Week 8 Tutespark & Tutorial Task

In order to really immerse myself in the themes of cyberpunk, I set myself the task of watching (or re-watching) several influential cyberpunk films. This task in itself required some additional background research, as many unofficial websites, fansites and books I referred to disagreed as to what does or does not consitute a work true to the cyberbunk genre. The online database Cyberpunk Review lists several glossy hollywood blockbusters such as I, Robot (Proyas, 2004) that have been otherwise shunned by commentators who adopt a stricter definition for works of cyberpunk fiction and film. After cross-referencing the Cyberpunk Review database with other sources (Cyburbia Productions) I felt fairly confident that Blade Runner, Fifth Element and the Terminator films fit the cyberpunk genre, and set about watching them with a new perspective and a consciousness of the gritty, dark, dystopian aesthetics they share. I felt that these films are also connected via their exploration of the fusion of man and machine - one of several recurring themes in cyberpunk social and political theory. The following extract from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick (1968) will give you an idea of the complex moral dilemmas posed by cyberbunk literature crafted around this theme:

"This problem," Rick said, "stems entirely from your method of operation, Mr. Rosen. Nobody forced your organization to evolve the production of humanoid robots to a point where — "

"We produced what the colonists wanted," Eldon Rosen said. "We followed the time-honored [sic] principle underlying every commercial venture. If our firm hadn't made these progressively more human types, other firms in the field would have. We knew the risk we were taking when we developed the Nexus-6 brain unit. But your Voigt-Kampff test was a failure before we released that type of android. If you had failed to classify a Nexus-6 android as an android, if you had checked it out as human — but that's not what happened."

His voice had become hard and bitingly penetrating. "Your police department — others as well — may have retired, very probably have retired, authentic humans with underdeveloped empathic ability, such as my innocent niece here. Your position, Mr. Deckard, is extremely bad morally. Ours isn't."

By trawling through a range of science/technology-related online news providers (Sydney Morning Herald - Technology; Science Daily; CNET; et cetera), I located an article about a football-playing humanoid robot developed by French company Aldebaran Robotics. The article, 'How Football Playing Robots Have the Future of Artificial Intelligence at Their Feet' (Wiley Blackwell, 2010), is available on the Science Daily website. The following clip will give you an idea about the current status of this artificial intelligence project:

See my next post - a would-be expository persuasive piece that (hopefully) reworks the news story mentioned above, giving it a decidedly cataclysmic spin that prophecies the steady rise of the humanoid , the decline of the human-computer divide, and the inevitable transformation of the world as we know it into a ‘post-industrial dystopia’!

Reference List

Dick, P. (1968). Do androids dream of electric sheep? London: Doubleday Publishing.

Wiley Blackwell. (2010, September 13). How football playing robots have the future of artificial intelligence at their feet. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 4, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2010/09/100913080952.htm