Shows
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastThere Is No Apolitical RobotDecades before Karel Čapek coined the word "robot" in 1920, Americans and Europeans already dreamed of mechanical workers. Actually, they weren’t just dreaming, as Taylor Evans, of UC Riverside has found. The image for today's podcast is from an American patent, granted in 1868, for a man-shaped "steam carriage." Does it matter that, a little more than two years after the end of slavery, the head of the mechanical man in the drawing looks like white people's ideas of an African-American (not just in its features, but in the minstrel-show hat)? Tom Williams, a designer, roboticist and...2024-05-091h 08