Robots and Space
By: Natalia Campos
Tags: College, Lecture Series, Robots, Space

The past two weeks in our CSMA 102 Lecture class we learned about robots and space. Before the lectures and discussions about what robots are, I imagined them only to be metal machines shaped like a human to do human like things but after the lectures, discussions, and readings/assignments, I now know that robots also have to deal with artificial intelligence, cyborg or intelligence augmentation, androids that look exactly like humans, and machines that help solve our problems. I actually now think of robots of less than a threat to our human way of living since learning more about them and what they do, it is more evident to me that humans make these machines to innovate our way of living by solving tedious problems allowing us to be more productive instead of lazy. These machines also helped us explore space ,which was the next topic we talked about. During the time of the industrial revolution many wondered about how it would be to land on the moon and for this lecture series on space we watched A Trip to the Moon by George Meliésé to see through the eyes of those during that time of how they thought they would reach the moon or what could be on the moon. It was quite funny because in the 15-minute movie, they described the moon as a white snowy realm where aggressive moon aliens lived and the astronauts reached the moon by shooting their spaceship out of a huge cannon or gun, which was very unique to how we now see spaceships going to the moon. In the lectures and class discussion we also went over the difference between astronomy and astrology and to be honest, before, I thought they were the same thing. Now I know that astrology actually helps astronomy in studying space and that astrology is the interpretation of the movement of stars for time keeping.

As a result, there is so much I have learned about robots and space these past two weeks that I can go on and on about how much my perspective has changed on both topics because of what I learned in the lectures, discussions, and reading/assignments, but I think a really interesting aspect of this class is taking a look at the social posts created to see how others outside of the class perceive these topics. On my Instagram stories I posted a question on robots which got no responses at all which was really confusing and weird to me. I guess it was because the question was, “At what point does the tool start and the person begin?” which I guess without context is almost so confusing that many didn’t answer. Even though, I also posted my answer with the question which was, “A machine starts off as a tool because it’s following precisely as the human programs to help out but once it starts to problem solve like a human than the person begins”, which kind of gives the question context so I am not completely sure why I got no answers. My second social post, however, only received a few answers and sadly they were all jokes. But the question was, “Would you go to space and where?”, and my answer was, “Yes, I would go to Mars because Elon Musk (I believe) plans to have Space X successfully colonize that planet so I see it as the first planet I would like to visit.” It was very unusual to me that these past two social posts where not taken seriously which was kind of a bummer but at least I can answer those questions with a new perspective on space and robots because of this lecture class.