Illuminating the Victorians

ABSTRACT

From the beginning of the twentieth century, Japanese roboticists have observed specific features in the physical designs of humanoid robots that cause users to react with either fear or affection. Analyzing the sources of these reactions, robotics egineers eliminated from robots those features that might trigger negative associations, and instead embedded their designs with cues to norms, theories, and cultural references valued by their society. By analyzing Nishimura Makoto’s building of an affable artificial human named Gakutensoku, Mori Masahiro’s discovery of the phenomenon of the ‘uncanny valley’, and Ishiguro Hiroshi’s current employment of cognitive, social, and psychological sciences to overcome the ‘uncanny’ impression of his robots, this essay claims that the development of the field of humanoid robotics in Japan was driven by concern with human emotion and cognition, and shaped by Japanese roboticists’ own associations with the social and intellectual environments of their time.     

Whither labor geography and the rise of the robots?

The rise of the robots suggests a technological revolution like no other. It heralds potentially profound impacts on jobs and labor markets. Geographers have so far remained relatively quiet about such transformations. This commentary suggests ways in which social and cultural geographers can expand upon a robust labor geography and the debates surrounding the relationship between robots, robotic technologies, and labor. Six areas of engagement are offered that outline the richness and nuance of social and cultural geographical analysis related to the ‘rise of the robots’ at a time where much of the popular discourse around robotics is characterized by the extremities of either dystopian angst or positive boosterism. We call on social and cultural geographers to engage in conceptually rigorous and empirically informed research that provides novel ways of making sense of the multiple dimensions of our robotic futures.     

From minefields to minespace: An archeology of the changing architecture of autonomous killing in US Army field manuals on landmines,booby traps and IEDs

Since WWI, militaries and armed groups have used remote and autonomous explosive traps – landmines, booby traps and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – as a kind of deadly architecture to reengineer terrain inhospitable. Until recently, minefields remained analog, static, and fixed. But technological development and changes in the nature of war have made remote and autonomous violence increasingly mobile, dynamic, and robotic and, rather than being contained in a bounded Cartesian plane, diffused through the very spaces and flows that sustain civilian life. Such “unmanned” weapons are increasingly able to navigate, communicate with each other, identify targets and even kill with minimal human involvement. Mirroring broader changes in the spatial configurations of war, the architectural form of remote and autonomous killing is thus shifting from the two-dimensional minefield to multi-dimensional minespace. This poses challenges to those engaged in humanitarian efforts to demilitarize space. To illustrate these changes, the paper draws on Derek Gregory's notion of “Everywhere War” and engages in a discursive “archeology” of the minefield as described by US Army mine, booby trap and IED warfare field manuals.     

Cost-effective deep water archaeology: preliminary investigations in Trondheim Harbour

In the past few years there has been an increased interest in deep water archaeology, and a growing number of archaeological institutions now use remote sensing equipment and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to locate and investigate deep water archaeological sites. The article presents some important projects that have been carried out around the world. These include Norwegian projects. In Trondheim Harbour several shipwrecks have been located in relatively deep water. One of these wrecks was selected as an experimental site for testing new methods, and the results of this work, including documentation and excavation with ROVs and other robotic solutions, are presented. © 2000 The Nautical Archaeology Society