27 years ago! On June 24, 1986, I publicly billed myself as the ‘World’s First Robotic Psychiatrist®’. I always thought that ‘Robotic Psychiatry’ for my lifetime, would be informing and educating the masses in a humorous and entertaining manner while slowly readying them for the more serious issues and implications of a robotic society. I also thought that someday Robotic Psychiatry (as Asimov envisioned it) would be a real field of study. Perhaps this would occur when I was no longer alive (posthumously), but now I’m realizing that it will be within my lifetime (or at least post-Singularity). Imagine that
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depressed robot
My patient Cy’s (short for Cyborg) depression stemmed from a feeling of low self-esteem and paranoia. He felt that because he was a robot, humans would constantly stare at him. A robot/human integration program was recommended whereby slowly, daily human-like functions were performed in public to help build acceptance. Things are progressing well for Cy, who is now a Florida resident living at Century Village. He has not been granted the right to vote yet. However, he knows his right to vote won’t matter in the State of Florida anyway.
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Mariska Hargitay: SVU, and blurred lines
I was reading about Mariska Hargitay (am I the only one who didn’t know she’s the daughter of Jayne Mansfield?) in her nail-biting performance in the season premier of Law and Order SVU, in which she is a victim of rape. “When you’re acting,” she said on the Today Show [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoWVoe-Q4Mo[/youtube], “your body doesn’t know the difference [between] acting or being in reality, and that’s what presented the challenge.” I was struck by Hargitay’s admission. To think that telepresence, virtual reality, and the like, are part of our daily lives already evokes a pressing question. Will these technologies, like a professional
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