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アンドロイドは電気羊の夢を見るか? : Do androids dream of electric sheep?

TL;DR: A TURTLE WHICH EXPLORER CAPTAIN COOK GAVE TO THE KING OF TONGA IN 1777 DIED YESTERDAY. It was NEARLY 200 YEARS OLD as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: A TURTLE WHICH EXPLORER CAPTAIN COOK GAVE TO THE KING OF TONGA IN 1777 DIED YESTERDAY. IT WAS NEARLY 200 YEARS OLD. THE ANIMAL, CALLED TU'IMALILA, DIED AT THE ROYAL PALACE GROUND IN THE TONGAN CAPITAL OF NUKU, ALOFA. THE PEOPLE OF TONGA REGARDED THE ANIMAL AS A CHIEF AND SPECIAL KEEPERS WERE APPOINTED TO LOOK AFTER IT. IT WAS BLINDED IN A BUSH FIRE A FEW YEARS AGO. TONGA RADIO SAID TU'IMALILA'S CARCASS WOULD BE SENT TO THE AUCKLAND MUSEUM IN NEW ZEALAND.
Citations
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09 Oct 2012
TL;DR: The Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly is becoming extinct on Red Cloud Peaks in the San Juan mountains of Colorado as mentioned in this paper, where the climate was perfectly habitable 10,000 years ago during the Ice Age, but the butterfly failed to retreat with the glaciers and ended up trapped in the mountains, thousands of miles from its proper arctic climate.
Abstract: On Uncompahgre and Red Cloud Peaks in the San Juan mountains of Colorado, the Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly is becoming extinct. The Uncompahgre fritillary never should have been there in the first place. The climate was perfectly habitable 10,000 years ago during the Ice Age, but the butterfly failed to retreat with the glaciers and ended up trapped in the mountains, thousands of miles from its proper arctic climate. Facing several consecutive years of warm weather, the butterfly has steadily climbed the mountain in search of cooler climes. Now it has reached the

7 citations

06 Jan 2017
TL;DR: For instance, this article pointed out that whether a fictional world is allowed to go too far into utopian dreams through drug use, hyper-sexualization and the like, or whether it is all repressed into a dark authoritarian regime, members of each societal type undergo a loss of empathy which eventually becomes the downfall of civilization.
Abstract: Science fiction literature has long dreamed of extravagant utopias and dreaded nightmarish dystopias. Authors from the birth of the genre to more current times find the erosion of empathy to be the downfall of either extreme form of society. On the one hand, George Orwell’s tyrannical climate of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1961) may seem worlds away from the hedonistic faux-paradise of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) or the fallen society of Margaret Atwood’s attempted-utopia turned dystopia in Oryx and Crake (2004). However, whether a fictional world is allowed to go too far into utopian dreams through drug use, hyper-sexualization and the like, or whether it is all repressed into a dark authoritarian regime, members of each societal type undergo a loss of empathy which eventually becomes the downfall of civilization. It is notable as well that in both novels where science progresses rapidly without the check of ethics, and in literature where androids or modified human beings become too advanced for mankind to keep in the confines of a lawful society, it is the lack of empathy that causes death, destruction, and/or social disconnection and psychopathy. Though the pleasurable aspects of utopian classics and the unpleasant facets of dystopian books appear at first to be polar opposites, they indeed both reflect a society that is losing its sense of empathy and which is collapsing.

7 citations


Cites background from "アンドロイドは電気羊の夢を見るか? : Do androids dre..."

  • ...On the one hand, George Orwell’s tyrannical climate of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the punitive society found in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) may seem very different from the hedonistic fauxparadise of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and the fallen society of Margaret Atwood’s utopia-turned-dystopia in Oryx and Crake (2004)....

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  • ...Disch (1998) breaks down the reasoning behind Dick and other authors writing about robots and artificial intelligence....

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  • ...Following Wells’s later, more typically utopian novels, Aldous Huxley was inspired to write a reactionary novel that would show a much darker possible future than was popular in fiction at the time....

    [...]

  • ...Following Wells’s later, more typically utopian novels, Aldous Huxley was inspired to write a reactionary novel that would show a much darker possible future than was popular in fiction at the time. Huxley wrote Brave New World (1932) to showcase what would happen to society and its individuals if they existed in a “hedonistic ersatz paradise[....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the author's attempt to justify the need for understanding the problem of multilevel mind in artificial intelligence systems and propose two opposite approaches regarding the relationship between the unconscious and the conscious.
Abstract: This paper presents the author’s attempt to justify the need for understanding the problem of multilevel mind in artificial intelligence systems. Thus, it is assumed that consciousness and the unconscious are not equal in natural mental processes. The human conscious is supposedly a “superstructure” above the unconscious automatic processes. Nevertheless, it is the unconscious that is the basis for the emotional and volitional manifestations of the human psyche and activity. At the same time, the alleged mental activity of Artificial Intelligence may be devoid of the evolutionary characteristics of the human mind. Several scenarios are proposed for the possible development of a “strong” AI through the prism of creation (or evolution) of the machine unconscious. In addition, we propose two opposite approaches regarding the relationship between the unconscious and the conscious.

7 citations

06 May 2008
TL;DR: In this task figurative language plays a significant role, as it helps create a close link between content and form, the latter not only stylistically supporting the former but also frequently epitomizing the philosophy behind what is said and establishing various kinds of argumentative logic.
Abstract: During the last twenty-five years, literary critics have become increasingly aware of the complexities surrounding the relationship between the so-called two cultures of science and literature. Instead of regarding them as antagonistic endeavours, many now argue that the two emerge from the common ground of language, and often deal with and respond to similar questions, although their methods of doing it are different. While this thesis does not suggest that science should simply be treated as an instance of discursive practices, it shows that our understanding of scientific ideas is to a considerable extent guided by the employment of linguistic structures that allow genres of science writing such as popular science to express arguments in a persuasive manner. In this task figurative language plays a significant role, as it helps create a close link between content and form, the latter not only stylistically supporting the former but also frequently epitomizing the philosophy behind what is said and establishing various kinds of argumentative logic. As many previous studies have tended to focus only on the use of metaphor in scientific arguments, this thesis seeks to widen the scope by also analysing the use of other figures of speech. Because of its important role in popular science writing, figurative language constitutes a bridge to literature employing scientific ideas. While popular science employs figurative language to enhance its rhetoric and literary qualities, such literature portrays science by using its own techniques of representation, with the rhetoric of popularized accounts evident in the portrayals. By a comparative analysis of contemporary popular science writing and literature, this study discusses how the two often reciprocally affect each other’s means of representation while approaching shared topics, such as identity and knowledge, thus together contributing to the process of signification through which scientific ideas are given their human meaning and relevance.

7 citations

References
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23 Mar 2017
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the best way to contribute to the establishment of an evidence-based first paradigm, is by adopting a research through design approach, and they describe the creation of two Design Fictions through which they consider the relationship between narrative and Design Fiction and argue that links between the two are often drawn erroneously.
Abstract: Design Fiction has garnered considerable attention during recent years yet still remains pre-paradigmatic. Put differently there are concurrent,but incongruent, perspectives on what Design Fiction is and how to use it. Acknowledging this immaturity, we assert that the best way to contribute to the establishment of an evidence-based first paradigm, is by adopting a research through design approach. Thus, in this paper we describe ‘research into design fiction, done through design fiction’. This paper describes the creation of two Design Fictions through which we consider the relationship between narrative and Design Fiction and argue that links between the two are often drawn erroneously. We posit that Design Fiction is in fact a ‘world building’ activity, with no inherent link to ‘narrative’ or ‘storytelling’. The first Design Fiction explores a near future world containing a system for gamified drone-based civic enforcement and the second is based on a distant future in which hardware and algorithms capable of detecting empathy are used as part of everyday communications. By arguing it is world building, we aim to contribute towards the disambiguation of current Design Fiction discourse and the promotion of genre conventions, and, in doing so to reinforce the foundations upon which a first stable paradigm can be constructed.

92 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, two principles for ethical AI design recommend themselves: (1) design AIs that tend to provoke reactions from users that accurately reflect the AIs' real moral status, and (2) avoid designing AIs whose moral status is unclear.
Abstract: There are possible artificially intelligent beings who do not differ in any morally relevant respect from human beings. Such possible beings would deserve moral consideration similar to that of human beings. Our duties to them would not be appreciably reduced by the fact that they are non-human, nor by the fact that they owe their existence to us. Indeed, if they owe their existence to us, we would likely have additional moral obligations to them that we don’t ordinarily owe to human strangers – obligations similar to those of parent to child or god to creature. Given our moral obligations to such AIs, two principles for ethical AI design recommend themselves: (1) design AIs that tend to provoke reactions from users that accurately reflect the AIs’ real moral status, and (2) avoid designing AIs whose moral status is unclear. Since human moral intuition and moral theory evolved and developed in contexts without AI, those intuitions and theories might break down or become destabilized when confronted with the wide range of weird minds that AI design might make possible. Word count: approx 10,000 (including notes and references), plus one figure

63 citations

23 Sep 2017
TL;DR: Hacking the Future as discussed by the authors proposes a spatially attuned reading protocol to assist scholars engaging twenty-first century post-colonized science fiction, arguing that postcolonial writers use Earth-spaces to "hack" into constructions of the future, establishing postcolonial SF as a type of literary activism.
Abstract: This dissertation offers a spatially attuned reading protocol to assist scholars engaging twenty-first century postcolonial science fiction. “Hacking the Future” first explores the boom in postcolonial SF since 2004, considering the instigations of digital publishing, community-building platforms, and the event RaceFail09. It then examines how spatial studies, particularly the concept of Edward Soja’s thirdspace, the geocriticical lens of Bertrand Westphal, and the political attentiveness of Doreen Massey, synchronize with the worldbuilding reading practices proposed by SF theorists Darko Suvin and Samuel Delany. “Hacking the Future” activates this newly spatialized reading practice in the arenas of inquiry highlighted by postcolonial studies to examine how physical, conceptual, and lived spaces function as types of critical revision. Science fiction (SF) is a speculative genre capable of reaching ‘escape velocity’ from Earth and its histories of violence. Yet, when writing in this imaginative genre, contemporary postcolonial SF authors overwhelmingly produce Earthside stories. Utilizing this dissertation’s proposed combinative protocol allows us to access the interventions and innovations of this new subgenre of writing. By creating SF, postcolonial writers reclaim their right to not only produce genre fiction, but imagine alternative futures for previously colonized people. ”Hacking the Future” contends that by challenging the ethnographic stare of traditional SF, SF authors of the Global South productively shift away from underlying ideologies of the inferior “Other.” Through close examination of Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn and “Amnesty,” Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “Them Ships,” Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon, and Samit Basu’s Turbulence, this dissertation demonstrates how postcolonial SF spatially revises societal hierarchies, corrupt politics, the Futures Industry, “third contact” narratives between sections of human society, Afropessimism, and citizenship scales. As an additional contribution to the archive surrounding postcolonial SF, “Hacking the Future” includes personal interviews with postcolonial SF writers Samit Basu, Lauren Beukes, Nalo Hopkinson, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Vandana Singh, and SF book cover illustrator Joey Hi-Fi. Using these interviews as critical sources encourages interdisciplinary considerations that bridge creative-critical divides. This project argues that these writers use Earth-spaces to “hack” into constructions of the future, establishing postcolonial SF as a type of literary activism.

40 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Although it is unclear whether, by ‘fantasy,’ Butler intended a narrow deŽnition (generic fantasy, i.e., imitation Tolkien heroic or epic fantasy and sword ’n’ sorcery) or a broad de’nition as mentioned in this paper, such statistics nonethless make the need for a Marxist theory or preferably, Marxist theories of the fantastic selfevident.
Abstract: Although it is unclear whether, by ‘fantasy’, Butler intends a narrow deŽnition (generic fantasy, i.e., imitation Tolkien heroic or epic fantasy and sword ’n’ sorcery) or a broad deŽnition (the fantastic genres, i.e., generic fantasy, sf (science Žction), horror, supernatural gothic, magic realism, etc.), such statistics nonethless make the need for a Marxist theory – or preferably, Marxist theories – of the fantastic selfevident. The last twenty or thirty years have witnessed a remarkable expansion in the study of fantastic texts and genres. Literary studies has embraced the gothic, fairy tales and sf, and screen studies has developed a complex critique of horror and is now beginning

36 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
23 May 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider the plausibility of design fictions, looking at examples that are (1) obviously design fiction, (2) identified as design fiction and (3) whose status is either ambiguous or concealed.
Abstract: Since its inception the term ‘design fiction’ has generated considerable interest as a future-focused method of research through design whose aim is to suspend disbelief about change by depicting prototypes inside diegeses, or ‘story worlds’. Plausibility is one of the key qualities often associated with suspension of disbelief, a quality encoded within the artefacts created as design fictions. In this paper we consider whether by crafting this plausibility, works of design fiction are inherently, or can become, deceptive. The notion of deception is potentially problematic for academic researchers who are bound by the research code of ethics at their particular institution and thus it is important to understand how plausibility and deception interact so as to understand any problems associated with using design fiction as a research method. We consider the plausibility of design fictions, looking at examples that are (1) obviously design fiction, (2) identified as design fiction, and (3) whose status is either ambiguous or concealed. We then explore the challenges involved in crafting plausibility by describing our experience of world- building for a design fiction that explores the notion of empathic communications in a digital world. Our conclusions indicate that the form a design fiction takes, and pre- existing familiarity with that form, is a key determinant for whether an audience mistake it for reality and are deceived. Furthermore we suggest that designers may become minded to deliberately employ deceitful strategies in order help their design fiction reach a larger audience.

35 citations