Reflections

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.