Temple University Robotics Graduate Student Checks in Again!

Our East Coast correspondent, Gabe "iRobot" Cutrufello just can't stop himself when it comes to dispatches for the ObsceneMachine Blog, especially when it comes to a tale that weaves his twin fetishes: one literary, Philip K. Dick; the other, er, cyborgic, robots! Here's Cutrufello's piece, hot off the presses:

Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 01:15:33 -0500
Subject: Ok, Ok, I'll stop I promise...
From: Gabriel Cutrufello
To: Bill Nerricio

Hi Bill,

It may come as no shock to you that what graduate students like to do at 1AM is look for information about the Philip K. Dick android project. This is slightly old news (about two years ago), but Hanson Robotics created an android Philip K. Dick. Check out the way in which they create the interactive personality: "IIS will create the artificial intelligence personality of the robot by mathematically deriving it from Dick's life and works in a manner very similar to that described by Dick himself in his book We Can Build You (published in 1964)." Here are two links: one and two.

And here is a really great picture of the PKD simulacra with the back of its head removed:



Best,

Gabe

PS – I read the post on the Doctor Who Cybermen (really great). Being the sf fanboy/”scholar” that I like to imagine myself, I have to recommend the new Battlestar Galactica and its take on the Cylon (its version of the simulacra).