It would be comical if it weren’t ridiculous. In mid-August 116 “leading figures” of artificial intelligence, including the illustrious owner of Tesla, Elon Musk, sent an urgent and anguished letter …
Terminator and Blade Runner: building cyborgs and humans
Making Cyborgs, Making Humans – Of terminators and blade runners by Forest Pyle is a chapter from the book The Cybercultures Reader (2000, Routledge editions), and we have included its …
Road? Everywhere!
Feeling on their backs the hot breath of the energy paradigm shift in the capitalist world— and thus their own petro-decline— and with nothing to do with the mountains of …
Attention to nature
Whoever is tired of “natural” jellyfish may not be thrilled. Still, the robotic jellyfish from German company Festo was impressive. Perhaps it isn’t the most technically challenging build the firm …
Through the prayers…
If you show up “unprepared,” the great bouncer at the gates of the after-live will find a problem with your papers and you may end up in some limbo state, …
auto-shopping
You shouldn’t just pass it by with indifference. It’s a robotic shopping cart for the supermarket. If you input the right codes, it can “shop on its own.” It can …
DNA sequencer
It may look like a large photocopier, but it’s not. According to its specifications, Illumina’s HiSeq X machine can produce the complete sequence of 16 human genomes in every 3-day …
3D printers
The generations that grew up in the 20th century were trained to use specific symbolic representations in encoding the world. Among these, the images of “construction” and “building” had a …
Job stealing
How many clicks does it take to place an order on Amazon? Very few! With zero effort, online, a product from anywhere on the planet arrives right at the buyer’s …
the armed parade : robot, work, ideology
In our parts, the issue is not burning. High unemployment but limited (compared to other places) use of information technology and its derivatives in the secondary sector. Internationally, however, it …
Make way!
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 …