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Royal Institute Christmas Lectures
category9 writes "One of the best xmas tv highlights for us chaps in the UK is the RI Christmas Letures. Once broadcast by the BBC, Channel4 now have the helm. Past lecturers include the world renowed cybernetics engineer, Prof. Kevin Warwick. This year Sir John Sulston, of Human Genome Project fame, will be talking about genetics and the building blocks of life over 5 lectures. This is a must see for anyone interested in artificial intelligence. The lectures are presented in a format which allows technical detail, but in a way very accessible to those outside the particilar scientific fields. The website has transcripts for anyone not able to receive Channel4, perhaps with streams coming at a later date (lobby Channel4 if you must)."
i really wish the US would have something like that.. oh, and first post!
It seemed a bit bland this year, I saw some of Adam-hart Davis' program on BBC2 by accident, which seemed more interesting even though it lacked depth, before switching over to C4. Maybe some of the other lectures will be more entertaining.
Give me a break. you are really not serious
about Discovery channel, right?!
What does genetics have to do with AI?
I have to agree. The Discovery channel doesn't cover anything like this. They always have some dumbed down version of everything "science" that pre-schoolers can understand. I have yet to find a discovery program that confuses me or makes me look up words on the 'Net or a dictionary. The Discovery channel IMHO is good to get people interest but not to go in depth into anything.
Discovery Science and Discovery Wings is pretty good, alot more technical than just plain Discovery. No show on tv is going to start throwing out equations at you
I don't think you can get a hell of a lot more dumbed down than "Professor" Kevin Warwick.
"This year Sir John Sulston, of Human Genome Project fame, will be talking about genetics and the building blocks of life over 5 lectures. This is a must see for anyone interested in artificial intelligence. " The only way I can see him tieing this into AI is by describing the parallels between neural nets and low order organisms Kick ass website
Help pay for my wedding! Go to my kickass website
Does this mean that UK's Boxing Day is over and everybody can surf the *.uk sites again? :)
Zodiac Survey
World-Renowned my ass.
There should be. I would watch a show/channel that actually made me think, even a little. But for the most part they don't. Once in a blue moon a decent program comes on that makes you think about the topic that they are talking about, but they are all for entertainment. Um... isn't that what TV is for? Nevermind, my fire on this just went out.
Kevin Warwick is renowned alright... renowed for being a media whore and buffoon.
You clearly don't read The Register. Warwick is a joke in the Artificial Intelligence community, regarded by most as little more than a publicity hound. He used to go around saying that we would all be human slaves in a robot nation by the year 2000. At the time he came to my university to debate some of the professors in our Artificial Intelligence department, and they mopped the floor with him.
Having milked the world of Artificial Intelligence for all the publicity it was worth, he then installed one of those chips they use for tracking dogs in his arm and started claiming that he was the first Cyborg...
Do a search for "Captain Cyborg" at The Register to learn more about this guy, he gives science a bad name.
Perhaps when the BBC has to fight for its funding in the marketplace like other TV stations instead of relying on the forced taxation of millions of British TV viewers, maybe then it will come up with quality science programming.
Until then, make sure your 'TV License' is up to date British slashdot readers :-)
Of course TV is for entertainment. Who the hell is entertained by "Royal Institute Christmas Lectures"?? If I wanted to learn anything I'd go to college but TV is for keeping me entertained. Preferably shows with big breasted blonde women and comedies.. both if possible. Maybe football.
I went to these as a kid, very cool lectures covering some suprisingly difficult stuff with the usual obfuscating crap removed. It was also the only time I got to see TV crews and the amount of hassle it takes to make television, so a learning process on two fronts. If you can get to see one or two of these lectures, do.
Downside: Eventually you get to university and get taught exactly the same thing with the obfuscating crap put back in again. By the same people.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
World renowned? Oh please. Within the UK community the man is a joke.
I hardly feel sticking a chip in your arm makes you a cyborg, otherwise we have a lot of cybernetic dogs out there.
That would be nice if it was up today. What's up with that? It's been down all day today. I need my daily dose of The Register like I need my dose of Slashdot.
Zodiac Survey
I have been reading it all morning.
This will probably be left as an exercise for the viewer.
On a related note, at a recent C. elegans seminar I attended, the speaker made mention of Sir John, saying (to paraphrase) "Only Sulston is interested in these long boring projects, like serial EM reconstructions and the human genome project". Said in jest, of course :)
NO CARRIER
RI is a quaint, somewhat ruritanian institution. Most of the membership are rather stuffy and insist on wearing formal evening dress to the discourses, and there is a tradition that no questions are taken from the floor (you have to buttonhole the speaker afterwards). The staff and the Director, on the other hand. are very unfussy and very helpful. The Director is Susan Greenfield, who is known as a broadcaster on neurology. They do have a lovely old building in Albemarle Street, however, with an absolutely excellent Faraday museum. Research into inorganic chemistry is still carried out in the basement where Faraday had his original labs.
my damn dog has one of these chips, and he's definitely more entertaining (and prbably smarter) than warwick
--Stupidity is Self Curing!
perhaps there was a slight hint at sarcasm in my reference to kevin warwick, but we all love him really. he even offered me a place on his course at Reading uni. i decided against.
when i said AI, i kind of meant neural nets, alife, and such things. i admit i could have worded it better. oh well, its a first article for me, better luck next time.
If it's anything like the normal discovery channel, it will be unwatchable due to all the FUCKING ADVERTS. You can barely watch it without 15 minute advert breaks cropping up every 5 minutes. It's almost painful to watch.
Just from reading the story posted above it seems that in-fact, Channel 4, ITV's cousin, is now broadcasting these lectures...
From KW's 'Achievements' page:
Nice misspelling, there...
In the past I've been quite a fan of the RI Xmas lectures. What a pity that they now involve Warwick. The profiteering, egotistical, megalomaniacal cur.
Life is thus,
Death is thus,
Poem or no poem
What's the fuss?
I got home from work just in time for the Christmas lecture, this morning, only to find that our friends on the BBC had started a similar science programme half an hour beforehand. It was called Come to Your Senses and it was pretty good. Unfortunately, it means I missed most of the damn Lecture.
Maybe it's just my misanthropic nature, but I can't think of any reason for putting on such a similar programme at the same time that doesn't involve fucking over Channel 4.
Offtopic? Perhaps. But I'm bitter, and needed to get it off my chest.
On an unrelated matter, I recently got hold of the book of a series of Christmas Lectures given by Sir William H. Bragg in the 1920s. It's noteable for the fact that it's not afraid of explaining maths to the audience. He also wrote The Universe of Light, a popular science book that contains actual equations!.
1994 Journey to the Centre of the Brain
:)
Dr. Susan Greenfield
That was, IMHO, the best RI Xmas lecture of them all. Since then, Greenfield has been in the media a lot more (but not in the way Kevin Warwick has) and is certainly a revered expert on matters of the brain.
Much of this lecture contained comparisons of brains and computers, and the way in which they may work together in the future. There were also a lot of practicals.
It's when they're about geology, 'how the earth was formed', plant or human biology that they get mega boring. Who wants to see a plant get cut up? The math and tech ones rock
mogorific carpentry experiments
I'll pay 10$ per VHS tape if there isn't ALOT of them to be taped. I live in the states, and I am a scientific computing major interested in genetics and artificial intelligence(no relation in my book). If there aren't alot of tapes, this will rule.
email me:sager@andrew.cmu.edu
God spoke to me
I was looking at the TV license website and they claim they have vans that can pick up the signals of a specific TV component.
Their wording made it seem like they require some sort of locator beacon to be built into every British TV. Is this the case or do their vans just pick up escaped EM radiation from the TV? If there is a beacon, do any of you ever open up your TVs and disable it? Or how about putting your TV inside a Faraday Cage?
I don't know how you guys over there can support this as it seems from some of the other posts, having officers running around in vans and knocking on your door to make sure you don't have something completely harmless in your house without their approval seems way too big brother to me...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Is it just me, or has Discovery gone *way* past being fluffy pop-science of late? They seem to be more in the realm of pop-non-science.
It seems like half the time I tune in, they are doing some special on the Bermuda Triangle or whether the Apollo Moon landings were faked or aliens built the Great Pyramids.
What worries me more than dumbing things down is the spreading of unscientific rumors.
How far they have fallen from the early glory days of "Shark Week."
(Hm... moderate or post or moderate and post anonymously...)
;o)
I'm getting pissed off with people attacking Kevin Warwick. Yes, even those who know him affectionately refer to him as 'Mad' Kevin. But it's not like he's attacked anyone, has exibited aggressive behaviour in public, or has really done anything to deserve such harsh criticism. (Such as, oh, Derek Smart.)
Yes, some of his ideas are bit outlandish. But he runs one of few cybernetics departments in the entire world. You'd expect his ideas and focus to be completely different from computer science AI departments around the world. The difference is subtle but important. You can't comment on what his department do internally, because as a former student - to coin a phrase - it's very, very good shit they get up to, if a little more grounded than Kevin's bluesky concepts.
The field of cybernetics needs evangelists to attract attention and to help it to grow. I don't doubt that anything Kevin has said in public will come to pass - it's merely a matter of when the technology will catch up to his ideas, as is the case with 90% of science-fiction. Although, no, I don't eventually think that robots will enslave humans - but I still think we need to think about such things. It will be one of the most startling moments in human history when we eventually create an artificial life form with the mental capacity to rival us. The first true 'alien intelligence' we're ever going to encounter, built by our own hand.
Nobody knows what pace progress will take. Cybernetics is an artificial science just like computer science - the limit is effectively the limits of our imagination and how long our species exists to dream. You do have a sense of imagination, don't you? (Or maybe not after seeing your web site. God, I'm funny.
FYI, I was originally on a joint cybernetics & comp. sci degree when I was there in the mid-1990's. The cybernetics stuff was seriously cool and very very involved. It was heartbreaking when I was forced to switch to pure computer science because the math required for cybernetics was way beyond my abilities. Dysgraphia and heavy math don't mix I suppose.
Everyone fears change. Kevin Warwick's ideas represent a huge change in the possible trends of technology. A lot of the so called "AI community" are now split over whether to use Python or LISP for AI programming, for example ....
I am a briton and I hate the licensing fee, whenever I watch BBC I get half way through the program, need a pee and am waiting for the adverts, and it takes me bloody twenty minutes to realise there arent any bloody adverts and I have to miss the bloody program to pee! Its soo damn annoying!
I was working in Italy for 6 months this year and I really missed my Channel 4, (if I could only choose one channel that would be it). Does anybody know if it's possible to get Channel 4 in Italy (I'm willing to pay!)?
Shoot some Fish!
Go on, shoot some fish!
Kevin Warwick has appropriated the term cybernetics for his tomfoolery, but don't think that means he's actually doing anything that anyone else would recognise as cybernetics. While Kevin Warwick is shoving dog pellets up his arse, real researcher are learning about human-machine interfaces and artificial organs. Warwick is a complete shonk
Oh man, these things used to be really good. i remember ones about AI and the Human Brain. but this year its just irritated me, that guy is just annoying. and it feels like A-Level content dressed up for 8yr olds! it doesnt achieve anything
Andy
H,
.nl (at least where I live, and we don't have a dish on the roof either). Major bummer. I don't think I'm gonna buy the video's though... Maybe I'll check out the way-too-small-video-streams when they come online.
Used to watch the RICL every year until they moved it to C4 which we can't get here in
CU,
J