Questions for Analysis and Discussion
of Assignment #11: 

Ronald Collins and David Skover,
Robotica: Speech Rights & Artificial Intelligence

Prologue, Parts I & II



Query:
Robotica opens with the sentence: And the word was made functional. What do you understand to be the meaning and significance of that observation?


Query: The Prologue claims: “It is axiomatic: with every revolutionary change brought about by a new communicative technology, there will be new threats to the established order, whether political, religious, economic, or social." If you agree that the proposition is axiomatic, why is it likely that a revolutionary change in communications technologies will, indeed, threaten existing power structures?


Query: Consider the myth of Theuth and Thamus as related by Plato in the Phaedrus. What are the most telling observations or lessons to be derived from the myth that may be generally significant to evolutionary changes in dominant communications technologies?


Query: “Primary orality” is defined as “a culture of communication based more heavily on spoken language than anything else." And in the “oral world,” the authors tell us, “communication and knowledge tended more toward the customary, the provincial, the participatory, the ceremonial, the adaptable, and the contextual." Briefly explain why such attributes characterized the primary oral culture.


Query: As Collins and Skover describe it, the culture of scribality focused more on the spatial-temporal, the hierarchical, the artificial (or reified), and the censorial than the oral culture could. Briefly explain why such attributes characterized the scribal or chirographic culture.


Query: In what important respects did the technology of print solidly reinforce and dramatically revolutionize the cultural transformations that had begun in the scribal era? Collins and Skover describe the print age as more depersonalized, objectified, systematic, inflexible, abstract, and censorial than earlier eras. Briefly explain why such attributes characterized the print culture.


Query: Explain what the authors mean by the following claim: “With the emergence of electronic media, the balance of power among the preelectronic modes of communication began to change once more. In the electrified age, we have come nearly full circle, with electronic media standing midpoint between orality and print, combining characteristics of each.”


Query: What does the example of the Internet pornography industry illustrate about the technological, legal, and social dimensions of the Internet culture?


Query: In summarizing their historical treatment of the oral, scribal, typographic, and electrified media, the authors present six “take-away points." For each point, recall one or two telling examples that illustrate and validate the point.


Query: In “The Age of Robotica,” the authors depict two evolutionary stages: First Order Robotics and Second Order Robotics. What characterizes each of these stages and how do they differ from one another? How do those differences present potentially distinct legal and technological issues?


Query:
In exploring the question of First Amendment coverage for robotic expression, Part II contrasts the perspectives of “the naysayers” and “the advocates for constitutional coverage." What are the most significant arguments made by these two warring sides in the debate on First Amendment coverage? How do both of these warring sides differ fundamentally from Collins and Skover’s analysis for the First Amendment coverage of robotic expression?


Query: What are the central tenets of reader-response or reception theory? In what respects does the “wave poem” hypothetical illustrate the meaning and significance of reader-response or reception theory? Why do Collins and Skover consider that theory to be foundational for their understanding of First Amendment coverage of robotic expression?


Query: What do you understand to be the differences between Professor Jane Bambauer’s and Professor James Grimmelmann’s proposals for extending substantial First Amendment protection to computer data? How are they both different from the theoretical perspectives of Collins and Skover on First Amendment coverage of robotic expression?


Query:
What do you understand to be the essential meaning and operation of Collin and Skover’s “intentionless free speech” theory (IFS) for First Amendment coverage of robotic expression?


Query: Collins and Skover contend that several significant First Amendment free speech doctrines become both more understandable and appropriate in the IFS context. What are the most significant of those doctrines? Do you agree with the authors’ perceptions of a nexus between their IFS theory and those doctrines?


Query:
Several critics of Collins and Skover’s IFS theory have had the greatest difficulty with the authors’ defense of First Amendment coverage for intermediate robot-to-robot communications incidental to such transactions as those that occur in robo-trading. Why does IFS theory extend to such intermediate robotic communications? Do you agree that the First Amendment coverage should avail even if a human is only the final recipient of factual data that is the culmination of a long chain of messages conveyed and “interpreted” by multiple computers or robots?

 

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