2018-2019 Colloquium Series


The Tourism Studies Working Group is pleased to announce
 
HARBIN AND AVATAR BOTS:
Robotics and Tourism

Scott MacLeod
Professor of Anthropology
World University and School, Online

Friday, October 26, 5:00pm
Gifford Room, 221 Kroeber Hall
University of California, Berkeley

Abstract:
The tourist in the information technology age, and avatar bots: in this talk, I examine physical < > digital tourism with Lego robotics, Brick Street View & Google Street View, conceptually, and in relation to my actual < > virtual Harbin Hot Springs’ ethnographic project. Harbiniana is a physical/digital Bot, who does Watsu, and is an anthropologist: “How would you teach me about Harbin in this early phase of artificial intelligence/machine learning and robotics?“ Harbiniana is also interested in human cultures/counterculture. Furthermore, in this talk I seek to lay the groundwork conceptually for the study of great enjoyment, or loving bliss, in the Harbin warm pool and via an anthropological approach to brain science. A realistic 3D interactive virtual earth at the cellular and atomic too (think Google Street View+ with Brick Street View for Legos+) will give radically new potentials for studying brain chemistry with brain wave head sets, and in the Harbin warm pool, and both actually as well as virtually, physically and digitally. In this presentation, I also suggest that wiki ethnography generation in a realistic virtual earth – which I’m calling, as a new social science method, ‘ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy ‘– is a new kind of fieldwork to actual and virtual Harbin Hot Springs. Lastly, I examine questions of “robotic authenticity,” and for Watsu, or water dance, a creative Harbin innovation – now both actually, and potentially virtually.

Speaker Bio:
Scott G.K. MacLeod is an American academic and Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at World University and School - worlduniversityandschool.org. He's taught "Network Society, Information Technology and the Global University" on Harvard University's virtual island, and on Penn State Isle in Second Life as a Penn State University instructor. He's taught both anthropology and sociology in real life at Chatham University, the University of Pittsburgh, and at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received a Master's Degree in anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Diploma of Research from the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the information technology network society age, the world wide web cosmos, the virtual, and actual-virtual Harbin Hot Springs, seeking to facilitate the development of a realistic virtual earth for STEM research, and as classrooms (Think Google Street View with time slider +). He is World University and School's founder, president and CEO. WUaS forked successfully in 2017 into a second legal entity, the WUaS Press / Corp, planned with machine translation in all 7,097 living languages. Wiki World University and School is CC-4 MIT OCW-centric (in 5 languages) and CC Yale OYC-centric and seeks to develop major universities in all ~200 countries' main and official languages, as well as wiki schools in all 7,097 living languages too; WUaS plans to offer online CC OCW Bachelor, Ph.D., law, M.D. as well as I.B. high school degrees, partly in group video.