Category Archives: Contextualization Exercise

Humans Controlling Rats with Thoughts

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/162678-harvard-creates-brain-to-brain-interface-allows-humans-to-control-other-animals-with-thoughts-alone The subject of the article above is a study that was conducted at Harvard University in an attempt to allow the human brain to control an animal with thought. Researchers at Harvard used brain-to-brain Interface to connect to a rat. The … Continue reading

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Unflattening in science

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOCaacO8wus This video is interesting in that it uses the core concept of Unflattening, breaking down a medium into its composite parts to analyse and comprehend it more fully, and applies it to life. Using an objective, scientific standpoint, the … Continue reading

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Genetic Modification of Animals

The genetic modification of animals is nothing new…in fact we have been doing this as humans since the beginning of our evolution – domesticating wolves into dogs for our own benefit. While we weren’t specifically splicing genes in labs back … Continue reading

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Animal Enhancement Progress

The idea of cybernetically enhancing animals is to me morally challenging, since animals cannot give their consent. Not only that but animal experimentation can be dangerous, as witnessed in We3. Nonetheless animal experimentation using enhancements has begun. One element of … Continue reading

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Taking Advantages of Animals’ Biology

http://www.cracked.com/article_19191_7-bizarre-advances-in-animal-cyborg-technology.html This article is highly relevant to our discussions of animals being used and manipulated for the benefit of humans. In We3, the dog, cat, and rabbit are given exo-suits that weaponizes them and their instinctual behaviors in order to … Continue reading

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The Threat of the Thinking Robot

Human culture is filled to the brim with a deep fear of sentience that isn’t ours. Descartes’ attempts to mechanize animals reminds me of two things that persist in film. The characterization of animals are cold, calculating killing machines is … Continue reading

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Humans, animals, and the hierarchy of reason

In Rene Descartes Animals as Machines, Descartes claims that animals “have no reason at all, and that it is nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs, just as a clock, which is only composed of … Continue reading

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Humanity and Perspective

Perhaps the biggest question we have discussed in class, which relates to every single text we have read, is what makes a human a human, and how are we distinguishable from other nonhuman entities? I think that We3, Unflattening, and … Continue reading

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Useful Psychology behind Robotic Animals?

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/542791/what-dancing-lizards-can-teach-us-about-human-robot-interaction/ There’s a lot to be learned between robotic animal, animal, and human interaction, and how that is affected by the social status we give them. Animals could be tricked to believe that a robotic machine is one of their … Continue reading

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Comics as Literature

The graphic narrative format in itself was an interesting medium to place the narratives of both We3 and Unflattening. By placing these stories within this format, the authors have expanded their limitations to a different realm, other than the traditional … Continue reading

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