If the robot shoots, who's to blame?

"Imagine the miners strike with robots armed with water cannons, these things are coming, definitely."

Interesting piece on the BBC website, looking at the ethical issues around the use of robots. Apparently Samsung is working on a robot which will have 2 cameras and a machine gun . . reminiscent of Aliens . . but to patrol (and kill) people. It also brings to mind Robocop.

There was a great graphic in the Guardian today—in the wake of the revelation that the US is building a wall in Bagdhad to keep Sunni from Shia—showing the extent of walls and fences around the globe built to keep groups of people away from each other. There are loads of them, all around the world - and I guess that those Samsung robots are for patrolling the 248km fence between North and South Korea.

Is this because to resolve these various conflicts would be too much of a volte-face for any of these political systems? Or that too little has been done to resolve these issues for years - that colonial and imperial chickens are coming home to roost.

hmmm.

Is change possible

Just had lunch with my brother and mother, during which she said that she was becoming quite depressed at her own growing scepticism about the possibility of real change (in the world).

I find this too. I think that this is a result of 2 main currents: Firstly, events which happen are so difficult to comprehend although you know they're real (like the "war on terror") and secondly, because the domininant idea at present is that capitalism will solve all - that the individiual can do nothing except for themselves - and this combination is so prevalent, even in places (the labour party for example) which had more collective ideas previously, that many people are just giving up on bigger social ideas . .

Its all a little unnerving.

Closed systems and polls

With so many people able to access a page, and stumble upon it with little less than a search which tangentially connects to that page, the possibility or likelihood of receiving a huge amount of unfiltered nonsense, from many alienated people around the world is very high.

This is the “democracy of the web” at work, and it is not democratic and neither is it useful. It is not democratic as a democratic process involves some level of responsibility and accountablitiy. With the comparative anonymity and the huge numbers of people who can be involved this is difficult if not impossible

This suggests that closed systems are attractive to those who would like to participate in discussion and debate without having to run through a lot of nonsense to do so. A small filter, by way of free registration - which gives access to an number of spaces segregated from the web in general makes sense. (Filtering also comes in the shape of minority interest sites, and moderation.)

Polls on site might be quite useful. The process of gathering the opinions of the passing traffic, which while not scientifically accurate might generate an interesting statistical flow itself. The user expreince is good - seeign my jprefernce in relation to my peers; and providing attractive visual stuff on the page. And it might be useful in terms of some (probably) interesting data snapshots of users interests and preferences.

Polss types: (to be added to) film reviews, positions on debates, factual info about self (do you smack your child, do you have a flat screen telly etc)

None of this is new . . it all happens now . .just some small attempts to get my head around how these actualites work, can be used . .other than just to increase "stickiness"