Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!uunet!munnari.oz.au!bruce.cs.monash.edu.au!monu6!awfuchs
From: awfuchs@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (A.W. Fuchs)
Subject: Re: MIT Insect Robots
Message-ID: <1992Jun24.215644.19045@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au>
Organization: Monash University, Melb., Australia.
References: <1992Jun16.065514.2629@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Jun18.175623.15359@seer.gentoo.com> <1992Jun20.015635.29593@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> <1992Jun23.171102.517@seer.gentoo.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1992 21:56:44 GMT
Lines: 60

In <1992Jun23.171102.517@seer.gentoo.com> tomk@seer.gentoo.com (Tom Kunich) writes:

>Big science is only big science. While it is nice for you and
>I to know the origins and fundamental properties of the universe,
>it doesn't really amount to a hill of beans to the average person.

>To most people it seems pretty radical to be spending billions on
>a project of such academic interest when there are so many immediate
>needs.

It may seem that way, but I believe it often results in completely
new things emerging. As I understand it, Germany poured huge amounts
of money into basic research after WWI, and look at the result
(political lunacy aside).

It's dangerous to start discriminating between "big" and "useful"
science.

>I say that interstellar space exploration is so unlikely as to be
>a virtual impossibility. Yet there are those who want to belive in
>this subject so much that they will completely ignore the economic

I haven't heard of any money being spent on this...

>Robots are another of these ideas. While there will always be a small
>market for robotics of one sort or another, the development funds for
>real robotics seems pretty vulnerable when human labor is so cheap
>and available.

And let's get the lamplighters and ricksha guys back. Human labour
is not cheap, even for undesirable jobs.

>We must also face the fact that fossil fuel is limited and rapidly failing.
>The green revolution and, hence, more than 75% of the world's food 
>production is endangered by the failure of this energy source. The

What does this have to do with robots?

>impact this will have upon civilization is pretty difficult to
>assess accurately, but we can assume that it will be traumatic.

>So with a violently decreased population and energy shortages I can
>hardly believe that robotics is a financial priority.

Come on, more of the world's money is probably spent on sex aids or
those aluminium trays for TV dinners. Also, there will be cases where
using a robot (instead of a human, or instead of not being able to
acheive a task at all) will be an energy-saving measure.

Overall, it seems that you're trying to start a robot vs. green
debate, which seems as sensible to me as debating whether reading
books is preferable to speaking on the phone.

Andy

Andrew W. Fuchs
Faculty of Computing & Information Technology
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

--- awfuchs@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au ---
