[Robotgroup] Food for thought and discussion

[Don Colbath]

The whole thing has been blown completely out of proportion.  
It could only be considered a "hoax" if it intentionally looked like a 
bomb.  Like if it had a grenade shaped object or Wylee Coyote dynamite 
sticks or something.  A cute pac-man type character flipping us off 
doesn't look very bomby to me.  They should be told "Hey let's not do 
this because you're scaring people" and that should be it.  The 
difference is if some lady leaves her bottle of baby powder on a subway 
it's a lot different from leaving an envelope full of white powder 
labeled send to CIA or something. 

Who was it that said "First we kill the lawyers"?

Don

Vern Graner wrote:

>You may all be aware by now that Turner Broadcasting / Adult Swim is in
>pretty hot water for an ad campaign that used electronic LED devices
>placed around the country:
>
>http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/31/2314214
>
>The artists who created the devices were recently arrested:
>
>http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/01/boston.bombscare/index.html
>
>The devices they created and placed around looked like this:
>
>http://www.flickr.com/photos/xjohnpaulx/361613084/in/photostream/
>
>http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanderlin/sets/72157594512553078/with/358742603/
>
>Arguably, this guerrilla art ad campaign has much in common with the
>"throwies" that were featured in make magazine and elsewhere:
>
>http://www.instructables.com/id/E9D2ZJ3FG0EP286JEJ/
>
>http://c2.com/cybords/thumb/mt/demo.html
>
>Right now, I have a couple of circuit boards on the front floorboard of
>the passenger side of my car. These boards consist of batteries, wires,
>resistors and LEDs. These very parts were deemed by the Boston
>authorities to be "consistent with an improvised explosive device":
>
>http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/10888268/detail.html
>
>So, the topic for discussion is how, in this increasingly security
>paranoid society, do we continue to make and use technology and art
>without having someone mistake us for terrorists?
>
>Do we go into "hiding" making sure our component laden circuits are
>always boxed or bagged to avoid the paranoid? Or do we proudly hold out
>our work for inspection and hope to educate others as to what it is and
>what we do?
>
>Or is it just a matter of time till someone sees one of our circuit
>boards accidentally left on a chair at Pokejo's and the bomb squad is
>called out?
>
>All in all, this recent development is very troubling to me... :(
>
>Vern
>
>  
>

-- 

I live like a monk...except for the celibacy part.