From the digital pets, I selected the virtual puppy. I expected some kind of animation with the dog, but was left staring at the same, poor quality picture. In fact the unrealistic, "child drawn" picture was disappointing. The animal's representation made it less appealing, as I was immediately bored with the tedious task of taking care of it. Taking care of the pet was very mechanical: Click the buttons and you can feed, pet, clean, play, etc. with the dog. If I was devoted to the digipet game, I would probably feel more of an obligation than empathy towards the dog. Also, the fact that some people would consider the virtual puppy as a game would negate any emphathetic feelings towards the pet. A person would take care of this virtual pet because they want to see how long it could last, and not because they have feelings for it.

I give up. I tried downloading about six different digital animals. I selected virtual pets that i normally would not pick, to see if these out-of-the-ordinary animals would exude and elicit empathy in a different way than a real dog or cat. first, the happy hamster. then, the rock. Eventually, after the dragon, I settled for the dog. either i dont have some plug-in or i'm clicking the wrong buttons. the only responses i received from these sites were that of the pop-up advertisements.

I agree with Stephanie, that the whole odea of virtual pets defeats the purpose of what it means to care for an animal. The fact that each animal you may come across in life has a perosnality of its own, that these animals earn your trust and come to depend on you, seems to me the priceless quality of caring for it.

As noted in class last week or so, it is clear that Dick put a great deal of thought into the notion of androids on the verge of humanity. What sticks to my mind the most is the quote by Deckard introspectively shaming himself for putting on such a ploy with his mechanical sheep because it degraded his morality and that bothered him. Why want a real animal so badly? Because, for Deckard/Dick the empathy towards an animal (could animals represent humans before dependence of the empathy box?) is the last semblance of what it means to be human and this feeling of humanity just simply cannot be faked.

I can't even believe something like this exists. What kind of loser would draw any significance from owning a virtual pet? I was reading the directions for owning a virtual cat and I was surprised that these cats can actually die if they are not taken care of properly. They must be managed, fed, loved and played with often, else their happiness meter will drop. Who the hell cares about a virtual happiness meter? The cat is not alive but is an effect of digital code. Not only that, the simulation of a cat is quite poor. Who wants a cat without a physical body and presence? Who wants a cat that lives on the internet? That's it, I give up.

Well, I tried both the vitual cat and virtual dog, there didnt seem to be much of a difference between the two. I kinda got bored really, maybe my inability to pay attention enough to feed/play with these simple creatures is just proof that I should not ever own a 'real' pet. I suppose these things must be good for people who aren't able to handle living pets, who just want the empathatic response when they want to feel like they are responsible without having to deal with the responsibility. Oh, dont download bonzi buddy, he's kinda hard to get out of your system.
   I certainly hope this is not what those alife folk are talking about with their idea of life on other media. Its hard to say that a-life is not possible, its a negative that I cannot see how to prove. The attempt by alife to compare synthetic biology with synthetic chemisty is a complete failure on logical grounds; its a comparison of apples to oranges. Synthetic chemistry takes things that are already chemicals and arranges them in different ways. Its chemicals being made into chemicals, and never does it step beyond the bounds of chemisty. Synthetic bilogy is nothing like this. Its analogy with chemistry would be to make chemicals out of things not thought of as chemicals, out of photons perhaps. As a persuasive move, this is more interesting. Its more of an appeal to the more techie part of humanity, those who are familiar with synchemistry. I take this page to in general aimed at such techie folk, these being the people most likely to find/read this stuff. If we are willing to accept the synthetic in one discipline, why not another? It presents us with the idea that we are somehow descriminting againt the same thing in biology that we accept in chemisty, and therefore we're not being consistant.

Edited by author 11-15-2002 11:15 AM
Being the philosophy oriented dog person that I am, I investigated “Virtual Dog” and “Self,” in order to see if I would be empathetic to either in any way remotely close to the way I feel about “Wolfy” (the family pet I miss terribly since I moved out of my mom's house).

“Virtual Dog” definitely emphasizes just how much work having a dog is, I had no trouble putting “Italics” in a kennel for a day after 15 minutes. This made me consider the word “caring”, it could mean that you actively pursue the well being of your pet, but it can also mean that you pursue your pet’s well being because you love it. I REALLY enjoy looking after Wolfy, but I cant the say the same for Italics – with Italics its actually work. I know she’d never steal pizza from my table, but I think that’s actually the problem. Italics doesn’t shed, steal food, tug on your pant leg when it wants to go out or howl when it’s lonely at 3 am and a siren zooms by - she's not the type of dog I have to be careful with my languae and spell out "walk" and "bath" around - its just not anything like the real thing.
     Then I went to this "SELF" site, which luered me by the quote:
"SELF" is your self. Let's go to the edge of your mind with your "SELF".
I immediately thought, wow, this is a great vehicl for empathy! But how wrong I was. This self thing is a kind of ghost pet, which only eats, sleeps and dies after 3 minutes. I had NO idea as to what was going on with it - which may be due to my lack of tech skills but its inability to communicate with me killed any chance for me to empathize with it. But maybe thats what the problem is. Virtual pets asfar as I can tell cant communicate with you. The only way that I knew Italicas was happy was because of her "happy meter" as well - and how do I know a score of 57 means? I know most of the communication my dog and I have is my interpretation, but in some autopoetic way it works out.

Rhetoric 174
VLife (Virtual Life)

I was looking throught the virtual pet links and found an interesting site. I clicked on the bio-insects link and found interesting virtual bugs and other animated images. Question: What is the point of these sites? What is the point in having a virtual pet? This discussion seems to be interconnected with the discussion of ALife.

All I could think of as I was looking at these animated pets was that we are in the preparation stage for bigger things in the future. We talked about synthetic chemistry that will eventually create artificial life. In a sense, virtual life is preparing our mentality to accept artificial life when becomes a reality. In other words, it is the sense of detachment from nature and reality that will eventually create humans who are more dependent on machines than humans. The ability to communicate on a social/human level is being pushed out and made obsolete, while our minds are changed and rewired to think more and more like machines. The engines of creation is indeed running towards the age of spiritual machines. It is a scary thought, and the internet is only facilitating the process.

"It is the sense of detachment from nature and reality that will eventually create humans who are more dependent on machines than humans. The ability to communicate on a social/human level is being pushed out and made obsolete, while our minds are changed and rewired to think more and more like machines. The engines of creation is indeed running towards the age of spiritual machines. It is a scary thought, and the internet is only facilitating the process."

I'm inclined to concur with you Do, but I also think that this started to happen once we became a capitalistic society, and that this isnt the result of our tango with machines, but the result of alienation. I mean, we have LONG been relating to eachother through commodities, and while in some instances that eliminates human interaction, some times it also facilitates it. (Please do think I'm being harsh, you wrote this really fabulous piece that I cant resist engaging/problematizing) Take a look at your rhetoric, we already speak of ourselves as machines "our minds are changed and rewired", and just five minutes ago I was telling my sweetie that I had to change my settings back to English after talking to my mom for an hour in spanish. This era/phenomena brings up a whole slew of intresting questions - like does this technology threaten our very notion of what reality is? If so why is this a bad thing? Is god dead and have we killed him? Is this becomming the world of the irrational man in Nietzsche's famous piece on Lying?

Edited by author 11-17-2002 03:40 PM
Rhetoric 174
Response and Cloning

There is some truth that machine-like behaviors rose with capitalism. Repetitive industrial works were repetitively conducted by humans in the beginning and gradually more efficient machines took over these roles. However, this discussion is an open-ended one. First, we have to define what a machine is. Of course, we could develop machine-like behaviors but we will never truly be machines. I believe that some humanity in us will never die away. One could even argue that ancient repetitive agricultural works were display of machine-like behaviors. The only difference was that the ancient humans had nothing (no machines) to compare their machine-like behaviors to - only hint at what was to come in the near future.

Cloning: Andrea asks the question: Is God dead? I strongly believe that the idea of God will never die away because it is too deeply rooted in our human history. I was reading through the Clonaid website and found it pretty fucking disgusting. (I had to write something on this.) All I could think of was that it's another scientology wannabe. Clonaid is a company that combines modern science with religion (Christianity). How the hell do you do that and get away with it? The Raelian movement is this twisted belief that humans were created through genetic engineering. (Don't understand the logic.) These modern religions or cults have no basis for their claims and all they do is twist and deviate from ancient human text. It's fine to conduct research for the sake of research, but when research is driven by radical religious beliefs there is a lot of room for misuse of the technology. Thus, I'm against this Clonaid shit. The sad thing is that desperate people who wants cloning for their personal use will invest their money to further these types of causes. And I'm predicting that our world will get weirder and weirder as time progresses. What do you think?

Wow! That Raelian stuff is a trip! Here is another open ended question with Platonic under/over tones:
Can a clone be a human being? And how could human beings originally be clones? What would the point be? I'm not that much into immortality - not because my life is hellish, but, why would I want to be around for so long? -Would each stage of cloning be different? I mean would I be the same person if I were cloned? And say I was cloned, would that eventually just get like a really bad xerox (y'know, like a xerox of something thats a xerox of some distant original xerox of a document? But then again is a printed document ever the original?)
On a some what unrelated note: Did anyone see the Simpson's new Halloween special? It totally had a cool segment on cloning that might relate to the topic at hand - and yes, I do haave it on tape :)

For those who caught my Stuart Little reference during last Wedneday night's rant on The Fly, check out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/27/science/27CELL.html


It's all about creating mouse/human hybrid organisms.

Initially, i was interested in writing about the man/machine distinction, where there is often a blending of the two entities. i wanted to explore what it meant to be human and why being human seems essentially distinct from machine, yet at times so alike. Some theorists i wanted to focus on were Marx, Dick, and Haraway.

But this was before i read Butler's Dawn. Sex in Dawn is primitive, primal, necessary, and yet unnecessary. It has become apparent to me the issue of the sex act plays a big role in defining the human experience. Of course then, the issue of replication vs. reproduction comes into play - i havent yet formulated a clear thesis, but i think i'm on my way. Some theorists i thought of includes Mackinnon, Foucault, and Freud,

Initially, i was interested in writing about the man/machine distinction, where there is often a blending of the two entities. i wanted to explore what it meant to be human and why being human seems essentially distinct from machine, yet at times so alike. Some theorists i wanted to focus on were Marx, Dick, and Haraway.

But this was before i read Butler's Dawn. Sex in Dawn is primitive, primal, necessary, and yet unnecessary. It has become apparent to me the issue of the sex act plays a big role in defining the human experience. Of course then, the issue of replication vs. reproduction comes into play - i havent yet formulated a concrete thesis, but i think i'm on my way. Some theorists i want to use: Mackinnon, Foucault, and Freud.

OOPS! sorry guys, just read #92.

After reading Darwin, Watson, and Preston, I became interested in the relationship between science and beauty. However, with only their texts to rely on, it is difficult to discern whether science produces beauty or if the pursuit of beauty the motivation for scientific discovery. I have thus chosen to explore this question in more detail. In order to do so, I hope to explore the relationship between art (aesthetics) and science. It has been argued that the process of scientific discovery is exactly the same as the production of a work of art, and that science is often misrepresented in our society just because it is difficult for most members of society to appreciate the aesthetic value of science. I plan to draw on Kant's distinction between the sublime and the beautiful, various lectures in The Elusive Synthesis: Aesthetics and Science, various lectures by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, and Richard Dawkin's Unweaving the Rainbow.

From Watson to Butler, scientific advances in genetics have a profound influence on the way society views science and themselves. The application of genetics to medical practice has interesting implications towards healthcare and the doctor-patient relationship. Known as pharmacogenomics, medicine is being developed to tailor one’s unique genetic structure in order to facilitate a more efficient use of drugs. More importantly, the importance of testing one’s genes to determine potential diseases changes the grounds on which the patient is defined. Healthcare appears to place an emphasis on the future of one’s health, while ignoring the patient as the reporter of signs and symptoms. Through popular press and scientific journals, I will be investigating the rhetorical way pharmacogenomics is described. I will also compare the rhetoric presented in the biotech companies “selling” pharmacogenomics, such as GeneLink and LifeSensors, inc. How these biotech companies utilize the same discourse will suggest society’s reaction towards pharmacogenomics (because the biotech companies will be playing with the overall sentiment towards pharmacogenomics in order to sell their product.)
My specific sources include JAMA, the GeneLetter, Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, Pharmacogenomics Journal, and Nature. Popular press articles include Time and Newsweek. Information from the biotech companies can be found online, where they advertise their products.

I am doing a research paper on how effective the Center of Disease Control and Prevention was in providing the necessary information regarding anthrax after September 11, 2002 to the public (focusing especially, but not exclusively, on the rhetoric used in their webpage) in reducing panic and anxiety. My research paper will look closely at the URL efforts of the CDC by analyzing the information on their webpage and evaluating how effective the CDC’s rhetoric is in keeping the general public calm and safe in a period of crisis. There is little to no information on how successful the CDC was in there efforts to reduce the panic of the general public so I have resorted to e-mailing journalists who wrote about the CDC during this time period for information on the topic. I have also asked certain individuals for their input by sitting with them in front of the CDC’s webpage and asking them questions about the CDC’s rhetoric. Finally, I plan to provide alternative suggestions to improve the quality of the rhetoric in the CDC’s URL efforts.

Comments, suggestions, information? Please e-mail: zdresben@uclink.berkeley.edu