The nice people at the University of Sheffield produced this video of the project that I undertook with the fabulously talented Rita Marcalo at Instant Dissidence for 2016’s Festival of the Mind.
BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking: Man and Animals
Back on Tues, 15 November, I took part in a discussion hosted by Free Thinking on BBC Radio 3. Entitled ‘Man and Animals‘, it was part of the 2016 Being Human Festival, recorded at FACT in Liverpool.
The programme can be heard here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b082kwsl
The full description is below:
French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss famously said that ‘animals are good to think with’. Rana Mitter with Sarah Peverley, Charles Forsdick, Alasdair Cochrane, Eveline de Wolf, Michael Szollosy and an audience at FACT, Liverpool debate robots, humans and animals.
The broadcast will preview upcoming events organised by the University of Liverpool as part of their Being Human festival programme and is part of a week of programmes on Radio 3 focusing on new research and the UK wide festival supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
From a best friend to a tasty snack or something we must carefully husband to a threat we must eradicate, we humans think about animals in lots of ways. But how has our thinking about animals changed over time, and what does that tell us about our shifting attitudes toward the natural world and our place in it? Hear the views of a medievalist who studies bestiaries and mermaids, a French scholar who explores the history of the ‘human zoo’, and a political theorist who argues that we should extend human rights to animals, a zookeeper, and an expert on human-robot relations.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Westworld blog on mad scientists and corporate villains
I’ve published another blog on Westworld, addressing larger themes in science fiction more generally:
The Ford Factor: mad scientists and corporate villains
Also available on Robohub.
Tweeting on Westworld
I’ve been fortunate to be sent some previews of HBO’s new series, Westworld (available on Sky Atlantic here in the UK). So far, it’s proving to be a remarkable series, very engaging with terrific ideas.
I’ll be blogging on it at Dreaming Robots Blog, and during each episode’s UK premiers, I have been live tweeting thoughts, comments and ideas, while interacting with the audience through my @DreamingRobots twitter account.
You can see ‘Superguides’ of each episode – compilations of my tweets – here:
Episode 1: https://twitter.com/i/moments/785470912971829248
Episode 2: https://twitter.com/i/moments/787973079276347392
Episode 3: https://twitter.com/i/moments/788750958750826496
Episode 9: https://twitter.com/i/moments/803897622314487809
(I’ll update this post with further ‘Superguides’ as the series progresses.)
Festival of the Mind 2016 (1)
A nice short article from @UniShefEngage on Futurecade at this year’s Festival of the Mind, featuring words from my dear friend @ChrisBlackmore and a nice picture of Nao and @RitaMarcalo doing their thing.
It was a great experience and I hope to be able to work with Rita and Instance Dissidence again soon.
New post on Robohub
I’ve had a few posts on Robohub.org now, but this one seems to be doing rather well, with a few retweets and a lively discussion on Hacker News.
The New Westworld: Humanizing the un-human, or dehumanizing humankind?
It’s a repost (and slight revision) of a blog I put up on my own Dreaming Robots site.
First post on RoboHub
Dreaming Robots has been noticed, and is (sometimes) going to be cross-posted on the terrific website RoboHub. Check out my article here, but do take the time to look at RoboHub more generally – it’s a terrific collection of resources.
My talk at Bristol’s EU Robotics Week
Video of my talk, ‘A History of Robotics’ at Bristol’s ‘Robots: From Imagination to Market‘ event, part of EU Robotics Week 2015.
Interview in the Sheffield Telegraph
Short article about Robosapiens film series in the Sheffield Telegraph.
Interview in El Prisma
So here I am talking about robots… in Spanish. (I don’t actually speak Spanish, but the interviewer was terrific.)
http://diarioelprisma.es/construimos-robots-michael-szollosy/
Michael Szollosy 