Close, but no cigar...

In the following YouTube video you can see the android replica of Philip K. Dick. I have also attached a link to a recently released book about the project http://www.pkdandroid.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ930zzYxl8

As you can see, we are a long way off from needing special tests to distinguish between human disguise and our mechanical creations. The speech recognition errors abound and his (its?) movements are jolting; in addition, he must remain stationary. But the realism of the androids' facial features is certainly worth noting.

In his article “The Android and the Human” (1972) Philip K. Dicks writes,  “Perhaps, really, what we are seeing is a gradual merging of the general nature of human activity and function into the activity and function of what we humans have built and surrounded ourselves with….Our electronic constructs are becoming so complex that to comprehend them we must now reverse the analogizing of cybernetics and try to reason from our own mentation and behavior to theirs—although I suppose to assign motive or purpose to them would be to enter the realm of paranoia; what machines do may resemble what we do, but certainly they do not have intent in the sense that we have; they have tropisms, they have purpose in the sense that we build them to accomplish certain ends and to react to certain stimuli.”

After last night’s class I wonder what can we glean from the growing animation of the things that surround us?