Sitting in LSE liveblogging PRPS – natalie jeremienko is presenting “megabyte” – an aibo-like robodog that has been hacked to to detect radioactivity and other toxic hazards – it’s reward by finding it… makes this invisble hazard, and it’s allied data visible and accesible by all – especially kids.

Saw her talk about this at Voice02, but she’s going into much more detail, and it seems to have progressed more.

it’s a $39.99 toy… but natalie has put up a wiki which explains how to hack them to do weird and wonderful things.

Now she’s talking about how these things are actually the source of loads of really cheap components to experiment with a-life because of the economies of scale and distribution networks of the toy industry. Plus cannablising from the huge r/c subculture. Opensource robotics. Distribute the code, not the parts.

Now talking about Sony’s pseudo-opensourcing of AIBO’s sourcecode, and the campaign mounted by dog owners to get it opensourced

other memebullets she’s shootin’ from the hip:

• “the robotic genre of cinematography”: a whole subclass of films where you see lab floors from a vantage point about 8 inches high – most famous example: mars sourjouner films
• Doing things like robotic dogs that illustrate the invisbile is about democratising and making widespread the “scientific method”. Peer-review in pub lic. Allows people to ask questions of those who are making assertions and policy about the environments: “hey what are those dogs doing” “what do those cloned trees mean” etc. start a diaolgue rather than receiving wisdom.

Hopefully, no time-travelling avengers will comeback and assassinate Natalie for making these things…

» http://www.proboscis.org.uk/prps/docs/p_jeremijenko.html