Download or read book Enchanting Robots written by Maciej Musiał and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that robots are enchanting humans (as potential intimate partners), because humans are enchanting robots (by performing magical thinking), and that these processes are a part of a significant re-enchantment of the “modern” world. As a foundation, the author examines arguments for and against intimate relationships with robots, particularly sex robots and care robots. Moreover, the book provides a consideration of human-robot interactions and philosophical reflections about robots through the lens of magic and magical thinking as well as theoretical and practical re-evaluations of their status and presence. Furthermore, the author discusses the abovementioned issues in the context of disenchantment and re-enchantment of the world, characterizing modernity as a coexistence of these two processes. The book closes with a consideration of future scenarios regarding the meaning of life in the age of rampant automation and the possibility that designing robots becomes a sort of new eugenics as a consequence of recognizing robots as persons.

Download or read book The Enchantments of Technology written by Lee Bailey and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Enchantments of Technology, Lee Worth Bailey erases the conventional distinction between myth and machine in order to explore the passionate foundations concealed in technological culture and address its complex ethical, moral and social implications. Bailey argues that technological society does not simply disenchant the world with its reductive methods and mechanical metaphors, then shape machines with political motives, but is also borne by a deeper, subversive undertow of enchantment. Addressing examples to explore the complexities of these enchantments, his thought is full of illuminating examinations of seductively engaging technologies ranging from the old camera obscura to new automobiles, robots, airplanes, and spaceships. This volume builds on the work of numerous scholars, including Jacques Ellul and Jean Brun on the phenomenological and spiritual aspects of technology, Carl Jung on the archetypal collective unconscious approach to myth, and Martin Heidegger on Being itself. Bailey creates a dynamic, interdisciplinary, postmodern examination of how our machines and their environments embody not only reason, but also desires.

Download or read book Enchanted Objects written by David Rose and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Who Owns the Future, an MIT Media Lab scientist imagines how everyday objects can intuit our needs, improve our lives, and form “an ethereal interconnection of gadgets and human desires that...will pervade our lives in the very near future” (The Wall Street Journal). We are now standing at the precipice of the next transformative development, a world in which technology becomes more human. Soon, connected technology will be embedded in hundreds of everyday objects we already use: our cars, wallets, watches, umbrellas, even our trash cans. These objects will respond to our needs, come to know us, and even learn to think ahead on our behalf. David Rose calls these devices—which are just beginning to creep into the marketplace—Enchanted Objects. In Rose’s vision of the future, technology atomizes, combining itself with the objects that make up the very fabric of daily living. Such innovations will be woven into the background of our environment, enhancing human relationships, channeling desires for omniscience, long life, and creative expression. The enchanted objects of fairy tales and science fiction will enter real life. Groundbreaking, timely, and provocative, Enchanted Objects is a “delightful” (The New York Times) blueprint for a better future, where efficient solutions come hand in hand with technology that delights our senses. It is essential reading for designers, technologists, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and anyone who wishes to take a glimpse into the future.

Download or read book Capitalism and the Enchanted Screen written by Aleksandr Andreas Wansbrough and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Myths such as Narcissus' reflection, Pandora's box, and Plato's cave have been used to frame modern technological dangers; often to describe people absorbed in their own digital reflections. Such speculation either purports that technology has a magical power or else that technology merely represents human nature unchanged from the myth's inception. But those accounts ignore the paradoxical understandings of the power relationships allegorized, where people are manipulated by higher forces beyond their comprehension. Working from the assumption that capitalism rather than God is the highest power, this book examines mythic anticipations of the screen and digital technology from European literature, poetry, folklore and philosophy. Digital technology and social media are approached not as reflections of human nature but capitalist ideology's power to enchant. To this end, Capitalism and the Enchanted Screen also surveys a diverse variety of films, digital media and contemporary artworks to understand and critique how myths are reimagined today.

Download or read book The Enchanted Screen written by Jack Zipes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-01-27 with total page 894 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films offers readers a long overdue, comprehensive look at the rich history of fairy tales and their influence on film, complete with the inclusion of an extensive filmography compiled by the author. With this book, Jack Zipes not only looks at the extensive, illustrious life of fairy tales and cinema, but he also reminds us that, decades before Walt Disney made his mark on the genre, fairy tales were central to the birth of cinema as a medium, as they offered cheap, copyright-free material that could easily engage audiences not only though their familiarity but also through their dazzling special effects. Since the story of fairy tales on film stretches far beyond Disney, this book, therefore, discusses a broad range of films silent, English and non-English, animation, live-action, puppetry, woodcut, montage (Jim Henson), cartoon, and digital. Zipes, thus, gives his readers an in depth look into the special relationship between fairy tales and cinema, and guides us through this vast array of films by tracing the adaptations of major fairy tales like "Little Red Riding Hood," "Cinderella," "Snow White," "Peter Pan," and many more, from their earliest cinematic appearances to today. Full of insight into some of our most beloved films and stories, and boldly illustrated with numerous film stills, The Enchanted Screen, is essential reading for film buffs and fans of the fairy tale alike.

Download or read book Enchanted Looms written by Rodney Cotterill and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This beautifully written 1998 book examining consciousness, and which received high praise in the reviews, is now available in paperback.

Download or read book Surrogate Humanity written by Neda Atanasoski and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Surrogate Humanity Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora trace the ways in which robots, artificial intelligence, and other technologies serve as surrogates for human workers within a labor system entrenched in racial capitalism and patriarchy. Analyzing myriad technologies, from sex robots and military drones to sharing-economy platforms, Atanasoski and Vora show how liberal structures of antiblackness, settler colonialism, and patriarchy are fundamental to human---machine interactions, as well as the very definition of the human. While these new technologies and engineering projects promise a revolutionary new future, they replicate and reinforce racialized and gendered ideas about devalued work, exploitation, dispossession, and capitalist accumulation. Yet, even as engineers design robots to be more perfect versions of the human—more rational killers, more efficient workers, and tireless companions—the potential exists to develop alternative modes of engineering and technological development in ways that refuse the racial and colonial logics that maintain social hierarchies and inequality.

Download or read book New Romantic Cyborgs written by Mark Coeckelbergh and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-02-24 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the complex relationship between technology and romanticism that links nineteenth-century monsters, automata, and mesmerism with twenty-first-century technology's magic devices and romantic cyborgs. Romanticism and technology are widely assumed to be opposed to each other. Romanticism—understood as a reaction against rationalism and objectivity—is perhaps the last thing users and developers of information and communication technology (ICT) think about when they engage with computer programs and electronic devices. And yet, as Mark Coeckelbergh argues in this book, this way of thinking about technology is itself shaped by romanticism and obscures a better and deeper understanding of our relationship to technology. Coeckelbergh describes the complex relationship between technology and romanticism that links nineteenth-century monsters, automata, and mesmerism with twenty-first-century technology's magic devices and romantic cyborgs. Coeckelbergh argues that current uses of ICT can be interpreted as attempting a marriage of Enlightenment rationalism and romanticism. He describes the “romantic dialectic,” when this new kind of material romanticism, particularly in the form of the cyborg as romantic figure, seems to turn into its opposite. He shows that both material romanticism and the objections to it are still part of modern thinking, and part of the romantic dialectic. Reflecting on what he calls “the end of the machine,” Coeckelbergh argues that to achieve a more profound critique of contemporary technologies and culture, we need to explore not only different ways of thinking but also different technologies—and that to accomplish the former we require the latter.

Download or read book Friendship Robots and Social Media written by Alexis M. Elder and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Various emerging technologies, from social robotics to social media, appeal to our desire for social interactions, while avoiding some of the risks and costs of face-to-face human interaction. But can they offer us real friendship? In this book, Alexis Elder outlines a theory of friendship drawing on Aristotle and contemporary work on social ontology, and then uses it to evaluate the real value of social robotics and emerging social technologies. In the first part of the book Elder develops a robust and rigorous ontology of friendship: what it is, how it functions, what harms it, and how it relates to familiar ethical and philosophical questions about character, value, and well-being. In Part II she applies this ontology to emerging trends in social robotics and human-robot interaction, including robotic companions for lonely seniors, therapeutic robots used to teach social skills to children on the autism spectrum, and companionate robots currently being developed for consumer markets. Elder articulates the moral hazards presented by these robots, while at the same time acknowledging their real and measurable benefits. In the final section she shifts her focus to connections between real people, especially those enabled by social media. Arguing against critics who have charged that these new communication technologies are weakening our social connections, Elder explores ways in which text messaging, video chats, Facebook, and Snapchat are enabling us to develop, sustain, and enrich our friendship in new and meaningful ways.

Download or read book The Enchanted Realm written by H. Adam and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2005-03-31 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ingenious, brilliant mix of mystic, magic and action-packed adventures. A must-read book!

Download or read book Biopolitics Necropolitics Cosmopolitics written by C.L. Quinan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concepts of biopolitics and necropolitics have increasingly gained scholarly attention, particularly in light of today’s urgent and troubling issues that mark some lives as more – or less – worthy than others, including the migration crisis, rise of populism on a global scale, homonationalist practices, and state-sanctioned targeting of gender, sexual, racial, and ethnic ‘others’. This book aims to nuance this conversation by emphasising feminist and queer investments and interventions and by adding the analytical lens of cosmopolitics to ongoing debates around life/living and death/dying in the current political climate. In this way, we move forward toward envisioning feminist and queer futures that rethink categories such as ‘human’ and ‘subjectivity’ based on classical modern premises. Informed by feminist/queer studies, postcolonial theory, cultural analysis, and critical posthumanism, Biopolitics, Necropolitics, Cosmopolitics engages with longstanding questions of biopolitics and necropolitics in an era of neoliberalism and late capitalism, but does so by urging for a more inclusive (and less violent) cosmopolitical framework. Taking account of these global dynamics that are shaped by asymmetrical power relations, this fruitful posthuman(ist) and post-/decolonial approach allows for visions of transformation of the matrix of in-/exclusion into feminist/queer futures that work towards planetary social justice. This book is a significant new contribution to feminist and queer philosophy and politics, and will be of interest to academics, researchers, and advanced students of gender studies, postcolonial studies, sociology, philosophy, politics, and law. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Gender Studies.

Download or read book Enchanted by You A Romance Collection written by Isla Chiu and published by Isla Chiu. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 5 sexy romantic short stories in one bundle! Includes Claimed on Halloween, An Alien Prince for Thanksgiving, A Werewolf Jock for Thanksgiving, An Alien Prince for Christmas, and His Enchanting Princess. CLAIMED ON HALLOWEEN Audrey Yamamoto needs to get a life. This Halloween, her only plans are watching Hocus Pocus for the 30th time—alone. However, when she walks home from work, a car heads straight toward her, and she's sure her mundane existence is about to come to an end. But a beautiful stranger saves her just in the nick of time. Even crazier? The beautiful stranger is a vampire, and he wants to claim her for his mate… AN ALIEN PRINCE FOR THANKSGIVING The last thing I expected this Thanksgiving was to meet an alien prince. Because I have no life and no friends, I'm working a shift at the convenience store on Thanksgiving. I expect the day to be completely uneventful. Then a freaking UFO lands in the parking lot. Sani is a 7-foot-tall green man with 12-pack abs, and he's a prince from the planet Eler. Even crazier? He is in search of a mate because he needs to repopulate his kingdom. And he wants me to be his mate... A WEREWOLF JOCK FOR THANKSGIVING The last thing I expected this Thanksgiving was to find out that my college's (hot) star quarterback is a werewolf. After my mom tells me that she's going to Jamaica with her new boyfriend, I expect to spend Thanksgiving with me, myself, and I. Then I come across a freaking wolf on campus. Just as I think I'm about to die, the wolf transforms into Colin freaking Buchard, our school's very hot, very naked star quarterback. Then I faint... AN ALIEN PRINCE FOR CHRISTMAS My Christmas miracle came in the form of a sexy alien. This holiday season, I have little reason to be merry. Thanks to my defective heart, I only have a few months left to live. Just when I think things can't get any worse, I'm abducted by a (sexy) alien. But my abduction might turn out to be a blessing in disguise. He says his planet has medicine that could cure me. Then he tells me that he needs to repopulate his planet and asks me if I can help with that... HIS ENCHANTING PRINCESS Anthony Tanaka is just drinking his coffee when a beautiful princess falls on his lap. Like, literally. Her name is Lisassa, and she has freaking chipmunks following her and doing her bidding. She says she's looking for her prince. Anthony is no prince, but he is determined to claim the princess for himself all the same… ***A sexy fairytale featuring an obsessed alpha male, a lovely princess, and sugary sweet instalove!***

Download or read book Enchanted Flight written by Donijo Ash and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surprises, adventures, and intrigue fill this spellbinding story. When a vile 'worse than death two hundred year' spell is cast on Ian and Deborah, it changes their lives forever. They discover an unusual friend and soon learn that their new home will be taken from them by a ruthless greedy banker. With help, and following their hearts, the pair take on a daring magical quest to a strange world beyond the moon to save the farm. Zor Zanger (the evil giant), unexpected events, dragons, dinosaurs, and a boiling volcano add to the earthlings' frightening perils. A simple fairy tale turns into a wild and brave struggle for freedom. The companions learn about friendship, devoted love, and a yearning desire to survive. Tears, smiles, and terror fi ll the pages of this heartwarming tale with its unusual revelations.

Download or read book What Social Robots Can and Should Do written by J. Seibt and published by IOS Press. This book was released on 2016-10-14 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social robotics drives a technological revolution of possibly unprecedented disruptive potential, both at the socio-economic and the socio-cultural level. The rapid development of the robotics market calls for a concerted effort across a wide spectrum of academic disciplines to understand the transformative potential of human-robot interaction. This effort cannot succeed without the special expertise in the study of socio-cultural interactions, norms, and values that humanities research provides. This book contains the proceedings of the conference “What Social Robots Can and Should Do,” Robophilosophy 2016 / TRANSOR 2016, held in Aarhus, Denmark, in October 2016. The conference is the second event in the biennial Robophilosophy conference series, this time combined with an event of the Research Network for Transdisciplinary Studies in Social Robotics (TRANSOR). Featuring 13 plenaries and 74 session and workshop talks, the event turned out to be the world’s largest conference in Humanities research in and on social robotics. The book is divided into 3 sections: Part I and Part III contain the abstracts of plenary lectures and contributions to 6 workshops: Artificial Empathy; Co-Designing Children Robot Interaction; Human-Robot Joint Action; Phronesis for Machine Ethics?; Robots in the Wild; and Responsible Robotics. Part II contains short papers for presentations in 7 thematically organized sessions: methodological issues; ethical tasks and implications; emotions in human robot interactions; education, art and innovation; artificial meaning and rationality; social norms and robot sociality; and perceptions of social robots. The book will be of interest to researchers in philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, robotics, computer science, and art. Since all contributions are prepared for an interdisciplinary readership, they are highly accessible and will be of interest to policy makers and educators who wish to gauge the challenges and potentials of putting robots in society.

Download or read book Animals Machines and AI written by Erika Quinn and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sentient animals, machines, and robots abound in German literature and culture, but there has been surprisingly limited scholarship on non-human life forms in German studies. This volume extends interdisciplinary research in emotion studies to examine non-humans and the affective relationships between humans and non-humans in modern German cultural history. In recent years, fascination with emotions, developments in robotics, and the burgeoning of animal studies in and beyond the academy have given rise to questions about the nature of humanity. Using sources from the life sciences, literature, visual art, poetry, philosophy, and photography, this collection interrogates not animal or machine emotions per se, but rather uses animals and machines as lenses through which to investigate human emotions and the affective entanglements between humans and non-humans. The COVID-19 pandemic made us more keenly aware of the importance of both animals and new technologies in our daily lives, and this volume ultimately sheds light on the centrality of non-humans in the human emotional world and the possibilities that relationships with non-humans offer for enriching that world.

Download or read book Human Flourishing in a Technological World written by Jens Zimmermann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-23 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human Flourishing in a Technological World addresses the question of human identity and flourishing in the light of recent technological advances. The chapters in Part I provide a philosophical-theological evaluation of changing major anthropological assumptions that have guided human self-understanding from antiquity to modernity: How did we move from a religious and mostly embodied anthropology of the person to the idea that we can upload human consciousness to computing platforms? How did we come to imagine that machines can actually be intelligent, or even learn in human fashion? Moreover, what metaphysical changes explain our mostly uncritical embrace of a technological determination of being and thus of how reality "works"? In Part II, the focus turns to the practical implications of our changing understanding of what it means to be human. Covering some of the most pressing current concerns about human flourishing, these chapters deal with the impact of technology on education, healthcare, disability, leisure and the nature of work, communication, aging, death, and the nature of wisdom for human flourishing in light of evolutionary biology. The volume includes the text of a lecutre by virtual reality engineer and computer scientist Jaron Lanier, and a discussion between Lanier and other contributors.

Download or read book Robot Ecology and the Science Fiction Film written by J. P. Telotte and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-22 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first specific application in film studies of what is generally known as ecology theory, shifting attention from history to the (in this case media) environment. It takes the robot as its subject because it has attained a status that resonates not only with some of the key concerns of contemporary culture over the last century, but also with the very nature of film. While the robot has given us a vehicle for exploring issues of gender, race, and a variety of forms of otherness, and increasingly for asking questions about the very nature and meaning of life, this image of an artificial being, typically anthropomorphic, also invariably implicates the cinema’s own and quite fundamental artificing of the human. Looking across genres, across specific media forms, and across closely linked conceptualizations, Telotte sketches a context of interwoven influences and meanings. The result is that this study of the cinematic robot, while mainly focused on science fiction film, also incorporates its appearance in, for example, musicals, cartoons, television, advertising, toys, and literature.