OII: Cyberintimacies/Cybersolitudes October 25, 2007
Oxford OX1 3JS, England
Sherry Turkle will be speaking:
Recent years have seen the development of computational entities - I call them relational artifacts - some of them are software agents and some of them are robots - that present themselves as having states of mind that are affected by their interactions with human beings. These are objects designed to impress not so much through their 'smarts' as through their sociability, their capacity to draw people into cyberintimacy.
This presentation comments on their emerging role in our psychological, spiritual and moral lives. They are poised to be the new 'uncanny' in the culture of computing - something known of old and long familiar - yet become strangely unfamiliar. As uncanny objects, they are evocative. They compel us to ask such questions as, 'What kinds of relationships are appropriate to have with machines?' And more generally, 'What is a relationship?'
Official Website: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=150
Added by Preoccupations on May 29, 2007
Comments
danieljohnlewis
I didn't end up going. Did someone go, was it good?
danieljohnlewis
Although its later on today - I am intending to attend and have my name down, but still not sure if I will be yet. Its only 20 mins walk from where I live, so I'll probably decide at 4:30pm whether I am going. It sounds really interesting from a psychological point of view and a computing point of view.