I’ve been itching to go public and tell everyone that Linux User and Developer magazine are publishing a series of my sci-fi shorts on their back page.
They chose Killer Virus? as the first in the series and as you can see from the quick snap I took in W H Smith at London’s Euston Station, it’s on the shelves now.
During my visit to the Bristol Robotics Lab I heard about the danger of human shaped robots because we naturally attribute them with human qualities they don’t have.
This got me thinking about artificial intelligence that’s embodied in non-human forms but still shows human type behaviour. After all, it’s coded by humans and learns how to behave from humans.
That was part of the inspiration behind The Mythical Moss.
Over the past few months, a film of me reading this story has been in the exhibition, Only Human: Believing the Strangest Things, Loving the Alien. The exhibition recently ended so I can now share the exhibit with you.
I hope you enjoy the story and it doesn’t cause you to spend too much time wondering about what might be lurking in the nooks and crannies of your life.
photo credit: dreaming_of_rivers Intimidation via photopin (license)
This summer I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Science in Public 2017 conference as a panel member on Science and Science Fiction – the role of fiction in imagining the future, understanding public attitudes to technology, and engaging with scientific researchers.
I find it interesting to be at conferences that are for a specific set of people whose discipline is new to me; there’s so much that’s familiar about all conferences and yet there’s so much that’s new and different about each one.
The theme of this conference was: how do science and technology affect what it means to be human?
“Science and technology are essential ingredients of our humanity. The emergence of fruitful and diverse scholarly perspectives on the history, practice, communication, governance and impacts of scientific knowledge reflects this fact. Continue reading