Donna Haraway – Social Robot Futures

Force of Gravity in Space “Man” World

July 22, 2017September 5, 2021

By Karen Asp

“Genders in Space: Science Fiction, Cyborgs, and Alien Pleasures” was the intriguing name given to one of the panels at a trans-disciplinary, public conference hosted last month by the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI Berlin). The panel speakers, Silvia Casalino, James Burton, and Hania Siebenpfeiffer discussed gender relations in specific off-world sci-fi narratives: The Female Man (J. Russ 1975); Planet of the Apes (film adaptations); and the German novels None of You on Earth (R. Jirgl 2013), and The Future of Mars (G. Klein 2013).

Discussion

Companion Species 2.0: Aibo’s Extinction Traumatic Event, Cruel Reality

June 23, 2015September 16, 2021

By Karen Asp

Sony has rendered its robotic pet dog “Aibo” obsolete. As The New York Times documentary “A Robotic Dog’s Mortality” shows, this extinction event has traumatized Aibo owners in Japan who are no longer able to repair or replace their beloved pets. A summary posted with the NYT documentary reveals that Sony had introduced Aibo in 1999 with the expectation of widespread adoption.

Discussion

Companion Species Manifesto 2.0: Jibo the Family Robot

September 19, 2014September 16, 2021

By Karen Asp

As the video that accompanied the July 2014 launch of the Jibo crowdsourcing campaign shows, Jibo is a personal robot designed to convincingly interact in conversations, as well as perform organizational, cognitive and educational tasks such as conducting internet searches on command and telling children’s stories. From the various interviews that Jibo’s inventor Cynthea Breazeal gave during the launch, one can surmise that the project aims to dispel a myth. (Original video is no longer available; an alternative upload can be viewed here.)