromont posted things that helped tie some loose ends for me.
Maggi’s posting, Honesty, part ii, contained a helpful reminder that all human beings, regardless of sexual orientation, are in need of grace in their relationships – that no one ever lives without some relationships that involve hurt and pain.
Paul’s posting on Douglas Coupland, Hey Douglas Coupland!, included a link to an interview that made the comment that when you target a group of people (say, for marketing purposes) you dehumanize them. So too when we talk about “issues” in human sexuality. It’s not “issues” were talking about, it’s flesh and blood, real live people.
So a big thanks to them, and to all the other blogs I read intermittently. You never know when something you post is incredibly helpful to others.
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Socks that plug into a battery and keep your feet warm using special conductive wool developed here in NZ.
Fly fishermen, skiers, hikers and sports fans, take note: Soon, all you will need to keep your toes toasty warm are special wool socks and a 7-volt battery.
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Meeting with my PhD supervisors on Monday as part of the ongoing PhD supervision process. Have suspicion it will be something like Amos 5:18-20.
18 Alas for you who desire the day of the LORD!
Why do you want the day of the LORD?
It is darkness, not light;
19 as if someone fled from a lion,
and was met by a bear;
or went into the house and rested
a hand against the wall,
and was bitten by a snake.
20 Is not the day of the LORD darkness, not light,
and gloom with no brightness in it?