The most recommended robotics books

This book is one of the nuttiest I’ve read in its imaginings of a modern world on steroids. The part that teases most is that its predictions might come true.

I know our smartphones and laptops have changed our world, but cures that would extend longevity ad infinitum? Neural interfaces that would connect us directly to the internet? Nanobots that would reduce the cost of goods to zero?

Because the topic of modernity has come to engross me so, the big question always is, “How far will it carry us?” The answer to which (according to Kurzweil) is much farther than you can possibly imagine and much sooner than you think. One should have one’s mind blown every couple of years, and Kurzweil does exactly that.

Full disclosure: Adrienne Mayor is my wife. But that is not why I chose this book: It is a mind-blowing account of ancient dreams of technology and ancient scientific wonders. Mayor is a master storyteller. She recreates the ancient myths to reveal the timeless fascination with “artificial life” – with beings that are like us in some ways, except that they are “made, not born.” Long before humans could create real mechanical men and thinking machines, the Greeks dared to imagine what that would mean for humans and our relations with one another. And they imagined the inner lives and torments of the semi-machines themselves. Read this book and shiver to learn that our modernity was dreamed of 2500 years ago. 

This novel is not as well-known as others, but it should be. I’d describe it as a dystopian thriller set slightly in a future where technology has become part of every single aspect of life. Detective Carl Dremmler is tasked with the complexities of investigating a murder by an advanced AI assistant (which should not have been possible).

This fast-paced and thought-provoking story addresses the themes of human autonomy, morality, and the dangers of technological advancement. The writing is excellent, with its premonition of where we might be heading and some of the issues we might encounter. It is thrilling and enjoyable.

Tenebris Rache. I hated him, I really did. But, there was also something niggling at the back of my mind. I devoured all nine books, and by the end, I was cheering for this man, and one of my favorite female characters of the series. Buroker writes the complexities of life and relationships so well, you don’t even see the moment it all changes coming. And then you’re hooked, because deep down, we all know the best bad guys have a wound in need of healing. 

If sci-fi is not really your thing, worry not! Charming robots have crept into romance too and as a romance, The Plus One doesn’t disappoint. The robot love interest, Ethan, is everything a woman could look for—attentive, handsome, intelligent. But is he too good to be true? I loved how this book took a sci-fi trope and rewrote it for a romance reader, while still addressing some of the fundamental questions raised by AI, in this instance, not just “what is human?” but also “what is love?”

Arguably, Bill McKibben has been this nation’s preeminent environmentalist since 1989 when he published The End of Nature. Falter is his latest book and it is a numbing take on our species and how we have damaged the environment, perhaps, to the point of no return. On the other hand, McKibben is as much an activist as an environmentalist and as such he cannot and, so far at least, has not lost hope no matter how dire the straits.  

What holds the future of globalization in store?

I learned a lot from Baldwin’s insightful book, which posits a fast and dramatic rise of digital service trade between high- and low-wage countries.

Such services could range from well-known digital back-office services, such as airline ticketing in India, to more speculative “global robotics”, dubbed “globotics”, such as cross-border controlling of robots via virtual reality devices.

Baldwin points to new opportunities emerging to developing economies that hitherto were unable to gain from the globalization of manufacturing value chains. But he also warns of potentially dramatic social consequences in high-wage countries.

Whether you agree or disagree with his diagnosis, this is essential reading to be prepared for the next wave of globalization and its potential social disruptions.

Garreau’s book highlights the promise and peril of enhancing our minds, our bodies—and what it means to be human.

In this, the 21st Century, AI, cloning, robotics, mind-enhancing drugs, computer chip implants, and bio-engineering pose the stark alternatives of a real-life Utopia or a Brave New World where the very definition of what it means to be human comes into question. Collectively, these scientific breakthroughs will produce “the biggest change in 50,000 to our environment and ourselves as human beings".

Garreau has managed to put these complex concepts into everyday terms and anecdotes that lay people can understand and grasp the consequences of.

Though this book came out a little while ago, I first listened to it this year. Little Eyes is a near-future novel in which the latest technological fad are Kentukis (the novel’s original title in Spanish), networked devices that allow strangers to either be “keepers” or “dwellers” of these household objects (picture what you’d get if you combined Chatroulette, Furbies, and Roombas).

The popularity of this seemingly innocuous toy soon has a massive social impact throughout the globe, and the novel traces a range of unanticipated uses and consequences of this merger of public and private life.

The plausibility of this future makes the story all the more compelling

There are many relevant books that preceded Andy Clark’s Supersizing the Mind and that followed it. For example, Raymond Gibbs’s Embodiment and Cognitive Science, Louise Barrett’s Beyond the Brain, and Lawrence Shapiro’s Embodied Cognition have made important contributions to the field’s understanding of the role that the body plays in cognition. But Andy Clark’s treatment of this topic stands out because of the range of disciplines that he includes in marshaling of evidence for embodied and extended cognition.

Unlike many of the proponents of embodied and extended cognition, Andy Clark relies heavily on state-of-the-art robotics for his evidence. As a philosopher, Clark’s first instinct is to use thought experiments to help “pump” the reader’s intuitions out of the ground like subterranean insights. A good thought experiment can actually help you realize that you have a different opinion about something than you thought you had. But Clark also clearly… show more.