Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids - Hardcover

Perkowitz, Sidney

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0309089875 ISBN 13: 9780309089876

Publisher: Joseph Henry Press, 2004

Synopsis

Robots, androids, and bionic people pervade popular culture, from classics like Frankenstein and R.U.R. to modern tales such as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Terminator, and A.I. Our fascination is obvious — and the technology is quickly moving from books and films to real life.

In a lab at MIT, scientists and technicians have created an artificial being named COG. To watch COG interact with the environment — to recognize that this machine has actual body language — is to experience a hair-raising, gut-level reaction. Because just as we connect to artificial people in fiction, the merest hint of human-like action or appearance invariably engages us.

Digital People examines the ways in which technology is inexorably driving us to a new and different level of humanity. As scientists draw on nanotechnology, molecular biology, artificial intelligence, and materials science, they are learning how to create beings that move, think, and look like people. Others are routinely using sophisticated surgical techniques to implant computer chips and drug-dispensing devices into our bodies, designing fully functional man-made body parts, and linking human brains with computers to make people healthier, smarter, and stronger.

In short, we are going beyond what was once only science fiction to create bionic people with fully integrated artificial components — and it will not be long before we reach the ultimate goal of constructing a completely synthetic human-like being.

It seems quintessentially human to look beyond our natural limitations. Science has long been the lens through which we squint to discern our future. Although we are rightfully fearful about manipulating the boundaries between animate and inanimate, the benefits are too great to ignore. This thoughtful and provocative book shows us just where technology is taking us, in directions both wonderful and terrible, to ponder what it means to be human.

About this title

About the Author

Sidney Perkowitz is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Physics at Emory University. He often writes and lectures about the intersections of science, technology, and culture. His books include Empire of Light, in which he explores the intersection of science, art and light; and Universal Foam, about the science and culture of foam. Professor Perkowitz lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

From the Inside Flap

"We are in the early stages of merging with our technology, while at the same time, our machines are becoming more like us. Perkowitz tells this compelling story from its roots in Aristotle to our future in superintelligent robots. He makes the case for this inevitable result: we are all becoming cyborgs." -- Ray Kurzweil, inventor and author of The Age of Spiritual Machines

"There is no need to die in the future. Digital People is a comprehensive compendium about machines and people, about how the distinctions between them will vanish. To be human and intelligent is ultimately a matter of interchangeable parts. Consciousness cannot be tested." -- Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman & Co-founder, MIT Media Laboratory

Reviews

In ancient Greece and on modern drawing boards, humans have dreamt of changing the limits of mortality through androids, robots, automatons and cyborgs. Perkowitz, a professor of physics at Emory University, catalogues our millennia-long fascination in this ambitious book. The author is at his best illuminating the history of artificial life, starting with Talos, the bronze automaton created by Hephaestus in Greek myth, and touching on every fictional work that has shaped the genre. This ranges from R.U.R. (the 1921 play that coined the word robot) to Asimov's I, Robot, with plenty of room for The Terminator, Robocop and Commander Data. Perkowitz then creates a parallel history of what humans have been able to create, dwelling mostly on prosthetics and 18th-century automatons. The final chapters describe the fascinating robots currently under development, in a manner that reads like a Nova special. The writing is technical, not for the uncommitted reader, and the book bogs down when Perkowitz grapples with the problems of duplicating human perception and self-awareness by artificial means. This is not a philosophical treatise on the nature of the mind-body connection or an engineering manual. Perkowitz fills in the gaps between current knowledge and the philosophical problems posed by advanced artificial life with fantasy-like suppositions, interposing well-accepted philosophical arguments with those that Perkowitz acknowledges have been rejected by the philosophical community. Hence, as a history of humans' fascination with artificial life—both real and fictional—this book is informative. But for a roadmap to the future of robotics, look elsewhere.
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Perkowitz, professor of physics at Emory University, takes the reader on an absorbing journey through the history of human efforts to duplicate human functions. Robots and artificial body parts represent the current level of achievement; the ultimate achievement may be artificial beings. Although "no one has yet made a completely autonomous being, or one that seems consistently and convincingly alive, or a bionic implant that improves human strength or wit ... there is no doubt that existing technology will carry us further along these paths." And eventually we must face some profound questions. "What is our purpose in making artificial or hybrid beings? What are our ethical responsibilities toward them and theirs toward us? Do we have anything to fear from intelligent and powerful nonhuman beings?"

Editors of Scientific American

Edition details

• Publisher: Joseph Henry Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0309089875
• ISBN 13: 9780309089876
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 246