Human Cyborgs and Robots: course description
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Victor Gomez Pin, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
In his book “Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?” the writer Philip K. Dick describes humanoid androids and explores their relationships with humans. The subject is taken up in the celebrated film Blade Runner where Denker, a policeman is required to terminate renegade replicants. Another film “AI” (Artificial Intelligence) raises the question of the love between a robot and a human. This kind of literature and movies assume the possibilities of machines that not only have primary consciousness, but also know themselves and are conscious of their own emotions and feelings. Anyway the development of robotic-sensors research and artificial intelligence will eventually lead to such entities. But the myth comes from far away. Starting with the Iliad, the west literature is plenty of physically embodied replications of people robots (entirely non-organic materials) or androids (mixture of non-organic and organic materials). In Science this fascination for the myth is also present, as we will show in some examples of the scientific literature of XXth century.
