The word “robot” will soon celebrate its 100th anniversary, as it was coined in 1920 by Czech writer Karel Čapek. But humanity’s fascination with self-moving devices, or automata, is far older. Classicist and science historian Adrienne Mayor here surveys the many living statues, robotic warriors, and artificial devices that populated Greek mythology to show the deep roots of our fascination with beings “made, not born”.
technology
Book review – How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls: Animal Movement and the Robots of the Future
Animals move in many different ways – hopping, gliding, flying, slithering, walking, swimming, etc. their way through our world. Studying how they do this brings together biologists, engineers, and physicists in disciplines such as biomechanics, bioengineering and robotics. Author David L. Hu, for example, is a professor of mechanical engineering and biology. How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls is a light and amusing romp through the many remarkable forms of animal locomotion, and the equally remarkable experiments that are informing the robots of the future, although it leaves out some notable examples.
Book review – The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy
The internet was supposed to be the great leveller. A revolutionary new medium that would allow anyone, anywhere to share his views and opinions with the world. A medium that would lead to robust and civil discourse amongst the citizens of planet Earth, with people holding different viewpoints exchanging ideas and finding inspiration. It would spell the end of big companies, with “competition being only a click away”, and numerous promising startups hiding in garages everywhere, ready to burst onto the scene. With the cost of reproduction and distribution approaching zero, anyone could start a blog, be a journalist, be heard!
Now take another good look around you. Where is the internet that we were promised?
Book review – Animal Internet: Nature and the Digital Revolution
This book is translated from the German Das Internet der Tiere, published in 2014. I started reading it thinking it would mostly deal with what the latest developments in animal telemetry are telling us about conservation, and what we can learn moving forward. With advances in technology, GPS units and tracking devices are now becoming so small that we can even attach them to insects. Scientists are uncovering a wealth of data about bird migrations, whale feeding patterns and many other behaviours that are normally unobservable to us. Instead, this book provides a philosophical blueprint for how technological advances could bring about a new way for humans to reconnect to animals.
Book review – The Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise (Second Edition)
The Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise lays bare a conundrum of our times. How is it that so many of us loathe resource extraction (e.g. the cutting down of trees for timber, or the mining of ores to produce metals), yet we absolutely adore the products that are subsequently made from these resources? We are up in arms when our forests are under threat, or companies want to start fracking in protected areas (a current concern in the UK), and when we successfully halt these things, the results are invariably hailed as a victory for the environment. Except that they aren’t.
Book review – Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction
How to Clone a Mammoth, Resurrection Science, Bring Back the King, and now Rise of the Necrofauna. There has been no shortage in recent years on books written for a general audience that talk about de-extinction: the controversial idea of resurrecting extinct species using recent advances in biotechnology. Futurist Alex Steffen catchily refers to them as the necrofauna mentioned in the book’s title. Rather than focusing on the technical side of things, radio broadcaster and writer Britt Wray here foremost discusses the ethical, legal and other questions this idea raises. And once you start thinking about it in earnest, it raises many thorny issues. No wonder it has been a controversial issue.
The Inquisitive Biologist