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Originally Kang's dissertation, this work is a rigorously historicized examination of the role of automatons throughout western history as a kind of liminal entity that allowed people to work through their concerns regarding a number of binary distinctions: natural/artificial, living/dead, animate/inanimate, mechanist/vitalist, and so forth. The book is organized chronologically, working from the classical/medieval/renaissance fixation on self-moving machines as agents of demonic or benign natur...
Mr. Kang has done his research and come up with dozens of startling and often wondrous examples of automatons throughout history. That's accomplishment enough. But there's also a remarkable and wide-ranging intelligence to Sublime Dreams of Living Machine--literature, film, philosophy, culture. Kang insists that you understand the context in which people of the past viewed automatons. He does so with great skill and clarity.
This is a fine work of scholarship. Kang surveys a very wide field, and hoard learning is impressive. The book provides some key contexts to the contemporary AI debate, which has a tendency to be quite naive and ahistorical.At times I found the analysis a bit rigid and lifeless. Kang has found some excellent examples, and it would have been nice if he had devoted more space to them. A little more narrative, and a little more analysis of individual thinkers and automata would have enriched the di...
As an intellectual history of reactions to the automaton, this is the most encyclopedic book I've read so far in my studies, and will be an essential tool for further research. Kang doesn't linger too long on any single text or argument, so those seeking a strong thesis will find this book too sleight. Kang also decides to end his survey in the middle of the 20th century, which may disappoint those seeking stronger links between the earlier reflections and modern developments touched on only bri...
Did you know that there were machines in ancient times? Yeah, neither did I. This book is a great, approachable history of "robotics" from as far back as Antiquity. The language and methodology is academic, but it isn't too dry or technical. Recommended for every history and/or engineering nerd out there. I picked this book up to read about Golems. What will you pick it up for?
Como resistir a um título destes? Quer ao título quer ao tema. O livro é imprescindível para um curioso apaixonado pelas visões da FC, aliás, pelo porquê dessas visões, que se interroga sobre o que é que nos atrai no imaginário das criaturas artificiais, que impulso primevo nos move na forma como nos sentimos atraídos pelos engenhos mecânicos.Primeiro, há que definir com precisão o que é isso de autómato. Fiquei surpreendido quando Kang refere que a distinção entre autómato como mecanismo simula...
This book had a bunch of fascinating history, and was very well researched, the bibliography makes a great reading list if you are interested in cultural views on robotics. But it reads like a dissertation, I mean it is a dissertation; which is fine. Also I find myself in disagreement with almost all the conclusions the author draws from his copious research, but other than that, interesting stuff.
Somewhere inside this fat, mediocre work, are the elements of an interesting — even good — book, which a competent editor could have extracted. As published, this volume was merely written — but not, in any meaningful sense, edited. Shame on the Harvard University Press for letting the author embarrass himself with such a poorly edited publication. The author's bombastic, redundant prose can't get out of its own way. Many ideas are mooted but, just as quickly, stifled in a goo of tortuous scribb...
