Cyborg Theory, Class #1

[replicarter.livejournal.com]

*closes the door and the windows and turns on the powerpoint*

Introduction to Cyborg Theory – Class #1



barefoot_tahiri
bent_bender
can_be_more
carter_i_am
cerulean__eyes
chief_tyrol
cyloninyourhead
emo_padawan
kawalsky
leeadama
magitekboy
pyramid_is_life
radekzelenka
sharon_valerii
sogothcally
sparkplugfelix
thehurleyabides
valentine_tart
whitedeathpod

Note to students: If you are playing multiple characters and are enrolled, therefore, twice in the class because you love me OMG!, please think this through a bit as the homework will therefore be doubled with you. You can, however, crash the class if the discussion is getting interesting and you want to add another characters perspective.





There will be no lecture today as it’s our first class. I would like everyone to do the following:

1) Introduce yourselves to the class by saying your name, fandom, and something really interesting about yourself.

2) If you are cybernetic, artificial intelligence, a robot, or a human-form robot of any variety, please state this at this time. If you are unaware of your synthetic state, please see me after class.

3) Introduce yourself to a student in the class that you haven’t met yet or haven’t had the chance to have a conversation with yet. I’d like my students to get to know one another.

If you need a discussion topic outside general small talk, please discuss the issues of humanity creating machines to bear the brunt of hard labor and what this does to the blue collar human workforce.


For homework, and I wish to have this by Wednesday in my inbox, I would like you to research on the internet for a recent news article on cybernetics, artificial intelligence, or something to that effect and send me the link to the article. We will be discussing these articles next Monday.

Now. Get to it. *smiles kindly*

Comments

[carter-i-am.livejournal.com]

Um. We're related. My...uh...cousin is her mother. Of sorts. There's a...strong family resemblance.

Do you get in trouble for killing the toasters? My Dad figured he should take shares in General Electric, I was destroying them so often. (The little heating element wires had wonderful resistance, they just didn't last very long.)

[sogothcally.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my 'rents used to try and hold it against me, but I just told them replacing toasters was nothing compared to the dental bills I never had. ::beaming smile::

[carter-i-am.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

Well, my Dad had to pay for both the toasters and the braces. God, they were ugly. The braces, I mean, not the toasters.

[sogothcally.livejournal.com]

::shrugs:: I can only imagine, I guess. So... building machines and blue collar whatever. Any thoughts?

[carter-i-am.livejournal.com]

Um. I guess what the teacher might be trying to say is that automation takes jobs away from people who might otherwise do the work.

Like machines to weave fabric instead of people. Except that the machines do it better and with a more consistent quality than the people. And the weavers suffered from eye strain and backache anyway, so it made more sense to use the machines and spare the people.

I dunno. I'm not sure what she's trying to make us see.

You?

[sogothcally.livejournal.com]

Exactly, and for every machine, there needs to be people to make sure they run properly, cause machine's don't fix themselves, that's for sure.

I suppose at some level, there's a job loss, but there's lots of things we can't make machines do, like write novels or operas or anything.

Plus, machines don't have souls, right?

[carter-i-am.livejournal.com]

there's lots of things we can't make machines do, like write novels or operas or anything

That's the conventional theory regarding cyborgs. They can't extend beyond the level of their programming - they're limited. Of course, we're constrained by our understanding of AI, which, in my universe, has never been considered comparable to the possibilities of the human mind. Until the human replicators turned up.

I never imagined machines to have souls. But I still felt guilty for lying to Fifth and leaving him behind.