p2p news developments and commentaries

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I am participating with a lecture on P2P and spirituality, in the New Media festival at Chiang Mai University’s Art Museum. One of the other speakers is the fascinating Russian artist Boryana Dragoeva, who specializes around the theme of robot ethics.
“Humanity is not meant to ever get hold of the center, to get nearer to the Absolute, which is always evading the field of thinking... Our lot is the eternal longing for the unattainable goal, and also the understanding of the self as marginal, as well as the tolerance to marginality in general, the representation of the shades of marginality in the context of one's realizing his or her own place... Nothing and nobody in this material world could be considered as anything more that marginal. So this project declares the universal equality of the marginalia : the human being and the computer virus, the woman and the microorganism, the man and the street dog, the lamb and the cannibal, the fly and the Pope, the president and the leper.
Everybody is equal, because everybody is marginal, and this is the only law valid for all!

Here are some more links to explore her work: http://autobot.fact.co.uk/ ; http://www.roboriada.org/ ;

And some interesting links recommended by Boryana:

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoism, http://www.neoism.net , http://www.thing.de/projekte/7%3A9%23/Neoist_Text_Path.html, , on the artistic/philosophical movement of Neoism, a celebration of the new

- do we have to grant feelings to robots, or do they already have them?, a discussion of robot rights at http://www.techcentralstation.com/102903B.html

- American Society for the Prevention of Cruely to Robots, at http://gamma.sitelutions.com/~toucans/aspcr/index.html

- Background and text on R.U.R., the play at the origin of the naming of Robots, at http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/RUR-Capek-1920.htm