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Robot Ecology and the Science Fiction Film (Routledge Focus on Film Studies)
by J. P. TelotteThis book offers the first specific application in film studies of what is generally known as ecology theory, shifting attention from history to the (in this case media) environment. It takes the robot as its subject because it has attained a status that resonates not only with some of the key concerns of contemporary culture over the last century, but also with the very nature of film. While the robot has given us a vehicle for exploring issues of gender, race, and a variety of forms of otherness, and increasingly for asking questions about the very nature and meaning of life, this image of an artificial being, typically anthropomorphic, also invariably implicates the cinema’s own and quite fundamental artificing of the human. Looking across genres, across specific media forms, and across closely linked conceptualizations, Telotte sketches a context of interwoven influences and meanings. The result is that this study of the cinematic robot, while mainly focused on science fiction film, also incorporates its appearance in, for example, musicals, cartoons, television, advertising, toys, and literature.
Robot Futures
by Illah Reza NourbakhshA roboticist imagines life with robots that sell us products, drive our cars, even allow us to assume new physical form, and more.With robots, we are inventing a new species that is part material and part digital. The ambition of modern robotics goes beyond copying humans, beyond the effort to make walking, talking androids that are indistinguishable from people. Future robots will have superhuman abilities in both the physical and digital realms. They will be embedded in our physical spaces, with the ability to go where we cannot, and will have minds of their own, thanks to artificial intelligence. In Robot Futures, the roboticist Illah Reza Nourbakhsh considers how we will share our world with these creatures, and how our society could change as it incorporates a race of stronger, smarter beings.Nourbakhsh imagines a future that includes adbots offering interactive custom messaging; robotic flying toys that operate by means of “gaze tracking”; robot-enabled multimodal, multicontinental telepresence; and even a way that nanorobots could allow us to assume different physical forms. Nourbakhsh examines the underlying technology and the social consequences of each scenario. He also offers a counter-vision: a robotics designed to create civic and community empowerment. His book helps us understand why that is the robot future we should try to bring about.
Robot Futures
by Illah Reza NourbakhshWith robots, we are inventing a new species that is part material and part digital. The ambition of modern robotics goes beyond copying humans, beyond the effort to make walking,talking androids that are indistinguishable from people. Future robots will have superhumanabilities in both the physical and digital realms. They will be embedded in our physical spaces,with the ability to go where we cannot, and will have minds of their own, thanks to artificialintelligence. They will be fully connected to the digital world, far better at carrying out onlinetasks than we are. In Robot Futures, the roboticist Illah Reza Nourbakhshconsiders how we will share our world with these creatures, and how our society could change as itincorporates a race of stronger, smarter beings. Nourbakhsh imagines a future that includes adbotsoffering interactive custom messaging; robotic flying toys that operate by means of "gazetracking"; robot-enabled multimodal, multicontinental telepresence; and even a way thatnanorobots could allow us to assume different physical forms. Nourbakhsh follows each glimpse intothe robotic future with an examination of the underlying technology and an exploration of the socialconsequences of the scenario. Each chapter describes a form of technologicalempowerment -- in some cases, empowerment run amok, with corporations and institutions amassing evenmore power and influence and individuals becoming unconstrained by social accountability. (Imaginethe hotheaded discourse of the Internet taking physical form. ) Nourbakhsh also offers acounter-vision: a robotics designed to create civic and community empowerment. His book helps usunderstand why that is the robot future we should try to bring about.
Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (The\mit Press Ser.)
by Joseph E. AounHow to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover—filling needs that even the most sophisticated robot cannot.Driverless cars are hitting the road, powered by artificial intelligence. Robots can climb stairs, open doors, win Jeopardy, analyze stocks, work in factories, find parking spaces, advise oncologists. In the past, automation was considered a threat to low-skilled labor. Now, many high-skilled functions, including interpreting medical images, doing legal research, and analyzing data, are within the skill sets of machines. How can higher education prepare students for their professional lives when professions themselves are disappearing? In Robot-Proof, Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun proposes a way to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover—to fill needs in society that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence agent cannot.A “robot-proof” education, Aoun argues, is not concerned solely with topping up students' minds with high-octane facts. Rather, it calibrates them with a creative mindset and the mental elasticity to invent, discover, or create something valuable to society—a scientific proof, a hip-hop recording, a web comic, a cure for cancer. Aoun lays out the framework for a new discipline, humanics, which builds on our innate strengths and prepares students to compete in a labor market in which smart machines work alongside human professionals. The new literacies of Aoun's humanics are data literacy, technological literacy, and human literacy. Students will need data literacy to manage the flow of big data, and technological literacy to know how their machines work, but human literacy—the humanities, communication, and design—to function as a human being. Life-long learning opportunities will support their ability to adapt to change.The only certainty about the future is change. Higher education based on the new literacies of humanics can equip students for living and working through change.
Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence In The 21st Century
by Jacob TurnerThis book explains why AI is unique, what legal and ethical problems it could cause, and how we can address them. It argues that AI is unlike is any other previous technology, owing to its ability to take decisions independently and unpredictably. This gives rise to three issues: responsibility—who is liable if AI causes harm; rights—the disputed moral and pragmatic grounds for granting AI legal personality; and the ethics surrounding the decision-making of AI. The book suggests that in order to address these questions we need to develop new institutions and regulations on a cross-industry and international level. Incorporating clear explanations of complex topics, Robot Rules will appeal to a multi-disciplinary audience, from those with an interest in law, politics and philosophy, to computer programming, engineering and neuroscience.
Robot Takeover: 100 Iconic Robots of Myth, Popular Culture & Real Life
by Ana MatronicIn the not too distant future, mankind faces the possibility of being overthrown by its own creations.In Robot Takeover, Ana Matronic presents 100 of the most legendary robots and what makes them iconic - their creators, purpose, design and why their existence has shaken, or in some cases, comforted us. Through 100 iconic robots - from Maria in Fritz Lang's Metropolis to the Sentinels of The Matrix and beyond, via the Gunslinger (Westworld), R2-D2 (Star Wars) etc. - this is a comprehensive look at the robot phenomenon. As well as these 100 entries on specific robots, there are features on the people who invent robots, the moral issues around robot sentience, and the prevalence of robots in music, art and fashion, and more. It's the only robot book you need.With fighters, seducers and psychos in their ranks, it's best you get ready for the robot revolution. Know your enemy...
The Robotic Imaginary: The Human and the Price of Dehumanized Labor
by Jennifer RheeTracing the connections between human-like robots and AI at the site of dehumanization and exploited labor The word robot—introduced in Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R.—derives from rabota, the Czech word for servitude or forced labor. A century later, the play’s dystopian themes of dehumanization and exploited labor are being played out in factories, workplaces, and battlefields. In The Robotic Imaginary, Jennifer Rhee traces the provocative and productive connections of contemporary robots in technology, film, art, and literature. Centered around the twinned processes of anthropomorphization and dehumanization, she analyzes the coevolution of cultural and technological robots and artificial intelligence, arguing that it is through the conceptualization of the human and, more important, the dehumanized that these multiple spheres affect and transform each other.Drawing on the writings of Alan Turing, Sara Ahmed, and Arlie Russell Hochschild; such films and novels as Her and The Stepford Wives; technologies like Kismet (the pioneering “emotional robot”); and contemporary drone art, this book explores anthropomorphic paradigms in robot design and imagery in ways that often challenge the very grounds on which those paradigms operate in robotics labs and industry. From disembodied, conversational AI and its entanglement with care labor; embodied mobile robots as they intersect with domestic labor; emotional robots impacting affective labor; and armed military drones and artistic responses to drone warfare, The Robotic Imaginary ultimately reveals how the human is made knowable through the design of and discourse on humanoid robots that are, paradoxically, dehumanized.
Robotic Process Automation im Desktop-Publishing: Eine Einführung in softwaregestützte Automatisierung von Artwork-Prozessen (essentials)
by Ennis GündoğanDie Automatisierung dient als eine wesentliche Komponente in der Wirtschaft, um Unternehmensziele mit qualitativ und quantitativ besseren Ergebnissen zu erreichen. Auch im Bereich des Desktop-Publishings (DTP) ist der Einsatz von Automatismen unabdingbar, um die Kosteneinsparung im Unternehmen und die Verbesserung der Endergebnisse durch Standardisierungen und Fehlerreduzierungen sowie die Entlastung der Mitarbeiter bezüglich aufwendiger und monotoner Aufgaben zu erreichen. Das vorliegende essential setzt das Ziel, die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten der Automatisierung im Bereich des DTP zusammenzufassen und legt dabei den Fokus auf sich wiederholende Artwork-Prozesse in der Druckvorstufe.
Robotic Process Automation in Desktop Publishing: An Introduction to Software-based Automation of Artwork Processes (essentials)
by Ennis GündoğanAutomation serves as an essential component in business to achieve company goals with qualitatively and quantitatively better results. The use of automation is also in the field of desktop publishing (DTP) indispensable to achieve cost savings in the company and to improve the final results through standardization and error reduction, as well as to relieve employees with regard to laborious and monotonous tasks. This essential aims to summarize the many possibilities of automation in the field of DTP, focusing on repetitive artwork processes in prepress.
Robotization and Economic Development
by Siddhartha MitraThis book critically examines the sweeping impacts of robotization and the use of artificial intelligence on employment, per capita income, quality of life, poverty, and inequality in developing and developed economies. It analyzes the direct and indirect effects they have had and are projected to have on the labour markets and production processes in the manufacturing, healthcare and agricultural industries among others. The author explores comparisons of human labour with robotic labour emphasizing the changes that new technologies will bring to traditionally labour-intensive industries. Offering various insights into the effectiveness, benefits and negative implications of robotization on the economy, the book provides a comprehensive picture for policymakers to implement changes that embrace new technologies while meeting employment needs and development goals. Topical and lucid, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of science and technology studies, digital humanities, economics, labour studies, public policy, development studies, political studies and sociology as well as policymakers and others who are interested in these areas.
Robots
by Chuck KlostermanOriginally collected in Chuck Klosterman IV and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Film and Television, this essay is about I, Robot.
Robots in Care and Everyday Life: Future, Ethics, Social Acceptance (SpringerBriefs in Sociology)
by Uwe EngelThis open access book presents detailed findings about the ethical, legal, and social acceptance of robots in the German and European context. The key resource is the Bremen AI Delphi survey of scientists and politicians and a related population survey. The focus is on trust in robotic assistance, human willingness to use this assistance, and the expected personal well-being in human-robot interaction. Using recent data from Eurostat, the European Social Survey, and the Eurobarometer survey, the analysis is extended to Germany and the EU. The acceptance of robots in care and everyday life is viewed against their acceptance in other contexts of life and the scientific research. The book reports on how the probability of five complex future scenarios is evaluated by experts and politicians. These scenarios cover a broad range of topics, including the worst-case scenario of cutthroat competition for jobs, the wealth promise of AI, communication in human-robot interaction, robotic assistance, and ethical and legal conflicts. International economic competition alone will ensure that countries invest sustainably in the future technologies of AI and robots. But will these technologies also be accepted by the population? The book raises the core issue of how governments can gain the needed social, ethical, and user acceptance of AI and robots in everyday life. This highly topical book is of interest to researchers, professionals and policy makers working on various aspects of human-robot interaction. This is an open access book.
Robust Simulation for Mega-Risks
by Craig E. TaylorThis book introduces a new way of analyzing, measuring and thinking about mega-risks, a "paradigm shift" that moves from single-solutions to multiple competitive solutions and strategies. "Robust simulation" is a statistical approach that demonstrates future risk through simulation of a suite of possible answers. To arrive at this point, the book systematically walks through the historical statistical methods for evaluating risks. The first chapters deal with three theories of probability and statistics that have been dominant in the 20th century, along with key mathematical issues and dilemmas. The book then introduces "robust simulation" which solves the problem of measuring the stability of simulated losses, incorporates outliers, and simulates future risk through a suite of possible answers and stochastic modeling of unknown variables. This book discusses various analytical methods for utilizing divergent solutions in making pragmatic financial and risk-mitigation decisions. The book emphasizes the importance of flexibility and attempts to demonstrate that alternative credible approaches are helpful and required in understanding a great many phenomena.
Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture
by H. Samy AlimComplementing a burgeoning area of interest and academic study, Roc the Mic Right explores the central role of language within the Hip Hop Nation (HHN). With its status convincingly argued as the best means by which to read Hip Hop culture, H. Samy Alim then focuses on discursive practices, such as narrative sequencing and ciphers, or lyrical circles of rhymers. Often a marginalized phenomenon, the complexity and creativity of Hip Hop lyrical production is emphasised, whilst Alim works towards the creation of a schema by which to understand its aesthetic. Using his own ethnographic research, Alim shows how Hip Hop language could be used in an educational context and presents a new approach to the study of the language and culture of the Hip Hop Nation: 'Hiphopography'. The final section of the book, which includes real conversational narratives from Hip Hop artists such as The Wu-Tang Clan and Chuck D, focuses on direct engagement with the language. A highly accessible and lively work on the most studied and read about language variety in the United States, this book will appeal not only to language and linguistics researchers and students, but holds a genuine appeal to anyone interested in Hip Hop or Black African Language.
Rock and Popular Music: Politics, Policies, Institutions (Culture: Policy and Politics)
by Tony Bennett Simon Frith Graeme Turner John Shepherd Larry GrossbergRock and Popular Music examines the relations between the policies and institutions which regulate contemporary popular music and the political debates, contradictions and struggles in which those musics are involved.International in its scope and conception, this innovative collection explores the reasons for and ways in which governments have sought either to support or prohibit popular music in Canada, Australia and Europe as well as the impact of broadcasting policies in forming and shaping different musical communities.Rock and Popular Music is a unique collection suggesting significant new directions for the study of contemporary popular musics.
Rock And Roll: A Social History
by Paul FriedlanderNow updated with two new chapters and an extraordinary collection of photographs, this second edition of Paul Friedlander's Rock and Roll: A Social History is a smash hit. The social force of rock and roll music leaps off the page as Paul Friedlander provides impressive insights based on hits from Johnny B. Goode to Smells Like Teen Spirit and beyond. In this musical journey, Friedlander offers the melodious strains and hard-edged riffs of Elvis, the Beatles, The Who, Dylan, Clapton, Hendrix, Motown, the San Francisco Beat, Punk, New Wave, rap, metal, 90s grunge, plus file sharing, and much more. The book is written in a refreshing, captivating style that pulls the reader in, offering no less than a complete social and cultural history of rock and roll for students and general audiences alike. Friedlander writes, 'This book chronicles the first forty years of rock/pop music history. Picture the various musical styles as locations on a giant unfolding road map. As you open the map, you travel from place to place, stopping at each chapter to sample the artistry. Don't forget to dress your imagination appropriately for this trip, because each genre is affected by the societal topography and climate that surround it. Enjoy your trip. We promise it will be a good one!'
Rock around the Clock: Exploitation, Rock 'n' roll and the Origins of Youth Culture (Cinema and Youth Cultures)
by Yannis Tzioumakis Siân LincolnExamining one of the earliest films made specifically for young audiences in US cinema, Rock around the Clock (1956), this book explores the exploitation production company that made the film and the ways it represented young people, especially in terms of their association with rock ’n’ roll music and culture. Providing new avenues of approaching the film, the book looks at how Rock around the Clock has attracted significant scholarly attention, despite its origins as a low-budget production made by master exploitation filmmaker Sam Katzman. It challenges accounts that see the film’s young people as juvenile delinquents, using instead the label ‘cultural rebels’ as a signifier of youth’s ability to resurrect a moribund music industry and rejuvenate a stale youth culture. This book also questions the nature of the label ‘exploitation’ as applied to the film by examining Columbia Pictures’ role as a resource provider for Katzman’s film, comparing Rock around the Clock to contemporaneous films with a youth focus that were produced in different industrial contexts and investigating its relationship to adaptation by asking whether the film is an example of a ‘postliterary’ adaptation. Rich on archival research and industrial and textual analysis, Rock around the Clock will interest both film studies and youth cultures scholars.
Rock Art and Memory in the Transmission of Cultural Knowledge
by Leslie F. ZubietaThis book shares timely and thought-provoking methodological and theoretical approaches from perspectives concerning landscape, gender, cognition, neural networks, material culture and ontology in order to comprehend rock art’s role in memorisation processes, collective memory, and the intergenerational circulation of knowledge. The case studies offered here stem from human experiences from around the globe—Africa, Australia, Europe, North and South America—, which reflects the authors’ diverse interpretative stances. While some of the approaches deal with mnemonics, new digital technologies and statistical analysis, others examine performances, sensory engagement, language, and political disputes, giving the reader a comprehensive view of the myriad connections between memory studies and rock art. Indigenous interlocutors participate as collaborators and authors, creating space for Indigenous narratives of memory. These narratives merge with Western versions of past and recent memories in order to construct jointly novel inter-epistemic understandings of images made on rock. Each chapter demonstrates the commitment of rock art studies to strengthen and enrich the field by exploring how communities and cultures across time have perceived and entangled rock images with a broad range of material culture, nonhumans, people, emotions, performances, sounds and narratives. Such relations are pivotal to understanding the universe behind the intersections of memory and rock art and to generating future interdisciplinary collaborative studies.
Rock Art and Regional Identity: A Comparative Perspective
by Jamie HampsonWhy did the ancient artists create paintings and engravings? What did the images mean? This careful study of rock art motifs in the Trans-Pecos area of Texas and a small area in South Africa demonstrates that there are archaeological and anthropological ways of accessing the past in order to investigate and explain the significance of rock art motifs. Using two disparate regions shows the possibility of comparative rock art studies and highlights the importance of regional studies and regional variations. This is an ideal resource for students and researchers.
Rock Art and Sacred Landscapes
by Donna L. Gillette Mavis Greer Michele Helene Hayward William Breen MurraySocial and behavioral scientists study religion or spirituality in various ways and have defined and approached the subject from different perspectives. In cultural anthropology and archaeology the understanding of what constitutes religion involves beliefs, oral traditions, practices and rituals, as well as the related material culture including artifacts, landscapes, structural features and visual representations like rock art. Researchers work to understand religious thoughts and actions that prompted their creation distinct from those created for economic, political, or social purposes. Rock art landscapes convey knowledge about sacred and spiritual ecology from generation to generation. Contributors to this global view detail how rock art can be employed to address issues regarding past dynamic interplays of religions and spiritual elements. Studies from a number of different cultural areas and time periods explore how rock art engages the emotions, materializes thoughts and actions and reflects religious organization as it intersects with sociopolitical cultural systems.
Rock Art and the Prehistory of Atlantic Europe: Signing the Land
by Mr Richard Bradley Richard BradleyAlong the Atlantic seaboard, from Scotland to Spain, are numerous rock carvings made four to five thousand years ago, whose interpretation poses a major challenge to the archaeologist. In the first full-length treatment of the subject, based largely on new fieldwork, Richard Bradley argues that these carvings should be interpreted as a series of symbolic messages that are shared between monuments, artefacts and natural places in the landscape. He discusses the cultural setting of the rock carvings and the ways in which they can be interpreted in relation to ancient land use, the creation of ritual monuments and the burial of the dead. Integrating this fascinating yet little-known material into the mainstream of prehistoric studies, Richard Bradley demonstrates that these carvings played a fundamental role in the organization of the prehistoric landscape.
Rock Art and the Wild Mind: Visual Imagery in Mesolithic Northern Europe
by Ingrid FuglestvedtRock Art and the Wild Mind presents a study of Mesolithic rock art on the Scandinavian peninsula, including the large rock art sites in Alta, Nämforsen and Vingen. Hunters’ rock art of this area, despite local styles, bears a strong commonality in what it depicts, most often terrestrial big game in diverse confrontations with the human realm. The various types of compositions are defined as visual thematizations of the enigmatic relationship between humans and big game animals. These thematizations, here defined as motemes, are explained as being products of the Mesolithic mind ‘in action’, observed through repetitions, variations and transformations of a number of defined motemes. Through a transformational logic, the transition from ‘animic’ to ‘totemic’ rock art is observed. Totemic rock art reaches a peak during the final stages of the Late Mesolithic, and it is suggested that this can be interpreted as representing an increasing focus on human society towards the end of this era. The move from animism to totemism is explained as being part of the overall social development on the Scandinavian peninsula. This book will be of interest to students of rock art generally and scholars working on the historical developments of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in northern Europe. It will also appeal to students and academics in the fields of art history and aesthetics and to those interested in the work of Lévi-Strauss.
The Rock Blaster
by Henning MankellAn early gem from the creator of the Kurt Wallander series, charting the life of a principled man through tragedy, heartbreak, true love and the battle for a nation's soul."A very engaging portrait . . . There is a powerful lack of sentimentality to the telling of the story [and] a lovely and genuinely moving love story at the heart of the book." Liam Heylin, Irish ExaminerAt 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon in 1911, Oskar Johansson is caught in a blast in an industrial accident. The local newspaper reports him dead, but they are mistaken.Because Oskar Johansson is a born survivor.Though crippled, Oskar finds the strength to go on living and working. The Rock Blaster charts his long professional life - his hopes and dreams, sorrows and joys. His relationship with the woman whose love saved him, with the labour movement that gave him a cause to believe in, and with his children, who do not share his ideals.Henning Mankell's first published novel is steeped in the burning desire for social justice that informed his bestselling crime novels. Remarkably assured for a debut, it is written with scalpel-like precision, at once poetic and insightful in its depiction of a true working-class hero.Translated from the Swedish by George Goulding
The Rock Blaster
by Henning MankellAt 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon in 1911, Oskar Johansson is caught in a blast in an industrial accident. The local newspaper reports him dead, but they are mistaken.Because Oskar Johansson is a born survivor.Though crippled, Oskar finds the strength to go on living and working. The Rock Blaster charts his long professional life - his hopes and dreams, sorrows and joys. His relationship with the woman whose love saved him, with the labour movement that gave him a cause to believe in, and with his children, who do not share his ideals.Henning Mankell's first published novel is steeped in the burning desire for social justice that informed his bestselling crime novels. Remarkably assured for a debut, it is written with scalpel-like precision, at once poetic and insightful in its depiction of a true working-class hero.Translated from the Swedish by George Goulding(P)2020 Quercus Editions Limited
Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist's Guide to the Historical Sciences (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology)
by Adrian CurrieAn argument that we should be optimistic about the capacity of “methodologically omnivorous” geologists, paleontologists, and archaeologists to uncover truths about the deep past. The “historical sciences”—geology, paleontology, and archaeology—have made extraordinary progress in advancing our understanding of the deep past. How has this been possible, given that the evidence they have to work with offers mere traces of the past? In Rock, Bone, and Ruin, Adrian Currie explains that these scientists are “methodological omnivores,” with a variety of strategies and techniques at their disposal, and that this gives us every reason to be optimistic about their capacity to uncover truths about prehistory. Creative and opportunistic paleontologists, for example, discovered and described a new species of prehistoric duck-billed platypus from a single fossilized tooth. Examining the complex reasoning processes of historical science, Currie also considers philosophical and scientific reflection on the relationship between past and present, the nature of evidence, contingency, and scientific progress.Currie draws on varied examples from across the historical sciences, from Mayan ritual sacrifice to giant Mesozoic fleas to Mars's mysterious watery past, to develop an account of the nature of, and resources available to, historical science. He presents two major case studies: the emerging explanation of sauropod size, and the “snowball earth” hypothesis that accounts for signs of glaciation in Neoproterozoic tropics. He develops the Ripple Model of Evidence to analyze “unlucky circumstances” in scientific investigation; examines and refutes arguments for pessimism about the capacity of the historical sciences, defending the role of analogy and arguing that simulations have an experiment-like function. Currie argues for a creative, open-ended approach, “empirically grounded” speculation.