iTunes + Robot Podcasts = Learning on the go!

Do you like iTunes?  Do you like robots?  Do you like podcasts?  If you answer yes to all three of these questions, do I have a recommendation for YOU!  I’ve recently found a great podcast that inspires me to do further research on my favorite science/science fiction topic: Robots!

The title is Robots: The Podcast for News and Views on Robotics. There are other robot-related podcasts, but I will check them out later. This podcast is the first one I found and there are so many episodes available. Each episode is around a half hour or around 45 minutes. The first episode I listened to was one with an interview with scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro, who created the Geminoid, a copy of himself. This episode is titled, “Androids, Human Presence, and the Uncanny Valley.” You have to listen carefully though, because Mr. Ishiguro is speaking on a phone and also he has a Japanese accent of course.

What I really like about this podcast is it has topics I am looking for. There are two episodes about Robot Ethics and two episodes about Science Fiction that include robots and androids. There is even an interview with David X. Cohen, who works on Futurama, and he will be talking about the show and his view of the future, according to the info on the podcast. I definitely have to check that out; I love Futurama even more because of the fact that robots and humans co-exist in the 3000s. Personally I can’t subscribe to this podcast because my seven-year-old desktop computer doesn’t have much gigabytes left to hold megabytes and megabytes of podcasts and music, but I’d like to check back on this podcast often and find a select group of episodes to download. It helps that the podcasts are free!

A realization about my science fiction…

I have actually known for a long while now that I need to do more research on robotics for the science fiction I plan to write and publish in the near future. I’ve read some of Technophobia!, and want to read David Levy's Love + Sex with Robots in the near future as well, in fact as soon as I can. But I need to be reading on actual robotics—what really makes machines work.

In the past I wasn’t very interested in engineering and the building and controlling of robots. I’ve only been interested in robots and androids that appear in science fiction. The author, of course, would throw in some words and phrases that indicate he or she knows a thing or two about robots and computers. I stupidly told myself, “I am not going to do that. I don’t have to. I just want to focus on the character of the robot or android.”

Well, to understand how a robot, android, or talking computer might respond to a human, or how its own thoughts develop and spark, I DO need to know the historical and scientific facts about how robots and computers work. What would it look like inside a robot’s head? If it were able to think and compute, where do all the chips and cables go? I need to learn about key words like circuits, cables and programming. I probably should have taken learning courses on robotics and artificial intelligence. Maybe when I have a safe amount of money set aside for that pursuit.

So here is what I feel like I need to do. I need to just go ahead and write down the robot stories I have in my head…….all seven or eight of them, or so.  Later when I have enough background information and can incorporate the knowledge into the stories, I can choose one and work on them one at a time. Knowing that they won’t be published for at least the next two years, I feel a little discouraged about this giant writing project.

But I want to do it.  I need to work harder.