Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships - Hardcover

9780061359750: Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships
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Love, marriage, and sex with robots? Not in a million years? Maybe a whole lot sooner.From a leading expert in artificial intelligence comes an eye-opening, superbly argued book that explores a new level of human intimacy and relationships—with robots.

From Pygmalion falling for his chiseled Galatea to Dr. Frankenstein marveling at his "modern Prometheus" to the man-meets-machine fiction of Philip K. Dick and Michael Crichton, humans have been enthralled by the possibilities of emotional relationships with their technological creations. Synthesizing cutting-edge research in robotics with the cultural history and psychology of artificial intelligence, Love and Sex with Robots explores this fascination and its far-reaching implications.

Using examples drawn from around the world, David Levy shows how automata have evolved from the mechanical marvels of centuries past to the electronic androids of the modern age, and how human interactions with technology have changed over the years. Along the way, Levy explores many aspects of human relationships—the reasons we fall in love, why we form emotional attachments to animals and to virtual pets such as the Tamagotchi, and why these same attachments could extend to love for robots. He also examines the needs we seek to fulfill through sexual relationships, tracking the development of life-sized dolls, machines, and other sexual devices, and demonstrating how society's ideas about what constitutes normal sex have changed—and will continue to change—as sexual technology becomes increasingly sophisticated.

Shocking but utterly convincing, Love and Sex with Robots provides insights that are surprisingly relevant to our everyday interactions with technology. This is science brought to life, and Levy makes a compelling and titillating case that the entities we once deemed cold and mechanical will soon become the objects of real companionship and human desire. Anyone reading the book with an open mind will find a wealth of fascinating material on this important new direction of intimate relationships, a direction that, before long, will be regarded as perfectly normal.

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Review:
'The safest sex on the planet' - Wired. 'Racy, divertingly illustrated book' - Guardian. 'Robocopulate' - Sun. 'Oddly - very oddly - fascinating new book ... It's no mean feat just presenting a prediction as outlandish as that as unabashedly as Levy does. But more impressive still is how coherently he backs it up' - Telegraph. --Various

His book reminds us that humanity is an act: it is something we do. When our robots become pets, carers, even companions, we will, quite naturally, feel the urge to treat them well - Guardian. An interesting read and certainly food for thought ... There's certainly enough material in this book for you to examine human as well as android love needs - SFCrowsnest.com. David Levy's thesis, in this utterly fascinating, scholarly and rather uncomfortable book, is essentially that we'll f**k anything (which we knew), and that we love pretty much anything that looks as though it might love us; or, at least, is blank and malleable enough for us to project that idea upon - New Statesman. Get ready to bed a robot - Daily Star. --Various

'Love and Sex with Robots' provokes all kinds of questions about consciousness and emotions, about how we recognise ourselves in others and about the extent to which behaviour reflects the mechanics of the mind - New Scientist Magazine. Will surely rank as the definitive study of such phenomena for years to come - LA Times Book Review. The deeper you get into the book, the more difficult it becomes to dismiss his thesis - Chicago Sun-Times. [A] controversial and troublingly arousing book - USA Today. Entertaining (even climactic) -Washington Post --Various
Synopsis:
From a leading expert in artificial intelligence, an eye-opening but superbly argued book about how increasing innovation in robotic technology is enabling legitimate romantic and sexual relationships between humans and robots. Synthesizing breaking news in the field of robotics with the cultural history, technological development, art, literature, and psychology of artificial intelligence, "Love and Sex with Robots" is popular science at its diverting - and eye-opening - best. From Pygmalion falling for his chiseled Galatea to Dr. Frankenstein marveling in both awe and terror at his "modern Prometheus" to the man-meets-machine fiction of Ray Bradbury and Michael Crichton, readers have been enthralled by the possibilities of interaction between technological creations and themselves. Shocking yet wildly informative, "Love and Sex with Robots" builds on that fascination to show how entities we once deemed benign and unresponsive may very well turn out to be objects of real, human desire.

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  • PublisherHarperCollins
  • Publication date2007
  • ISBN 10 0061359750
  • ISBN 13 9780061359750
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages352
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780061359804: Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780061359804
Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2008
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  • 9780715637777: Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-robot Relationships

    Gerald..., 2009
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