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Master of Electronic Art
Representation and Presentation
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Future Agents/Blade Runner
Overview Scott Ridley's sci-fi film Blade Runner, made in 1982, proposes a bleak scenario for the future. In this film, which has since acquired a cult status, a question of what it is to be human is explored within the context of a society in which production of highly sophisticated autonomous robots called replicants has taken place. In this scenario the line between human and machine has become blurred. The theme of AI found in Blade Runner have been popularised in past through the stories such as Hoffmans' The Sand-Man , Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , and theories such as Norbert Wiener's and J.C.R. Licklider's man-machine symbiosis and Donna Haraway's cyborgs . When in 1950 Alan Turing was devising a test - called the Turring Test - to distinguish if the machine is conscious, technology that would make this possible was thought to become available in 50 yrs. Jaron Lanier (VR pionier) condemned the idea of intelligent agents/machines in his seminal 1995 essay The Trouble with Agents . Using advertising as an example of possible future application of AI, he pointed out that the way in which the machines make the lowest common-denominator-approach decisions coupled with our willingness to asign higher capability to computing, actually stupifies us.
Primary Viewing Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (film)
Primary Reading Lanier, Jaron Agents of Alienation Turing Test: 50 Years Later (2000) More Study Guide for Philip K Dick: Blade Runner (1968) Dick, Philip K Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Whitby, Blay 1997 Why The Turing Test is AI's Biggest Blind Alley Bunz, Mercedez Extensions, Boundaries & Double Crossings or: We Don't Trust Anybody. Shadowing Theory and Technology Constructing Subjects
jabberwacky.com
Jenny Marketou's Smell.Bytes David Rokeby Giver of Names (1991-ongoing) Lanier, Janon 1995 The Trouble with Agents Lanier, Jaron Agents of Alienation
Paul, Christiane The Agent's Desire Jenny Marketou's Smell.Bytes Foster, H (ed) 1985 Postmodern Culture , Pluto Press, London & Sydney 2019: Off World, Blade Runner-related Essays and Miscancelleous Leaver, Tama 1997 Post-Humanism and Ecocide in William Gibson's Neuromancer and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner Blade Runner (motion picture): A Selective Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Library Bruno, Giuliana Ramble city: postmodernism and Blade Runner October , no. 41 (1987), pp. 61-74. Cupitt, Cathy Eyeballing the Simulacra Desire and Vision in Blade Runner Jameson, Fredric Progress versus utopia; or, can we imagine the future? Science-Fiction Studies, vol. 9 (1982), pp. 147-158. Telotte, J P The World of Tomorrow and the "secret goal" of science fiction , Journal of Film and Video, vol. 45, no. 1 (1993), pp. 27-39. Desser, David Race, Space, and Class in Kerman, Judith (ed) Retrofitting Blade Runner , Bowling Green State University Press, Ohio
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