Our Robots, Ourselves
Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy
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- 299,00 Kč
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- 299,00 Kč
Publisher Description
“[An] essential book… it is required reading as we seriously engage one of the most important debates of our time.”—Sherry Turkle, author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
From drones to Mars rovers—an exploration of the most innovative use of robots today and a provocative argument for the crucial role of humans in our increasingly technological future.
In Our Robots, Ourselves, David Mindell offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of robotics today, debunking commonly held myths and exploring the rapidly changing relationships between humans and machines.
Drawing on firsthand experience, extensive interviews, and the latest research from MIT and elsewhere, Mindell takes us to extreme environments—high atmosphere, deep ocean, and outer space—to reveal where the most advanced robotics already exist. In these environments, scientists use robots to discover new information about ancient civilizations, to map some of the world’s largest geological features, and even to “commute” to Mars to conduct daily experiments. But these tools of air, sea, and space also forecast the dangers, ethical quandaries, and unintended consequences of a future in which robotics and automation suffuse our everyday lives.
Mindell argues that the stark lines we’ve drawn between human and not human, manual and automated, aren’t helpful for understanding our relationship with robotics. Brilliantly researched and accessibly written, Our Robots, Ourselves clarifies misconceptions about the autonomous robot, offering instead a hopeful message about what he calls “rich human presence” at the center of the technological landscape we are now creating.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
No robot takeover is in the offing, but this savvy insider's account of automated systems argues that we can expect ever more intimate cooperation of humans with intelligent machines. MIT engineering professor and historian Mindell (Digital Apollo) surveys robotic systems in extreme environments: submersibles that dive to ocean depths too dangerous for humans; aviation systems that can fly a plane or crash it; Predator drones whose crews find their experience of combat at a remove to be immersive and harrowing; Mars rovers that feel like bodily extensions of geologists at mission control. Mindell, who works on automation systems, offers an engaging history of their capabilities and short-comings that's full of intriguing technical detail but very accessible to laypeople. He also delves into the sociology of automation how people learn to work with robots and change their conception of their own work and social identity. His hopeful conclusion, exemplified by NASA's repair missions to the Hubble space telescope, is that robots work best in close communication with people, giving humans a sense of presence in and mastery of tasks they can't perform unaided. Mindell's is one of the best-informed and most thoughtful analyses of automation, and a corrective to the ominous hype surrounding the issue. Photos.