Tag: Book reviews

In the background of Mary Shelley’s life was a very public debate between two prominent doctors beginning in 1815: John Abernethy and William Lawrence, both faculty at the Royal College of Surgeons. Lawrence was Shelley’s doctor. There was a clash in their philosophies that emerged in public lectures. Abernethy’s belief about life is more harmonious with Judeo-Christian faith: that there is an essence that renders organic matter different from the inorganic and that human life is fundamentally different from other life. Lawrence maintained that life is simply matter that has grown sophisticated enough to reproduce itself and to become aware of its surroundings. Lawrence paid for this by losing his job. Ruston implies that Shelley’s Frankenstein subscribes to Abernethy’s belief.

When an early-adopter buddy of mine stopped by recently in his brand-new electric Ford Mustang Mach-E GT, I was stunned at how impressed I was. For one thing, unlike other electric vehicles (EVs) I have seen up close (mostly Teslas), this one looked and felt like a real car: it had a real dashboard with real switches and knobs, a real brake pedal, and an overall design that did not look like something an eight-year-old doodled after seeing Blade Runner 2049. More importantly, it was by far the fastest vehicle I have ever driven, so much so that by the end of a quick spin I had an idiotic grin on my face I could not quite shake. It was, as Matthew Eisler reports in Age of Auto Electric, the “EV smile.”

The fact that science denial is deeply implicated in identity helps explain why science deniers are usually unmoved by contrary evidence that on a purely rational level should be extremely convincing.

Strengers, an Associate Professor of Digital Technology at Monash University, and Kennedy, a postdoc at RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, argue that if we proceed down the current path of making our digital assistants, fembots, gynoids, and voice-activated devices look, sound, and/or behave like simulacra of women, we risk reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes in ways that could rebound on real women.

Discrimination is “embedded in computer code and, increasingly, in artificial intelligence technologies that we are reliant on, by choice or not.”

When thanks to drone use soldiers rarely come home in body bags, members of the public are not often prompted to care about or even notice military activity half a world away.