The humanoid robot in the photo cooks (among other things). But there’s no reason to worry: it won’t replace “mom,” and it won’t fill lunchboxes… Home robotic machines are one …
Do androids play electric games?
About the game in general Play is always an activity. Even when it presupposes high levels of abstract ability, it simultaneously demands the externalization of meaning through a series of …
uninterrupted transport
This is a fundamental function of technology: to replace living labour. To throw workers onto the street, that is, in order to keep the working class disciplined. The excerpt below …
Technology, total war and creative destruction
An illusion hovers over the first world, that war is somewhere else, in spatial and temporal terms. It happens on the fringes of civilization and does not concern “our world” …
robotic self-organization
From a technological and construction perspective, it is something remarkable. The robotic ants are the work of one of the leading companies in research and application of cutting-edge technologies: the …
Are consciousness and memory technoscientific “objects”?
The question in the title now seems foolish or pointless. Of course what has historically been called “consciousness” is a techno-scientific object of analysis and research! For decades now. Even …
automatic execution
The vehicle in the image could be a small tank. And indeed it is. With a difference. It is robotic and completely autonomous. “Completely autonomous” means that it is guided …
The pearly gates of cyberspace
This essay by Margaret Wertheim was published in Greek in the magazine futura no. 5, Winter 1998 – 1999, from which we republish it. It was included in the collective …
refrigerator jacket
The world and its inhabitants are looking for ways to slim down (at least until the fashionable items that will impose: lift and tuck to take another walk around the …
“A Cyborg Manifesto”: thirty years later
Cyborgs are ether, the quintessence We are now traversing the sixth decade since the writings of Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline gave substance to the cyborg construct/artifact. Today, although it …
flex screens
No one was interested (until now) in how flexible screens, televisions or “smartphones” are made, and the reason is simple: such products are not yet available on the market. And …
The piston, the worker, the hook: anatomy of cyborg ancestors
It is by no means necessary for someone to use a machine (from a smartphone to a robotic analyzer) to keep in mind how each wave of mechanization fits into …