Another book picked out of curiosity.
Artificial Intelligence is a buzzword, and the whole world is talking about it. Science has made a huge success in cracking it, and if we look around we can see a lot of devices are building intelligence on it's own. We even hear that machines are going to take over the world much before than expected. There are different school of thoughts who are arguing about it but that is not the focus here.
The book is full of ancient myths from Greek, Roman, Indian, and Chinese literature. The oldest reference is the Greek myth of Talos created by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention. Surprisingly, Pandora was also a female robot. The broader uses of such inventions were slave, security, spectacle, sex, and punishment.
The movies related to artificial life, and robots are also extensively quotes. Not a bad thing but could have avoided the overkill.
In a lot of cases the mythic inventions were compared to the latest inventions. There were even some cases where a detailed design is available was replicated by the modern scientists.
Artificial intelligence, and robots has fascinated the human imagination since long. In different era it has been designed to serve different purposes but the main object was the spectacle, and saving the human efforts. Which still holds good with more sophistication added to it. The scientific researches have made a lot of things possible which was just a myth in early days. We heard the stories of fascinating inventions but don't really have a proof if it really existed which is why the lines between science, and myth gets blurred. It is quite possible that the ancient workman might have imagined the possibilities of things like airplane, and might have even came up with some working models but it was definitely not a success otherwise some remains might have been available.
Well, if you're interested in myths, and would like to have a modern retelling than this is where you can start!
Artificial Intelligence is a buzzword, and the whole world is talking about it. Science has made a huge success in cracking it, and if we look around we can see a lot of devices are building intelligence on it's own. We even hear that machines are going to take over the world much before than expected. There are different school of thoughts who are arguing about it but that is not the focus here.
The book is full of ancient myths from Greek, Roman, Indian, and Chinese literature. The oldest reference is the Greek myth of Talos created by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention. Surprisingly, Pandora was also a female robot. The broader uses of such inventions were slave, security, spectacle, sex, and punishment.
The movies related to artificial life, and robots are also extensively quotes. Not a bad thing but could have avoided the overkill.
In a lot of cases the mythic inventions were compared to the latest inventions. There were even some cases where a detailed design is available was replicated by the modern scientists.
Artificial intelligence, and robots has fascinated the human imagination since long. In different era it has been designed to serve different purposes but the main object was the spectacle, and saving the human efforts. Which still holds good with more sophistication added to it. The scientific researches have made a lot of things possible which was just a myth in early days. We heard the stories of fascinating inventions but don't really have a proof if it really existed which is why the lines between science, and myth gets blurred. It is quite possible that the ancient workman might have imagined the possibilities of things like airplane, and might have even came up with some working models but it was definitely not a success otherwise some remains might have been available.
Well, if you're interested in myths, and would like to have a modern retelling than this is where you can start!
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