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Discussion

Why Technoscience Needs Fiction

  • April 27, 2018October 12, 2021

By Teresa Heffernan

As science was emerging as a discrete and soon to be dominant way of knowing and as the industrial revolution was transforming the English country-side, Thomas Love Peacock in his “Four Ages of Poetry” (1820) argued that poetry was increasingly useless and retrograde in the age of scientific invention: “A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community. He lives in the days that are past. His ideas, thoughts, feelings, associations, are all with barbarous manners, obsolete customs, and exploded superstitions. The march of his intellect is like that of a crab, backward.”

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Discussion

The Rift between Science and Fiction: The Case of…

  • June 4, 2015October 12, 2021

By Teresa Heffernan

Jibo, a device that is marketed as more than a “thing,” is the latest creation of Cynthia Breazeal, who has taken a leave from MIT to start up a company to sell this “family robot.” In a crowd-sourcing advertisement promoting “his” many roles, Jibo is referred to as an educator, entertainer, helper, companion, conversationalist, wingman, cameraman, and “a robot with humanity.” (Original video no longer available; alternative upload here.)

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