This week's discussion covers some specific, spoiler-y details from Solo: A Star Wars Story. Proceed accordingly. Last week we took a look at how Solo: A Star Wars Story interrogates the role of spaceships and interstellar travel in the Galactic Empire. The abstract concept of transportation (as opposed to specific transportation technology) is not an obvious theme for science fiction, but artificially intelligent robots are. What it does with ships, Solo also does for droids, taking a ubiquitous feature of the … [Read more...] about Science in Review: A Droid in Every Garage
Robots
Random Notes on Doctor Bot Ed: Part II
Picking up from Random Notes on Doctor Bot Ed (5/10/2012) . . . Back to Robots!! Personally, despite my earlier remonstration, I would be quite happy to learn all sorts of subjects from a robot. A robot is not going to rob us of our humanity and despoil our personhood – after all, we have less to fear from machines ‘wanting' to behave like humans, as much as humans wanting to behave like machines (Hence, my prefatory diatribe against the social engineering of technocrats and their worrisome bedfellows in academic … [Read more...] about Random Notes on Doctor Bot Ed: Part II
Random Notes on Doctor Bot Ed
This post is a patchwork of tattered reflections on a slew of topics ranging from humans behaving like robots to robots behaving like humans, mind-reading technologies, maybe cyborgs and so forth. There is no grand thesis tucked away in a prose that finds low triviality and high seriousness equally endearing. The hope here is that the reader, if any, would walk away feeling enough esprit to want to grab somebody gently and engage in debate until the Holy Spirit returns our souls to the still waters. “Be Still and know … [Read more...] about Random Notes on Doctor Bot Ed
‘After Shock’ as a resource for wrestling with the crisis in Japan
How long will you hide your face from me? -- Psalm 13:1 How does one Search for (and embrace) Honest Faith when your world is shaken? you've watched the world of others being shaken? you serve, minister to, walk with those whose world has been shaken? colleagues, family, friends bring the challenging question of where was your God? At Jubilee 2011, I had the opportunity hear Kent Annan (author of After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken and codirector of Haiti Partners) and Enel … [Read more...] about ‘After Shock’ as a resource for wrestling with the crisis in Japan