As I come to the end of week one I probably still have more questions than answers in my head and this little robot is pretty representative of the week.
Futuristic technology headlines appear continuously in my Twitter feed but before this module I would mainly just skim over the headlines without reading further. Knowing I had to fill my IFTTT stream on an almost daily basis I wasn’t worried about having enough but I was concerned about having a coherent, logical story joining the elements in the stream together. Therefore, I opted to start slowly and narrow my stream to only one or two items a day.
My first week has essentially been a focus on robots. The technological achievements and possibilities sitting alongside the rather more mundane reality. Many of the stories I have included speak of incredible technology yet it has been implemented in what appears to be almost bizarre applications. The range went from robots telling us jokes to an almost house sized robot taking approximately fifteen minutes to fold a single item of clothing, far far exceeding the time we would take to do it ourselves. Several articles spoke of future possibilities for their robots but by the end had actually identified how the technology could also be used to enhance current human qualities of life.
All in all I am wondering if humans are actually restraining the application? Are we making the best of the technology? Will this issue transfer to the learning environment? How do we deal with the many ethical issues?