Skip to content
You are not logged in |Login  
     
Limit search to available items
1248 results found. sorted by date .
Record:   Prev Next
Resources
More Information
Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Kingwell, Mark, 1963- author. https://id.oclc.org/worldcat/entity/E39PBJmhKw649DTfKPVPhTqqQq

Title Singular creatures : robots, rights, and the politics of posthumanism / Mark Kingwell.

Publication Info. Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xiii, 226 pages) : illustrations
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents Past imperfect -- The future is always present -- After work -- Future imperfect -- Second valley.
Summary "Anxiety about non-human intelligent machines is a longstanding theme of cultural production and consumption. These range from tales of golems and Frankenstein's monster to the evil overlord scenarios of contemporary film and television franchises: Star Trek, the Alien series, and the Terminator sequence, as well as Her, Black Mirror, Blade Runner, Ex Machina, and many, many other less mainstream cultural artifacts. The source of this anxiety is clear. Non-human conscious entities may turn out to be superior to any biological form of life, allowing a stride across human ambition in a moment dubbed "the Singularity" by AI insiders. This is the turning point when non-human entities advance and reproduce in a manner that surpasses and subjugates biological forms of intelligent life. Although today's artificial intelligences fall notably short of this level of sophistication, Mark Kingwell argues that we are already more than human in important ways, and likely to become more so as time goes on. In Singular Creatures Kingwell plumbs the depths of cultural and political meaning in the apparent transition to posthuman life. Our immersion in technology, now comprehensive to the point of invisibility, has altered forever what it means to be alive. The politics of posthumanism flow directly from our own situation, at once dependent on technology and afraid of its effects on current and future experiences. More than a century after playwright Karel Čapek coined the word robot--rooted in the Czech robota, meaning "servitude" or "drudgery"--in his 1920 allegory about the alienation of forced labour leading to a violent workers' revolt, Čapek's central question continues to haunt us still. Can humans and their own creations co-exist in a new cyberflesh world, or is a struggle for superiority inevitable? Singular Creatures is an attempt at sketching the field before any deadly battle is joined."-- Provided by publisher.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Technology -- Philosophy.
Human beings -- Philosophy.
Posthumanism.
Artificial intelligence.
Transhumanism.
artificial intelligence.
COMPUTERS / Intelligence (AI) & Semantics
Artificial intelligence
Human beings -- Philosophy
Posthumanism
Technology -- Philosophy
Other Form: Print version: Kingwell, Mark, 1963- Singular creatures. Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022 0228014344 9780228014348 (OCoLC)1308795706
ISBN 0228015375
9780228015383 (ePUB)
0228015383
9780228015376 (electronic bk.)
9780228014348
0228014344