Experiments in Artificial Sociality : Curious robots, relational configurations, and dances of agency

In this article, I explore how experiments with social robots enact and reconfigure more-than-human forms of sociality. I combine recent anthropological discussions of nonhuman sociality with Andy Pickering’s work on dances of agency (1993, 1995) and John Law’s method assemblages (2004) to show how human-robot interaction experiments enact open-ended and decentred configurations of entangling relations between humans and robots. I propose the concept of artificial sociality to capture both the ongoing enactments and multiple results of such experimental reconfigurations. Using these conceptual tools, I unpack the “curious robot experiment” from my ethnographic fieldwork in a Japanese robotics laboratory and compare the kinds of sociality produced in the two experimental conditions. I argue that the curious robot exemplifies what Pickering calls technologies of engagement (2018) by manifesting a form of artificial sociality that augments the unpredictability of dances of agency enacted in (re)configurations of entangling relations.&nbsp

Asian Roboticism: Connecting Mechanized Labor to the Automation of Work

Abstract This article reconsiders the present-day automation of work and its transformation of who we are as humans. What has been missing from this important conversation are the social meanings surrounding Asian roboticism or how Asians have already been rendered as “robotic” subjects and labor. Through this racial gendered trope, I assess whether industrial automation will lessen, complicate, or exacerbate this modern archetype. By looking at corporate organizational practices and public media discourse, I believe that Asian roboticism will not simply vanish, but potentially continue to affect the ways such subjects are rendered as exploitable alienated robots without human rights or status

Self-engineering – Technological Challenges

Engineered products are becoming more complex and need longer lifetime availability; there is a need for new approaches in maintaining, repairing and overhaul (MRO). This paper presents the concept of self-engineering; the aim is to preserve the functions of a product or system and extend its lifetime and automate MRO processes. New developments in self-healing materials, self-reconfiguring electronics and robotics, which are already or could be self-engineering systems, are reviewed. Biological healing and repair mechanisms are discussed as a potential source of inspiration for new self-engineering systems. Examples of biological self-engineering are presented. Key technological challenges and research questions which need to be addressed in future self-engineering research are discussed throughout

Is Ambient Intelligence a truly Human-Centric Paradigm in Industry? Current Research and Application Scenario

The use of pervasive networked devices is nowadays a reality in the service sector. It impacts almost all aspects of our daily lives, although most times we are not aware of its influence. This is a fundamental characteristic of the concept of Ambient Intelligence (AmI). Ambient Intelligence aims to change the form of human-computer interaction, focusing on the user needs so they can interact in a more seamless way, with emphasis on greater user-friendliness. The idea of recognizing people and their context situation is not new and has been successfully applied with limitations, for instance, in the health and military sectors. However its appearance in the manufacturing industry has been elusive. Could the concept of AmI turn the current shop floor into a truly human centric environment enabling comprehensive reaction to human presence and action? In this article an AmI scenario is presented and detailed with applications in human’s integrity and safety.Ambient Intelligence, networks, human-computer interaction

Department of Computer Science Activity 1998-2004

This report summarizes much of the research and teaching activity of the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College between late 1998 and late 2004. The material for this report was collected as part of the final report for NSF Institutional Infrastructure award EIA-9802068, which funded equipment and technical staff during that six-year period. This equipment and staff supported essentially all of the department\u27s research activity during that period

Back to the Future of the Body

What can the past tell us about the future(s) of the body? The origins of this collection of papers lie in the work of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities which has been involved in presenting a series of international workshops and conferences on the theme of the cultural life of the body. The rationale for these events was that, in concepts as diverse as the cyborg, the questioning of mind/body dualism, the contemporary image of the suicide bomber and the patenting of human genes, we can identify ways in which the future of the human body is at stake. This volume represents an attempt, not so much to speculate about what might happen, but to develop strategies for bodily empowerment so as to get “back to the future of the body”. The body, it is contended, is not to be thought of as an “object” or a “sign” but as an active participant in the shaping of cultural formations. And this is emphatically not an exercise in digging corpses out of the historical archive. The question is, rather, what can past lived and thought experiences of the body tell us about what the body can be(come)? Dominic Janes edited this book and contributed this chapter

Accountability and neglect in UK social care innovation

Innovation alters who is accountable for social care and how they are held to account. This article shows how organisational, institutional and technological innovation in infrastructures of social care can reconfigure accountability instruments and propel change between distinct modes of accountability. However, innovation also sustains neglect, both in terms of issues, objects and subjects missing from research, and in terms of low levels of institutional reflexivity mobilised to evaluate and direct innovation’s impacts. Evidenced using two-level situational analysis – across a UK research portfolio and within a public robotics lab – we argue that confronting this neglect is critical for post-pandemic reform