Come visit at my new Substack
https://michaelszollosy.substack.com/
This is where I will be doing most of my writing now.
Monsters, Machines, Messiahs
Catching up
Such is the way of these things, that they sometimes sit dormant exactly at the time I should be updating furiously. I’ll be catching up with the few posts in the next couple of weeks, promising, as always, to update more regularly from now on.
Film and Q&A at CHT2021
My colleague Tony Prescott and I were interviewed for a film that was presented at the Child Health Technology 2021 conference, followed by a Q&A with Paul Dimitri and the conference attendees.
A video of the interviews with Tony and I, along with the Q&A, can be found here:
100th birthday of robots
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first staging of Karl Capek’s play R.U.R. – the play that gave the world the word ‘robot’, and proved to be a template for so many of our future stories about robots since – I wrote a piece for The Conversation‘s Insights series (which meant I got a good, longer go at explaining some of my ideas on the topic).
You can read the article here: https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK
I’m really grateful to The Conversation’s editorial team, especially Josephine Lethbridge, for their tremendous support and ideas.
Cyberselves officially spins out
I am most very pleased and proud to announce that Cyberselves is now an official spinout of the University of Sheffield. We are registered at Companies House and everything.
Please visit our website at cyberselves.com and leave us a message. Or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Follow this link to subscribe to our newsletter, or email us at info@cyberselves.com
Interview on BUIHA Podcast
I had a lovely chat with Rambo of Nick and Rambo’s BUIHA Podcast fame, which he has kindly shared with the world here. It was great to have a chance to witter on freely about all things hockey.
Living Machines Handbook
So proud to have worked on this tome, Living machines: A handbook of research in biomimetics and biohybrid systems, with so many great minds and brilliant scholars. I edited one section, on ‘Perspectives’ (looking mostly at social and cultural impacts of living machines), and contributed an introduction to that section and a chapter, ‘Living machines in the cultural imagination.’ Do check it out; there’s something for everyone in the book with an interest in robotics, psychology, biomimetics, biohybrid systems, and (of course) the social, ethical. and cultural impacts of new technologies.
AI & Creativity on Free Thinking for BBCR3
I was fortunate enough to join a panel for BBC Radio 3‘s programme Free Thinking on AI & Creativity with Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, Anders Sandberg from the Future of the Human Institute at Oxford, artist Anna Ridler.
The programme is part of a week-long focus on Free Thinking the Future, and connected to the Barbican Gallery’s exhibit, AI: More Than Human, which runs until August 26th 2019.
This is the second time I’ve appeared on a Free Thinking panel: the last time was here.
You can listen to the programme on the BBC Radio 3 website here.
Education 4.0
In a recent video on Education 4.0, produced by Jisc, I give some thoughts on what the future of learning might look like. (My daughter also makes a couple of appearances, as do our robots.)
BBC Sunday Morning Live
My colleague Tony Prescott appeared on BBC’s Sunday morning Live this past Sunday (8 July), and we brought Pepper down to interact with the hosts, Sean Fletcher and Cherry Healey. (That’s me wrangling the robot, or trying to.) Our robot and Tony feature from the very start, at 42 minutes in (especially from the 45th minute), and at the end. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0b9z98j/sunday-morning-live-series-9-episode-4
Michael Szollosy 