I’ve grown to truly appreciate the process of research
throughout this Design Writing arena. I mentioned this in a previous blog post
on my visit to the Presidio and relating it to Turkle’s work, but the power of
observation rang true throughout this robot project. Even outside of going to
the Presidio, researching the various components of my robot’s functions forced
me into this observation of necessity (i.e. does using phytoremediation make
sense in cleaning water pollution?) and understanding how to make sense of its
function(s). I admit, I think my brain juices have just about evaporated from
the amount of information I read and collected for this robot project—I was
forced to re-read and read very slow all of the scientific/technological
attributes I wanted to apply to my robot—but it definitely was a great lesson
in research, again, observation, and how I go about writing in this way during
my time at CCA and beyond.
The readings, I must say, were definitely stuff out of a
science fiction novel that left me a little uncomfortable and leery about
robots. Uncanny Valley shared my
sentiments on this notion of human-like robots, which even reading Turkle’s
book, brought about an eerie feeling. It’s an amazing and scary line we are
crossing in pursuing bringing robots to life. Amazing, in the sense that, the
technology that is being produced is creatively intriguing, but scary because
it all feels like a cover up of life that we can barely handle nor understand.
It would be nice to see this type of creativity in dealing with our lives as it
is (i.e. connecting as humans to deal with vulnerability), instead of what I
feel is an escape mechanism, intentional or not. From Turkle to Mori to the
city of robots and other unbelievable robotics I have come across due to our
work in this arena, I am still baffled that such a robotic world is truly
existing or in the works of existing in our lives. I remember as a child,
watching the Jetsons, and I was so
sure that none of this would ever exist in “real life”. When our class saw
Asimo (the Honda robot), I could of fell out of my sit because I never in a
million years would have thought the Jetsons
world would come to life. As I mentioned, we can barely handle life let alone
understand it, so I do worry were all of this will take us.