Book•
アンドロイドは電気羊の夢を見るか? : Do androids dream of electric sheep?
01 Jan 1995-
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.
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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
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
Cites background from "アンドロイドは電気羊の夢を見るか? : Do androids dre..."
...Dick, Philip K. (1968). Do androids dream of electric sheep? New York: Doubleday....
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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
TL;DR: Although it is unclear whether, by ‘fantasy,’ Butler intended a narrow denition (generic fantasy, i.e., imitation Tolkien heroic or epic fantasy and sword ’n’ sorcery) or a broad denition 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 denition (generic fantasy, i.e., imitation Tolkien heroic or epic fantasy and sword ’n’ sorcery) or a broad denition (the fantastic genres, i.e., generic fantasy, sf (science ction), 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
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
References
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TL;DR: In this paper, the influence of these ecritures technologiques on les gestes, mouvements, and interactions quotidiennes is analyzed, e.g., le telephone intelligent, la tablette and lordinateur portable.
Abstract: Les programmes des nouvelles machines du quotidien, comme le telephone intelligent, la tablette et l’ordinateur portable, contribuent a ecrire nos gestes, mouvements et interactions quotidiennes, engendrant une incorporation de la technique. Par l’analyse de l’œuvre choregraphique de Julien Previeux, What Shall We Do Next ?, c’est l’influence de ces ecritures technologiques du corps sur les gestes et interactions sociales a venir, tel qu’imagine par l’artiste, que notre article vise a aborder.
4 citations
17 Oct 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the role of memory in video games and find that players tend to remember the failed executions of the Prince of Persia in a video game, even though these failed executions did not actually happen in the game.
Abstract: The Prince of Persia in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Ubisoft 2003) is ever reluctant to accept an ignominious end to his story, whether after a fall from atop a tower or after being killed by the sand demons. Every time he fails, the Prince exclaims ‘no no, that is not how it happened at all’. Like the videogame player controlling his avatar , the Prince wants the game sequence to be reloaded and replayed; only he appeals to an entity that the player often does not notice – memory. The Prince justifies the reload because he does not remember the events as they happen and he hankers for a return to a ‘true’ memory. There is an implicit problem here, however. We cannot ask the Prince what he remembers and during the game the player ends up remembering the ‘false’ memories, albeit often unconsciously. To progress further in the game, the player needs to have learned from his mistakes or, in other words, to have remembered the previous iterations of gameplay. According to the Prince’s memory, these failed instances of gameplay never happened; yet they happened in the gameplay and are remembered by players. Often, many players share the same experience and this exists as a shared memory. Players might also be drawing on collectively recorded memories – the written step by step guidelines in a walkthrough and the comments left by players on various gaming forums or wikis. What the player remembers is also often influential in determining the in-game identity of the player. Videogames themselves, such as Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft 2008) and STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl (GSC Gameworld 2007) have started self-reflexively exploring memory in their plots. Therefore, it will be useful to move the study of memory in videogames out of its relative obscurity and explore its multi-layered complexity.
4 citations
Book•
21 May 2008
TL;DR: In this paper, the romantic notion of Los Angeles as a city of opportunity is dismantled, revealing a desperation in people whose dreams can never be realized or satisfied, for as many people who have believed in and chased the dream of success, there are as many who have been destroyed by the illusion of opportunity.
Abstract: The city of Los Angeles is a contradiction, as much an imagined city as a real one. For as many people who have believed in and chased the dream of success, there are as many who have been destroyed by the illusion of opportunity.
Beginning with the idealistic dreamer coming west to Los Angeles, the romantic notion of Los Angeles as a city of opportunity is dismantled, revealing a desperation in people whose dreams can never be realized or satisfied. This idea is followed by discussions on the physical expansion of Los Angeles after the Second World War and how the disconnected, sprawling nature of the city reflects on the literature. The effects of the Cold War and nuclear paranoia also begin to reveal a new sense of isolation and confusion within the individual, and the writing begins to challenge societys values. Finally, the popular image of Los Angeles is challenged, exploring the vastness of a diverse cultural, racial and economic city. The sun-kissed, sandy beaches of Malibu are replaced by a city filled with violence, misinformation and uncertainty.
4 citations
21 Jul 2014
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the possibility of a new philosophical turn in robot-ethics, considering whether the concepts of Emanuel Levinas particularly his conception of the face of the other can be used to understand how non-expert users interact with robots.
Abstract: This paper explore the possibility of a new philosophical turn in robot-ethics, considering whether the concepts of Emanuel Levinas particularly his conception of the ‘face of the other’ can be used to understand how non-expert users interact with robots. The term ‘Robot’ comes from fiction and for non-experts and experts alike interaction with robots may be coloured by this history. This paper explores the ethics of robots (and the use of the term robot) that is based on the user seeing the robot as infinitely complex.
3 citations
19 Mar 2019
TL;DR: The authors describe an approach to online teaching that favors empathy over efficiency in the hope of achieving both, and present a rough and ready attempt at describing an approach for online teaching with empathy.
Abstract: This paper represents a rough and ready attempt to describe an approach to online teaching that favors empathy over efficiency in the hope of achieving both.
3 citations