Can Computers Think?

In the article Terminators: The Robots That Rodney Brooks and Hans Moravec Imagine Will Succeed Humans, Not Serve Them, Brooks explains that he works to make robots small. The artcile explains how Brooks studied crawling insects and used the neural activity of an insect to serve as the activity of hir robots. He decided on smaller sizes for the advantages they provide. Creating small robots  costs less money and therefore, keeps the budget manageable. Funds is always something that is needed in any research program. Another advantage of small size is that it is discreet and unnoticeable. Brooks, along with Flynn, wanted to design a gnat-sized robot. In their essay "Twilight Zones and Corner Stones: A Gnat Robot Double Feature," they explain there reasons for creating such a small robot: "We want to build gnat-sized robots, a millimeter or so in diameter. They will be cheap, disposable, totally self-contained autonomous agets able to do useful things..." (P.128)

Many small organisms survive in this harsh world. It is mostly due to their size and discreetability. An example is plankton. Plankton is so small that most underwater lifeforms don't even realize it is there. They are largely unharmed due to this. Small size mostly helps for being inconspicuous. Many insects are smaller than a finger-nail. We mostly overlook them, no matter how deadly they may be. Being that small, they can fit through small spaces and end up where we don't want. Sometimes, we we find flies and such insects inside our homes and rooms. We never think twice about how they got in there. We just decide an open window or something. Thye may be slipping in cracks within the walls, floor, or ceilings. Small size is a definite advantage for life, organic and artificial.