In this week’s reading, I learned about the story of Joaquin Murrieta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaquin_Murrieta). I decided to look up his history. I searched his name on Wikipedia and found that he was also called Robin Hood and that he was a famous outlaw in California during the California Gold Rush. I then decided to look into the California Gold Rush, I clicked on the internal link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush). It began on January 24, 1848 and it is actually when gold was found by James W. Marshall in Coloma, California. It is said that Gold Rush had an effect on the Native Californians and resulted in the declining percentage of the natives due to diseases, genocides, and starvation. I wanted to dig in a bit deeper on the Native Californians so I clicked on the internal link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_California). I found that the Native Californians were also known as the Indigenous people of California. They were hunter-gatherers and they practiced various forms of sophisticated forest gardening that would provide them food and medicinal plants.
“Moxon’s Master” is a story written by Ambrose Bierce which tells the story of Moxon, the master, who creates a chess-playing robot. Moxon is developing a sentient conscious machine, one that can think and possesses intelligence. Although the narrator states that robots have no brains or source of thinking, he is trying to create a which he believes will be capable of thinking, acting and possessing consciousness- a robot or automaton which will be able to perform actions independent of its creator – the idea of a humanoid robot. Moxon seems to live an isolated life and the representation of the robot is what he wishes. The robot represents human cognition and social interaction, that Moxon may be experiencing. In the story, Moxon plays a game of chess with the robot and wins. It is apparent the robot is mad, and kills Moxon. This part of the story is very interesting because Moxon states, “ definition of ‘life’ the activity of a machine is included – there is nothing in th...
Comments
Post a Comment