A walk down to Barns Ness trying to photograph deep time. How does one picture 320 billion years of time in a single exposure of a 320th of a second? This was a vexing problem that I tried to work through while on a photography expedition out near Dunbar.
The Marvin Problem: or Why Intelligent Robots will be Depressed
20 Thursday Jul 2017
Posted in Philosophy
Tags
Artificial Intelligence, Jerry Goodenough, Knightscope K5 Autonomous Data Machine, Louis Althusser, Marvin the Paranoid Android, Steve the Security Robot, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
There was a rather amusing story that made ripples across social media of a robot that allegedly ‘drowned itself’. Obviously, the comparisons to Marvin the Paranoid Android were uncanny. So why did Steve the K5 Security Robot kill himself? Why is Marvin the Paranoid Android always depressed?
Female Doctor? Academia Needs More of Them.
16 Sunday Jul 2017
Posted in PhD Life
The announcement of Jodie Whittaker as the new Doctor in BBC’s Doctor Who has taken the internet by storm for being both a revolutionary change and one that rubbed sexist trolls the wrong way. But here is why academia should welcome the casting of Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor in Doctor Who.
Working with Undergraduates: Why it Keeps Me Sane
09 Sunday Jul 2017
Posted in PhD Life
I have been involved with training undergraduate students in conference skills for the Edinburgh Undergraduate Research Conference. This is why I find this kind of work, training undergraduates in peer reviewing or conference organisation, immensely rewarding, and how it helps me balance my own doctoral work.
The Ethics of Smell: Corporeal Porosity and the Embodiment of Care
02 Sunday Jul 2017
Posted in Philosophy
Tags
Donna Haraway, Embodiment, Environmental Humanities, Gail Weiss, Improbable Research, Intercorporeality, Phenomenology, Smell
How can thinking of bodies through smell reveal the complexities of the embodied relations between them? This is a meditation on how we interact with other bodies through their smell, and how smell reveals their inner workings in ways that sight or sound do not.