Attention cultural historians, museum curators, and robot enthusiasts. On Saturday, the San Jose Museum of Art opened an incredible exhibition on robots that continues through October 19th. This compliments some previous observations I’ve expressed about the robot icon in American culture. Here’s the blurb from their website:
Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon examines the development of robot iconography in fine art over the past 50 years. In 1920, the term robot was coined from a Czech word robota, which means tedious labor. Since then, the image and the idea of a robot have evolved remarkably from an awkward, mechanical creature to a sophisticated android with artificial intelligence and the potential for human-like consciousness. As robotic technology catches up with the wild imagination of science fiction novels, movies, and animation, dreams and fears anticipated in these stories may also become reality. Artists included in the exhibition have responded to the technological innovation with optimism, pessimism, and humor, presenting work that ultimately explores our ambivalent attitudes towards robots.
And an introduction from JoAnne Northrup, Senior Curator:
What do the game Battleship, carnival clowns, patriotic country music, and gender in the Oregon Trail computer game have in common? They all were represented at the session I spoke at in Rochester, NY for the MAASA/GLASA conference on play at Strong Museum. This eclectic group of presenters approached play in many different ways something I’ve come to expect from American Studies. While there I got the scoop on a new quarterly publication from Strong whose first issue comes out this summer:
The American Journal of Play will feature articles on such disciplines as child development, education, psychology, anthropology, history, communications, and museology and is aimed at a general audience of educators, psychologists, play therapists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, museum professionals, and others interested in children and the importance of play.
Last Fall I teamed up with Student Pugwash USA to create a Facebook survey evaluating the positions of 18-25 year olds on science policy and politics, and the results are in! The full report is available for download and while its content falls outside the scope of this blog, I think it’s another great example in addition to my Oregon Trail Survey of how we can target niche groups and wider demographics on the social web. The survey was designed to inform the creation of a 2008 Science and Technology Policy Guide about the candidates.
Despite my optimism of the survey, its self-selecting nature makes it in no way a representative sample of all youth 18-25. One of the most striking numbers was that 96% of respondents said they were planning on voting in the 2008 election. I would consider most of the respondents hardcore political junkies or environmentalists, which is still OK. Overall I’d suggest this approach for collecting oral histories, or other information from the most active members of an online community.
