Autonomous cars? Yes! Autonomous trucks? Yes! (Read a related comment in b&g issue 3). Autonomous flying machines? Yes! Autonomous ships? Autonomous tankers, cargo, Ro-Ro or warships? Not yet, but it …
Sewing automata
Can a robotic machine (or a team of such machines) sew clothes? Anyone who has even an amateur relationship with sewing knows that fabrics have lots of whims. Sometimes two …
short history of computers
Every modern computer is, in essence, supposed to be a physical implementation of an ideal machine, the universal Turing machine that can compute any computable function. Extremely simple in conception, …
knowledge accelerator
It could be the plot of a futuristic movie. Yet it is an idea for the organized devaluation of (also) intellectual labor. Not “sector by sector,” but as a general …
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 …
The Internet of Things: comments on the political economy of the networked information machine
Always look at the bright side of life… It’s 7:59 in the morning on some weekday and you’re enjoying your sleep. In a minute, the smart watch you recently bought …