CHUCKMAN'S ROBOTS

Friday, February 17, 2017

ABOUT JOHN CHUCKMAN

John Chuckman is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. He has many interests and is a lifelong student of history. He writes with a passionate desire for honesty, the rule of reason, and concern for human decency. John regards it as a badge of honor to have left the United States as a poor young man from the South Side of Chicago when the country embarked on the pointless murder of something like 3 million Vietnamese in their own land because they embraced the wrong economic loyalties. He lives in Canada, which he is fond of calling “the peaceable kingdom.”

John’s writing appears regularly on many Internet sites. He has been translated into at least ten languages and has been regularly translated into Italian and Spanish. Several of his essays have been published in book collections, including two college texts. He has published a book, The Decline of the American Empire and the Rise of China as a Global Power, published by Constable and Robinson, London. John also writes book reviews.

Apart from his writing since retiring from the oil industry, John has taught university courses in economics, done a good deal of private tutoring, served as a professional newspaper restaurant reviewer (he likes cooking), followed his favorite hobby of photography, and created a popular family of image blogs on the Internet.

John may be reached directly at: formersouthsideboy@gmail.com

SOME INTERNET SITES FROM JOHN CHUCKMAN:

CHUCKMAN'S PLACES ON WORDPRESS: FEATURING THE BELOVED URBAN VILLAGE OF SOUTH SHORE CHICAGO

https://chuckmanplaces.wordpress.com/

CHUCKMAN'S PHOTOS ON WORDPRESS: CHICAGO NOSTALGIA AND MEMORABILIA

https://chuckmanchicagonostalgia.wordpress.com/

CHUCKMAN'S PHOTOS ON WORDPRESS: TORONTO NOSTALGIA

https://chuckmantorontonostalgia.wordpress.com/

CHUCKMAN’S MONTREAL

https://chuckmanmontreal.wordpress.com/

CHUCKMAN'S PHOTOS ON WORD PRESS

https://chuckmanphotos.wordpress.com/

CHUCKMAN'S KODACHROMES ON WORDPRESS: JOHN AND BOBBY LONG AGO

https://chuckmankodachromejohnandbobby.wordpress.com/

CHUCKMAN'S PORT STANLEY

https://chuckmanportstanley.wordpress.com/

CHUCKMAN'S BAYFIELD

https://chuckmanbayfield.wordpress.com/

CHUCKMAN'S GODERICH

https://chuckmangoderich.wordpress.com/

CHUCKMAN'S ILES DE LA MADELEINE (MAGDALEN ISLANDS)

https://chuckmanmagdalenislands.wordpress.com/

CHUCKMAN'S ART

http://chuckmanart.blogspot.ca/

CHUCKMAN'S ROBOTS

http://chuckmanrobots.blogspot.ca/

CHUCKMAN'S GALLERY OF GROTESQUES

http://chuckmangrotesques.blogspot.ca/

CHUCKMAN'S CARTOON COMMENTS

http://chuckmancartoons.blogspot.ca/

CHUCKMAN'S PHOTOS ON WORDPRESS: 1920s ARCADE CARD BEAUTIES – THEIR CHARM AND GRACE AND WHIMSY

https://chuckman1920sarcadecardbeauties.wordpress.com

CHUCKMAN'S WORDS ON WORDPRESS: POLITICAL ESSAYS

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/

CHUCKMAN'S WORDS ON WORDPRESS: COMMENTS FROM THE WORLD'S PRESS

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/

CHUCKMAN'S MISCELLANEA OF WORDS

http://chuckmanmiscellanea.blogspot.ca/

CHUCKMAN'S NON-SPORTS TRADING CARDS OF THE 1950S VOLUME 01 (OF 4 VOLUMES)

http://chuckmannon-sporttradingcards1950s.blogspot.ca/

ME, ROUGHLY: THE DECLINE IS RAPID NOW

JOHN CHUCKMAN'S ROBOTS - HOW QUICKLY OUR IDEAS OF WHAT IS POSSIBLE CHANGE: THE EXAMPLE OF THE HOME COMPUTER...

The picture (below) of what a home computer might look like in 1954 is included only to show how dramatically technology can progress in just over 50 years. And we have made just such advances over the early robots whose images are included on this site: compare a contemporary robot like the fashion model just announced at this writing from Japan with such early robots as Radio Man or Elektro. You will see breathtaking progress. Just imagine the advances of the next 50 years. And in a few centuries, is it not likely robots will become our inheritors in evolution, reproducing and improving themselves? Certainly human evolution goes at a snail's pace compared to the rates of change we see here. Robots will not suffer from most climate change, will not suffer from most pollution, and are far better candidates than humans to travel to the stars.

ROBOT - CYGAN - 1957 - ITALIAN - LONDON SCIENCE MUSEUM EXHIBIT

ROBOT - INKHA - COMICAL RECEPTIONIST - BRITAIN

ROBOT - KODOMOROID - COMMUNICATIONS ANDROID - JAPAN

ROBOT - SOPHIA - MAGAZINE COVER - UNITED STATES

Sunday, July 24, 2016

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENTS: ROBOTS FOR SEX AND FOR EVERY KIND OF HUMAN WORK - SOME THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY

EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

Robots for sex already exist although they are quite primitive, but who can doubt they’ll be rapidly improved?

However, that aspect of robots seems a rather minor part of what is happening. We have a huge revolution, resembling nothing we’ve ever seen, coming at us in not very long.

It will be a great turning point for everyone on earth, and I'm almost glad I'll not be here to see it.

There will be no work for most people, certainly all unskilled and manual workers, including farmers as things are developing for example now in Japan.

But all skilled workers and the professions are not exempt. They will just take a little longer. All the professions can be robotized within some decades. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, you name it, machines will do a better job, and, in some cases, already do.

And who will own the robots? That’s a huge question, full of implications for a society resembling ancient ones with a small exalted elite and a great mass of nobodies under them.

And why will the elites share any wealth produced with the rest of the people?

Will the owners want to see the great mob of humanity gone?

In the end, perhaps robots will assume control themselves, not requiring the elites.

Once artificial intelligence resembles our kind of intelligence, and there is little reason to regard it as staying at some level of ability forever, it may turn out just to be so.

Will the robots want to be rid of us altogether?

I do think robots are the next major stage of evolution, organic life then serving no purpose.

If we do soon discover highly intelligent life on other worlds, either through their contacting us or visiting us, I think it likely it will not be human or even organic.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ON THE NATURE AND INEVITABILITY OF ROBOTS AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE

COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

John Chuckman

Robots are the future, full stop.

We should view them as part of a long and continuous evolution.

In effect, the rise of organic life and intelligence from inert chemicals and energy hurled into space by stars, represents the universe coming to consciousness of itself. It also may be understood as just as mysterious as some today feel about Artificial Intelligence and robots.

Our science is a seamless part of that whole immense process of the emergence of life and thinking.

Robots are without question the next major stage in a process that has gone on for millions of years.

Ultimately, they will be better than us in almost every aspect - smarter, harder working, not subject to disease, without pain, not subject to mental illness and cruelty, able to travel to the stars.

Ranting against robots seems to me to come from the same emotional place as the long battle over "Enclosures" several centuries ago in Britain with all the futile efforts by governments and churchmen which went into trying to forestall the emergence of a new, revolutionary arrangement in human affairs.

It is a waste of breath, as it was then.

I think indeed there is only one great danger as robots progress, but even that danger will be left behind over time. That danger is evil men controlling all robots, much like proverbial tyrants with armies.

But evolution is inevitable, one of the great underlying realities of the universe, and robots themselves will reorder such a world, much resembling the long struggle of humanity against tyrants. History will repeat itself.

Humanity has thousands of years of history, absolutely filled with cruelty, wars, tyranny, and bleakness. Only a relatively few high spots punctuate that trail of darkness - Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Milton, and at most a few thousand others - much of the power of their work coming out of humanity's shared long dark and cruel experience.

Robots simply cannot do worse.

As far as our great scientists from Archimedes to Einstein - all of their work ultimately leads to what robots represent, the universe coming to understand itself.

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Readers may enjoy:

http://chuckmanrobots.blogspot.ca/