the long held dream of creating an irrational, violent, fear hobbled, and hopelessly confused computer simulation has taken a step toward becoming a reality with the announcement of the blue brain project. a collaboration between IBM and a swiss university team aiming to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain right down to the molecular level. very cool. here is some coverage from new scientist and businesweek. interesting stuff. (btw the thumbnail is taken from gray matters: the brain movie.)

I think that very bad sci-fi movie ‘the black hole’ (Does it still suck? you betcha!) is proving sorta prophetic. You have the nice little googly-eyed robots, which seemed silly to me until I realized that the cutesy angle was part of the user-friendliness of the design, and shore nuf, look at some of the googly-eyed robots they have now; then there’s that more anthropomorphic robot, Maximilian, a complete gear-hole.

What was I talking about? There was some sort of connection here. search me.

yeah i actually rented the black hole a year or two ago just out of nostalgia fueled curiosity. it did indeed suck. the little garbage can robots were far too cute, maximillian the red ass kicking robot was underused. the humans were, well the same as they always are- human, yawn. perhaps if i were still dosing myself heavily with hallucinogens it might have been better.

as far as robotic anthropomorphism and “cuteness” in the real world, i have to say, though i understand the strategy, i don’t need or want my robots of the future to be cute. i want slick, cold, and ultra modern. i want brazenly mechanical functionality. hell if they could find a way other than anthropomorphism (short of insecto-pomorphism, yuck) to design robots which can get around and function so much the better…

with the amount of irrational, rational, and perfectly rational hatred people have for one another, the lack of empathy and patience (guilty!), does anyone really think a malfunctioning, slow, or otherwise imperfect anthropomorphic robot is a good idea? imagine the shoddy government issue rubber faced robot you eventually are faced with after a long wait on the dmv line, that human/no-human face with it’s big fake eyes and big fake mouth will make your fucking blood boil, i guarantee it. how will you react?

well, that’s the other problem i see with anthropomorphic robots- we are essentially begging for some kind of moral quandary down the line. considering humanity’s history of enslaving one another it’s only a matter of time before robots created especially to “identify with” and “to be put at ease by” will illicit compassion as they are worked into the scarp heap, as they are kicked and blamed and spit on and cursed at. do we really want to keep that kind of thing so uncomfortably close to our past mistakes by making these things look like people? i don’t know, just seems perverse to me somehow.

having said all that, the second they perfect the human consciousness upload procedure i will take it all back. “i’ll have a nice titanium and porcelain humanoid bod with 4 arms please.”

what was I talking about? there was some sort of connection here. search me.