Others want to keep it, noting that the metals in the penny have risen in value.

Whichever stance you take, this particular argument is irrelevent. A penny is worth one cent if you keep it, or if you spend it. However, it does not lose its value in being spent. The true value of the penny in the economy is reflected in the number of transactions. In that respect, it’s worth much more than a cent.

So let’s retire that argument, not the penny!

I went to see “Walking with Dinosaurs: The Arena Experience” last summer. It was a bit like watching “Jurassic Park” in 3-D. As the larger beasts were remote-controlled robots, this led me to Michael Crichton’s earlier film, “Westworld”.

This brought me to the realization that robots have now entered the third stage of technological development. Real life (or in this case artificial life) has overtaken fiction.

Stages of technological development:

1. It can’t be done. In this stage, something has been conceived, but the means to achieve the desired result does not exist. For robots and automata, this was the case for thousands of years.
2. It can be done, but is very expensive for the return. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was possible to build clockwork mechanisms which seemed very realistic, but couldn’t do much. Early electronic robots were much the same. Then factory robots were constructed, which were versatile but very expensive.
3. It is relatively cheap and easy to do. This is the current situation. There are robots available to the public which are very useful: mowing lawns and vacuuming floors are among the tasks these machines perform. They are used as toys: Robo Sapiens, Robo Raptor.
4. It is obsolete. Hopefully this stage is far in the future.

The history of robots is summarized in an excellent Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot so I won’t recapitulate that.

Automata have always fascinated us. Greek mythology says Hephaestus built several robot servants, including the giant Talos, which may be seen in Ray Harryhausen’s film “Jason and the Argonauts”. Early automata were either explicit mechanical toys or elaborate hoaxes like the Turkish Chess Player which was controlled by a person inside its cabinet. Jewish folklore has the Golem.

“Frankenstein” probably belongs to the class of robot/android fiction. However, the monster was never designed as a worker, or a servant, but as an experiment in artificial life. So we’ll leave him out of the discussion.

L. Frank Baum’s Tin Man is one of the first literary cyborgs, part man, part machine. He, too, is not a robot.

Karel Capek’s “R. U. R.” was the first story to name Robots, though he gives credit to his brother for coining the term.

One of the earliest functioning robots was a dog named Sparky. It would follow lights, and when it got close enough, bark at them. Legend has it that one of the 3 Sparkys got out of the exhibit hall one evening and was struck by a car. This is an example of a robot imitating its living counterpart too successfully.

Real self-guided robots came into their own with the development of computers, and combined mechanisms with sensory feedback and programming to produce truly remarkable machines.

Science fiction continues to give robots a bad rap, through deadly malfunctions. In most cases, this is a result of assigning too much responsibility to a machine. There are human analogies in each case:

(For discussion purposes I’m going to include as Robots any machinery controlled by a computer)

A computer gains control over nuclear missiles:

• Colossus: The Forbin Project.
• Doctor Strangelove
• Fail Safe

The human equivalent: Twilight’s Last Gleaming.

Robot or computer kills people:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey

Human equivalent: Pretty much any story about someone going postal due to stress.

Robots supplant the human race:

• R.U.R.
• The Matrix
• The Terminator

Human equivalent: genocide, colonization, slavery.

The point is, these machines became dangerous not because they acted like machines, but because they acted like people.

Isaac Asimov wrote many stories about robots, especially about the danger they may represent. His robot-builders fashioned laws to protect man from such danger:

1. A Robot may not harm a human being, nor by inaction allow a human to come to harm.
2. Subject to the 1st law, a Robot must obey orders given it by a human.
3. Subject to the 1st and 2nd laws, a Robot must protect its own existence.

For Asimov’s laws to work, first robots will have to learn to recognize human beings, and to be able to understand what harm is, and what may cause it. Even were such understanding possible, danger still existed: Robot Giscard Reventlov realized that humans could endanger themselves and formulated another law which had higher priority than the others:

• A robot may not allow the human race to come to harm. [Pedantic note: this law should have become the First Law of Robotics, and the other laws should have been renumbered to match. Instead, R. Giscard called it the Zeroth law, which is not linguistically correct. Perhaps Asimov was trying to hint at the flaws in Giscard's logic.]

As a result of this new law, the robots conspired to protect humanity from itself and from all other threats, resulting in the stifling of human development and the extinction of alien races which might have posed a threat. So even the best of intentions can create disaster.

Robots are not yet versatile: they cannot perform a wide range of tasks without reprogramming. They do not come with a wide range of attachments to allow them to weld a seam and then mix eggs, for example.

In becoming versatile, robots will also become more complex. It is in complexity that danger resides, for the more human a robot becomes, the more we are apt to treat it like a person. People have already been killed by industrial robots, because the robots did not know they were there.

Which brings us back to Westworld. In that film, people died because robots interacted with people and malfunctioned. Increased automation poses similar dangers, not just physical ones. Computerized telephone systems cause frustration: it may be the human component that malfunctions in such circumstances.

Human beings are starting to trust computers and robots. That trust is misplaced, because computers have no loyalties. Use the computer, but keep an eye on it.

This post is long and rambling. Apologies.

I purchased one of your products today. It doesn’t matter what it was. However, when I went to your website, to request more information, I was unable to do so.

Why not? Because I don’t have an American shipping address, that’s why not! Or because my email address falls outside the parameters of your security system. Your Toll-Free number doesn’t work outside the United States.

You may find it hard to believe, but people who live in other parts of the world have legal access to your products. Our TV stations carry your programs. Our stores carry your merchandise. But, because your websites are restricted to American subscribers, my access to your services is hindered.

This costs you customers, and costs you money. While this may not bother you, it bothers me. I need help with your product, and I cannot get it.

Julius Caesar realized the calendar was slipping out of phase with the seasons, and decreed the year would be one day longer every fourth year. But did people notice the extra day in their own lives? No!

Pope Gregory XIII enacted the Gregorian Calendar, so that October 4, 1582 was followed immediately by October 15, 1582. Catholic Europe lost 10 days from one year at the stroke of a pen!

The railroads brought faster travel, and towns which previously set their clocks by the sun conformed to standard time zones by the end of the 19th century. Some towns lost time, others gained it, but who profited? The railroads! Sandford Fleming is usually blamed for this, but a deeper conspiracy was evident.

Today, the length of the year is being adjusted by one second at a time, in the name of rotational accuracy, but do you find you have more time? No! There is only one conclusion that can be reached!

The seconds, minutes, hours, days, even years of our lives are being stolen in a massive conspiracy to enslave us to the hourglass. Join with me in the League for Chronic Emancipation!

Because…

(wait for it)

SOME PEOPLE HAVE TOO MUCH FREE TIME!

Remember, if you want to be part of the solution, you’re part of the problem!

• Pranks, human or otherwise
• Force fields generated by alien spacecraft
• Unexplained atmospheric phenomena
• Messages from beyond.

Here’s my theory:

• An alien spacecraft lands in a clearing.
• The captain steps out to take a leak.
• While he is fastening his trousers, he drops the keys to the spaceship.
• He doesn’t notice this till he is back in the cockpit.
• The entire crew debarks to police the area
• They set up a search grid, and march around shoulder to shoulder in a vain attempt to locate the keys.
• The captain finally discovers them in the subspace pocket of his left boot.
• This happens EVERY time!

I submit this is as valid a theory as any other!

Me, I’m going to keep posting, whenever a topic strikes me as of interest to more than one person.

As for the rest of you, shows how much interest you really had in blogging!

• NASA has a variety of feeds. Their podcasts are accessible by RSS feed – not directly from my Google Reader.
• Pennsic Independent provides information about the Pennsic War, a long-standing medieval recreational event which occurs every August in (where else?) Pennsylvania. Their podcasts can be accessed directly through Google Reader. Though it may seem odd that an organization devoted to the Middle Ages should be technically advanced, I have found that (in the Winnipeg branch at least) there is a strong overlap with Star Trek fandom.

I have had one other experience with podcasts, from CBC: they had a debate show in which the merits of the Scottish was the main topic. I thought John Burgess might get a kick out of it.

Now I find I may need to get a media player that can handle videos…

Speaking of which, here are links to You Tube videos which have made my day on occasion. Both are Star Wars parodies

Grocery Store Wars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVrIyEu6h_E : this is actually a promo for organic agriculture, as well!

Hardware Wars: Long enough to be divided into two parts, this is George Lucas’ favorite parody. It’s done up as an extended trailer for the movie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlFOiFLLd0g and part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL0wutsciS8&feature=channel

Unfortunately, the problem with the spam filter prevented me from spending as much time on actually editing. As I have forgotten how I got in the first time, and both my email addresses generate “I’m sorry…” messages, I have been unable to log into the wiki again to try some more editing. So I can’t comment on the features or functionality.

Okay I’m in again. I just can’t do it directly from the Angel Learning page. On to the questions:

• Working in the Circulation area, the one place I can see a Wiki being useful is in creating a procedures manual. We rotate special duties between us from one year to the next, and each of us has our own ideas about how to improve what we do. A wiki might let us keep track of what our predecessor did, as well as what should be done.
• I feel like I’m comparing apples to oranges, in comparing wikis and blogs. I can see how they could actually be used for the same purposes, but a single person doesn’t have to moderate everything that happens in a wiki. This can make it more versatile.
• I may be overthinking. I’ve used the Wikipedia to search for all kinds of information, mostly about trivia, but I haven’t contributed to one until this course.

Also contacted my sister-in-law, who tells me I’m only the 2nd friend in her account in 3 years, and that my niece usually writes for her every 6 to 8 months. So it seems my group of friends, at least, has relatively little use for the media, at least in the brief time I’ve had to work with it.

As a wish list, it works quite well. I can see where it might take a long time to enter my own private library, but it’s a start. The search tools are good: I had to go to another URL to discover which author I was looking for, as the book I sought was the basis of a movie.