Author: E. R. Truitt Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 0812246977 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
Medieval robots took such forms as talking statues, mechanical animals, or silent metal guardians; some served to entertain or instruct while others performed surveillance or discipline. Medieval Robots explores the forgotten history of real and imagined machines that captivated Europe from the ninth through the fourteenth centuries.
Author: E. R. Truitt Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 0812291409 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 292
Book Description
A thousand years before Isaac Asimov set down his Three Laws of Robotics, real and imagined automata appeared in European courts, liturgies, and literary texts. Medieval robots took such forms as talking statues, mechanical animals, and silent metal guardians; some served to entertain or instruct while others performed disciplinary or surveillance functions. Variously ascribed to artisanal genius, inexplicable cosmic forces, or demonic powers, these marvelous fabrications raised fundamental questions about knowledge, nature, and divine purpose in the Middle Ages. Medieval Robots recovers the forgotten history of fantastical, aspirational, and terrifying machines that captivated Europe in imagination and reality between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. E. R. Truitt traces the different forms of self-moving or self-sustaining manufactured objects from their earliest appearances in the Latin West through centuries of mechanical and literary invention. Chronicled in romances and song as well as histories and encyclopedias, medieval automata were powerful cultural objects that probed the limits of natural philosophy, illuminated and challenged definitions of life and death, and epitomized the transformative and threatening potential of foreign knowledge and culture. This original and wide-ranging study reveals the convergence of science, technology, and imagination in medieval culture and demonstrates the striking similarities between medieval and modern robotic and cybernetic visions.
Author: E. R. Truitt Publisher: Middle Ages ISBN: 9780812223576 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
Medieval robots took such forms as talking statues, mechanical animals, or silent metal guardians; some served to entertain or instruct while others performed surveillance or discipline. Medieval Robots explores the forgotten history of real and imagined machines that captivated Europe from the ninth through the fourteenth centuries.
Author: Adrienne Mayor Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691202265 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 294
Book Description
Traces the story of how ancient cultures envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices and human enhancements, sharing insights into how the mythologies of the past related to and shaped ancient machine innovations.
Author: Paul Dumouchel Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674971736 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 281
Book Description
Preface to the English edition -- Introduction -- The substitute -- Animals, machines, cyborgs, and the taxi -- Mind, emotions, and artificial empathy -- The other otherwise -- From moral and lethal machines to synthetic ethics
Author: JF Dubeau Publisher: Inkshares ISBN: 1941758606 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
JF Dubeau’s debut novel, The Life Engineered begins in the year 3594, where humanity is little more than a memory—a legend of the distant past destined to reappear. Capeks, a race of artificial creatures originally created by humans, have inherited the galaxy and formed a utopian civilization built on the shared goal of tirelessly working to prepare for their makers’ return. One moment a cop dying in the line of duty in Boston, the next “reborn” as a Capek, Dagir must find her place in this intricate society. That vaguely remembered “death” was but the last of hundreds of simulated lives, distilling her current personality. A robot built for rescue and repair, she finds her abilities tested immediately after her awakening when the large, sentient facility that created her is destroyed, marking the only instance of murder the peaceful Capeks have ever known. For the first time in their history, conflicting philosophies clash, setting off a violent civil war that could lay waste to the stars themselves. Dagir sets off on a quest to find the killers, and finds much more than she sought. As the layers of the Capeks’ past peel away to reveal their early origins, centuries-old truths come to light. And the resulting revelations may tear humanity’s children apart—and destroy all remnants of humankind.
Author: Rebecca Morgan Frank Publisher: Carnegie Mellon University Press Essays (CHICAGO) ISBN: 9780887486685 Category : American poetry Languages : en Pages : 96
Book Description
Part bestiary, part litany, part elegy, Rebecca Morgan Frank's Oh You Robot Saints! is populated by a strange menagerie of early automata and robots, including octobots and an eighteenth-century digesting duck, set alongside medieval mechanical virgins and robot priests. From a riveting robobee sonnet sequence that links weapons of war and industrial fixes for infertility to a microdrama sketching out a missing Sophocles play on the mythical bronze man, Talos, these muscular poems blur and sing the lines between machines and the divine. This lyrical exploration of the ongoing human desire to create life navigates wonder and grief, joining the uncanny investigation of what it is to be, to make, and to be made.
Author: Albrecht Classen Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG ISBN: 3110556529 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 742
Book Description
There are no clear demarcation lines between magic, astrology, necromancy, medicine, and even sciences in the pre-modern world. Under the umbrella term 'magic,' the contributors to this volume examine a wide range of texts, both literary and religious, both medical and philosophical, in which the topic is discussed from many different perspectives. The fundamental concerns address issue such as how people perceived magic, whether they accepted it and utilized it for their own purposes, and what impact magic might have had on the mental structures of that time. While some papers examine the specific appearance of magicians in literary texts, others analyze the practical application of magic in medical contexts. In addition, this volume includes studies that deal with the rise of the witch craze in the late fifteenth century and then also investigate whether the Weberian notion of disenchantment pertaining to the modern world can be maintained. Magic is, oddly but significantly, still around us and exerts its influence. Focusing on magic in the medieval world thus helps us to shed light on human culture at large.
Author: David E. Newton Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1440858624 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 357
Book Description
Robots: A Reference Handbook differs from most other books on robotics in the variety of resources that it provides to readers of all ages. Robots: A Reference Handbook teaches readers about a wide variety of robots. It opens with a history of robotics, dating to ancient Greece and Rome, at which time an impressive array of automata were invented for entertainment, religious, and instructional purposes. It follows the development of automata and robots in ancient China and the Islamic world, through to Western Civilization in the present day. Subsequent chapters describe the wide array of applications to which robots are put today and discuss the technical, social, political, ethical, and economic issues created by their increasing use. Additionally, a number of essays by interested individuals highlight various aspects of robotics development. The remaining chapters of the book provide resources that will assist readers in learning more about the topic of robotics.
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Author: E. R. Truitt
Author: E. R. Truitt
Author: E. R. Truitt
Author: Adrienne Mayor
Author: Paul Dumouchel
Author: JF Dubeau
Author: Rebecca Morgan Frank
Author: Amy S. Kaufman
Author: Albrecht Classen
Author: David E. Newton