Loving the Machine
Loving the Machine

Author: Timothy N. Hornyak

Publisher: Kodansha International

Published: 2006-05-25

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9784770030122

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While the US sponsors robot-on-robot destruction contests, Japan's feature tasks that mimic non-violent human activities. Why is this? What accounts for Japan's unique relationship with robots as potential colleagues in life, rather than potential adversaries? This book answers this query by looking at Japan's historical connections with robots. Japan stands out for its long love affair with robots, a phenomenon that is creating what will likely be the world's first mass robot culture. While US companies have created robot vacuum cleaners and war machines, Japan has

Glow
Glow

Author: Tim Jordan

Publisher: Watkins Media Limited

Published: 2021-02-23

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0857668870

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A man battles his addiction to a devastating nanotech drug that steals identities and threatens the survival and succession of mankind as a galactic species. After the Nova-Insanity shattered Earth’s civilization, the Genes and Fullerenes Corporation promised to bring humanity back from the brink. Many years later, various factions have formed, challenging their savior and vying for a share of power and control. Glow follows the lives of three very different beings, all wrestling mental instability in various forms; Rex – a confused junkie battling multiple voices in his head; Ellayna – the founder of the GFC living on an orbital satellite station and struggling with paranoia; and Jett – a virtually unstoppable robotic assassin, questioning his purpose of creation. All of them are inextricably linked through the capricious and volatile Glow; an all controlling nano-tech drug that has the ability to live on through multiple hosts, cutting and pasting memories and personas in each new victim. In this tech-crazed world where nothing seems impossible, many questions are posed: what makes us who we are? What is our ultimate purpose and place in this world? And, most frightening of all, what are we capable of doing to survive? File Under: Science Fiction [ Hivemind | One More Fix | No Escape | Run Like Hell ]

The Robot's Rebellion
The Robot's Rebellion

Author: Keith E. Stanovich

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-10-15

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 0226771199

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The idea that we might be robots is no longer the stuff of science fiction; decades of research in evolutionary biology and cognitive science have led many esteemed scientists to the conclusion that, according to the precepts of universal Darwinism, humans are merely the hosts for two replicators (genes and memes) that have no interest in us except as conduits for replication. Richard Dawkins, for example, jolted us into realizing that we are just survival mechanisms for our own genes, sophisticated robots in service of huge colonies of replicators to whom concepts of rationality, intelligence, agency, and even the human soul are irrelevant. Accepting and now forcefully responding to this decentering and disturbing idea, Keith Stanovich here provides the tools for the "robot's rebellion," a program of cognitive reform necessary to advance human interests over the limited interest of the replicators and define our own autonomous goals as individual human beings. He shows how concepts of rational thinking from cognitive science interact with the logic of evolution to create opportunities for humans to structure their behavior to serve their own ends. These evaluative activities of the brain, he argues, fulfill the need that we have to ascribe significance to human life. We may well be robots, but we are the only robots who have discovered that fact. Only by recognizing ourselves as such, argues Stanovich, can we begin to construct a concept of self based on what is truly singular about humans: that they gain control of their lives in a way unique among life forms on Earth—through rational self-determination.

Small Robots
Small Robots

Author: Thomas Heasman-Hunt

Publisher: Unbound Publishing

Published: 2020-02-20

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1783528230

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Whether you need a robotic companion to remember the names of people you meet at parties, an algorithmic pal to help you stomp on the crispy leaves in autumn, or just a really, really big 'bot for no particular reason at all, Small Robots is your spotter's guide to the wonderful world of robotic friends. They bring tea, complain in restaurants, retrieve lost balloons, but they also tackle more serious problems: mental health, disability, discrimination and grief, and will, when called upon, fiercely defend the marginalised and oppressed. This collection of one hundred of the best and most beloved 'bots delves into the functions, features, dimensions and backstories of these wonderful but often bafflingly obtuse creations. Discover how they perform their all-important tasks in the world of their large human friends, revealing how acts of kindness can be achieved in the littlest and most unexpected ways.

Historical Dictionary of Modern Japanese Literature and Theater
Historical Dictionary of Modern Japanese Literature and Theater

Author: Scott J. Miller

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 0810863197

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With the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan opened its doors to the West and underwent remarkable changes as it sought to become a modern nation. Accompanying the political changes that Western trade ushered in were widespread social and cultural changes. Newspapers, novels, poems, and plays from the Western world were soon adapted and translated into Japanese. The combination of the rich storytelling tradition of Japan with the realism and modernism of the West produced some of the greatest literature of the modern age. Historical Dictionary of Modern Japanese Literature and Theater presents a broad perspective on the development and history of literature_narrative, poetry, and drama_in modern Japan. This book offers a chronology, introduction, bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on authors, literary and historical developments, trends, genres, and concepts that played a central role in the evolution of modern Japanese literature.

The A to Z of Modern Japanese Literature and Theater
The A to Z of Modern Japanese Literature and Theater

Author: Scott J. Miller

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2010-04-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1461731887

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With the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan opened its doors to the West and underwent remarkable changes as it sought to become a modern nation. Accompanying the political changes that Western trade ushered in were widespread social and cultural changes. Newspapers, novels, poems, and plays from the Western world were soon adapted and translated into Japanese. The combination of the rich storytelling tradition of Japan with the realism and modernism of the West produced some of the greatest literature of the modern age. The A to Z of Modern Japanese Literature and Theater presents a broad perspective on the development and history of literature-narrative, poetry, and drama-in modern Japan. This book offers a chronology, introduction, bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on authors, literary and historical developments, trends, genres, and concepts that played a central role in the evolution of modern Japanese literature.

Servant of the Underworld
Servant of the Underworld

Author: Aliette de Bodard

Publisher: Watkins Media Limited

Published: 2010-10-26

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0857660322

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IT IS THE YEAR ONE-KNIFE IN TENOCHTITLAN - THE CAPITAL OF THE AZTECS. The end of the world is kept at bay only by the magic of human sacrifice. A Priestess disappears from an empty room drenched in blood. Acatl, High Priest of the Dead must find her, or break the boundaries between the worlds of th living and the dead. But how do you find someone, living or dead, in a world where blood sacrifices are an everyday occurrence and the very gods stalk the streets? File Under: Fantasy [ Aztec Mystery | Locked Room | Human Sacrifice | The Dead Walk! ]