We’ve seen the glossy magazine stories of late featuring our future bosses - robots. Jimmy Fallon’s face was on the cover of Wired - provocative as usual; The Atlantic featured the robodocs of the future with the now token robotic hand illustration; Scientific American featured Baxter in its series about the future of manufacturing; finally the Mother Jones story describing our future office lives - with robots. The common thread in these articles is the question of the economic shift brought about by automation, and what this means for the time when robots can do mental tasks, and just about everything, better than their creators.
The unstable economy has been the source of anxiety for recent college graduates and corporate businesspeople alike, and it is telling of society’s priorities. Business, though, is just one aspect of life, isn’t it? Where, do you guess, are the stories about morality, and, you know, the humanness of our shifting world? If your questions of technology go beyond wondering how it will affect your paycheck, here are some books you might enjoy. They will keep you on your moral toes, flexing your philosophic arches.
Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflicts in the 21st Century
-Peter Singer“The definitive work on a killer subject: the role of robots in war. More than 12,000 warbots have already been deployed in Iraq, yet there are no agreed frameworks for accountability when things go wrong. Singer’s riveting and terrifying account covers all sides, from historical to ethical.”
— Financial Times, Non-Fiction Book of the YearAlone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
-Sherry Turkle“Nobody has ever atriculated so passionately and intellignelty what we’re going to ourselves by substituting technolically mediated social interaction…Equiped with penetrationg intelligence and a sense of humor, Turkle surveys the front lines of the social-digital transformation.”
—Lev Grossmas, TimeRobot Futures
-Illah Reza Nourbakhsh“An exhilerating dash into the future of robotics from a scholar with the enthusiasm of a bag of monkeys. It is gripping from the start with little sci-fi stories in each chapter punching some points backed up forcefully by factual relaity. This is an entertaining tour de force that will appeal to anyone with an interest in robots.”
—Noel Sharkey
Robot Reading List
At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.
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| — | Alberto Manguel (via thelifeofabookjunky) |
My father takes the photos from me. He moves them to the far end of the table. “A human heart isn’t made out of stories,” he says.
“Every heart is made of stories,” G says.
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| — | Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution |
I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.
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| — | Sylvia Plath (via laddershield) |
I woke up into the bleak winter morning of my twenty-first birthday, the window - sill shining with its lip of snow, and the morning already begun.
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| — | Delmore Schwartz, from In “Dreams Begin Responsibilities” (via the-final-sentence) |
