[tt] [wta-talk] NEW BOOK: Beyond Human: Living with Robots and Cyborgs

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from James Clement <clementlawyer at hotmail.com> -----

From: James Clement <clementlawyer at hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2007 10:39:57 -0800
To: 'World Transhumanist Association Discussion List' <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>
Subject: [wta-talk] NEW BOOK: Beyond Human: Living with Robots and Cyborgs
X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 12.0
Reply-To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>

[Thanks to Dr. Steve Coles for this]

Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre, Beyond Human: Living with Robots 
and Cyborgs (Forge Books, 2007; $16.47 at Amazon.com ).


    The simple title of this book belies its profundity-and its sense of
humor. 
Besides an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of developments in the fields
of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, physicist Benford and biologist
Malartre
also address deeper questions about the relationship between the brain and
the
mind, as well as humankind's nervous relationship with increasingly
sophisticated 
machines. Looking at robots' use in all areas, such as unskilled labor,
precision 
work (like surgery), the home and the battlefield, Benford and Malartre take

into account not just the latest research and developments, but the long
popularity 
of Robots and Cyborgs in pop culture (citing movies like A.I. and The Day
the Earth 
Stood Still). Their concluding argument, that consciousness and the
intellectual
power of the human mind emerge from the complexity of the brain, and thus 
cannot be reduced to the functioning of its individual components, leads
them 
to doubt, convincingly, that Robots (machines that mimic humans) and Cyborgs
(man-machine hybrids) will ever amount to more than sophisticated tools, 
enhancing human life but never replacing it. Throughout, the authors
maintain 
a playful sense, an optimistic view of the future and a steady grip on this
rapidly
expanding field.


--------------------------
James Clement, J.D., LL.M.



_______________________________________________
wta-talk mailing list
wta-talk at transhumanism.org
http://www.transhumanism.org/mailman/listinfo/wta-talk

----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE